Boston, MA · Bangalore, India
Aahan Desai
Product & Innovation · Data Science · Conservation
About
I'm Aahan — a product manager and computer science student at Northeastern University, originally from Bangalore, India.
I build products by obsessing over users first. At CENTA, I owned features end-to-end for platforms serving 2 million teachers across 100 countries — from user research and PRDs through wireframes in Figma to shipping live pages. Before that, I built data pipelines at Graphene AI to surface customer insights for Fortune 500 clients like Costco.
What sets me apart: I think in systems. My CS and economics background means I approach products through data, incentives, and user behavior — not just feature lists. I've built ML models that predict crop yields for farmers, trained computer vision systems for healthcare, and run econometric analyses on real-world policy questions.
Outside of work, I'm a wildlife photographer with 300+ bird species documented, an award-winning filmmaker, and a WWF India conservation advocate. I believe the best PMs are deeply curious people — and I bring that curiosity to everything I touch.
Currently seeking Product Management co-op opportunities for May–Dec 2026.
Experience
Center for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA)
Bangalore, IndiaProduct Team Intern · May 2025 – Jul 2025
- Owned product features end-to-end across B2B and B2C platforms serving 2M+ teachers in 100 countries.
- Identified product gaps through competitive analysis and user research, then authored PRDs defining requirements, specs, and rollout phases.
- Designed wireframes in Figma and built live production pages using Loveable.AI.
- Built user analytics dashboards in Google Looker Studio — including one for a statewide government teacher upskilling initiative.
- Championed a net-new product initiative and validated it through the company's first formal user interviews.
Graphene AI
Bangalore, IndiaBackend Software Intern · Apr 2023 – May 2023
- Built an automated data pipeline in Python (Scrapy, Selenium, Beautiful Soup) to extract and structure large volumes of customer review data for Fortune 500 clients including Costco.
- Transformed raw data into actionable business insights and deployed the pipeline on Azure Kubernetes for scalable execution.
Projects
Statistical ML Course Project · Spring 2026
- Full EDA on real-world data — log-wage transformations, Tukey fence outlier detection, and bivariate plots across all treatment variables.
- Built 4 OLS models with HC1 robust standard errors justified by Breusch-Pagan test.
- Documented omitted variable bias from two unobserved confounders.
Horizon Academic Research Program · May–Jul 2024
- Built an end-to-end ML tool helping farmers in developing markets maximize crop yields and profits.
- Defined the product from scratch — identified the problem, scoped the solution, built data pipelines, and delivered a Flask web app.
- Achieved 96.8% accuracy on a 22-class crop recommendation classifier with a parallel yield regression model.
- Mentored by Dr. Maria Konte at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Orthodontist AI — Google Code2Learn
Developer · Apr–Jul 2020
- Developed a computer vision model to diagnose orthodontic treatment severity and recommend treatment plans — validated against clinical data from India's leading prosthodontist, Dr. Sadashiv Shetty.
- Trained and deployed on Google Cloud with a Python client for inference.
SnugLine — CVC Patient Sleeve
Design & Engineering Consultant · ENTR 3330 · Spring 2026
- Co-designed a lightweight sleeve to secure external CVC lines for patients undergoing treatment.
- Led technical design focused on comfort, mobility, and a quick-access mechanism for providers.
Developer & Lead Planner · CS Course Project · Spring 2026
- Leading a team to build a full-stack desktop application in Java and JavaFX following the MVVM architecture pattern.
- Features four integrated modules: a recipe library browser, a recipe editor, a search system with advanced filtering and debounced queries, and an import interface powered by Gemini's OCR API for adding recipes via photos.
To anyone who shares the love for flight
Obsessed with flight even before I could walk.
From memorizing every system in an F-14 cockpit as a kid to building a 6-foot rocket from scratch with AeroNU — aerospace has been my longest-running obsession. Our rocket hit 3,000 ft and 230 m/s. I'm not here because aerospace seems like a good career move — I'm here because a two-year-old watched Maverick take off and never got over it.
Skills
Languages
ML & Data
Product
Tools
Languages Spoken
Nature
I've been a wildlife photographer since I was 14 — 300+ bird species documented across India and counting. I use my camera to tell stories about the ecosystems we share, and why protecting them matters.
Follow my wildlife photography on Instagram
Little Spiderhunter
Bangalore, India
Oriental White-Eye
Bangalore, India
Mottled Wood Owl
Western Ghats, India
Jerdon's Leafbird
Western Ghats, India
Bengal Tiger
Kabini, Karnataka
Conservation
Film
Bengaluru, Let's Fly Together
Award-winning documentary selected for Bangalore International Centre's B•LORE festival. The film explores Bengaluru's urban bird ecosystems across locations like Jakkur Lake, Thimmasandra Lake, and Devanahalli — documenting rare species and the cost of habitat encroachment.
Watch at BICWWF India
Model COP — Karnataka Representative
Selected as one of two state representatives for Karnataka in WWF India's Model COP program. Led ground-level plastic pollution audits in my locality and developed actionable policy recommendations for local government officials.
Let's Connect
Open to PM co-op opportunities for May–Dec 2026, research collaborations, and conversations about building products, conservation, and anything in between.
desai.aah@northeastern.edu
GitHub
github.com/aahan-rd
linkedin.com/in/aahan-desai-
@aahandesai
© 2026 Aahan Desai
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