Priyadarshan Narayanasamy, 19
Priyadarshan Narayanasamy: A Hacker’s Story of Grit and Growth
Priyadarshan Narayanasamy didn’t always dream of becoming a hacker. In fact, he barely knew what one was when he stumbled across an Instagram reel promoting a hackathon in Delhi. "My friends and I just wanted to go for the free food and swag," he remembers with a smile. But that spontaneous decision would ignite a journey that took him from Jamshedpur, a town that even most Indians might struggle to place on a map, to the stages of Princeton, MIT, and Stanford, collecting trophies, friends, and unforgettable experiences along the way.
Today, Priyadarshan is a rising senior at the University of Maryland, majoring in Computer Science and Neuroscience with a minor in Computational Finance. He’s attended 22 hackathons in just two years, winning 19 of them. From First Place Overall at HackPrinceton to Track Winner at HackMIT and Third Place at Hacklytics, his resume reads like a hacker's dream run. But what drives him isn’t just the adrenaline of 36-hour coding sprints. "What truly drives me is bringing ideas to life," he says. "Each event teaches me something new, and every hackathon reminds me how far I’ve come."
His story starts in Jamshedpur, where computer science was mostly a classroom concept. Initially enrolled as a biomedical engineering major driven by a desire to help people, Priyadarshan realized early on that the creative power of computer science could amplify that impact exponentially. "I’m always thinking about the deeper meaning behind things," he reflects. "And CS just seemed like the universal toolkit to explore and build those meanings while helping far more people."
What began as curiosity quickly became passion. As co-founder and Vice President of UMD’s AI/ML Club, Priyadarshan helped grow the group from a handful of students to over 600 members. Along with his co-founders, his leadership has brought corporate partnerships, collaborative research projects, and hands-on workshops on everything from Pytorch to transformers. He also contributes to an unofficial hackathon group of 60+ students, sending links to hackathon applications the minute they drop ensuring no one misses out on the next big event.
His contributions don’t stop at attending. He’s mentored students as a judge at Bitcamp, helped newcomers find their footing in AI, and even scanned tickets on a bus to HooHacks when the organizer couldn’t make it. Every step of the way, he pays it forward. "Most students don’t even know these extraordinary career-defining opportunities exist," he says. "Once they do, the community does the rest."
Professionally, Priyadarshan has interned at Gencise AI and Kaliber Labs, working on ML pipelines and deploying vision-language models for surgical monitoring. At UMD, he conducts research on spatial context integration in LLMs and audio perception using EEG signals at the iCosMos Lab under Dr. Nirupam Roy. Most recently, his work on SING was accepted at ICML 2025. And yet, it’s the joy of weekend hackathons that continues to fuel his creativity.
"While I don’t mind most software tools being replaced," he says, "hackathons and the MLH community are the one thing I honestly couldn't live without." It's not just about code. It's about community, curiosity, and finding a place where failing fast and building together is part of the culture.
His journey isn’t just impressive, it’s contagious. As he reflects on his very first hackathon, where he built a Rick Roll alarm clock with an Arduino by following some instructions online he smiles: "Ten lines of code, that's all it was, but seeing it come to life gave me this incredible rush and made me fall in love with technology"
That same magic still fuels every project he touches . And in Priyadarshan’s world, the next big build is always just one hackathon away.
Quick Facts
Priyadarshan Narayanasamy, 19
Priyadarshan Narayanasamy: A Hacker’s Story of Grit and Growth
Priyadarshan Narayanasamy didn’t always dream of becoming a hacker. In fact, he barely knew what one was when he stumbled across an Instagram reel promoting a hackathon in Delhi. "My friends and I just wanted to go for the free food and swag," he remembers with a smile. But that spontaneous decision would ignite a journey that took him from Jamshedpur, a town that even most Indians might struggle to place on a map, to the stages of Princeton, MIT, and Stanford, collecting trophies, friends, and unforgettable experiences along the way.
Today, Priyadarshan is a rising senior at the University of Maryland, majoring in Computer Science and Neuroscience with a minor in Computational Finance. He’s attended 22 hackathons in just two years, winning 19 of them. From First Place Overall at HackPrinceton to Track Winner at HackMIT and Third Place at Hacklytics, his resume reads like a hacker's dream run. But what drives him isn’t just the adrenaline of 36-hour coding sprints. "What truly drives me is bringing ideas to life," he says. "Each event teaches me something new, and every hackathon reminds me how far I’ve come."
His story starts in Jamshedpur, where computer science was mostly a classroom concept. Initially enrolled as a biomedical engineering major driven by a desire to help people, Priyadarshan realized early on that the creative power of computer science could amplify that impact exponentially. "I’m always thinking about the deeper meaning behind things," he reflects. "And CS just seemed like the universal toolkit to explore and build those meanings while helping far more people."
What began as curiosity quickly became passion. As co-founder and Vice President of UMD’s AI/ML Club, Priyadarshan helped grow the group from a handful of students to over 600 members. Along with his co-founders, his leadership has brought corporate partnerships, collaborative research projects, and hands-on workshops on everything from Pytorch to transformers. He also contributes to an unofficial hackathon group of 60+ students, sending links to hackathon applications the minute they drop ensuring no one misses out on the next big event.
His contributions don’t stop at attending. He’s mentored students as a judge at Bitcamp, helped newcomers find their footing in AI, and even scanned tickets on a bus to HooHacks when the organizer couldn’t make it. Every step of the way, he pays it forward. "Most students don’t even know these extraordinary career-defining opportunities exist," he says. "Once they do, the community does the rest."
Professionally, Priyadarshan has interned at Gencise AI and Kaliber Labs, working on ML pipelines and deploying vision-language models for surgical monitoring. At UMD, he conducts research on spatial context integration in LLMs and audio perception using EEG signals at the iCosMos Lab under Dr. Nirupam Roy. Most recently, his work on SING was accepted at ICML 2025. And yet, it’s the joy of weekend hackathons that continues to fuel his creativity.
"While I don’t mind most software tools being replaced," he says, "hackathons and the MLH community are the one thing I honestly couldn't live without." It's not just about code. It's about community, curiosity, and finding a place where failing fast and building together is part of the culture.
His journey isn’t just impressive, it’s contagious. As he reflects on his very first hackathon, where he built a Rick Roll alarm clock with an Arduino by following some instructions online he smiles: "Ten lines of code, that's all it was, but seeing it come to life gave me this incredible rush and made me fall in love with technology"
That same magic still fuels every project he touches . And in Priyadarshan’s world, the next big build is always just one hackathon away.
