Ashwin Sonawane

About Ashwin Sonawane

Florida State University’s graduate program in Computer Science has enabled me to specialize in advanced machine learning, service deployment, and real-time analytics. I actively apply my academic knowledge to solve practical challenges, combining theoretical rigor with hands-on expertise.At Goupbrod, I contributed to a recommendation engine powered by TensorFlow, improving match accuracy by 30%, and integrated Tesseract OCR for multilingual document verification. My goals include driving impactful AI innovations and improving system efficiencies while advancing my technical depth and industry readiness.

Experience

1. Software Developer

   Community Dreams Foundation

   May 2025 — Present · New York, NY, US

   System Design & Architecture: Defined and implemented a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture to automate volunteer onboarding and support for the Community of Developers (CDF).Knowledge Base Engineering: Developed automated data pipelines to extract, preprocess, and chunk unstructured data from PDF-based organizational guides into a searchable vector database.Vector Search Optimization: Integrated FAISS for high-performance similarity search and implemented Maximum Marginal Relevance (MMR) to improve the diversity and accuracy of retrieved context.LLM Orchestration & Prompt Engineering: Designed custom system prompts and templates using LangChain to enforce strict \"anti-hallucination\" guardrails, ensuring the bot only answers based on verified internal documentation.Citations & Transparency: Implemented a metadata-tracking system to provide real-time source citations, allowing users to verify AI-generated answers against specific PDF filenames and page numbers.UI Development: Built a responsive web interface using Streamlit, featuring persistent chat history and interactive source-viewing components for an intuitive user experience.Full-Stack Implementation: Managed the end-to-end development lifecycle, including environment configuration with Python virtual environments, dependency management, and secure API key integration.Performance Tuning: Conducted rigorous testing and evaluation to identify documentation gaps and fine-tuned retrieval parameters to ensure reliable responses for complex FAQ and administrative queries.

Education

• Florida State University

  Master's degree, Computer Science

• University of Mumbai

  Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering