Hi, I'm Pranav 👋
I am a Software Engineer with over 8 years of experience in higher-education settings and a proven track of developing cutting-edge applications in various domains including:
- Back-end Development
- Data Engineering
- XR Engineering
- Game Development
Check out some of my work below 👇
Projects
Helios VR
This VR visualization tool allows farmers and breeders to make data-driven crop growth decisions. It uses Helios 3D Plant Modeling Software to provide interactive, 3D visualizations of plant models, highlighting key data crucial for agricultural analysis.
GEMINI Framework
A scalable, container based data pipeline that allows farmers and breeders to store and retrieve high volume sensor and plant trait data (e.g. RGB Cameras, Weather Sensors etc).
Tar AR
An augmented reality (AR) exhibit displaying how animals during the ice age, turned into fossils that we find today at the La Brea Tar Pits. This project was done in collaboration with USC Rossier School of Education and
Advancing Ethical Decision Making in Virtual Reality
This project explores how virtual reality (VR) can be used to investigate moral judgment, specifically by placing participants in a Trolley Dilemma scenario as either the victim or the driver. A pilot study with four participants was performed.
CICERO
A versatile system for training social skills with interactive virtual agents reacting to the user’s automatically assessed performance.
Work Experience
Software Engineer - Full Stack
University of California, Davis — Plant Simulation Lab
July 2022 - July 2025
- Architected and deployed a scalable, Docker-based data pipeline that managed the end-to-end lifecycle for 100+ TB of time-series sensor data allowing ML researchers to accelerate model learning and development.
- Built a high performance data lake using PostgreSQL, MinIO and AWS S3 to significantly reduce data access time and to support genomic research and crop trait analysis.
- Automated crop trait data collection for farming and breeding partners for reducing their labor times and costs by 80%.
- Solved critical data fragmentation issues for a team of 30 researchers by developing a unified React and Next.js front-end which improved data discovery and elevated overall user satisfaction.
- Created a REST API suite using Flask, SQLAlchemy and Litestar to establish a framework to develop internal tools and to lay foundations for extensibility.
- Engineered native Python APIs and CLI tools to streamline internal AI workflows that improved data accessibility for internal research teams and external partners for model training.
Mixed Reality Software Engineer
USC Institute for Creative Technologies
June 2018 - June 2022
- Led the development of a multi-platform AR exhibit using ARKit, ARCore and Vuforia for mobile devices that engaged 300 participants to educate museum visitors on Ice Age fossil formation.
- Partnered with paleontologists and learning scientists on exhibition design and directly contributed to research that demonstrated a 30% increase in learning retention and 90% user satisfaction among museum visitors.
- Designed and developed an Android application in Unity3D that demonstrated the use of spatial audio to improve navigation and spatial awareness in low-visibility situations, like military excursions and search operations.
- Implemented visual abstraction algorithms on raw drone data to reduce terrain file size and rendering times by 85%
Education
M.S. in Computer Science
University of Southern California
August 2016 - May 2018
B.E. in Information Technology
University of Mumbai
May 2012 - May 2016
Publications
Advancing ethical decision making in virtual reality
Sinhwa Kang, Jake Chanenson, Pranav Ghate, Peter Cowal, Madeleine Weaver, David M Krum
2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)
Read MoreA generic platform for training social skills with adaptative virtual agents
Mathieu Chollet, Pranav Ghate, Stefan Scherer
Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems
Read MoreInfluence of individual differences when training public speaking with virtual audiences
Mathieu Chollet, Pranav Ghate, Catherine Neubauer, Stefan Scherer
Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Read More