F E A T U R E
Forging New Frontiers in Computer Science
By Carina Storrs, Ph.D. • Illustration by Sol Cotti
When Siddhant Bhandari and Surbhi Hirawat got together for dinner one evening, they had no idea it would inspire them to do research to help preserve their Indian traditions.
When Siddhant Bhandari (M.S. ’23) went to his friend’s home for dinner in spring 2023, shortly before he finished his master’s at New York Tech, he had no idea it would inspire him to apply his cybersecurity training to understand ancient practices.
Bhandari was sitting next to the 6-year-old daughter of his friend, Surbhi Hirawat (M.S. ’23), who was also completing her master’s in data science. They were enjoying their meal on the floor, as is the custom in India, where Bhandari and Hirawat grew up. But Hirawat’s daughter was not eating in the customary way, cross-legged to help digest food and not overeat. Bhandari gently tried to correct her, but the girl, who had not lived in India for several years, said she didn’t know about these practices.
“That moment hit home for both of us,” recalls Bhandari, who received his master’s in cybersecurity. “Surbhi and I realized how easily cultural knowledge can fade across generations. We decided to use our tech backgrounds to do research to help preserve these traditions that have so much wisdom behind them.”
The result is three articles that the classmates-turned-collaborators published in academic journals in 2024.
From left: Siddhant Bhandari and Surbhi Hirawat
In the first, Bhandari and Hirawat surveyed the extensive research on how AI technologies can make ancient medicine and practices such as yoga more accessible and effective. For example, AI can help uncover possible medicinal properties in plants, and when integrated into smart devices such as fitness trackers, AI can correct yoga poses. Bhandari and Hirawat also created a framework for future research and how AI can assist in finding, interpreting, and compiling data.
The next two articles came about because of a conversation that Hirawat had with her daughter while grocery shopping. The girl asked her mother about pasta made from millets—ancient grains that have been staples across Asia and Africa for centuries.
“I remembered from my childhood that millets can grow in harsh conditions and are packed with nutrients,” Hirawat says. “It got me thinking—what if we could use our tech skills to help these traditional crops feed more people sustainably?”
Bhandari and Hirawat turned to AI to track down millet genome sequences in databases and published studies and compiled a pan-genome—including all the genes and many genetic variations among cultivars of pearl millet, a common type of the grain.
Bhandari and Hirawat—along with Saravana Prakash, a physicist and geneticist based in Ecuador—published this work in a proof-of-concept study. It shows what AI is capable of and how it can help combine pan-genome data with other types of data, such as from genome-wide association studies and gene expression studies, notes Bhandari, who relied on his cybersecurity expertise to keep all the data secure as he and Hirawat analyzed it.
The approach can help researchers identify genes that enable millets to tolerate extreme conditions and improve millet breeding programs. In a second millet article, Bhandari and Hirawat outlined ways that AI can help the supply and distribution of the grains.
AI has been used to improve farming of common crops such as wheat, but Bhandari and Hirawat think their study is the first AI-powered venture into millets.
At first, this research may seem like a far cry from the training and experiences that Bhandari and Hirawat received in computer science at New York Tech. Bhandari focused on developing a learning management system to create courses for professors, and Hirawat worked on a project analyzing the energy efficiency of New York City buildings.
“But the learning environment at New York Tech isn’t just confined to a single domain,” Hirawat says. “The strong foundation in data science helped me develop the AI models and push the boundaries for how technology can be used for global impact.”
From Ancient Sciences to Education and Sustainability
Research on ancient practices and grains is only part of what Bhandari and Hirawat have been up to since graduating.
In spring 2024, Bhandari got a position as a software engineer at Akamai Technologies, a company that specializes in cybersecurity, cloud computing, and other services based in Cambridge, Mass. Hirawat joined New York-based SportsBiz as an executive data scientist in fall 2023, where she uses AI to analyze brand visibility at sporting events.
In addition to these jobs, Bhandari and Hirawat are charting new territory in sustainability and career development. While job hunting after graduation, Bhandari got interested in 1World1Nation, a nonprofit organization that operates an open platform that connects science and technology projects across the globe. Bhandari and Hirawat have been volunteering their programming skills to 1World1Nation to help small companies determine their carbon footprint and plan offsets—such as investing in a reforestation project—to become carbon neutral.
Starting last year, Bhandari and Hirawat also got involved in creating a new university called the International Institute for Sustainability (IIS), which offers students a mix of online coursework and classes taught outdoors in forests, with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of traditional campuses. They are building the online courses for IIS—like Bhandari did at New York Tech—as well as handling information technology infrastructure and data security.
For Hirawat, interest in sustainability stems back to the days she worked at HSBC in India, just before moving to the United States to attend New York Tech. She was a climate champion at the bank, taking regular trips to remote areas of India to plant trees.
Bhandari and Hirawat credit the faculty at New York Tech for preparing them to think through new ideas and push into new frontiers, as well as fostering a highly supportive environment. “We know we’d be welcomed back with open arms anytime,” Bhandari says.
Their latest venture may bring Bhandari and Hirawat right back to some of these faculty. They recently filed a provisional patent for software that helps high school and college students determine the career path that best suits them based on their background and interests. They tested it on about 1,000 students at Siddha Vetha Multiversity in New Jersey. They are now starting to talk with New York Tech professors about the possibility of piloting it among their students.
Bhandari often thinks about a point made by Abhinav Aggarwal, an engineer and chairman of IIS. When asked about everything he has achieved and what he would like to do, he responded, “I aim to contribute to society for the rest of my life.”
It would seem that Bhandari and Hirawat are well on their way toward that goal.
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