NAVRAJ
SIKAND
Research Software Engineer
Building computational infrastructure for DNA nanotechnology and developing machine learning models for molecular design at Arizona State University.
About Me
I'm a Computer Science student at Arizona State University and Research Software Engineer at the Biodesign Institute's Šulc Group.
My work sits at the intersection of machine learning, biophysics, and software engineering. I architect computational infrastructure that powers DNA nanotechnology research for a global community of scientists.
From deploying HPC clusters to developing SE(3) diffusion models for molecular dynamics, I build tools that democratize access to cutting-edge computational research.
Selected Work
Managed procurement and deployment of a 3-server HPC cluster supporting international research community.
- Deployed 200+ core computing infrastructure
- Configured authentication and monitoring systems
- Supporting 150+ weekly user registrations
- Enabled scalable research computation access
Complete modernization of DNA nanotechnology research database platform.
- Reduced page load by 80% (12.7MB → 2.6MB)
- Implemented sub-10ms typo-tolerant search
- Achieved 3× user growth in one month
- Eliminated server dependency for search queries
Unified authentication and data backend for cross-platform research workflows.
- Centralized authentication for multiple applications
- Type-safe REST API with schema validation
- Eliminated data inconsistencies across platforms
- Serving 150+ active weekly researchers
3D DNA/RNA molecular design platform with version control capabilities.
- Implemented Git-style commit history and branching
- Added local-first storage architecture
- Created shareable permalink system
- Integrated with oxCloud for simulation submission
Technical Expertise
Core Programming
Web Development
Infrastructure
AI/ML
Let's Build Something
Open to research collaborations and interesting projects