Nikil Shyamsunder । निखिल् श्याम्सुन्दर् ।
I study computer science and mathematics at Cornell University. I am broadly interested in formal methods, high-performance computing, compilers, and computer architecture.
I work on Protocols, a DSL for specifying the communication of digital circuits, in the Computer Architecture and Programming Abstractions Lab (Capra) under Adrian Sampson. In Spring 2026, I’m at AWS Annapurna Labs working on formal verification and graph-level optimizations for the Neuron compiler for Trainium.
I enjoy hiking, snowboarding, classical languages (Latin and Sanskrit), and recently, Victorian literature.
See here for a detailed breakdown of my work experience, and here for some projects I’ve done.
News
| May 06, 2026 | I gave an invited talk at UC Berkeley’s Slice Lab on our Protocols DSL. |
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| Mar 05, 2026 | I was inducted into Cornell’s chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. |
| Jan 05, 2026 | I began my internship as an ML Compiler Engineer at AWS, working on the Neuron graph compiler for Trainium. |
| Dec 16, 2025 | My teammate and I published a blog post for our graduate compilers class on our project building an end-to-end backend that lowers the Allo accelerator DSL to Google’s XLS for ASIC synthesis and comparing it to LLM-based program synthesis. |
| Oct 10, 2025 | Our work on the Protocols DSL was accepted to the FMCAD ’25 Student Forum, where I presented in October. |
| Jun 13, 2025 | My teammates and I on CUSail won the 2025 International Robotic Sailing Regatta. |
Research
- Specifying Hardware Communication as Programs
Ernest Ng, Nikil Shyamsunder, Francis Pham, Adrian Sampson, Kevin Laeufer
Ongoing work [Code] - Making Machine Learning-based Snow Water Equivalent Forecasting Research Productive and Reusable by Geoweaver
Sun, Z., Cristea, N. C., ... Shyamsunder, N., ... Bhandaru, P.
American Geophysical Union, Fall 2022
Talks
- Specifying Hardware Communication as Programs
Invited Talk, UC Berkeley EECS SLICE Lab, May 2026 - Building an Interpreter for an Imperative Hardware Interface Specification Language
Student Forum Talk and Poster, FMCAD '25, Oct 2025
Experience
- AWS Annapurna Labs (Jan 2026 – Present)
Formal verification of compiler passes in Lean 4 and graph-level optimizations for the Neuron compiler. - Lumen Technologies (May 2025 – Aug 2025)
Engineered scalable AWS-based data pipelines and dashboards in Angular to process and visualize real-time network threat intelligence for millions of IPs. - Beacon Platform (May 2024 – Aug 2024)
Built a full-stack testing dashboard and root-cause analysis system, reducing regression failures by 22%.
Teaching
- CS 2800: Discrete Mathematics
- Fall 2025 (Head TA)
- Spring 2025 [Induction on Trees Video]
- Fall 2024
Writing
| Nov 07, 2025 | Optimizer vs. Learner: Strategic Manipulation in Games and Auctions |
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| Jul 14, 2025 | Using Hadoop to Analyze 32 Million Movie Ratings |
| Aug 08, 2024 | A Case Against Supreme Court Term Limits |