I build systemsthat reason.

I keep digging into rabbit holes, some become systems.

Navigate, Don’t GenerateFirst author · NeurIPS 2026, AI4Good Workshop

Download resume
Portrait of Pranav Dhiran
  1. 01LFX’26 mentee
  2. 02Neurosymbolic SLMs
  3. 03Agri-language model
Scroll
[01]Small Language Models[02]Efficient AI[03]Natural Language Processing[04]Machine Learning[05]Model Architectures[06]Neurosymbolic AI[07]Knowledge Representation[08]Reasoning[09]Reinforcement Learning[10]Trustworthy AI
[01]Small Language Models[02]Efficient AI[03]Natural Language Processing[04]Machine Learning[05]Model Architectures[06]Neurosymbolic AI[07]Knowledge Representation[08]Reasoning[09]Reinforcement Learning[10]Trustworthy AI

Everything I build started as a question I couldn't leave alone.

Playing football
Anime

Everything started with a question I couldn't put down. I didn't pick a field so much as a habit — follow a question until it turns into something you can build, test, and hand to someone else. Some questions became models; some became tools; a few became stories worth telling.

Final-year B.Tech, Electronics & Telecom at SGGSIE&T Nanded.

Recognition

  • National Finalist — Smart India Hackathon 2024 & 2025
  • International Finalist (Top 6) — UWA Hack 2026
  • Speaker & Model Evaluator — IAIRO Pramana Bootcamp
  • Reviewer — Trustworthy AI for Good (AI4GOOD) Workshop, NeurIPS 2026

Every role is a different vantage on the same question.

Apr 2026 – Present

Research Intern

AIISC, University of South Carolina

The bet: a small model with symbolic constraints can do things a large one can't — not in spite of its size, but because of it. I own the pre-training pipeline that tests the bet.

  • Own the pre-training pipeline for a 5-person team building an India-focused agriculture SLM — data collection and cleaning through pre-training and evaluation
  • Built a 140M-parameter Qwen3-style transformer training/eval pipeline (GQA, RoPE, RMSNorm, SwiGLU, factorized embeddings) over a 6.5 GB / 266K-document corpus, with training-health, domain-validation, and safety evaluation frameworks
  • Built the neurosymbolic layer: BPE tokenizer with AGROVOC entity injection, Z3-based causal KG verification, Triple Transformer Encoder
  • Built India-Agri-KG — 784 districts, 26 domains, 14,478+ entities, 38,590+ relations — with a 5-stage non-LLM verification layer enforcing source traceability on every triple (unpublished)
  • Delivered two technical lectures for the IAIRO-affiliated SLM Bootcamp 2026: Vanilla GPT-2 Architecture, and Scaling Laws & Cost Accounting

Jun 2026 – Present

LFX Mentee

Hyperledger Cello · Linux Foundation

Fabric has an operations problem: steep learning curve, verbose tooling, too much that shouldn't require an expert. The hard part isn't the LLM — it's knowing which API calls compose into what the operator actually meant.

  • Building an AI operations copilot for Hyperledger Fabric — natural-language queries to Cello REST APIs through an LLM tool-calling workflow
  • Implemented the Django/DRF backend and SSE streaming pipeline powering incremental AI responses in the React dashboard
  • Built a Fabric node-logs API on the agent layer with bounded log retrieval and Docker error handling for AI-assisted node debugging
  • Developed a multi-party channel invitation workflow end to end: database models, REST APIs, Fabric configuration/signing logic, and dashboard UI

Mar 2026 – Jul 2026

Open Source Contributor

Meshery — CNCF Sandbox Project

The PRs matter less than what you absorb reading other people's production code at scale.

  • 5+ merged PRs across Meshery's Go backend and React frontend — service-mesh features, UI components, and API integrations
  • Active in issue triage, code reviews, and contributor discussions under CNCF's open-source workflow

Where the rabbit holes go deepest.

