Sense and Serendipity, and Running with it 

The second part of the title is easy to explain. The philosophy of “Running with it” is one of the most impactful pieces of advice I’ve received from PK. Funnily enough, this predates my entry into Precog or even my first interaction with PK. I consider this to be one of my most valuable skills, it was a cornerstone of my time at Precog. How does all of this tie in with the first part of the title? Allow me to explain.. 

Hi, I’m Ishwar, class of 2025. I’ve been associated with Precog since the summer of 2023. I remember the exact moment I knew I’d be in the lab. During my Precog interview, after the main discussion of the Precog task was over, Shrey Gupta, a popular Precog senior, picked up something from my SOP about my passion for math. He asked if he could pose a few math questions, and we started with probability. I aced every question, and the highlight came when I completed a question myself and answered it. I remember PK commenting on it, it’s been a core memory ever since.

The following semester, I began two projects that shaped my growth in very different ways. Working on them was when I picked up everything I needed for ML research and many other skills that made me a more competent person overall. This was also when I met my very influential mentor, Ruwan Wickramarchichi. Our first project, “Towards Infusing Auxiliary Knowledge for Distracted Driver Detection“, was later published in the Knowledge-Infused Learning Workshop at KDD 2024.. We began another collaboration soon after. I deeply value the mentorship Ruwan has provided me throughout both projects

This was also the time when Sreeram and I were among the first to start coming to the mostly empty lab. Precogers generally agree that showing up to the lab makes a significant difference largely because of the peers there. But I’d argue that even showing up to an empty or near-empty lab has its own impact, especially in improving productivity.

I’ve seen my fellow Precogers and I describe our lab as more like a family, and I have some insights on why it feels that way. PK has intentionally designed its work culture to be so. We take great pride in investing our time in everyone’s work whether through WUs, paper reviews, or, most importantly, the casual banter during our breaks. It is in our interest that everyone thrives, and therefore the lab thrives as well. We build organic connections that likely remain intact for a long time. Honestly, some of my best college memories are with people from the lab.

Precog greatly benefits from PK’s vision for the lab, which stems from what an amazing advisor he is. He always looks out for his students, taking a genuine interest in our academic lives and accommodating our needs to make things easier. He is quick to identify red flags in project progression and always has our best interests in mind. I know for a fact that you can even approach him with personal issues during tough times, and he’ll listen. This level of support is probably unique to him and the lab. I am deeply grateful for all the small and big accommodations he has made for me.

Something interesting happened in the run-up to the Summer of 2024. Being in Precog opens doors to many opportunities, and I was all set for my internship at Microsoft. During a Precog visit, I happened to meet Dr. Shivkumar K , who now leads ANRF, and had a quite interesting conversation about my work at precog. He got me in contact with Dr. Srinivasan Iyengar, the current CTO at Microsoft Energy India. We spoke over a call about my resume, and he offered me an internship to work with him via Microsoft Research, I later learned from someone that this call had actually been my interview, lol. During the internship, I got to work on a super interesting problem statement. This experience taught me a lot about industry-scale research workflows, collaboration, and practical problem-solving. Our work culminated in a paper, “LABELING COPILOT: A Deep Research Agent for Automated Data Curation in Computer Vision“, which was published in IEEE Big Data 2025, giving me my first taste of contributing to high-impact research in the industry.

I then began collaborating with Vamshi (currently PhD student at MBZUAI and a Precog Alum), Anish and Prof.TK from WSU and Prof. Manas from UMBC.  This is the most interesting project I’ve worked on, and it’s what got me seriously invested in the field of AI Safety and its potential. I’ve spent countless hours exploring counterfactual reasoning and its interaction with LLMs. Honestly, there is still a lot of uncharted territory in this area, and it’s a field I plan to remain actively engaged with for a long time.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to the amazing friends I’ve found in Vamshi, Sreeram, Akshit, Raghav, Ishaan, Anish, Debangan, Aditya, and many others, as well as the mentors I’ve had in all the seniors at Precog. I’m grateful for the meaningful and impactful time I’ve spent at Precog, and I hope to continue crossing paths with fellow Precogers in the future. Precog has taught me that there is something to take away from everything. Even when some projects don’t work or some papers get abandoned they still give you valuable experience and learnings that are non trivial as long as we take the time to reflect on them for the future. And my precog experience has been a lot of life changing reflections and learnings. Every evening spent at the lab immersed in conversations about all the awesome advancements in AI is a vibe that just motivates you to keep going.

The final stretch — like many of my peers, I also applied to multiple colleges. It was a pretty daunting process, but PK was incredibly supportive and streamlined many things to make it easier for us. My decision to apply was quite impromptu; I hadn’t seriously considered it until the very end. In fact, I only made the decision to apply after my time at Microsoft Research. Then, due to a middle-name complication with my passport, I was only able to take the GRE at the very last moment — literally living on the edge. I managed to complete both the GRE and TOEFL by the first deadline, quickly finished my SOP, and began submitting applications. I highly recommend going through the FAQs on the Precog website while applying, as that was really helpful for me. I applied to several colleges and received acceptances from a few, including CMU, UCSD, Columbia, and Cornell Tech. I was all set to go to CMU for their MCDS program, but it seems fate had different plans for me.

People often err on the side of attributing to serendipity what may simply be the consequence of one’s own actions. If that were true, actions would not matter, and there would be no incentive to work. We know that’s untrue, most outcomes that can be explained as consequences of our actions… they make Sense. At the same time, many things are out of our control, and no action within our capacity can change them. That is Serendipity, the realm of the invisible hands of the universe. And here’s the thing: even if you have nothing to do with such events, you are still responsible for how you respond to them. You’ve got to own it and move forward… in other words… Run with it.

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