Suchir Balaji

I'm a researcher in San Francisco, California. @suchir

Some things about me:

• Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI (Nov 2020 - Aug 2024)
• Machine Learning Intern at Helia (Summer 2020)
• Studied Computer Science at UC Berkeley (2017 - 2021, 3.98 GPA)

Some projects:

• Passenger Screening Algorithm Challenge - 7th place solution in the TSA/Kaggle competition. Built a distributed ML pipeline using 20+ VMs with P100 GPUs for threat detection in airport passenger scans.

Some things I believe:

• Research should be driven by curiosity, not fashion
• The best ideas often come from crossing disciplines
• Most breakthroughs happen when you question basic assumptions
• Speed of iteration matters more than perfection
• The gap between "possible" and "impossible" is smaller than we think
• Good research requires both deep technical knowledge and creative intuition
• The most interesting problems are often hiding in plain sight
• Being able to explain complex ideas simply is a superpower
• The best way to learn is by doing
• Most fields are less crowded at the edges
• You can't optimize what you can't measure
• The future is built by people who believe in it