About

I'm Rachith.

At least that's what I was told

A part of a whole

I am a Ph.D. student majoring in Informatics (Complex Networks and Systems track) with a minor in Computer Science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. I work closely with Drs. YY Ahn (my advisor), Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer (and OSoME), Jisun An, and Haewoon Kwak. Not so long ago, this seemed like a distant dream.

Research

My research broadly encompasses belief networks, social information diffusion, and natural language processing.

I ask the question, "How do our beliefs influence the way we process and share information in social networks?"

Some of my ongoing projects include (see also papers):

  • Extracting belief networks from social media data
  • Large Language Models and Social Surveys

In the recent past, I've worked on:

  • Modelling human belief networks and social contagion | Science Advances
  • Trusting the evaluation of Large Language Models | TrustNLP
  • Large Language Models and Stance Detection | arXiv
  • Belief Embeddings | arXiv
  • Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of information on Twitter | Plos One

Internships

In the Summer of 2024, I interned at eBay as an Applied Researcher in the Search and Content Science team.

In the Summer of 2023, I interned at Fitch Group as a Data Science and NLP intern in the Emerging Tech Team.

Visit my LinkedIn to learn more about what I did.

Recent academic past

Before I started my PhD, between August and December 2020, I was a Teaching Fellow in the Physics Department at Ashoka University, India. I helped run a foundational course called Principles of Science, which I deeply believe in. Teaching is indeed therapeutic!

In July 2019, I graduated with a dual degree, a B.E (Hons.) in Mechanical Engineering and an M.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science - Pilani, India.

During the 5 years it took me to earn this dual degree, I have enjoyed rains on Marine Drive (Mumbai, India) while interning at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Pune, India), jumped off a cliff into the Mediterranean whilst a Charpak Summer Research Scholar at Collective Animal Behaviour lab (University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France), cherished mum's company during my Bachelor Thesis at the Theoretical Ecology and Evolution lab at Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore, India), and experienced a massive culture shock (I'm looking at you, mashed potatoes) during my Master Thesis at Institute of Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany).

I like physics (and science in general) but I love tennis. I'm the happiest on a tennis court. Been playing the sport since I was as tall as the racquet! Simpler times.

Actually, I like and do lots of other things. More on that to follow...

Long story short, happy times these! :)