Akash Gogate
Exploring the space where systems think and biology inspires.
From satellite observation scheduling at Leidos to LLM pipelines for cancer biology.
CS + Biology at UW-Madison | Computing for biology's next frontier.
Hi, I'm Akash.
I'm a CS + Biology student at UW-Madison, graduating in May 2028. Right now I'm building LLM agent pipelines for spatial transcriptomics research at the Kendziorski Lab, and my industry experience has been in backend infrastructure and distributed systems at Leidos.
I grew up in Princeton, NJ, where I spent a lot of time on tennis courts (still do). I've coached players, organized tournaments, and built a racket stringing business out of it. That's where I learned that most interesting problems look messier up close than from a distance, and that knowing the fundamentals is what lets you improvise when things go sideways.
I'm drawn to work where the technical depth actually matters. Not as a marker of seniority, but because the problem just doesn't yield without it.
The goal is to build things that couldn't exist without both solid engineering and thoughtful design, where getting the craft right is the only way through. That intersection is where the most interesting problems are, and where I want to spend my career.
3.9 GPA · Dean's List · CS + Biology, UW-Madison · Graduating May 2028 · Open to Summer 2027 internships & co-ops
Where I've worked
Leidos
Software Engineer Intern
May 2025 — Present
Applied system design principles to optimize multi-objective satellite scheduling via memoization and dynamic programming in Python, then rewrote the engine in Rust for the team's production microservice ecosystem to meet strict reliability and latency requirements.
Designed a scalable Kafka event-driven data pipeline persisting to MongoDB with at-least-once delivery and full system decoupling for mission-critical satellite operations.
Containerized a Docker test suite on Kubernetes via GitHub Actions CI/CD, writing pytest coverage across boundary conditions and fault injection to catch regressions before production.
Built a Claude Code MCP plugin from scratch on top of an institutional knowledge graph mapping team ontologies and service dependencies, serving 30 engineers across a multi-team defense program.
The Kendziorski Lab — UW-Madison
Student Research Intern
September 2025 — Present
Built end-to-end ML pipeline for single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), next-generation sequencing (NGS), and spatial transcriptomics using PyTorch/TensorFlow deep learning; agentic framework selects and evaluates models across scVI/scANVI/scGen/AmortizedLDA for scalable production genomics, cutting GPU runtime from 80 to 27 minutes (300% reduction) on identical hardware; tracked via Weights & Biases.
Built TransferAgent, automating natural language processing (NLP) literature synthesis and cross-paper validity scoring across ~500 clinical genomics papers; cut review time by ~60%; collaborated with clinicians on clinical genomics impact.
Co-authored an ongoing clinical genomics publication targeting a peer-reviewed computational biology journal, validating model performance and pipeline reproducibility for glioblastoma gene therapy research across a 10-person interdisciplinary lab.
Inspirit AI
Machine Learning Research Intern
Sep 2022 — Mar 2023
Built skin cancer detection pipeline (OpenCV + scikit-learn, NumPy/Pandas) achieving 95% classification accuracy on ~70,000 dermoscopic images; published as first author on 'Early Skin Cancer Detection Improvement' through Inspirit AI.
Trained and validated Random Forest classifier on miRNA sequences achieving 95% predictive accuracy (p < 0.05); validated via stratified k-fold cross-validation for cancer cell likelihood prediction.
Princeton Racket Club
Tennis Coach & Tournament Director
May 2024 — Aug 2024
Directed 8 regional tournaments (380+ match entries, 100% on-time initialization) while coaching 3 classes of 8-10 athletes ages 8-65, in a dual tournament director and head coach role.
Guided 3 junior athletes to 150+ regional ranking points and 5 adults up a full 0.5 NTRP competitive level through data-driven, skill-adapted coaching regimens.
Tennis Racket Stringing Services
Founder
Jan 2019 — Present
Founded and scaled an independent racket stringing business to 45+ clients, servicing 12-20 rackets monthly with a premium 2-day turnaround tier alongside the standard 3-4 day SLA.
Grew the client base through multi-channel grassroots marketing: word-of-mouth referrals, flyers at local parks, high school team referral discounts, and an Instagram page of stringing craftsmanship.
Recognition along the way.
TEL: Spatial Intelligence Ideathon
UW-Madison
Placed 2nd at a competitive UW-Madison ideathon, pitching a dual-product airport accessibility platform combining ZaiNAr sub-meter indoor positioning with SGA AR spatial computing.
Designed a B2B tool giving airline staff real-time sub-meter wheelchair-passenger tracking between gates, paired with a B2C app letting family track accessible relatives through the terminal.
Self-Improving LLM Agent
Architected failure-driven self-improvement loop for LLM agents across a 5,000+ task benchmark, outperforming ReAct baseline by 15pp via RAG-enhanced retrieval and Transformer neural network reasoning; built AgentBench + LLM-as-judge eval infrastructure with GitHub Actions CI/CD. Optimized inference via fine-tuning, task horizon tuning, and parameter search; built provider-agnostic serving abstraction supporting end-to-end ML pipeline scaled to horizon 20. Engineered LLM-as-judge harness scoring 7 dimensions; implemented novel repeated_failure_rate metric to quantify self-improvement efficacy.
