Ruthuraraj R

Mechanical Engineering × Artificial Intelligence

Ruthuraraj R

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering · Endurance Runner

I build AI systems that retrieve, reason, and collaborate — and document the engineering decisions, failures, and lessons behind them.

What started as learning Python for teaching and engineering applications turned into a genuine pull toward AI. Today, I design and build applied AI systems that combine deterministic software, retrieval, large language models, and agentic workflows for engineering and education. This portfolio is less about showcasing finished projects and more about documenting how I learn to build better AI systems.

25+ AI/ML Projects
3 AI Workshops
250+ Learners Trained
8+yr Teaching

Training Delivered

Workshops I've Organised & Led

Three hands-on workshops designed and delivered in 2026 — covering the full AI stack from ML fundamentals to production-ready agentic systems.

January 2026 · SNS College of Technology
3-Day Workshop

From Machine Learning to AI Agents: A Practical Hands-on Introduction

ML Fundamentals Deep Learning LLMs Prompt Engineering RAG AI Agents

Live demos of multi-agent workflows, LLM API integration, and AI-assisted applications. Covered Mini-RAG concepts and agent architectures for students and AI enthusiasts.

March 2026 · SNS College of Technology
1-Day Workshop

AI Content Studio: Multi-Agent AI System

CrewAI ChromaDB RAG Pipelines Multi-LLM Agent Patterns

CrewAI orchestration, ChromaDB-powered RAG workflows, and planner–worker–reviewer agent architectures for automated educational content generation.

May 2026 · SNS College of Technology
2-Day Workshop

Build Your Own Local AI Assistant: From Tools to Grounded AI Agents

Local LLMs Ollama RAG Tool Integration Grounded AI

Guided participants in building local AI assistant workflows from scratch — covering retrieval, tool use, and multi-agent systems with live hands-on demonstrations.

The Transition

I didn't start in computer science. I registered for an NPTEL Python course in February 2025 to become a better teacher. What followed wasn't a career plan — it was a series of courses, experiments, setbacks, and projects that gradually pulled me into AI systems engineering.

How I got here →

Portfolio

Systems, Experiments & Learning Journey

A documented journey through machine learning, generative AI, agentic systems, and emerging edge-AI applications—built to understand, experiment, and teach.

Notable Systems I've Built
A few more from the bench
Learning Journey
Multi-Agent

AI Content Studio — Multi-Agent System

Transforms a topic prompt into structured educational content via four specialised agents: Research (RAG) → Image (diffusion) → Reviewer → Manager. Failure cases in agent handoffs and RAG retrieval are documented alongside the working pipeline.

CrewAI Gemini Groq FLUX RAG
RAG · ReAct-lite

Workshop Assistant — ReAct-lite RAG Agent

Built as a live demo for the 3-day AI workshop. Answers questions grounded in workshop PDFs and notebooks using a heuristic ReAct-style loop — LLM routing replaced with a FAISS L2 distance threshold, making reasoning fully deterministic and transparent to a non-CS audience.

Gemini API SentenceTransformers FAISS pypdf Streamlit
Embeddings

Word2Vec Embedding Explorer

End-to-end Word2Vec (Skip-Gram + Negative Sampling) built from scratch in PyTorch, with an interactive browser-based explorer showing how semantic structure emerges from random vectors across training epochs.

Word2Vec PyTorch FAISS WikiText-2
Generative AI

Image Super-Resolution — SRGAN & ESRGAN

×4 super-resolution built from scratch with patch-based training, warm-up stability phases, and adversarial fine-tuning. Perceptual trade-offs and mode collapse behaviour are honestly documented without cherry-picked results.

SRGAN ESRGAN RRDB VGG Loss DIV2K
Multimodal AI

Image Caption Generator

Progresses from CNN–LSTM baseline (InceptionV3 + LSTM) through Transformer decoder to pretrained vision–language models. Validates learning via controlled overfitting and honestly documents why pretrained models outperform naive fine-tuning on small datasets.

InceptionV3 LSTM Transformer HuggingFace
Classical ML

XOR Problem — Why Deep Learning Exists

A concept-driven bridge from classical ML to deep learning. Deliberately breaks logistic regression on XOR before solving it with a single hidden layer MLP — focusing entirely on decision boundaries and architectural necessity, not accuracy.

scikit-learn MLP Decision Boundaries

Technical Stack

Skills & Tools

From prompt engineering to multi-agent orchestration — the full stack of modern AI training and development.

