Varad Patwardhan is a graduate student in Computer Science at NC State University. His master’s research focused on reconstructing student coding behavior using keystroke-level data, developing a plugin-based approach to better understand coding patterns. Before this, Varad’s bachelor’s research explored Natural Language Processing (NLP) and code-mixed data, laying the foundation for his continued interest in computational linguistics.

Beyond his academic work, Varad has been involved in several personal projects, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models, where he explored the intersection of information retrieval and large-scale language models. For this, he was awarded the Pentair Fellowship from the NC State University Libraries. As he moves into his PhD, Varad aims to delve deeper into the capabilities and applications of Large Language Models (LLMs), with a focus on exploring their potential across a variety of domains. Through his research, he hopes to contribute to the evolving field of AI and natural language understanding.