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The people behind RAIN.

A coalition of student founders, faculty, and partner organizations building the operating layer for AI at UC San Diego.

Founding leadership

Founders.

Pranav Kumar Soma

Pranav Kumar Soma

Co-Founder & President

CS @ UC San Diego. Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Emerging Intelligence (LEI), building Educational Virtual Agents and the Smart Learning Hub on top of LLM reasoning methodologies. Graduate student researcher in the Human eXtended Intelligence Lab (UCSD Design Lab × Qualcomm Institute), where he develops the AI Living Assistant for the LifeSaver Project — multimodal LLMs that parse sensor, audio, and video data into queryable health signals, plus the project's robotics pipeline. Has led 30+ contributors across MuseScore+, the Virtual Trial Room, and a Skin Lesion Detector.

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Raj Krishnan

Raj Krishnan, Ph.D.

Co-Founder & Board Chairman

Ph.D. in Bioengineering, UC San Diego. Co-founder and former CEO of Biological Dynamics — a startup born from his UCSD graduate research, building devices that isolate bionanoparticles and cancer biomarkers directly from blood for early-stage detection. Forbes 30 Under 30 (Innovator, 2011) and recipient of multiple national entrepreneurship awards. Brings a decade of operating experience translating university research into venture-backed companies — exactly the pipeline RAIN is being built to scale.

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Partner & affiliate organizations

A federation of student communities.

RAIN is not a replacement — it's an integrator. We work alongside the most active student organizations at UC San Diego.

WISDOM advisory board

RAIN WISDOM Council.

An advisory body of Workplaces · Investors · Students · Deans · Operational staff · Mentors — providing strategic guidance, external credibility, and long-term continuity to the program.

UCSD affiliates
Dr. İlkay Altıntaş de Callafon

Dr. İlkay Altıntaş de Callafon

Chief Data Science Officer · SDSC

Founder of the Societal Computing & Innovation Lab (SCIL). CDSO of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Director of CICORE, Founding Faculty Fellow of HDSI, and Founding Director of the WIFIRE Lab.

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External affiliates
Raj Krishnan

Raj Krishnan, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO · Biological Dynamics

Ph.D. Bioengineering, UCSD. Founder of Biological Dynamics (cancer biomarker detection from blood). Forbes 30 Under 30. Decade of operating experience translating university research into venture-backed companies.

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SA

Sharad Aggarwal

Investor · Mentor

Investor, mentor, and operator with deep experience scaling product and partnership functions across enterprise technology. Advises early-stage AI founders on go-to-market and strategic partnerships.

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Ryan Pandya

Ryan Pandya

Co-Founder · Perfect Day

Co-founder of Perfect Day, the pioneering precision-fermentation company that built the first commercial animal-free dairy protein. Chemical & Biological Engineering, Tufts. Brings deep operating experience from idea to global biotech category-creator.

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