🔮
Generative AI & LLMs
Prompt Engineering · Local LLMs · Ollama · LLM API Integration · Multi-LLM Architectures · Gemini · Groq · Whisper Speech-to-Text
🗄️
RAG & Vector Databases
Multimodal RAG · ChromaDB · FAISS · BGE Embeddings · SentenceTransformers · Docling · Semantic Retrieval · Chunking Strategies
🤖
AI Agents & Orchestration
LangGraph · LangChain · CrewAI · CrewAI Flow · AutoGen AgentChat · ReAct Patterns · Reflection Loops · Persistent Memory · SQLite Memory · Builder Pattern · Multi-Agent Systems · Pydantic State
🧮
ML & Deep Learning
scikit-learn · PyTorch · TensorFlow/Keras · CNNs · Transformers · GANs · Vision-Language Models
🎛️
Fine-Tuning & Model Adaptation
PEFT · LoRA · QLoRA · 4-bit Quantization · BitsAndBytes · Instruction Tuning · HuggingFace PEFT · Encoder vs Decoder Adaptation
🐍
Programming & Tools
Python · NumPy · Pandas · HuggingFace · Streamlit · Gradio · Plotly · ReportLab · OpenPyXL
🎓
Training & Facilitation
Workshop Design · Curriculum Development · Hands-on Demos · Technical Presentation · 8+ Years Teaching
⚙️
Software Engineering for LLMs
Pydantic Validation · Structured Domain Artifacts · Deterministic vs LLM Design · Observability & Tracing · Streamlit Cloud Deployment · Reproducible Workflows

Credentials

Certifications

NPTEL certifications with Gold and Silver distinctions, and a national AI upskilling programme at IIIT Allahabad.

AICTE QIP
From AI to GenAI: Unlocking the Power of Smart Technologies
IIIT Allahabad · 2025
Gold · Top 2%
Artificial Intelligence: Concepts and Techniques
NPTEL
Silver · Top 5%
Introduction to Large Language Models
NPTEL
Silver · Top 5%
Introduction to Machine Learning
NPTEL
Silver · Top 5%
Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms Using Python
NPTEL
NPTEL
Artificial Intelligence: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
NPTEL

Coding Practice

Active on Coding Platforms

Consistent practice in algorithmic problem-solving and clean, idiomatic Python.

Source Code
GitHub
All projects, notebooks, and experiment repositories — open source and fully reproducible.
Algorithm Practice
LeetCode
Practicing data structures, recursion, dynamic programming, and competitive problem-solving in Python.
Peer-Reviewed Practice
Exercism
Mentor-supported exercises focused on idiomatic, clean Python patterns across a structured curriculum.

Writing

Build Logs & Articles

Documenting what I build, what breaks, and what I learn — across project build logs and LinkedIn articles on AI for engineering education.

Build Log — Project Journal
Engineering an Institution-Ready Academic AI Platform
Two turning points, four academic workflows, and why the architecture behind R-B.A.T outlived every language model swap.
Read the build log →
Building a Memory-Aware Multi-Agent Logistics Platform
Six design decisions, five bugs that reshaped the architecture, and what I learned about where determinism belongs and where reasoning belongs.
Read the build log →
✍️ More build logs in progress — one written after each project.

Posts are written after each project — covering architectural decisions, failure modes, and what I'd do differently. No tutorials, no rephrased docs — just build notes.

LinkedIn — Learning in Public

I post as I learn — build notes, project launches, and reflections on what each system taught me. A selection of recent posts is below; the rest are a click away.

See all activity on LinkedIn →
Agentic AI with CrewAI & multi-agent systems
AICTE QIP PG Certification
Fine tuning LLMs
Learning to Solve Leetcode Problems from Scratch
NPTEL — AI & machine learning
Faculty Leetcode Challenge
Running Quantized LLM on CPU
Learning through Teaching
View all 40+ posts on LinkedIn →
New posts drop after each project build. Follow on LinkedIn for updates, or check back here — build logs go up within a week of project completion.

Let's Build Something Together

Looking to bring AI training to your institution, company, or team? I design and deliver hands-on workshops — from ML fundamentals to production-grade LLM and RAG systems — tailored to your audience's level and goals.

"These projects are not about replicating benchmarks or shipping polished products. The goal is to build from scratch after genuinely understanding the underlying concepts."

🎓 Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering · SNS College of Engineering, Coimbatore
🏛️ AICTE QIP Programme on AI to GenAI · IIIT Allahabad
📍 Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
🔬 Ph.D. Pursuing · Anna University, Chennai