Aashish Ghimire
Curriculum Vitae · updated May 2026

A decade of building, researching, & serving.

From granular-matter simulations as an undergrad, through a Ph.D. on generative AI in education, to architecting agentic systems at Microsoft's Office of the CTO — plus a parallel life as a US Army Reserve cyber officer.

Experience

11 roles · 2014 → present
  1. 2023 → now Redmond, Washington

    Research Software Engineer · Office of the CTO (OCTO)

    Microsoft ↗

    Architect end-to-end agentic workflows that link cognitive intelligence (LLMs/VLMs) to physical systems — orchestrating multi-agent systems for autonomous process control and mission planning.

    • Built the centralized chatbot interface for our cognitive-physical platform: a single natural-language UI that runs robotic missions and retrieves technical knowledge via GraphRAG.
    • Integrated Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models directly into agentic architectures, giving agents physical grounding and bridging reasoning to real-world actuation.
    • Drive prototyping cadence inside a small agile team within OCTO — early proof-of-concept of emerging tech for division-wide adoption.

    Tech stack: AutoGen · Semantic Kernel · LangChain · MCP · VLA models · RAG / GraphRAG · LLMs / SLMs · Azure AI · agent observability.

  2. 2016 → now Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington

    Cyber Warfare Officer (301 ME HHC)

    US Army Reserve ↗
    Supervise the Cyber section within the brigade as a staff officer; lead a team of 15+ cyber-trained soldiers. Previously led a platoon-sized element (~40 soldiers), running monthly battle assemblies and maintaining mission readiness.
  3. 2022 → 2022 Redmond, Washington

    Research Intern · Advanced Autonomy & Applied Robotics (A3R)

    Microsoft ↗

    Built a transformer-based NLP model for code generation from English text, targeted at the Robot Operating System (ROS).

    Tech stack: PyTorch · GPT · ROS · Gazebo · Python · Jupyter · CloudSim · Azure · Codex.

  4. 2022 → 2022 Menlo Park, California

    Research Intern · Data and AI Platform · Reality Labs

    Meta (Facebook) ↗

    Created production data pipelines and a metrics anomaly-detection system for large-scale log data.

    Tech stack: SQL · Presto · Python · Jupyter · Prophet for ML.

  5. 2021 → 2021 Washington D.C. Regional Office (Remote)

    SWE / Machine Learning Intern · Advanced Spatial Analytics

    Esri Inc. ↗
    Built an end-to-end ML pipeline for satellite imagery in geo-spatial context — data cleanup, augmentation, model selection, image processing, and training. Three-person team.
  6. 2021 → 2021 Phoenix, AZ (Remote)

    SWE Intern · Tools, Audit & Automation

    Charles Schwab Corporation ↗
    Tools, audit, and automation work in a regulated financial-services environment.
  7. 2020 → 2023 Logan, Utah

    Graduate Research Assistant · EdwardsLab

    Utah State University ↗
    Project: Smart Career Recommendation System — “The Pocket Jeanie.” Designed and shipped a recommender system that helps high-school students find optimal paths to a career goal — 1,000+ active users. Combined large-scale web data harvesting with ML-based recommendation modeling.
  8. 2019 → 2022 Logan, Utah

    Graduate Teaching Assistant

    Utah State University ↗
    Developing dynamic, database-driven web applications (CS 2610). Lab instruction, office hours, exam prep, grading.
  9. 2016 → 2017 Salt Lake City, Utah

    Support and Escalation Engineer

    Microsoft (via vendor) ↗

    Tuned custom SIEM correlation rules in Azure Security Center to detect lateral movement and privilege escalation, cutting MTTD for phishing attacks. Hardened critical infrastructure by deploying Secure Admin Workstations (SAW) with Just-In-Time admin access and conditional-access policies.

    Tech stack: Azure Cloud Security · Zero Trust · SIEM · Threat Intelligence.

  10. 2014 → 2014 West Lafayette, Indiana

    Undergraduate Research Fellow

    Purdue University ↗
    Designed and built a web-based simulation tool for jamming and stress perturbation in granular matter and nanoparticles. Used the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to render 3D initial / final configurations.
  11. 2012 → 2015 Baltimore, Maryland

    Research Assistant · Department of Natural Science

    Coppin State University ↗
    Studied semiconductor materials for multi-junction solar cells; simulated output and efficiency across material choices.

Education

3 degrees
2020 – 2023

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Utah State University

Advisor: Dr. John Edwards. Dissertation: Generative AI in Education From the Perspective of Students, Educators, and Administrators.
2019 – 2020

M.S. in Computer Science

Utah State University

Minor: Military Science and Leadership. Thesis: Data-Driven Recommendation of Academic Options Based on Personality Traits.
2011 – 2015

B.S. in Computer Science

Coppin State University

Minor in Mathematics. Graduating Senior of the Year (CS); Best Senior Research Thesis Award.

Skills

What I reach for

AI & Agents

  • Agentic architectures (AutoGen / Semantic Kernel / LangChain)
  • LLMs / SLMs / VLA models
  • RAG & GraphRAG
  • Agent observability & evaluation

Engineering

  • Python
  • Java / C++
  • Azure AI · Azure Cloud
  • PyTorch

Off the keyboard

  • Cyber Warfare Officer (US Army Reserve)
  • Mentoring & teaching

Awards & languages

12 awards · 3 languages
  • 2023
    USU Graduate Research and Creative Opportunities (GRCO) Award

    Utah State University

    $1,000 research funding for a student-proposed and student-executed research project.

  • 2023
    School of Graduate Study Student Travel Grant

    Utah State University

    $400 travel grant.

  • 2023
    Gold Award · Intermountain Engineering, Technology and Computing (i-ETC)

    i-ETC Conference

    $300 award at the Intermountain Engineering, Technology, and Computing Conference.

  • 2019
    Full Tuition Awards & Stipend (GTA / GRA)

    Utah State University

    Multi-year graduate funding through teaching and research assistantships.

  • 2015
    Graduating Senior of the Year — Computer Science

    Coppin State University

  • 2015
    Best Senior Research Thesis Award

    Coppin State University

  • 2011
    Golden Eagle Honors Scholarship

    Coppin State University

    4-year, full-ride honors scholarship.

  • 2014
    Thurgood Marshall College Fund Scholar

    Thurgood Marshall College Fund

    Selected for week-long retreat & national conference, 2013 and 2014.

  • 2014
    STEM Grant

    Coppin State University

    $1,200 / semester, 2013 and 2014.

  • 2015
    Dean's List (all semesters)

    Coppin State University

  • 2012
    Rising Scholar Award

    Coppin State University

  • 2014
    Asia-Pacific Private Donor Award

    Coppin State University

    $500 / semester, 2012–2014.