Saransh Chopra

academics by day, open-source by night

SaranshChopra.jpeg
London, United Kingdom s.chopra@ucl.ac.uk

I do Research Software Engineering at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Research Computing. I graduated from the University of Delhi with a major in CS and Mathematics in 2024 (with a thesis titled “Computational upgrades to the high energy physics analysis pipeline for future LHC/HL-LHC runs”). My thesis was carried out at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), under the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE) / Princeton Research Computing Group. Moreover, in daylight, I work on my academic skills and professional commitments, and by night, I develop and maintain open-source scientific software (see /opensource), which I believe are the key to collaborative and reproducible research.

I worked as a visiting student researcher (Mitacs GRI) under Prof. Jacques Carette at McMaster University in the summer of 2023. My work here revolved around Type Theory, Proof Theory, Functional Programming, Logic, agda, and agda-stdlib. I have previously worked as a research fellow at Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics (IRIS-HEP), Princeton University under Dr. Henry Schreiner and Dr. Jim Pivarski where my work involved developing a library for JIT-compiled ragged (awkward) Lorentz vector manipulations (see /experiences for other work-related stuff).

I am broadly interested in {Research Software Engineering, Scientific Computing, High Performance Computing, DevOps}, {Theory of Computation, Programming Languages, Type Theory}, {Scientific Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Data Science for Social Good}. I am extremely passionate about Open-Source and Open-Science. Finally, I possess a strong background in Android Development and Backend Development, but I don’t find them interesting anymore.

news

Aug 16, 2024 I have joined UCL’s Centre for Advanced Research Computing as an Assistant Research Software Engineer!
Aug 9, 2024 I will be attending PyHEP.dev and RSECon in 2024, thanks to the generous grants provided by both the conferences. Ping me if you will be around!
Jul 11, 2024 Article titled “Predicting efficacy of antiseizure medication treatment with machine learning algorithms in North Indian population” published in Epilepsy Research.
Jun 29, 2024 Abstract titled “A new SymPy backend for vector: uniting experimental and theoretical physicists” accepted at the 27th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics as a poster.
Jun 5, 2024 Abstract titled “A new SymPy backend for vector: uniting experimental and theoretical physicists” accepted at the 7th International Workshop on Python in High Energy Physics (PyHEP)) as a standard talk.
Mar 12, 2024 I have joined the NumFOCUS Affiliated Project Selection Committee (APSC).
Feb 22, 2024 I will be supervising selected Google Summer of Code applicants working with the sub-orgs - PyBaMM (Python Battery Mathematical Modelling) and OSL (Open Science Labs) - under NumFOCUS (umbrella org).
Jan 11, 2024 I have joined CERN + Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE) / Princeton Research Computing Group as a Research Fellow!
Oct 9, 2023 Abstract titled “What’s new with Vector? First major release is out!” accepted at the 6th International Workshop on Python in High Energy Physics (PyHEP)) as a lightning talk.
Sep 13, 2023 I have been added to Astropy’s GitHub organisation for developing a pre-commit hook for them!
Sep 10, 2023 I now maintain asmeurer/removestar and conda-forge/removestar-feedstock.
Aug 9, 2023 I have joined Open Science Labs Incubator and I now maintain osl-incubator/scicookie.
Jun 5, 2023 I have started working on agda-stdlib under Prof. Jacques Carette at McMaster University as a Mitacs Globalink Research Intern.
Feb 22, 2023 I will be supervising selected Google Summer of Code applicants working with the sub-orgs - PyBaMM (Python Battery Mathematical Modelling) and OSL (Open Science Labs) - under NumFOCUS (umbrella org).
Feb 20, 2023 Lightning talk titled “Lessons learned while working as a technical writer at FluxML” accepted at JuliaCon 2023.
Dec 7, 2022 I have joined PyBaMM’s Steering Council!
Oct 2, 2022 I have joined FluxML’s GitHub organisation.
Sep 6, 2022 I now maintain scikit-hep/vector and conda-forge/vector-feedstock.
Aug 22, 2022 Abstract titled “Constructing HEP vectors and analyzing HEP data using Vector” accepted at the 5th International Workshop on Python in High Energy Physics (PyHEP)) as a notebook talk.
Aug 9, 2022 Abstract titled “Compiling Awkward Lorentz Vectors with Numba” accepted at the 21st International Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques (ACAT) in Physics Research as a poster session.
Jun 21, 2022 I have been awarded (one of the 500 recipients over the world) the Shubhra Kar Linux Foundation Training (LiFT) Scholarship in the “Developer Do-Gooders” category for my work on open-sorce scientific software.
Jun 12, 2022 I will be leading a talk at PyCon APAC 2022.
Jun 1, 2022 I have started working as a Research Fellow at IRIS-HEP - Princeton Research Computing with the Analysis Systems group (Scikit-HEP), under Dr. Henry Schreiner and Dr. Jim Pivarski.
May 26, 2022 I have started working as a technical writer at FluxML under Julia Season of Contributions.
May 19, 2022 I will be leading a talk at EuroPython 2022 on the topic “Code coverage through unit tests running in sub-processes/threads: Locally and automated on GitHub”.
Mar 2, 2022 I have received a grant to lead a workshop at PyCon Italia 2022 in-person.
Feb 21, 2022 Scientific software paper accepted in the Journal of Open Source Software - liionpack: A Python package for simulating packs of batteries with PyBaMM.
Feb 1, 2022 I will be supervising Google Summer of Code students under PyBaMM, NumFOCUS, on projects involving, but not limited to, documentation, DevOps, parameterisation, and visualization.
Nov 18, 2021 PyBaMM’s contributor community received the Faraday Institution Collaboration Award!:battery:
May 27, 2021 Won a hackathon conducted by Elastic out of 2500+ participants!
May 17, 2021 Started working as a Google Summer of Code student developer with PyBaMM (Python Battery Mathematical Modeling), NumFOCUS, under Dr. Valentin Sulzer, Dr. Ferran Brosa Planela, and Dr. Robert Timms.
Aug 31, 2016 Discovered an asteroid having a fixed orbit around Sun by analysing the data provided by the Pan-STARRS laboratory!! Asteroid temporarily named as - 2016 JC20 P10vKdL.

selected publications

  1. liionpack: A Python package for simulating packs of batteries with PyBaMM
    Tranter, Thomas G., Timms, Robert, Sulzer, Valentin, Planella, Ferran Brosa, Wiggins, Gavin M., Karra, Suryanarayana V., Agarwal, Priyanshu, Chopra, Saransh, Allu, Srikanth, Shearing, Paul R., and Brett, Dan J.
    Journal of Open Source Software 2022
  2. vector: vector utilities and classes
    Schreiner, Henry, Pivarski, Jim, and Chopra, Saransh
    Sep 2022
  3. Predicting efficacy of antiseizure medication treatment with machine learning algorithms in North Indian population
    Kaushik, Mahima, Mahajan, Siddhartha, Machahary, Nitin, Thakran, Sarita, Chopra, Saransh, Tomar, Raj Vardhan, Kushwaha, Suman S., Agarwal, Rachna, Sharma, Sangeeta, Kukreti, Ritushree, and Biswal, Bibhu
    Epilepsy Research Sep 2024