[Nomination] <Akash Agrawal>

[agrawal-aka]

Select one:

• I am nominating myself for the PyTorch Ambassador Program.
• I am nominating someone else to become a PyTorch Ambassador.

Please confirm that the nominee meets the following requirements:

• The nominee is 18 years of age or older.
• The nominee agrees to abide by the PyTorch Code of Conduct.
• The nominee agrees to comply with the Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy.
• The nominee meets at least one of the qualifications listed in the PyTorch Ambassador Program Requirements.

Nominee Name

Akash Agrawal

Nominee Email

Akash.Agrawal@fujitsu.com

Nominee's GitHub or GitLab Handle

@agrawal-aka (https://github.com/agrawal-aka)

(Optional) Organization / Affiliation

Fujitsu Research of India Pvt. Limited

City, State/Province, Country

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Your Name

No response

Your Email (Optional)

No response

How has the nominee contributed to PyTorch?

• An active contributor to PyTorch repositories (e.g., commits, PRs, discussions).
• A speaker at PyTorch events or workshops.
• A PyTorch user group organizer or meetup host.
• A researcher or educator using PyTorch in academic work or training.
• An active leader in the PyTorch community with at least one year of experience in:
• Organizing events (virtual/in-person).
• Speaking at AI/ML conferences.
• Mentoring others in PyTorch.
• Creating technical content (e.g., blogs, videos, tutorials).

🏆 How Would the Nominee Contribute as an Ambassador?

Greetings! 
Brief Bio: I have been contributing to PyTorch Ecosystem for over the past one year as part of the OSS-AI Frameworks Team at Fujitsu Research of India. Being a young-early career software engineer at an established MNC, I also hold a master's degree in Robotics from the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (https://www.iisc.ac.in/).     

Ways I plan to contribute: As I have been involved with PyTorch as a contributor for the past one year and also as a user as a student during my masters' days for my thesis projects and Hackathons, this program naturally drew my attention. As a PyTorch Ambassador I plan to:

1. Help Host workshops and office-hours (virtual and in-person) focused on advanced performance topics (vector extensions, sparsity, quantization).
2. Organize PyTorch meetups in Bangalore (and expand to other Tier-2 cities), inviting local researchers and engineers to demo their projects.
3. Mentor students and early-career engineers through structured 1:1 sessions —helping them get started with open-source contributions, write clean code, and navigate PR reviews.
4. Develop bite-sized tutorial series (blog posts and short screencasts) on torchao, tying them back to real-world use cases (BERT, LLaMA).
5. Actively review and triage issues/PRs on the pytorch/torchao repository, particularly around quantization, sparsity, and performance optimizations—leveraging my existing knowledge and PRs as a springboard.
6. Represent Work on PyTorch at conferences and hackathons, submitting talks (e.g., “Advancing PyTorch Performance with Scalable Vector Extensions on Arm CPUs” — under evaluation for PT Conf ’25) and volunteering as a track chair or mentor for student competitions/PyTorch workshops.

Code Contributions: Links of existing/ongoing PRs/issues/discussions on pytorch/torchao:
 
1. Fixes observer attachment to model based on config for wanda sparsifier #1265
(https://github.com/pytorch/ao/pull/1265)
2. Enabling ATen Distribution kernels for AARCH64 using OpenRNG #134942 (https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/134942)
3. Issue Raised: [Sparsity] When sparsifying using Wanda on only Linear layers, PerChannelNormObserver() being added to embedding layers, leading to RuntimeError: linalg.vector_norm: Expected a floating point or complex tensor as input. Got Long #1133 (https://github.com/pytorch/ao/issues/1133)
4. Issues tagged/involved in: Implement MKLGenerator #151218 (https://github.com/pytorch/pytorch/pull/151218)

Any additional details you'd like to share?

There are several avenues where I have contributed/represented PyTorch or the AI community in general. Some of these include:

Speaking at Conferences: Submission as a speaker for session to the PyTorch Conference 2025: Advancing PyTorch Performance with Scalable Vector Extensions on Arm CPUs. (under evaluation) 

Mentorship/Leadership: Chosen to serve as a Mentor for an Enterprise Level AI/ML Hackathon by Intel, Linkedin post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/akash-agrawal-059307143_intel-intel-oneapi-activity-7142385413830156288-7AcI?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACLAQ4UBeQd0XQ2jc4tU1fVEWRuEqsH1hSo

Recognition: Featured blog for Project developed on PyTorch codebase on intel community website: 
https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Artificial-Intelligence-AI/Building-an-Object-Detection-Model-for-Autonomous-Vehicles-using/post/1514410

Blogs/Writing Skills: Medium Article published for a PyTorch based project built for a Hackathon: 
https://medium.com/@akaagr10/towards-autonomy-building-a-robust-object-detection-and-segmentation-model-for-autonomous-vehicles-ddc86b1568a

[github-actions]

👋 Thank you for submitting a nomination for the PyTorch Ambassador Program! 🎉

Your nomination is currently under review. A team member will evaluate the submission and update the status accordingly.

🔹 Review Process & Next Steps:

1️⃣ Initial Review – The nomination will be reviewed by the team.

2️⃣ Scoring & Selection – Reviewers will assign scores based on eligibility and impact.

3️⃣ One-on-One Review – If shortlisted, the nominee will have a session with the Executive Director.

4️⃣ Final Decision – Selected ambassadors will receive an official invitation. ✅

📖 Program Details: View Documentation

💬 Have questions? Please submit a Feedback or Inquiry and reference this nomination issue number.

Thank you for helping grow the PyTorch community! 🚀

[github-actions]

Please note: This conversation is now locked and limited to PyTorch Foundation team members only to maintain the integrity of the submission process.

[github-actions]

Hello Akash Agrawal,

Thank you for applying to the 2025 PyTorch Ambassador Program and for the valuable contributions you make in the PyTorch community. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your application was not selected in this cycle.

We encourage you to apply again in the future — the next application cycle will open in early 2026. Please keep an eye on our website for updates on the timeline: https://pytorch.org/programs/ambassadors/

We truly appreciate the time, effort, and passion you bring to the PyTorch community, and we hope to see your application again in the future.

If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to reach out to us at ambassadors@pytorch.org.

Best regards,
The PyTorch PMO