Shishir Agrawal

I am Shishir Agrawal, a third-year Computer Science undergraduate student at BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus. I have a strong interest in the Blockchain, Machine Learning, Data Structures and Algorithms. I am a member of Crux- Programming and Computing Club at the college, where I organize and teach various workshops on Blockchain, Android Development and Machine Learning. I am also an active Art Of Living (AOL) volunteer, I organise and volunteer for various AOL workshops in and around Hyderabad. And I am also a core member of ACM-BITS Pilani Chapter, where I organize Hackathons and Talks for campus population apart from taking workshops on Deep Learning.
My LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishir0agrawal/

I started with development in grade 10th summer break. I worked on the development of a website for my father's business. I knew that I found my interest and I took the decision to leave studies. For my family this was a big shock, they wanted me to prepare for IITJEE. After consulting many people I realized that a good college will give me a great platform to showcase good work. I accepted their recommendation and worked hard suppressing my passion.

I joined BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus two years back. I loved C programming in the first semester. The control that C gives in our hands is phenomenal. I started working on Android development to solve problems faced by the campus population and by the public at large.

I love to participate in Hackathons as they make us cross our boundaries and remind us of our true potential. I participated in IMImobile chatbot Hackathon. My chatbot was a smart restaurant finder. It able to understand the cuisine of our interest through conversation and recommend us restaurants through Zomato API and travel time to reach there via Google Maps API. I secured the 2nd position in the hackathon and won Amazon Alexa. It was a really great experience.

I also participated in the Mozilla Add-On Development Hackathon. the Idea was to develop an Add-on for smooth night reading on websites. Initially, our aim was to convert images too along with the dark background. But due to hardware resource limitations, we were unable to do that. I secured 3rd position in the Hackathon. It was a great learning experience. I was up 24 hours without break, my regular meditation practices helped me in staying awake.

Last semester I took the Deep Learning course at University. The course covered math behind neural networks. After getting, deep insight into CNN's and RNN's I started finding out of the box use cases for deep learning application. The course changed my notion that AI is just Object-Oriented programming after finding use-case. I coded a Neural Network in C++ for the first time. All assignments are available here:
https://github.com/aparichit007/DeepLearningAssignments

This summer I interned at the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology(iCreate), Ahmdebad recently inaugurated by Narendra Modi and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I started with understanding the nut and bolts of Blockchain. Then I started with the development of Blockchain applications through Hyperledger framework. I worked for a startup Brainy IoT, which is incubated there. After realizing the power of blockchain and disruption it can bring to an industry, this made up my mind to pursue a career in this field.

Recently I started working on an Android application with Django backend for REST-API endpoints. The application is aimed to solve the transportation issues faced by people. It works on the principle of location sharing between people who are travelling by bus and people who are waiting for the bus at a bus stop. The application will be completed by end of August.

Currently, I am working with a start-up named Riverboat, it is a financial store for banks. I am working on finding use case and deploying Machine Learning algorithms throughout Application.
website: https://www.riverbot.in/