Nikil Shyamsunder

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I am a Milstein Scholar in Technology and Humanity at Cornell University studying Computer Science and Mathematics. My passion lies in tackling hard problems by building elegant, efficient systems with a focus on performance, optimization, and security. I enjoy debating crucial topics that have deep social and ethical relevance. Outside of class, you can catch me snowboarding, watching The Royal Institution Lectures, or writing about my recent fixations—from art history to Formula One.

News

Jul 14, 2025 I led development of a public-facing threat analytics portal for Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs. Proud to see some of our work now live.
Jun 13, 2025 My teammates and I on CUSail won the 2025 International Robotic Sailing Regatta
May 30, 2025 I started interning at Lumen Technologies as part of the Black Lotus Labs group.
Feb 09, 2025 My team were finalists at the 2025 Cornell AI Hackathon, building RAG optimized for low-compute edge devices.

Experience

See here for detailed breakdowns of my work.

Regression Testing Dashboard
My regression testing dashboard built @ Beacon, presented in this company article
Lumen Technologies (May 2025 – Present)

Engineered scalable AWS-based data pipelines and dashboards in Angular to process and visualize real-time network threat intelligence for millions of IPs.

CMSX @ Cornell University (Jan 2025 – Present)

Building full-stack features for Cornell CS's internal course management platform.

Cornell Computer Architecture & Programming Abstractions Lab (Aug 2024 – Present)

Developing Protocols, a Rust-based hardware specification language to push the envelope in verification.

Beacon Platform (May 2024 – Aug 2024)

Built a full-stack testing dashboard and root-cause analysis system, reducing regression failures by 22%.

Discrete Mathematics - CS 2800 (Aug 2024 – Present)

Teach core topics and lead recitations for 400+ students each semester.

Projects

See here for detailed project descriptions.

Protocols Example: Here, two Protocols defining the interface for an add and sub operation respectively are inputed, along with the corresponding Verilog description and a set of top-level tasks to execute. The corresponding waveform is outputted by the interpreter after completion.
Visual Example of the Protocols Interpreter I built in action
CUSail team winning IRSR
My team and I winning the 2025 IRSR
Cornell Autonomous Sailboat Team (CUSail) (Sep 2023 – Present)

Lead 40-member team developing an autonomous robotic sailboat with ROS 2 and scalable APIs.

Decentralized Voting for Prescription Validation (Fall 2024)

Built decentralized validation platform in OCaml with hybrid blockchain and >91% test coverage.

Crazy Crush – 2D Infinite Runner Game (Spring 2024)

Developed Valentine's-themed infinite runner in Unity during DiGA Game Jam.

TinyTutor – RAG on a Budget (Spring 2024)

Built lightweight tutor app with FAISS, BERT, and Docker; finalist at Cornell AI Hackathon.

Neural Networks from First Principles (Spring 2023)

Implemented core ML models in Octave/MATLAB from scratch, focusing on math and optimization.

Latest Posts

Jul 14, 2025 Using Hadoop to Analyze 32 Million Movie Ratings
Aug 08, 2024 A Case Against Supreme Court Term Limits