Research Assistant La Jolla

Anirudh Sivarajan (he/him)

La Jolla, CA • **********@****.*** • 630-***-**** • www.linkedin.com/in/anirudh-sivarajan EDUCATION

University of California San Diego August 2025

Master of Science, Bioengineering (MS)GPA: 3.67/4.0 Purdue University December 2022

Bachelor of Science, Biomedical Engineering (BS)GPA: 3.30/4.0 RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Cognitive Science Laboratory●Graduate Research Assistant La Jolla, CA 04/2024-08/2025

●Designed a biologically-inspired recurrent neural network (RNN) in PyTorch, modeling individual neurons using first-order differential equations

●Mapped trained RNN connectivity onto a connectome-constrained Drosophila spiking neural network (SNN)

●Revealed circuit-level mechanisms underlying persistent activity during memory encoding, contributing to a first-author manuscript and SFN abstract submission Microbiome Science Laboratory●Graduate Research Assistant La Jolla, CA 08/2023-04/2024

●Processed and analyzed large-scale metagenomics data (16S rRNA) using QIITA, QIIME2, and Python/R to identify microbiome-drug interactions

●Evaluated how microbiome alterations influence Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression and associated neuropathology

●Identified microbial signatures linked to neuroinflammation, supporting the hypotheses on gut-brain axis in AD pathology

Functional Genomics Laboratory●Research Assistant Evanston, IL 03/2022-08/2022

●Used single-cell RNA sequencing to study how gene expression influences kidney development in mice

●Improved clustering accuracy by 15% with Seurat, enhancing cell-type resolution and enabling novel marker identification

●Reduced batch effect noise by 20% by applying unsupervised clustering to QC metrics Host-Microbiome Interactions Laboratory●Research Assistant West Lafayette, IN 12/2020-12/2022

●Operated different dimensionality reduction algorithms such as PCA & PCR to translate drug responses

●Trained regression models to help translate the gene expression in a clinical dataset to different human responses

●Gained an understanding of the sleep-wake cycle’s effect on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease WORK EXPERIENCE

Mathematical Methods●Teaching Assistant La Jolla, CA 10/2024-12/2024

●Graded homework assignments for 50 students on a weekly basis

●Answered questions and conducted weekly office hours Phase Maze LLC●Mechanical Engineer Naperville, IL 07/2021-07/2023

●Manufactured different components of the toy, a stackable maze, and effectively reduced the turnaround time by 50%

●Identified failure points in the stacking mechanism and iterated on design using 3D printing and physical prototyping

●Drafted detailed reports documenting design revisions and mechanical performance to support engineering decisions ADDITIONAL SKILLS

Certifications: Applications in Data Science, 2019 Programming & Data Analysis: MATLAB, Python, R, SQL, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn Machine Learning & Deep Learning: TensorFlow, PyTorch Data Visualization: Matplotlib, Seaborn, Tableau, Power BI

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