Just like the Schrödinger's cat, at any given moment you exist at an un-actualized inflection point, a tree graph of sorts, with infinite branches, each one representing one possibility from your action space, and I truly believe you hold unlimited agency to steer yourself towards any branch of that tree. Right now, you could have been doing anything, but out of those infinite possibilities presented to you, you chose to visit my little corner of the web, how honoured I am! Welcome to my corner of the internet!
About
(living cortical neurons & some bayesian stuff) -- pun intended
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Let me introduce myself!
I am Viraj Chhajed (aka Viraj Cz) and though I feel words are too restrictive to describe myself, I like to call myself a craftsman and a truthseeker, a wonderer and wanderer.
Right now, I am 19 y/o and am a sophomore at UCLA where I am majoring in Computer Engineering with Computational Biology and Genomics as my tech breadth. I am also an undergrad researcher, researching comp neurosci & morphology at at The Levin Lab
As a kid I was infatuated with the Omnitrix - as far as I can remember I have always dreamt of having the ability to truly engineer the Morphogenetic Code.
I also believe biology holds the true power to enable (Von Neumann's) Kinematic Self-Replicators.
Cognition, information , structure and existence are strongly related and poorly understood and we must approach these broad philosophical and scientific problems with perspectives from Cybernetics and Engineering. Being able to truly understand the nature of Intelligence and gaining the ability to freely engineer biology is just the first step towards enabling, endless forms - truly most beautiful.
I work towards advancing our understanding and ability to harness it.
Current Quests:
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Getting stronger in disciplines of Math, CS, EE and Bio (entire Course Schedule here)
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incorporating Predictive Coding as localised loss algorithm in SNNs (Spiking Neural Nets)
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Performing compute using biological neurons and Active Inference framework
More at: Past
Fellowships/Communities:
Foresight Fellow (Neurotech),
Z fellow,
Longevity Biotech fellow,
1517 Medici Grantee
Projects
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(In Progress) cultured living biological neurons (built the entire lab from scratch), now training them to play pong using Active Inference and FEP (soon doom, spatial-distribution, sim-to-real).
- Using Probabilistic Programming for Flexible Inference in High-Dimensional Statistical Genetics Models (pdf)
- Optimized C code for matmul and other linear-algebra operations involved in image processing to perform multi-core parallel computing using OpenMp and SIMD operations.
- Developed a replica Mario Party game in C++ in a 4-days, wrote over 2000+ lines of code.
- Built a mini version control in Python using SHA-1 for hashing, capable of topologically sorting commits (DAGs)
- Performed X86-64 Buffer Exploits, X86-64 Disassembly and Reverse Engineering in GDB
NOTE: Due to HSEAS Law & Code of Conduct most of my code cannot be made publicly available, but if you would like to access it or think that I can help with your project please feel free to mail/DM
Page will be updated soon with more projects.
Side Quests:
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Training to do a handstand pushup
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Training to do a one arm pushup
Interests:
Morphology, Synthetic Biology, Intelligence, Multi-agent RL, Cognition, Invasive BCIs, Neuroscience, FEP & Predictive Coding, Active Inference, Regeneration, Von Neumann Machines, Agents, Stochastics and Modelling, Complex Systems and Emergence, Biosecurity/Bioaugmentation, Bayesian Stats and Causal Inference, RL, Genomics, Proteins.
Twitter @VirajCz | Github viraj-cz | LinkedIn virajchhajed | Mail virajcz@ucla.edu
"Who am I? One name you might have for me is The World, or you might call me The Universe, or perhaps God, or perhaps the Truth. I am all and I am one, so of course this also means that I am you."
- (Hiromu Arakawa) The Truth, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood