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Available from March 2027

Aarush Kumbhakern

Program analysis, formal modeling & systems engineering

I'm a final-year computer science undergraduate at Ashoka University and a visiting student researcher at the University of Sydney, advised by Rahul Gopinath. I work on making failing programs easier to debug, through input reduction and learning input structure. My work has been recognized with Ashoka's award for the best undergraduate thesis in computer science, and with ISSRE artifact badges for Dr. DD's code and data.

Research profile

Research summary

With Rahul Gopinath at Sydney, I'm investigating whether a failure oracle can reveal enough structure to reduce inputs without a supplied grammar, parser or lexer, and whether the reduction savings justify the cost of learning.

My other work spans programmable microfluidics, through my undergraduate thesis with Bhargab B. Bhattacharya at Ashoka, and recipe representations, with Partha Pratim Das at the Mphasis AI & Applied Tech Lab.

Condensed CV

Publications

First author on two peer-reviewed conference papers and one workshop paper. Full references and BibTeX are on the publications page, and records on ORCID.

∗ Equal contribution.

Research experience

  • Visiting Student Researcher · University of Sydney

    Nov 2023 – present · Remote · Advisor: Rahul Gopinath

    I implemented, optimized and evaluated Dr. DD, which isolates failure causes while preserving 1-minimality, and built its replication package. On XML it ran 6.0× faster using 1.7% of ddminY's oracle calls; mean reduction quality was comparable across benchmark families. I'm now working on reducing inputs without a supplied grammar, by learning their structure from the failure oracle itself.

    Dr. DD · Current research · Grammar fuzzers

  • Undergraduate Researcher · Mphasis AI & Applied Tech Lab, Ashoka University

    May 2025 – present · Sonipat, India · Advisor: Partha Pratim Das

    I developed a temporal-graph ontology for cooking procedures, published at MMFood 2025 with equal-contribution credit, and extended it into a recipe DSL with a Python pipeline for LLM extraction, deterministic compilation, validation and interactive rendering.

    Research summary · Implementation

  • Undergraduate Thesis · Ashoka University

    Aug 2025 – Apr 2026 · Sonipat, India · Advisor: Bhargab B. Bhattacharya

    I designed HyDRA, a programmable microfluidic architecture and instruction set, with a finite integer-state safety model, a static verification procedure and a soundness argument. Evaluation covers physical feasibility under stated assumptions.

    Research summary · ISVLSI 2026 paper

Education

  • B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Science · Ashoka University

    Sep 2022 – early 2027 (expected) · Sonipat, India · Four-Year Honours with Research · Biology minor

    CGPA 3.63 / 4.00 through Spring 2026; coursework completes in December 2026. Thesis: HyDRA, grade A.

Engineering

  • Engineering Intern · Catalis Packaging Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

    Nov 2023 – Jan 2024 · Vadodara, India

    I built a Raspberry Pi gateway that polls machines over Modbus TCP, buffers readings in SQLite on a USB key and uploads them when the network allows; inserting or removing the key starts and stops it. I demonstrated it against machines and test benches and wrote the operator and technical documentation.

    Implementation & source code

Honors, talks & teaching

  • Conference presentation of HyDRA, IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI), July 2026.

  • Academic Excellence Award for the Best Undergraduate Thesis in Computer Science, Ashoka University, 2026.

  • Available, Reviewed and Reproducible artifact badges for Dr. DD's code and data, ISSRE 2026.

  • Teaching assistant, Lodha Genius Program, Ashoka University, May–June 2025: I mentored five early-high-school students through a month-long computational biology course and gave a lecture on version control for reproducible research.

  • Engineering International Scholar Award, University of Toronto, 2022: a merit entrance scholarship of CAD 140,000 over four years. Declined.

Opportunities · 2027

I'm considering research, engineering and doctoral study on equal terms. I haven't settled on a single long-term field; the problem, its purpose and the people matter to that decision.

I expect to complete coursework in December 2026, with the degree to follow in early 2027. Expected availability for full-time work and relocation is around March 2027, subject to degree documentation and visas.

If you have an opportunity in mind, please email me.