Things I've built
Lotus Health
Financial risk engine over a 1,080-node ICD-10 comorbidity graph, querying 45 million insurance records to compute 5-year disease cost paths.
LLM Agent Pipeline — Spatial Transcriptomics
End-to-end ML pipeline for scRNA-seq, NGS, and spatial transcriptomics. Agentic framework selects and evaluates models across scVI/scANVI/scGen/AmortizedLDA; cut GPU computation 300%.
SAT Practice Test Generator
GPT-4o tutor that finds your weak SAT domains and generates exam-matched practice questions on demand.
Computer Vision Hand Tracking System
Real-time hand gesture and joint angle tracking pipeline using OpenCV and MediaPipe. Outputs biomechanical data for clinical motion capture, rehabilitation, and sports performance analysis.
Ecological Conservation Game
Multi-threaded C++ simulation where AI bots compete for survival under configurable ecological constraints.
USTA Tournament Explorer
Android app for browsing and filtering USTA tennis tournaments by region, level, and surface.
microRNA Cancer Detection (miRcore)
Random forest classifier on microRNA expression profiles to predict cancer biomarkers. 95% accuracy (p < 0.05).
Here's where I am right now. Most of it I picked up quickly on real projects, and the list keeps growing.
Languages
Infrastructure
ML & Data
Agentic & LLM
Bioinformatics & Genomics
Developer Tools
Leadership & Product
University of Wisconsin–Madison
B.S. Computer Science & Biology · August 2024 — May 2028
Computer Science
Data Structures
Core structures: linked lists, trees, graphs, hash maps, heaps, and their algorithmic complexity.
Advanced Algorithms
Algorithm design and complexity analysis: dynamic programming, greedy methods, divide-and-conquer, graph traversal, and NP-hardness.
Deep Learning
Neural network architectures, backpropagation, CNNs, RNNs, Transformers, and training at scale with PyTorch.
Machine Learning
Supervised and unsupervised learning, model evaluation, neural networks, and ensemble methods.
Artificial Intelligence
Search, constraint satisfaction, Bayesian reasoning, and foundations of intelligent agent design.
Linear Algebra
Vectors, matrices, transformations, eigensystems, and their applications to data analysis.
Machine Organization and Programming
How processors execute instructions: memory hierarchy, caching, pipelining, assembly, and system-level memory management.
Intro to Computer Engineering
Digital logic, circuits, memory systems, and the hardware-software boundary underlying modern computing.
Operating Systems
Processes, threads, memory management, file systems, and concurrency primitives.
Database Management Systems
Relational model, SQL, indexing, transaction handling, and an introduction to NoSQL systems.
Cryptography
Symmetric and asymmetric encryption, hash functions, digital signatures, and protocol security proofs.
Differential Equations
Ordinary differential equations, modeling dynamic systems, and numerical solution methods.
Discrete Mathematics
Logic, proof techniques, combinatorics, graph theory, and set theory.
Biology
Bioinformatics
Sequence alignment, RNA-seq analysis, genomics pipelines, and biological databases.
Computational Biology
Mathematical modeling of biological systems, network analysis, and data-driven approaches to biology.
Genetics
Heredity, gene expression, mutation, and population genetics.
Cell Biology
Cellular structure, organelle function, signaling pathways, and the cell cycle.
South Brunswick High School
September 2020 — June 2024
Computer Science
Computer Science Capstone
Senior course surveying industry frameworks across game design, computer vision, machine learning, and web development. Included panels with working engineers, university professors, and college students.
AP Computer Science A
Object-oriented programming in Java: classes, inheritance, data structures, and algorithmic problem solving at the AP level.
AP Computer Science Principles
Broad survey of computing concepts: algorithms, data, the internet, and the societal impact of technology.
Android Application Development
Built native Android apps covering UI design patterns, activity lifecycle, data persistence, and REST API integration with real-world services.
Virtual Reality
Explored VR development fundamentals including 3D scene construction, spatial interaction design, and headset SDK integration for immersive experiences.
Game Development
Designed and shipped interactive games covering game loops, physics systems, entity management, collision detection, and AI agent behavior.
Web Development
Full-stack fundamentals: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and introductory frameworks for building interactive, data-driven web applications.
Mathematics & Science
AP Statistics
Probability, hypothesis testing, regression, sampling distributions, and statistical inference at the AP level.
AP Biology
Molecular biology, genetics, evolution, ecology, and cellular processes at the AP level.
Get in touch
Open to Summer 2027 internships and co-ops in software engineering, AI/ML, data science, biotech, and computational biology research. Available May 15 – Sep 1. Email is the best way to reach me.