Just like Schrödinger's cat that is both dead and alive at the same time (unless of course you open the box to check it, and actualize one of the possibilities into an outcome), at any given moment you exist in a realm of infinite possibilities -- always marching towards a greater entropy. Right now, you could have been doing anything, but out of those infinite possibilities, you chose to visit my little corner of the web, how honoured I am! Welcome to my corner of the internet!

Let me introduce myself! I am Viraj Chhajed, more popularly @VirajCz on the web, and though I feel words are too restrictive to describe myself, I like to call myself a craftsman and a truthseeker, a wanderer and a wonderer. I find extreme pleasure in discovering, learning and building new things.

Right now, I am 18 y/o and I was born and brought up in India. I am student at UCLA where I am majoring in Computer Engineering with computational biology and genomics as my tech breadth and minoring in Bioinformatics. I am trying to deepen my understanding of AI, Computational Biology, Genetics and Synthetic Bio .

I love intellectually stimulating challenges and find myself constantly gravitating towards abstract and fundamental, philosophical and scientific questions about self, consciousness and the universe.

Right now I am:

(last updated: 22nd April, 2023)

• Getting Better in Disciplines of CS, Math and Bio
• Doing Bioinformatics and Genetics Research at Zaitlen Lab at UCLA!
• Exploring RL
• learning synthetic biology from MIT HTGAA
• Trying some Calisthenics

In past I have worked on building Synthetic Media and text-to-video generation software at Basch.io (cofounder); built Algoz.xyz - onchain bot prevention algorithm (co-builder); did B2B SaaS growth at BridgeUp.com (early employee); built WebAR and IOS AR projects at CemtrexLabs.com (software engineering & AR intern); built Vizardlab, an AR VR agency for real estate companies (founder).

Publications:

coming soon..

Writings:

I love to write! Most of my writings are private, but I occasionally make a few of them public. Here are a few of my favourites:

• άθλημα-ism (áthli̱maism)
• “The courage to be curious”
• Absurd, ain't it?
• DREAM.REBEL.STARTUPS.

Achievements:

Here are a few of my academic (& related) achievements:

• AIR (National Rank) 8th: I secured 98.40% in my class 10th Board (AISSE) Exams organized by CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), earning me a shared rank of 8th amongst 1.8 million students (All India Rank - 8th)
• UCLA CE: I was selected in Computer Engineering (CE) - one of the most selective major at UCLA, only 64 applicants get in each year out of 40,000+ applicants that apply to UCLA Henry Samueli engineering school each year (And 1,623 CE Specific Applicants, Acceptance rate - 3.9%).
• UCLA B.I.G (Bruins in Genomics): I was selected (starts summer 2023) to perform research and work at some of the best Labs across the world in the areas of Quantitative Genomics, ML and Computational Biology.
• National Finalist at Aryabhatta Ganit (Maths) Challenge: I was selected among top 100 (CBSE) students in mathematics in class Xth, across the nation for the final stage of Aryabhatta Maths Challenge from the Pune division.
• winner at NIELIT Science exhibition: Worked in a team setting to create an Arduino based replica of Mars Rover within 3 weeks. We were awarded the first position by the chief guests - VP of Bajaj and MD of NIELIT (National Institute of Electronics & Information Technology).
• Winner at Multiple Hackathons: LatchBio's AI x Bio Hackathon (3rd Place), MHacks (Github Octo), HackMIT, MakeSPP, HackItBetter (AR title), Hackmann

This list is not comprehensive and I plan to complete it soon. Needless to say this list is also non exhaustive and I hope it doesn't get completed soon XD

Interests & concluding remarks:

Twitter @VirajCz | Github viraj-cz | LinkedIn virajchhajed | Mail virajcz@ucla.edu