Arka Jain

Arka Jain

Class of 2027 · New Jersey. I build and test things — rocket simulations, research code, math teams, and an eight-year relationship with the trumpet, self-taught after eighth grade — on my way to mechanical & aerospace engineering.

01 — Research & Projects

Rocket flight simulation

A computational model of rocket ascent I developed, tested, and interpreted: Euler and Runge–Kutta solvers validated against analytical cases, a burn-time sensitivity study, and a 2,000-run Monte Carlo analysis of peak altitude.

Entered as a trajectory-optimization project at the Terra North Jersey STEM Fair in March 2026, an ISEF-affiliated regional, under Engineering Technology: Statics and Dynamics.

github.com/arkajain27/RocketLab · ongoing work toward the 2026–27 science fair season

Computational genomics — first-author preprint

First author, with Dr. Umesh Sharma (Mayo Clinic), on a reanalysis of a public genomics atlas. My side was the computation: a dataset of ~254,000 individual cell profiles — running and adapting the analysis pipeline, clustering the data, and testing whether the patterns held up.

arXiv:2604.02511 · code

SciPy — open-source contribution

Identified three errors in SciPy’s statistics documentation and proposed corrections. All three fixes were accepted and pushed by a SciPy maintainer in August 2026.

scipy/scipy #25885 · my first contribution to a major scientific library

AeroLab — RC aircraft

The RocketLab aircraft module, started July 2026: RC-aircraft design in CAD, simulation, aerodynamic analysis, and rapid prototyping, developed iteratively.

In progress · not yet public

Summers

2026 Attended the inaugural cohort of Cornell Tech’s Summer Innovation Intensives: Engineering Operations (Data Science & Decision Making) and Future Builders Studio, where my team built Vouchify, a tool for collecting professional references. Also selected for the Purdue STEP and Michigan Math & Science Scholars programs.

2025 Data-engineering internship at Linde; Harvard Computer Society AI Bootcamp; New York Math Circle summer session at NYU Courant.

2024 Best presenter of 42, Inspirit AI Scholars (colon-cancer detection project); 1st of 25 teams at the Proyecto Competition for an autonomous Rube Goldberg machine.

2023 1st of 21 teams, NJCU STEAM Academy Competition.

02 — Leadership, Teaching & Discipline

Math — both sides of the table

Founded my school’s AMC Math Olympiad Club and trained the team while holding the school’s top AMC 12 score. Ten-time AMC Epsilon award winner at the New York Math Circle; selected by competitive exam for the Blue level at NYU Courant.

Team result: 9th of 23 New Jersey teams and top 100 nationally at the 2026 Purple Comet! Math Meet.

Teaching — Mini-Ivy

Taught STEM to elementary-school students and collaborated with three Princeton undergraduates on math and Python curriculum. Also founded my school’s International Research Olympiad Club.

Linde — data engineering intern

Summer 2025: cleaned and structured live materials-pricing datasets and built a price-prediction model for sputtering-target manufacturing.

Discipline & service

Taekwondo black belt and New Jersey state winner in forms; varsity fencing, and school soccer and swimming before that. Community service packing food bags with the Community FoodBank of NJ and restoring city parks in NJ and NYC.

Recognition

2026 College Board National Recognition Program — School Recognition Award, “For Outstanding Academic Achievement.” 11th of 66 teams at the Science Olympiad at NJIT.

2025 HarvardX CS50P certificate (Python programming); 4th of 38 teams at Sparkathon for PicAllergy, a food-allergen-checking app.

Coursework & activities

Courses DartmouthX, The Engineering of Structures Around Us; Introduction to Bioinformatics (Coursera, in progress).

MUN Represented my school at Model United Nations conferences in New York City, 2024 and 2026.

03 — Music

Trumpet since 2018

School ensembles through eighth grade, then self-taught — YouTube, recordings, and practice; no private lessons. Selected by audition in September 2025 (1 of 6 from my school) for the Dwight Global Concert in Shanghai, held in January 2026. Below, the whole arc: where it started, a practice run four years in, and the audition tape itself.

Every date comes from the original file’s metadata.

WHERE IT STARTED — DEC 17, 2018

YEAR FOUR — MAY 7, 2022

THE AUDITION — SEPT 19, 2025

04 — Contact

Send me a note

Questions about the projects, the research, or the music — the form below reaches me directly. I speak English and Hindi natively and read French.