Looking at the Trees and the Forest

Every journey, they say, is a collection of perspectives some near, some far, some intricate, some vast. My journey at IIIT Hyderabad was exactly that: eventful, to put it politely. Every semester introduced me to a completely new version of myself. There was the first-semester me, whose academic strategy could be summarized as “we’ll see when we get there.” Then there was the final-semester me, who somehow managed to worry about every possible future timeline. Somewhere between those two extremes, there was Precog-at-IIITH . And like most classic grand movies, it all started with a ….. “interview” (or a recommendation by Priyanshul Govil rather 😉😉) I still remember the panel ( Rahul Garg Kshitijaa Jaglan Vamshi Krishna Bonagiri ) To this day, however, I have absolutely no idea how every sentence I spoke somehow generated more laughter for the panel than confidence 😭😭. Against all statistical odds, I somehow made it into Precog. All thanks to the panel!!

Article content — Precog Graduating Batch Picture 2026

The Initial Success

My first project at Precog was COBIAS with Priyanshul Govil (had to pay back the Recommendation favour 😏😏 ). Fortunately for us, the research direction was already well-cooked, and about half the work had been completed. Unfortunately for us, we had roughly “a month” to finish the other half. So began the cycle of running experiments, debugging things that had no business breaking, questioning our results, fixing them, and repeating the process. The project gave me my first real taste of what research actually looks like – the version filled with countless discussions, and the occasional “why is this number different from yesterday?”. One thing going great during the project was the constant guidance by Manas Gaur and Aman Chadha . Their feedback continuously helped us shape the direction of the work, and their mentorship, especially during the writing phase, was invaluable. With Priyanshul, I learned that writing a research paper is almost as iterative as the research itself. After months of effort from the entire team, our work was accepted at WebSci 2025. And yes… this was my first peer-reviewed publication 🥳🕺[1].

To continue the culture of shared dedication, I worked on a parallel thread with Rahul Garg , “the Silent Slogger”. (Just kidding… although the title does fit.) If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working with Rahul is to pay relentless attention on minute details and was one of the biggest contributors to my learning during the project. What really attracted me to the project was Graphs and CV. From the outside, they looked pretty cool. From the inside… they looked even cooler, mostly because I was staring at them at 3 a.m. while wondering why my code refused to cooperate (yess, GPT was not strong enough yet). A huge thanks to Ugur Kursuncu and Trilok Padhi for showing an incredible amount of patience to my extremely slow learning pace. Instead of dwelling on my mistakes, the team helped me figure out what went wrong, trusted me to fix it, and gave me the opportunity to make things right. Thankfully, GPUs cooperated, the experiments finished in time, and so did we. Finally, the paper made it into ACL—well, Findings (courtesy of the reviewers 😭), my first A* paper 🤓[2] but looking back, I don’t just remember the paper, I remember the people who made the stressful moments feel manageable.

The Opportunities

Precog comes with an abundance of opportunities. One of the opportunities that I’ll always be grateful for was visiting Microsoft Research with my fellow Precogs ( Debangan Mishra, Anirudh Vempati ) In all honesty, it felt just as much like an outing as it did a research visit (credits to the beautiful office and incredible food). A special thanks to Tanuja Ganu for the opportunity and her mentorship throughout the project. Her feedback was always thoughtful and she had a remarkable ability to identify the bigger picture whenever we got lost in the details. Our work on TAMAS [3] focused on benchmarking safety vulnerabilities in multi-agent systems deployed in real-world tasks. My experience at MSR led to a pivotal evolution in my research trajectory and still continues to shape my current research interests. And of course, no description of TAMAS is complete without Ishan Kavathekar and Ameya Rathod . Ishan somehow mastered the art of being simultaneously calm and in a state of panic, a skill I’m still trying to understand. Ameya, with his bullying ensured that Ishan never got too comfortable. Between those two, countless experiments, and many rounds of “Pehle Pilot experiments run karte hai,” TAMAS became one of the most memorable research experiences I’ve had.

With all freedom, Precog allowed me to venture into domains that were unconventional, ambiguous but really cool. Through our collaboration with Alphagrep Quantitative Research Lab, one such direction was AI × Quant. A heartfelt thank you to Hemang Mandalia for believing in me, providing opportunities and organizing our visit to Alphagrep office and get a first hand experience of how Quants live.

The Precog Lab

From every small suggestion I received in WU (Weekly Update) to every large blunder I managed to create with the GPUs, Precog was always there to support me. The paper jams six hours before the deadline, the sudden realization of “I didn’t set the random seed”, the last-minute experiments, and the seemingly endless minor adjustments to the crown-jewel figure, somehow, all of it became part of my success. Looking back, these moments are probably some of the memories I will remember the most. Precog was never just a research group for me. It was a place where I learned how to think, question assumptions, take ownership, deal with failures, and, most importantly, keep going when things don’t work the way I expected them to. From the smallest technical discussion to the bigger research problems, there was always someone willing to help, challenge an idea, or simply say, “Let’s discuss it in detail after WU”. And finally, I would especially like to thank Ponnurangam Kumaraguru (PK) for his constant support, guidance, and direction throughout this journey. What I value most is that his mentorship was never limited to research and taught me to see the trees and the forest.

At Precog, I realised life is not just about the final result, but about the curiosity, persistence, people, and lessons that come along the way. And perhaps that is why Prof’s motto still stays with me “Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” As life takes me beyond IIIT, I know that there will be new places, new people, new problems, and probably new ways to mess up GPUs. But what stays with me are the memories, the people, the lessons, and the confidence that this journey gave me.

And finally, I would like to thank all my fellow Precogs — Anish R Joishy , Arihant Rastogi , Sathwik Reddy , Vaishnavi Shivkumar, George Rahul , Soham Petkar , Manas Mittal , Vishal Rao and my seniors, Sreeram Vennam, Akshit Sinha, Prashant Kodali, Bhaskara Hanuma, Ishwar Balappanawar and Ashok Urlana for making this journey so much more memorable. From endless discussions and last-minute chaos to the small moments in between, each of you has been an important part of my time at Precog. But what was Precog all about? It was the constant dedication that kept pushing us to do better. Maybe it was the belief that there was always something more we could improve, or the hope that ups were just around the corner. Maybe it was the countless discussions, the relentless pursuit of getting things right, and the occasional push when we were too comfortable with what we had. But more than anything, it was the people and the passion that made all the chaos worth it. Imagine a journey with only ups—that was Precog for me.