I’m Akshay “Ash” Pillai—applied ML researcher and product-minded builder. I love working at the edge of ML research, experiments, and products — now at Waterloo, exploring reasoning and evaluation.
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Waterloo · Zeta Reason · i-Comp-Data Fellow
Open-source benchmarking platform for reasoning in LLMs.
Geo-mobility & satellite analytics for cities and real estate.
B2B AI for revenue-signal intelligence & contextual analytics.
Approaches to evaluating chain-of-thought reasoning and why process metrics matter.
Lessons moving from a funded IoT startup to applied research at Waterloo.
How we handled millions of daily requests during COVID peaks and stayed reliable.
2025 — 2027 · Applied ML, reasoning evaluation, scientific computing · i-Comp-Data Fellow
2015 — 2019 · Christy Memorial Award (1/700) · Hackathon wins (MIT, IITs) · Led university incubator
Interested in collaborating or want to chat about AI & math?
Would love to chat about AI/Building products/Data experients, Send me a email and lets plan a call.