Meet the gem, Krishan Yadav – an international student from Kathmandu (Nepal), who successfully championed Google Summer of Code 2025 with ML4Science ($3000 stipend) while pursuing a B.Tech CSE programme at Parul University!

Usually, a student’s success story begins with structured preparation, and it goes like – have a goal, build the required skills, and just give your 100%. But well, Krishan Yadav’s journey wasn’t this easy; it was fully zig-zag and truly inspiring. He arrived from Kathmandu, Nepal and navigated his way via game development, web development and open source before landing at machine learning. And when he did, he ensured the championing of Google Summer of Code 2025.

Meet Parul University’s Gem – Krishan Yadav – an international B.Tech Computer Science & Engineering student. He has recently earned a Google Summer of Code 2025 internship with ML4Science, also known as Machine Learning for Science, at a stipend of $3000 USD for his innovative project.

The selection strategy and process behind his GSoC application are treated in a companion article. This piece documents the longer arc: who Krishan is, why he chose Parul University from Nepal, and how a winding journey through multiple coding paths produced an outcome that linear preparation often does not.

Krishan Yadav hails from Kathmandu, Nepal, in a middle-class family and pursued his studies there. As an introvert by nature, he has hardly communicated with his classmates over there, but the entire game changed when he started developing an interest and passion in coding. Nepal does not have particularly strong technical education infrastructure, but his curiosity about how digital systems actually worked, rather than just the theory of them, pushed him to look outward for stronger technical environments. The search eventually brought him to Parul University.

For students in Nepal evaluating Indian universities, Parul University has accumulated a particular kind of reputation that is hard to manufacture and hard to lose. Krishan’s family decision was driven partly by this reputation, partly by a personal connection.

• Recognition within Nepal – The most impactful part is that Parul University is worldwide famous and is revered as a top educational ecosystem amongst Nepali students and families. He recognised a pattern – whoever he spoke to, all of them had mentioned Parul University for the name and reputation it holds.
• Family connection. One of his relatives had previously graduated from Parul University, which gave the family a direct frame of reference for what the institutional experience would be like, rather than relying purely on external research.
• Primary research – Before finalising Parul University, he did his own evaluation. From infrastructure to the latest happenings to the trending placement story, he knew everything before arriving at the campus. He had explored course structure and student feedback, instead of just trusting anyone’s opinion!
• Absence of ragging culture. One of the structural factors that mattered to him during the evaluation was Parul University’s reputation for not having the ragging culture that affects some private universities. The institutional commitment to a safe campus environment was a concrete decision factor, not an abstract one.

The transition from Kathmandu to Vadodara was less disruptive than typical international student moves. Krishan had visited India multiple times before enrolling, so the cultural environment was not entirely unfamiliar. What helped more was the immediate access to a substantial Nepali student community on campus. Within days, he had connected with other Nepali students who helped him understand the broader Indian context and adjust to the new academic culture.

He has described the early integration with characteristic understatement: he never felt like a foreign student because he never felt left out.

The single notable adjustment was climate. Kathmandu’s high-altitude weather is consistently cool; Vadodara’s Gujarat summers run substantially hotter. Krishan has noted the temperature change as the only meaningful discomfort during his early days at the university, with everything else settling relatively quickly. The friend group he built in those early months, both among Nepali students and across the broader campus community, became the social foundation that made the academic challenges manageable.

Krishan’s path through coding domains did not follow any rational long-term plan. He explored, hit walls, switched, explored again, and eventually arrived somewhere that worked. That pattern is more common in successful student careers than student success stories usually admit.

• Semester 1: Exploration, not coding – His first semester was spent exploring college life, attending fests, tours, and events. No serious coding work yet. This phase was about adjusting to the institutional environment rather than building technical skills.
• Semester 2: Unreal Engine and game development – With faculty guidance, he started his coding journey from scratch by learning Unreal Engine. The interest in game development pulled him toward 3D environments, real-time rendering, and the broader mechanics of how interactive systems work.
• The MongoDB wall – Going deeper into game development required engaging with MongoDB, which he found unfamiliar and difficult to navigate at that stage. Rather than force the path, he stepped back and reconsidered.
• Semester 3: 6 months on web development – He spent approximately six months on web development, building practical familiarity with how web systems are constructed. The work taught him operationally how web stacks come together, even if the longer-term direction was still uncertain.
• 2024: The AI displacement question – As the discussion intensified through 2024 about AI tools potentially displacing manual web development work, Krishan re-evaluated. The reasoning he settled on: someone effective at prompt engineering could now produce more functional websites than his manual coding could. He decided to look elsewhere.
• PU Hackathon: Introduction to machine learning – A friend introduced him to machine learning during the PU Hackathon. The new domain felt different. He started exploring Machine Learning opportunities seriously.
• Mid-2025: Deeper machine learning, then open source – Through July and August 2025, he developed a deeper ML understanding. Then he encountered open source software development as a parallel path, drawn by the prospect of connecting with established programmers and building on existing codebases rather than starting from zero.
• Return to machine learning – Eventually, he came back to machine learning, recognising it as the domain with the broadest possibility space for his interests. The open source detour was not wasted: the contribution patterns he learned there became directly relevant to his eventual Google Summer of Code preparation.

A student who switches coding domains four times before settling on one needs faculty members willing to support exploration rather than insist on a single path. Krishan’s faculty network at Parul University provided exactly that.

• Pradiban Sir. Guided throughout the Google Summer of Code journey, helping Krishan understand the GSoC selection process, proposal evaluation, and broader programme expectations.
• Parukit Sir. Taught Database Management Systems and helped Krishan work through the DynamoDB and database concepts that mattered during his project preparation.
• Himadri Ma’am. Guided Machine Learning and Python, and served as his mentor during the SIH (Smart India Hackathon). She played an important role in strengthening his understanding of the ML technologies that ultimately anchored his GSoC project.
• Rashmi Ma’am. Supported his IMPACT training and helped him balance the academic and technical activities across his GSoC preparation period.
• Akash Yadav Sir. Provided continuous guidance whenever Krishan had technical doubts, helping him find solutions across various engineering challenges.

The cumulative pattern is what matters. Each faculty member contributed to a different layer: database fundamentals, machine learning depth, training programme integration, technical problem-solving, and GSoC-specific strategy. No single faculty member could have provided all of that. The institutional infrastructure that brought multiple specialised mentors into a single student’s journey is part of what made the eventual GSoC outcome possible.

After months of preparation, contributions, mentor discussions, and proposal refinement, Krishan Yadav received the Google Summer of Code 2025 result in April. He had been selected through his second-choice organisation, ML4Science. The outcome was the result of consistency and dedication across the full preparation arc rather than a single decisive moment of brilliance.

He is currently working as a Google Summer of Code intern with ML4Science on a project sized in the largest of three category tiers, requiring more than 350 hours of contribution. His stipend is $3,000 USD, distributed in two parts: one portion after the mid-term evaluation and the remaining amount after successful completion and final submission. The stipend itself is modest in absolute terms, but the structural significance is substantially larger: a Google-affiliated open-source programme on his record, peer-reviewed contribution work in machine learning for science, and a credential that compounds across future opportunities.

Krishan has been clear that the GSoC selection is not a destination. He intends to continue building depth in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and the broader AI technology stack. His longer-term plan is graduate study abroad, with the framing that international exposure will provide research opportunities and learning under experts that he cannot access through any single domestic institution alone.

The GSoC selection serves the longer plan rather than substituting for it. It is the credential that opens the next door, not the outcome that closes the previous one.