Nikhil Dharmaraj

Nikhil Dharmaraj is a senior at The Harker School in sunny San Jose, California who is fascinated by the intersection of technology and the humanities. Through post-AP Computer Science coursework, extra-curricular courses, hackathons, and research internships at CMU and MIT, Nikhil has developed a deep passion for software engineering, and specifically, artificial intelligence. However, as a strong proponent of interdisciplinary study, Nikhil has delved deeply into the liberal arts too: he is a nationally-ranked speech competitor in Original Oratory, an avid student of the Classics (and vice president of his school’s JCL chapter), and a current Mitra Family Foundation scholar researching Lucretius and Charles Darwin. Now, Nikhil hopes to make use of cutting-edge technology to better understand the timeless human experience.

In the summer of 2018, as a research intern at metaLAB, Nikhil worked on two projects: Moral Labyrinth, a project that aims to create an interface for users to explore questions of ethics and philosophy surrounding up and coming technology, and The Laughing Room, a thought experiment that investigates how close artificial intelligence can come to understanding human humor and laughter.

This fall, Nikhil will enter Harvard College as a member of the Class of 2023, where he intends to jointly concentrate in Computer Science and Classics. He is excited to continue working on exciting, interdisciplinary projects at metaLAB throughout his undergraduate years.

Read about Nikhil’s work in Harker News.