Open to Research Opportunities

Nischit Kumar

Aspiring Machine Learning Researcher

Passionate about building scalable and intelligent systems.

BITS Pilani - Goa Campus

B.E. (Hons) Electronics and Communication

M.Sc. Economics

Aug 2023 - Jun 2028

Goa, India

About Me

Building the future of intelligent systems

I'm currently exploring Reinforcement Learning, ML for Systems, and Language Models. I'm fascinated by RL algorithms, their applications, and designing efficient systems within hardware constraints.

I believe the next frontier of AI isn't in larger models, but in interdisciplinary systems that manage resources intelligently. My goal is to contribute to accessible and sustainable AI.

Beyond academics, I enjoy reading about tech and sports, listening to music, playing Cricket and Basketball, and staying curious.

Research Interests

Reinforcement LearningFederated LearningPost Training OptimizationQuantization TechniquesML for SystemsScalable Training

Skills & Expertise

Core Areas

Deep LearningNLP & TransformersFederated LearningReinforcement LearningLLM Optimization

Systems

DockerRay Engine

Languages

PythonC/C++MySQL

Frameworks

PyTorchTensorFlow

Tools

Git/GitHubWeights & Biases

University Coursework

Linear Algebra

Probability & Statistics

Differential Equations

Control Theory

Computer Programming

Digital Design

Operating Systems

Econometric Methods

Online Certifications

Stanford CS224R: Deep Reinforcement Learning

Stanford [YouTube]

Andrew Ng: Deep Learning Specialization

Coursera

Foundations of Machine Learning

Udemy

Computer Networks

YouTube

Experience

Research & Professional Journey

Research Assistant

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Oct 2025 - PresentBangalore, India

Optimizing the Traveling Thief Problem (TTP) using Deep Reinforcement Learning (PPO and SAC) and Combinatorial Optimization techniques (POMO).

  • Applying DRL algorithms (PPO, SAC) to combinatorial optimization
  • Supervised by Dr. Abhay Sobhanan

Undergraduate Researcher

DaSH Lab - BITS Pilani
Sept 2024 - PresentGoa, India

Privacy Preserving Federated Learning research, implementing Homomorphic Encryption (HE) and Differential Privacy (DP) while optimizing privacy-accuracy trade-offs.

  • Integrated RSPN pipeline in C++ and studied Mutable DB codebase
  • Supervised by Dr. Arnab K. Paul

Undergraduate Researcher

APPCAIR
Sept 2025 - Nov 2025Goa, India

Collaborated with University of Cambridge to optimize an LLM-based generator for drug discovery using graph search algorithms.

  • Collaboration with University of Cambridge researchers
  • Supervised by Dr. Ashwin Srinivasan, Dr. Tirtharaj Dash, and Dr. Raviprasad Aduri
Projects

Building & learning in public

Paper implementations and hands-on explorations of ML concepts

Featured

Twin Delayed DDPG (TD3)

Implemented TD3 in PyTorch within the Hopper-v5 environment to address systematic overestimation bias by integrating Clipped Double Q-Learning and Target Policy Smoothing.

Impact: 25-35% higher peak reward and substantially more stable learning dynamics compared to baseline DDPG.

PyTorchGymnasiumRLPython
Featured

Proximal Policy Optimization

Implemented PPO in PyTorch within the Cartpole-v1 environment. Addressed policy gradient variance by integrating clipped objective functions and adaptive KL divergence penalties.

Impact: Stable learning with average episode reward around 9.5-9.7 over 300+ episodes using ε=0.2 clipping.

PyTorchPythonRL

Generative Adversarial Networks

Implemented a GAN from scratch in PyTorch, drawing insights from the original research paper. Trained and fine-tuned the model on the MNIST dataset.

Impact: ~50% reduction in discriminator loss and ~68% improvement in generator objective.

PyTorchPythonMNIST

Variational AutoEncoder

Implemented a VAE from scratch in PyTorch by studying the original research paper. Used the MNIST dataset to train and validate the model.

Impact: Avg loss reduced by ~39%, Reconstruction loss improved by ~46%.

PyTorchPythonMNIST
Contact

Let's connect

Open to collaborations, research opportunities, and interesting conversations about RL, LLMs, and beyond.

Prefer a quick chat? Feel free to reach out and I'll respond as soon as possible.