Pushpender Mehla

Final-year Computer Engineering student at UNSW Sydney. I build software, data and machine-learning systems — from a satellite-imagery system that flags possible unauthorised construction on floodplains to a sensor rig for remote dialysis care.

Status

Based in
Sydney, NSW
Studying
Computer Engineering, UNSW
Graduating
Sep 2027
Now
Controls team, Purple House project

Insert a cartridge

Now

Purple House sensor rig

Controls team, Vertically Integrated Project (ENGG4600), UNSW. Current.

I was selected through interview for this VIP, which focuses on predictive maintenance and sensor data analytics.

On the controls team, I'm helping develop and automate a data-driven sensor rig for a pre-filtration system used in dialysis in remote Australia, supporting dialysis care for Indigenous communities.

Research

RAVEN

Research Intern and Project Lead, Thapar Institute, 2024 to May 2025. Supervised by Dr Ashima Singh.

RAVEN detects possible unauthorised construction on floodplains from satellite imagery. I led a three-person team through the whole project, from the first look at the data to a working detection system, and owned delivery and timelines.

  • Set up a cleaning and validation workflow for multi-band imagery with missing and cloud-corrupted observations.
  • Engineered five spectral-index features, then iteratively tuned classification thresholds and a proximity buffer to tell new construction apart from surrounding land.
  • Built an interactive dashboard for authorities, with layer toggles, date-range and area controls, and live alerts.
  • Turned detection results into readable change summaries for decision-makers.
  • Google Earth Engine
  • Sentinel-2
  • GeoTIFF
  • Leaflet
A river with a buffer zone and nearby buildings Buildings that fall inside the buffer zone around the river are highlighted as flagged for review.

 

Drag the slider. Anything built within the chosen distance of the river is flagged for review; a wider buffer catches more but raises more false alarms.

Illustration only, not project data.

Projects

2024–25

Hybrid vector, graph and relational data system

A single query pipeline that brings together three kinds of information: semantic similarity, relationships between entities, and structured records. It's built for finding related records across large datasets, where an ordinary table lookup isn't enough.

  • Vector DB
  • Graph DB
  • SQL
  • Embeddings

2024

Municipal Water Watch

A public reporting tool built at a hackathon. Every report becomes a tracked case with escalating alert levels, and status changes appear live without anyone refreshing the page.

2023

Weather forecast web app

A responsive web app that shows current conditions from a live weather service, extended with a short-range forecasting model trained on historical observations.

Experience

Now

Controls team, Purple House project

VIP ENGG4600, UNSW

Developing and automating a data-driven sensor rig for a dialysis pre-filtration system.

Jul–Aug 2025

Freelance web developer

Self-employed

Gathered requirements directly from clients and delivered responsive web apps on agreed timelines, including third-party API integrations and page-load speed improvements.

Jun–Jul 2025

After-school tutor

Self-employed

Taught programming to students from different backgrounds, planning individual lessons and adjusting each session to how they were progressing.

2024–25

Research intern and project lead

Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology

Led the three-person RAVEN team.

Education

Expected Sep 2027

UNSW Sydney

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), Computer Engineering

Includes the ENGG4600 Vertically Integrated Project, where I'm on the controls team for the Purple House sensor rig.

2023–2025

Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology

Computer Engineering, Patiala, India

Two years of study, credited as advanced standing towards the UNSW degree. Coursework included artificial intelligence, probability and statistics, object-oriented programming and software engineering.

Skills

Programming
  • Python
  • C/C++
  • JavaScript
  • SQL
  • R
  • MATLAB
  • HTML/CSS
Data and machine learning
Data cleaning and validation, exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, statistical analysis, classification, threshold tuning, forecasting, model evaluation
Web and data systems
Flask, REST APIs, WebSocket, relational, vector and graph databases, embedding-based similarity search
Geospatial and AI
Google Earth Engine, Sentinel-2 imagery, GeoTIFF, Leaflet, LLM-generated summaries
Tools
Git and GitHub, Linux, VS Code
Working with people
Client requirements gathering, technical communication, tutoring, project leadership
Languages
English (full professional), Hindi (native)

Recognition and volunteering

  • Finalist, HackTU hackathon
  • Summer Research Internship Program, Thapar Institute Selected for the 2024 program.
  • Volunteer, Prayaas March 2024. Coordinated volunteer teaching and awareness drives, and organised local school events.

Contact

Email is the best way to reach me.

pushpendermehla@gmail.com