Type of position: research position, research engineer in academia, research engineer in industry, other positions in industry
Name: Pranav Somu
Description: I'm seeking a research position related to Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), Neural Architecture Search (NAS), or LLMs for optimization. I am a Master of Science in Computer Science student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, expected to graduate in May 2027. My core research focuses on designing algorithms for tuning and discovering machine learning architectures, such as with the help of surrogate models and LLMs, as well as applying these methods to end applications, e.g. physics-informed neural networks for simulation engines. I am particularly interested in roles related to these lines of research.
Short CV: I am an MS Computer Science student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. My academic research heavily emphasizes surrogate-assisted automated algorithm design. As a Student Researcher on the Georgia Tech Automated Algorithm Design Team, I lead a team developing Python-based evolutionary algorithms to automate designing and tuning ML models. I recently engineered a novel surrogate for predicting model performance by leveraging LLMs to interpret model code. This methodology achieved performance competitive with prior research using 97% less training data and resulted in 34% faster design optimization. This work was accepted for presentation at GECCO 2026. As a Graduate Machine Learning Research Assistant at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), my focus is on applying AutoML techniques. I built a pipeline to conduct architecture search for physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) models to approximate high-fidelity physics simulations. To support the technical requirements of a Research Engineer, I bring scalable software engineering experience. I am currently a Software Engineering Intern at Databricks, where I develop a caching system to accelerate declarative data pipeline runtime.
Email: psomu3@gatech.edu
ORCID: 0009-0008-8633-9705
Web page: https://pcsom.github.io/
Other link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranav-somu/
General location: North America
Specific countries: United States
Until when: 2027-04-01
Present at next GECCO? yes