I'm a Research Scientist at Meta, working with CDN optimization and automation. Previously, I was part of the Connectivity org that brought improved internet to hundreds of millions of people around the world. I'm a Generalist capable of applying core data science and software competencies to varied domains, with an interest in foundationally understanding the domain that I work with. My professional interests have been in System Design, Data Visualization, ML, Privacy-preserving Data Science, and Reinforcement Learning. I have judged numerous technical competitions at the senior High School and Undergrad level in the U.S. and I regularly volunteer as an after-school mentor at the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley, teaching math, science, and creative arts to children in primary school.From my experiences in academia and the industry, I've learned to lead and own multiple technical projects in parallel, greatly exceed the expectations of my role, provide insightful directional inputs to peers and stakeholders, take constructive criticism well, and write code that is elegant, bug-free, and performant. At my workplace, I have been consistently highly rated on my strong analytical skills, reliability, technical strength, practicality, and leadership in meeting ambitious, difficult goals. I'm pleasant to work with, spend significant time helping my peers find success, and enjoy mentoring individuals on both the technical and career fronts, including peers with greater seniority.My Masters research was in designing Reinforcement Learning techniques for multi-agent adversarial games on graphs, on which I worked in Prof. Andrew Jiang's research group. For my undergrad thesis, I worked with Prof. Balaraman Ravindran on composing music using reinforcement learning techniques. You can find some samples at https://soundcloud.com/harish-kumar-664907632/sets/some-interesting-compositions.I completed a Masters program in Computer Science program from Texas A&M University (4.0 GPA, Thesis), and a B.Tech in Engineering Physics from IIT Madras. Throughout my Masters program, I was a teaching assistant for several undergraduate courses where I taught lab sessions, held TA office hours, answered student queries online, and evaluated submissions to assignments and projects. My work as a TA was widely appreciated by students and faculty alike. I was a 3rd Prize Winner at the TAMUHack '19 event where 130+ teams from across the U.S. participated. I won prizes in numerous fiercely contested technical competitions during my undergraduate program at IIT Madras.