I’m Kushagra Srivastava, a CS Masters student at Northeastern University specializing in operating systems and compilers. I build systems-level software and care deeply about how computers actually work.
What I Work On
My focus is low-level systems programming—the kind of work where you’re thinking about memory layouts, build systems, and why something takes 40 minutes to compile when it should take 9.
Current interests: Operating systems, compiler development, molecular dynamics simulation, LLMs as an accessibility tool, and making software that respects both the machine and the person using it.
Current Projects
STORMM — Molecular dynamics simulation software at Psivant Therapeutics.
tra86 — An x86 assembly stack tracer I built for my honors thesis at UMass Amherst. The thesis compared Rust and C++ performance at the assembly level using modified GDB tracing.
SelfSelect / Automator — An LLM-powered automation platform. The Android version uses Gemini to translate natural language commands into YAML scripts executed via Accessibility Services. I’m now building a desktop version using MCP servers with support for Hindi language input.
RavynOS / Swift on FreeBSD — Contributing to the effort of bringing Swift 6 to FreeBSD as part of the RavynOS project, working toward a macOS-compatible open source operating system.
SaberStat — An Apple Watch app for lightsaber dueling that uses IMU sensors for hit detection. Still refining the signal processing for acceleration magnitude and peak finding.
Background
I’m currently pursuing my Masters in Computer Science at Northeastern University, focusing on operating systems and compilers.
Before this, I worked at Psivant Therapeutics as a Systems/Software Developer on STORMM, a molecular dynamics framework. That role taught me a lot about large-scale scientific software and high performance computation.
I studied Computer Science at UMass Amherst (BS, Honors), where my thesis compared Rust and C++ performance at the assembly level. My first Linux experience was Ubuntu on an Intel Atom netbook in 7th grade—I wrote code on underpowered hardware because that’s what I had. That’s probably why I care so much about efficient software now.
Interests
Retro computing — PowerBook G3, Acer eeePC, Macintosh System 9, SUN Solaris, and anything that makes you appreciate how far we’ve come (or haven’t). I own actual hardware!!
Right-to-repair — I believe strongly that you should be able to fix what you own.
Lightsaber battles — Seriously enough to build an Apple Watch app for it.
I think programming is an art form. I prefer well-crafted, platform-native software over cross-platform compromises. I’ll take a thoughtfully designed tool over a feature-bloated one every time.
This site runs on Hugo with a custom theme I built—amber terminal aesthetics meets classic Mac typography. No JavaScript frameworks were harmed in the making of this blog.