Aman Desai

Now

A snapshot of what I'm focused on right now. Inspired by nownownow.com. I update this every month or so.

Last updated April 29, 2026

Working on

  • Settling into research-leaning project work — currently sketching a small benchmark for GPU kernels I want to use as a teaching scaffold for myself.
  • Learning Triton from the ground up; the goal is to write a meaningful kernel before the end of the quarter.

Reading

  • FlashAttention-3 paper, slowly. Trying to actually understand the asynchrony patterns rather than just nodding at the speedup chart.
  • Patterson & Hennessy's quantitative architecture book — the chapters on memory hierarchy especially.

Thinking about

  • Where the most interesting work happens between PyTorch-level abstractions and CUDA-level control. There's a layer in there that feels unsettled and is also where most performance lives.
  • How to build a credible research portfolio while still in undergrad. The main answer seems to be: write things up, even small ones.