Publications

  • PreprintNavigate, Don’t GenerateMaking AI Mediated Access to Public Agricultural Data Citizen-AuditablePranav Dhiran, Venkatesan Nadimuthu, Vedant Maheshwari, Raviteja Bommireddy, Mitanshu Khandal, Archy Das, Anmol Nimmala, Amit ShethFirst author · NeurIPS 2026 · AI4Good WorkshopOpenReview

Peer review

  • ReviewerTrustworthy AI for Good (AI4GOOD) Workshop · NeurIPS 2026
    Recognition letter

Interests

  1. 01Small Language Models
  2. 02Efficient AI
  3. 03Natural Language Processing
  4. 04Machine Learning
  5. 05Model Architectures
  6. 06Neurosymbolic AI
  7. 07Knowledge Representation
  8. 08Reasoning
  9. 09Reinforcement Learning
  10. 10Trustworthy AI

Thinking out loud — same act as building, different medium.

Speaking

Two sessions taught at the IAIRO SLM++ Bootcamp

PRAMANA Cohort 1 · 2026 — Two lecture sessions taught to the PRAMANA cohort — building GPT-2 from first principles, then what changed and what it cost.

Vanilla GPT-2 ArchitectureSession 02

Vanilla GPT-2 Architecture

A lecture session on the GPT-2 architecture from first principles — how attention, positional encoding, and the decoder stack fit together before any fine-tuning enters the picture.

Watch the session
Evolution of LLM Design DecisionsSession 05

Evolution of LLM Design Decisions

A compilation of frontier models case studies — Part 2, Session 05 of PRAMANA: SLM++ Lecture Series. Scaling laws, cost accounting, and how design decisions compound.

Watch the session
Writing

Essays on training, alignment, and going back to first principles

02 published
01Why pre-train, not fine-tune?Fine-tuning patches behaviour. Pre-training shapes belief. One is a fix; the other is a foundation.Substack · Ashborn2025 · 8 min02How Do You Design a Custom SLM?From Qwen3-0.6B to a 133M agricultural language model — not shrinking, but reallocating the parameter budget where it counts.Substack · AshbornAug 2026 · 10 min

Rabbit holes that became systems.

01
GNU Radio MCP Server - LLM-to-SDR Bridge

GNU Radio MCP Server - LLM-to-SDR Bridge

LLMs can reason about RF signals. They just could not touch a radio. This closes that gap.

PythonFastMCPZMQXML-RPCGNU Radio
View case study →GitHub →
02
Small Language Model From Scratch - TinyStories

Small Language Model From Scratch - TinyStories

Every LLM course teaches you to call an API. I wanted to know what happens before the API.

PyTorchCustom BPEAMPNLP
View case study →GitHub →
Medaura - Agentic Pharmacy System
03

Medaura - Agentic Pharmacy System

Medication errors are an information problem. The information exists - it is just not connected at the moment it matters.

FastAPILangGraphChromaDBLangfuseReact
View case study →Live system →
04
RF Watch - Open-Source Real-Time RF Spectrum Monitor

RF Watch - Open-Source Real-Time RF Spectrum Monitor

Physical-layer first: no protocol decoding, no black-box certainty, just traceable RF evidence.

PythonGNU RadioHackRF OneSignal Processing
View case study →GitHub →

If any of this resonated, let's talk.

Currently interested in AI research internships, open-source collaborations, and systems engineering opportunities. Cold emails work.

Primary channel
Download resume
Elsewhere on the internet
GitHubPranav-d33
HuggingFaceluffy19
LinkedInprannav-dhiran
Substackashborn2
X@Prannav_ai
Pranav Dhiran
Epigraph
“Not everything is meant to be, but everything is worth trying.”
Pranav Dhiran
Navigate
Connect
  • GitHub
  • HuggingFace
  • LinkedIn
  • Substack
  • X
© 2026 Pranav DhiranBuilt with care
He who does moreis worth more.

Geoffroi de Charny