There is a new addition to the COSMOS family! We hired a new full-time Data Engineer, Praveen Sundar! Praveen shares what attracted him to COSMOS and his aspirations and goals.

What is your name, and what role do you play at COSMOS?

My name is Praveen Sundar, and I am a Data Engineer at COSMOS – I work on the intersection of AI-driven Data Pipelines that power socio-computational research and tools.

Can you share a bit about your professional background and experience?

I’m an AI systems engineer and entrepreneur with extensive experience in cloud-native infrastructure, embedded hardware, and applied AI, including large language models (LLMs), knowledge graphs, and vector stores. I hold a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. I’ve founded two companies – TriZ, in the AI personal-assistant space, and LearnChain, a platform that integrates AI for enterprise knowledge retention, supporting training, documentation, and offering a work copilot.

Were there specific aspects of COSMOS’ culture or mission that resonated with you?

Prof. Agarwal’s mission at COSMOS—advancing social computing for social good—resonates with me both in terms of values and engineering practice. The center’s interdisciplinary and multicultural research on the full spectrum of cyber-social behavior (e.g., mitigating socio-cognitive threats) speaks to how deeply human cognition is shaped —and sometimes manipulated —by the information environments in which we live. Our thoughts, beliefs, and collective actions are increasingly mediated by digital platforms, which makes COSMOS’ work on socio-cognitive security not just timely but vital.

Are there any specific skills or experiences you’re looking to gain here?

I aim to enhance my ability to extract structured signals from large, complex social data (entity/event extraction, cross-platform resolution, provenance) and to develop a high-efficiency hybrid retrieval system that integrates knowledge graphs with vector search, achieving high recall. I’m also looking to sharpen ontology design and evaluation (precision/recall, calibration, latency) within privacy-aware pipelines, so these systems are trustworthy in sensitive, real-world settings.

Is there anything that stood out to you during your onboarding process?

Two things stood out: a genuinely close-knit, responsive team, and clearly scoped initial projects with crisp goals and quick feedback. It made the ramp-up smooth from day one.

How do you see yourself growing professionally within COSMOS?

I aim to become a full-stack data, systems, and AI engineer, mastering the end-to-end pipeline, so that research consistently turns into trusted and real-world tools.

Based on your experience, what advice would you give to someone starting a new role at COSMOS?

“Bring your ideas and your curiosity – COSMOS gives you real room to explore across technologies. If you’re chasing technical mastery with a team that you can lean on and that feels like family, you’ll thrive here.”

If you could have dinner with any historical figure or fictional character, who would it be and why?

Dhirubhai Ambani – I’ll learn as much as possible from his playbook on scaling from zero and building a brand and distribution that outlives the founder!