About

Curious about how complex things break down into simple parts.

I'm someone with an open mind, always learning and driven by curiosity about how complex things break down into simple, manageable parts. I have always tried to put myself in situations where I had to solve some kind of problem, like hackathons or improving upon some inefficiency.

My experience spans software fundamentals to ML, generative AI, computer vision, analytics, data engineering, and visualization - learned through internships, coursework, and building things. This exposure to a wide range of areas has helped me develop a holistic understanding of how different components of a system interact and how to optimize them for better performance and efficiency. The full history of where I've done that lives on the work page.

Apart from my experiences and projects, the changelog shows how consistently I ship or try to work on learning/building something. The honest notes on every project show how I think about tradeoffs. And how this site works is a concept I tried on this website to show the engineering standards I hold myself to. And if you want to know what's up with me right now, that's literally a page.

Vedant Hirekar

Technical forte

Software Engineering

Python, SQL, TypeScript/React, FastAPI, REST APIs, system fundamentals

AI & Data Systems

LLM pipelines, agentic AI & RAG, reinforcement learning, ML, computer vision

Infrastructure

Linux, Git, Docker, CI/CD, HPC/Slurm, Azure, AWS

Education

Indiana University, Bloomington

2024 - 2026 · GPA 3.9 / 4.0

M.S. in Data Science

Data Structures & Algorithms · Applied Machine Learning · Usable AI · Computer Vision · Information Visualization · Big Data Management · Database Technologies · Computer Networks · Statistics

academic record ↗

Savitribai Phule Pune University

2020 - 2024 · GPA 3.6 / 4.0

B.E. in AI and Data Science

Software Engineering · Data Structures & Algorithms · Machine Learning & Deep Learning · Big Data Analytics · Database Management Systems

academic record ↗

Recognition

NCAA Final Four Analytics Challenge - Winner

NCAA Final Four Analytics Challenge - Winner 2026

Won by predicting tournament seedings for 360+ teams at 78% accuracy with a 7-model gradient-boosting ensemble over 104 engineered features, presented to NCAA stakeholders through Tableau dashboards.

InnoQuest 2025 - Honorable Mention

InnoQuest 2025 - Honorable Mention 2025

Recognized by the Shoemaker Innovation Center at Indiana University for building an AI assistant builder that lets SMBs put AI on their own data in 3–4 simple steps.

GeeksforGeeks Hackathon - Winner

GeeksforGeeks Hackathon - Winner 2023

Won with a personal finance app featuring AI-based voice-to-text expense logging and expense forecasting.

TEDx Curator

TEDx Curator 2023

Organized a TEDx event - coordinating speakers and logistics, delivering talks to an audience of 500+.