Kunal Agarwal

About Me

Hi! I'm Kunal Agarwal, a student at UC Berkeley born and raised in the Bay Area looking for an internship opportunity for next summer. I am double majoring in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. Last summer I interned at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Scientific Data Management Research Group.

I am also enthusiastic about teaching computer science! After taking CS 61A, I helped give back to the course by academic interning and 1 on 1 tutoring. I mentored for Computer Science Mentors (CSM) and was a part of course staff for CS 61A as a tutor. I am currently a TA for Data 100, the upper division course for principles and techniques of data science.

Projects

Amazons: Artificial Intelligence (Java)

Artificial Intelligence for a game similar to checkers. The AI placed in the top five of a tournament in a class of almost 1000 students.

Graph API and Trip-finder (Java)

Created an API for a graph package which includes a general traversal algorithm and a shortest path algorithm. The algorithms were used to create a trip finder similar to Google Maps.

Personal Website and Teaching Materials (Django)

A web application that helps students access worksheets based on the topic they need assistance in. Also included are worksheets I designed to help teach students introductory computer science concepts.

Scheme Interpreter (Python)

An interpreter, written in Python, for Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. Can handle tail contexts and macros.

My Experience at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In the Summer of 2019, I had the pleasure of participating in an internship at one of the Department of Energy’s National Labs, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, in the Berkeley Lab Undergraduate Research (BLUR) program. I worked under Alex Sim and John Wu in the Scientific Data Management Research group in the Computational Research Division at Berkeley Lab.

I worked on a data compression software called the Implementation of Dynamic Extensible Adaptive Locally Exchangeable Measures (IDEALEM). The software, written in C, originally was functional, but limited in its functionality. I worked on expanding the boundaries of what a user could do with the software. I implemented functionality for more test statistics a user could use and allowed the user to use multi-dimensional data instead of just one-dimensional data. Additionally, I built an API for the software that previously could only be run using command line arguments. The user can then integrate the software into their codebase.

I learned about how to build a software package with the user in mind. I had to figure out which features the user would most appreciate, how difficult it would be for the user to complete certain tasks, and how to create a level of abstraction so the user doesn’t need to worry about how the software works. I learned about how software engineering in research is done, and I want to continue working on projects that take complicated mathematical/statistical algorithms and relates them to software engineering.

I had an incredible experience working at Berkeley Lab. The internship solidified my love for computer science and mathematics and encouraged my desire to pursue these fields. I want to try out other areas of computer science and applied mathematics as I continue to pursue more opportunities and decide what I am truly passionate about.