Saransh Chopra
academics by day, open-source by night

I am a master’s (computational science and engineering) student at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne - EPFL).
Before joining EPFL, I was a research software engineer at UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre, where I worked on HPC and DevOps projects. Even before UCL, I worked as a research software engineer at CERN (under the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering), writing software for computational high-energy physics. I hold an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Delhi (department rank 2). Besides writing code, I am also quite fond of teaching courses and workshops, broadly on scientific and high-performance computing, software engineering, and numerical mathematics (/teaching).
Apart from the experiences above, I have previously dabbled with functional programming and type theory, more computational high-energy physics and numerical mathematics, technical writing for ML frameworks, mathematical modeling of batteries, and data science for social sciences + social good + biomedical problems (/experiences). Moreover, I develop and maintain different parts (infrastructure, developer tooling, code, docs, …) of several open-source scientific software (/opensource).
I am currently interested in HPC, data-intensive computational science, computational and numerical mathematics, DevOps, and theoretical computer science. I advocate for and am extremely passionate about open-source and open-science. My background makes me a jack of all trades, but a master of none (which is why I am going to grad school). Finally, I also have some background in android and backend development, but I don’t find them interesting anymore.
news
Sep 8, 2025 | I have joined École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne - EPFL) as a master’s (computational science end engineering) student!!! This means that I am no longer a research software engineer at UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre :( |
---|---|
Jul 30, 2025 | Abstract titled “Navigating through Research Software Engineering as an undergraduate” accepted at the Swiss RSE in action, EnhanceR Symposium 2025 as a show-and-tell session (could not attend as the visa arrived late). |
Jul 16, 2025 | Abstract titled “Using Python’s array API standard for ESA’s Euclid mission” accepted at the Swiss Python Summit as a standard talk. |
Jul 16, 2025 | I have been selected and sponsored (as NumFOCUS’ second delegate) to attend Google Summer of Code 2025 Mentor Summit in Munich later this year. Ping me if you’re attending too! |
Jun 30, 2025 | I have been promoted to Research Software Engineer at the Advanced Research Computing Centre, University College London. |
Jun 17, 2025 | I have been selected for (and will be attending) the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre’s Summer University on Effective High-Performance Computing and Data Analytics. |
May 29, 2025 | I will be leading/helping with “python-tooling: transforming Python scripts into a Python package with good software engineering practices” and “First contribution to open-source software” workshops at UCL’s Festival of Digital Research, Innovation & Scholarship. |
May 25, 2025 | First-author paper titled “Vector: JIT-compilable mathematical manipulations of ragged Lorentz vectors” published in the Journal of Open Source Software. |
Apr 7, 2025 | Abstract titled “Differentiable Computation with Awkward Array and JAX” accepted at the 5th MODE workshop on Differentiable Programming for Experiment Design as a standard talk. |
Feb 3, 2025 | I will be attending PyBaMM Battery Modelling Conference (and helping with the training) in February, thanks to a generous grant provided by the conference. Ping me if you will be around! |
Jan 26, 2025 | I will be attending FOSDEM and CHAOSSCon in February. Ping me if you will be around! |
Jan 17, 2025 | At UCL, I am now partly funded by the UK Space Agency’s EUCLID UK to work on GLASS (Generator for Large Scale Structure). |
Sep 7, 2024 | At UCL, I am now partly funded by the GPU embedded Computational Science and Engineering grant from the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre to implement GPU and autodiff support for GLASS (Generator for Large Scale Structure). |
Aug 16, 2024 | I have joined UCL’s Advanced Research Computing Centre as an Assistant Research Software Engineer! |
Aug 9, 2024 | I will be attending PyHEP.dev and RSECon in August and September, thanks to the generous grants provided by both the conferences. Ping me if you will be around! |
Aug 1, 2024 | I have graduated from University of Delhi’s Cluster Innovation Centre (department rank 2; CGPA 9.505/10). |
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 Software Engineer! |
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!![]() |
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. |