Reach out on: Twitter @VirajCz | Github viraj-cz | LinkedIn virajchhajed | Mail virajcz@ucla.edu

Just like Schrödinger's cat that is both dead and alive at the same time until actualized, at any given moment you exist in a realm of infinite possibilities -- a tree graph, an inflection point of sorts, always marching towards a greater entropy. Right now, you could have been doing anything, but out of those infinite possibilities presented to you, 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 widely known as @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 19 y/o and I was born and brought up in India. I am a sophomore at UCLA where I am majoring in Computer Engineering with computational biology and genomics as my tech breadth and minoring in Mathematics. I am trying to deepen my understanding of Intelligence (both Artificial and Natural), Mathematics, Stochastic & Complex Systems, Emergence, Agents, and Morphology.

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: 25th Sept, 2023)

• Learning to Engineer Morphology & Build Kinematic Self-Replicators
• Exploring Computation, Intelligence and Emergence at Levin Lab (Independent Volunteer)
• Getting Better in Disciplines of CS, EE, Math and Bio

In past I have worked as Quantitative Researcher at Zaitlen Lab (undergrad researcher); built 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); built WebAR and IOS AR projects at CemtrexLabs.com (software engineering & AR intern); built Vizardlab, an AR VR agency for real estate companies (founder).

Projects:

(To be updated soon)

• Built an entire Mario Party game (CS32-P3) in C++ in less than 4 days (2000+ lines, 3 all nighters, 5 Monsters - 24 oz)
• X86-64 Buffer exploits
• X86-64 Disassembly and reverse engineering
• Optimized C code for matmul & other lin-alg operations for image processing to do multi-core parallel computing using OpenMp
• Built a mini version control in Python using SHA-1 for hashing and capable of Topologically sorting commits (DAGs)

Publications/Patents/Research:

• Leveraging Probabilistic Programming for Flexible Inference in High-Dimensional Statistical Genetics Models

Writings:

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

Note: most of these are old writings and were written when I was young and naive (just like I am rn :p). I might or might not hold same opinions as back then.

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

Academic Honors:

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

• AIR (National Rank) 8th: I secured 98.40% in All India Secondary School Examination (Class Xth) organized by CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), earning me a shared rank of 8th amongst 1.8 million students (AIR - 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, CE specific AR - 3.9%).
• UCLA B.I.G (Bruins in Genomics): I was selected to perform research and work at some of the best Quantitative Genomics and Computational Biology Labs (assigned: Zaitlen Lab).
• National Finalist at Aryabhatta Ganit (Maths) Challenge: I was selected among top 100 students in mathematics, across the nation for the final stage of Aryabhatta Mathematics Challenge from the Pune division.
• Winner at Multiple Hackathons: LatchBio's AI x Bio Hackathon, MakeSPP (AR title), MHacks (Github Octo), HackMIT, HackItBetter (AR title).

This list is not comprehensive and I plan to complete it soon.

Interests & Concluding Remarks:

Currently Vibing To:

Found this hidden gem with only 33K plays!