Akshay Mestry
Educator, software engineer and storyteller.
About me.
Hi, I'm Akshay, an educator, engineer, and currently a CS Adjunct Faculty at National Louis University. Before getting into academia, I worked at consulting firms, corporate product companies, and a startup. This small corner on the internet is my space to explore and share my experiences in software engineering through storytelling.
I currently live in Chicago. I got my Master's in AI from DePaul University in 2025. I also have a special interest in natural language processing and reinforcement learning.
I'm learning Rust this year.
Open source.
I Open source!!
I accidentally got started on it, and I don't know why; I bloody loved it. Doing open source was, and still is, a personal reminder to share my struggles and achievements/learnings with everyone and invite collaboration across various disciplines.
Fortunately, this naive belief in sharing has led me to contribute to and work at some amazing research labs and projects under the guidance of some super-duper talented people in the industry.
Contributed at
- Accenture
- OpenAI
- Django
- National Louis University
- Microsoft
- AWS Boto3
- TensorIoT
In these labs, I worked on a different kinds of projects, from building performant machine learning models to eventually crafting numerical computing libraries. These projects and sometimes our clients (big and small) helped me reflect on both my technical depth and my knowledge gaps.
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A subset of core PyTorch features re-built in pure Python.
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An experimental re-implementation of a few NumPy features in Python.
Beyond these, I've had the opportunity to speak at a few tech meetups and conferences, sharing insights on my projects, my thoughts on AI, and the inner workings of some frameworks.
It wouldn't be possible if I hadn't explored this; in doing so, I realised I had a passion for teaching.
Teaching philosophy.
I believe that "true" mastery of something comes from sharing learnings from mistakes and past experiences. Whether it's breaking down complex machine learning algorithms or explaining the nuances of software design patterns, I find joy in making these technical ideas relatable and easy to grasp.
Early in my software engineering career, I came across a quote:
If you want to master something, teach it.
—Dr Richard Feynman
And I absolutely fell in love with this idea. Soon, I realised you really can't call yourself an SME until you can teach a concept to those who barely know anything about it (or very little), and are willing to entertain questions at that initial frame of reference.
Thus began my journey into teaching.
Although my approach to mentoring has changed and evolved over the past few years, adapting to the needs of my environment, my students/mentees, the time, and my position, when asked for any help.
Let's connect.
I'm not on any social media besides LinkedIn, but I'm always open to having conversations about AI, Teaching, Open source, or just a casual chat about life. I'm a huge film nerd and enjoy memes, so feel free to send me your recommendations.
If you wish to communicate, please do so by using the below button or sending an email.