~/hello — welcome to my corner of the internet
Deep
Kotadia
M.Tech Chemical Engineering · IIT Madras
Scientific ML | Local LLM Systems | Cheminformatics | Process Engineering
Hi, I'm Deep — a postgrad chemical engineering student at IIT Madras, hooked on building at the intersection of science and intelligent systems.
My work focuses on Scientific Machine Learning — from predicting adsorption energies of catalysts using ML models to building LLM-powered agentic pipelines that mine literature at scale for data curation. I'm particularly excited about how local LLM systems and automated scientific workflows can accelerate research that would otherwise take years.
Outside of research, I have a background in process engineering (Zentiva, TITLIS), graphic design leadership, and a published patent. I'm driven by curiosity, collaboration, and the belief that sustainable energy solutions live at the intersection of data and domain expertise.
Current Endeavors
What I'm Working On
Actively Exploring
- Building an agentic LLM pipeline for automated curation of catalytic depolymerisation datasets from scientific literature
- Designing local LLM inference systems optimized for scientific Q&A and data extraction tasks
Learning
- Studying advanced transformer architectures and their application to molecular data
- Deep-diving into cheminformatics workflows using RDKit and molecular fingerprinting for property prediction
Beyond the Lab
A Glimpse Outside Work
Interests
When I'm not busy with code or running experiments, you'll find me at the piano, behind a camera, or out on a long cycle ride. This year I picked up meditation — small daily rituals that quietly anchor everything else. And I love exploring places — hill stations, coastal towns, temple cities.
Currently
Gujarati at heart · always up for a chai over a long chat — half my best ideas land somewhere between sips.
Tech Arsenal
Skills & Tools
Education
Academic Foundations
Chemical Engineering
M.Tech Thesis · Prof. Jithin John Varghese & Prof. Tarak Patra
Curated Dataset on Catalytic Depolymerization of Polyethylene Using Large Language Models.
- Developed an end-to-end AI-driven literature mining pipeline using Gemma4:e4b (Local LLM) to automate extraction of catalytic pyrolysis data from 736+ scientific publications
- Curated a structured dataset of 559 experimental datapoints from 73 research papers — covering 120+ catalysts, 6 reactor configurations, and operating conditions for catalytic polyethylene pyrolysis
- Built and optimized ML models (XGBoost, Random Forest, SVR) using Optuna-TPE for hydrocarbon product yield prediction — R² up to 0.78 for gas yield estimation
- Engineered a fully local GPU-accelerated scientific workflow integrating OCR, PDF parsing, prompt engineering, and schema validation — significantly reducing manual data curation effort
Teaching Assistantship
Key Coursework
Activities
Data Science Intern at Rapidrug Pvt. Ltd. (Nov 2024 — Jan 2025)
Graphic & Web Design Intern at MeDow (Jan 2025 — March 2025)
Website Design Coordinator at CARES - Catalysis Reaction Engineering Symposium, IIT Madras (Sep 2025)
Chemical Engineering
Major Project
Process Simulation of Ethyl Lactate Production in DWSIM — A Green Solvent.
- Simulated and optimized ethyl lactate production via reactive distillation in DWSIM — 96.13% lactic acid conversion and 95.7% yield
- Designed a flowsheet integrating fermentation, reactive distillation, and product purification — 234 g/h production rate, 111.41 kJ/g energy consumption
- Applied NRTL property model for non-ideal mixtures to optimize operating parameters for high-purity output
Relevant Coursework
Leadership & Activities
- Head of Graphic Design · Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) Student Chapter
- Head of Graphic Design · Cretus — The Robotics and Automation Club
- Vehicle Dynamics (Brakes) · Team Ragnar — Formula Student Team, PDEU
Experience
Career Timeline
| Nov 2024 - Jan 2025 |
Data Science Intern
Rapidrug Pvt. Ltd. · Chennai, India
|
| Jan 2023 — Jun 2023 |
Process Technology Engineer
Zentiva Pvt. Ltd. · Ankleshwar, India
|
| May 2022 — Jul 2022 |
Process Design Engineer (Intern)
TITLIS Projects & Engineering Pvt. Ltd. · Vadodara, India
|
Contact
Let's Connect
The best way to reach me is through email. I'm always open to research collaborations, project discussions, or just a conversation about ML and chemical engineering.