Rahul Arora

Education

Columbia University

New York City, NY • Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Current Coursework: Advanced Programming, Data Engineering with Python, Linear Algebra and Probability, Multivariable Calculus, Data Structures and Algorithms, Mech & Thermo

Activities & Societies: Columbia Organization of Rising Entrepreneurs (CORE): Committee Lead, Almaworks: Columbia's startup accelerator, Columbia Data Science Society (CDSS)

Work & Leadership Experience

Keye (AI Fintech Firm- YC F24)

Technology Intern

Collaborated with the founder to design and implement machine learning models using Python, applying regression and clustering techniques to financial datasets to generate predictive insights; Developed scripts to extract financial data, streamlining data pipelines and improving efficiency.

2024-2024

Copperwood Asset Management, LP

Data Science Intern

Developed a forecasting model to predict electricity demand for an energy trading firm using Python, leveraging Pandas for data preprocessing and scikit-learn for baseline modeling; Experimented with advanced machine learning algorithms including XGBoost to capture non-linear demand patterns.

2023-2024

Coffee for Good, Inc.

Data Science Intern

Assisted the organization's Salesforce implementation, migrating legacy data from spreadsheets to a relational database to streamline operations and reporting; Designed and implemented a weighted classification algorithm to match job opportunities with employee skill sets, improving placement.

2023-2024

Projects

Columbia Creative Machines Lab (Research Assistant)

Working under Prof. Hod Lipson

Developing an autonomous robotic system capable of vision-based waste detection, integrating reinforcement learning–based control architectures to enable object recognition, and human-environment interaction.

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DraftIQ

Founded and launched a data-driven sports trading marketplace that enables users to invest in professional athletes as tradable assets. Engineered dynamic pricing algorithms incorporating liquidity and portfolio management, and deployed a scalable backend infrastructure to enable a real-time market.

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Poll.It

Created a Gen Z political literacy platform that transforms news into interactive, swipe-based media using natural language processing and content extraction pipelines. Achieved 55K+ TikTok followers, 1M+ views, and thousands of app downloads within the first month through organic growth.

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Skills, Activities & Interests

Languages: Fluent in English, Hindi, Spanish (Proficient)

Technical Skills: Python, Java, Swift, R, SQL, HTML/CSS/JS

Interested in: Prediction markets, forecasting systems, consumer apps, AI agents