Hey, I'm Suriya — a CS student at Berkeley. I split my time between two things I love: building companies and doing ML research. I'm heads-down on something new right now, and on the research side I study how machine-learning models think — and where they go wrong.

On the startup side, I like going from zero — shipping the first version, getting it in front of real users, and figuring out what actually sticks. I built ProfitQuest, an app for teaching financial literacy, which led me into MoneyBot, where I was a founding engineer. These days I'm building something new (more soon).

On the research side, I work on explainable AIexplainable AIThe effort to make a model's reasoning legible — so you can see why it made a call, not just what it predicted.. Right now I'm looking at why image models mix up things that look alike — say, two breeds of dog — and using the "map" a model builds of what it sees to pin down where that confusion comes from. I just like taking models apart to understand how they actually work.

I grew up in Louisville and I'm at Berkeley for CS. If you're building something or working on interesting research, I'd love to hear about it — suriyansn5@gmail.com, or hit ⌘K.

Notes on what I'm building and learning — coming soon.