Shivam Kohli

I am a full stack web developer and worked with full-time professionals on technologies such as HTML, CSS, JS, Bootstrap, Django, SQL. I have successfully passed every academic milestone of my education by always ranking top in almost all courses. I have always been interested in Machine learning, Natural Language Processing and their application in Artificial Intelligence. This field interests me the most because of its never-ending possibilities. I was also selected among the top 40 teams(total 13000 teams) from all over the world for United by HCL Hackathon in which I made a natural language customer centric chatbot for logistics giant DHL.
I am a final year engineering student majoring in Computer Science. My Objective is to engage in an activity which enhances my skills and satisfies my desire to learn which helps me develop into a responsible entrepreneur. I am a born leader having excellent communication skills, sufficient enough to help me imbibe a spirit of teamwork among the group I work with.
Currently, I am working on a project under GSOC 2018 which I feel is the most complex project I have come across. I have achieved the goals for my GSoC and successfully completed this program but the fun for open source still motivates me to work with the community. The goal of this project was to create a component that sits between the seller's frontend and the GNU Taler merchant backend. People who don't know how to code can accept payments via GNU Taler (with only minor tech skill requirements). It also keeps a track of the inventory of the merchant. The current objective that I'm working on is to design an algorithm for writing heuristic functions to determine the shortest and most efficient coin selection approach in Taler. Every day there comes a new challenge on this journey. But one thing which project has definitely taught me is that never to give up. These challenges make me learn new things in the field of coding, let me explore new horizons which push me to get out of my comfort zone and give my best in every aspect. I would like to be a part of this hackathon because I find the opportunity to network with other professionals from the World, which is an exceptional opportunity for horizontal exchange of experience. I perceive this also as an occasion to familiarise with good practices as a channel for my personal development. From networking to meeting the keynote speakers for advice, to create connections with other tech enthusiasts of similar interests, to enjoy the extra-curricular program, etc. I want this hackathon to teach me time management. To teach me how to interact with people. To teach me the technical skills I’ll need in the near future. To help me know where I stand and how I can improve myself. One of my main motives to come to a hackathon like this is to connect with people and build research linkages cutting across borders.