Available for opportunities

Hi, I'm Keval

Quantitative Research & Data Science

B.Tech. CSE @ IIT Mandi · CFA Level I Cleared

Keval Patel

About

My Introduction

Passionate about quant finance.

I am a Computer Science undergraduate at IIT Mandi with a strong foundation in C++, Python, and Data Structures & Algorithms. My work spans Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Vision-Language Models, with hands-on experience in medical imaging, audio anti-spoofing, and quantitative finance. I enjoy solving complex problems—whether optimizing algorithms, building models, or analyzing datasets—and I am deeply interested in backtesting, risk-return analysis, portfolio management, and the applications of AI in decision-making. I am always eager to learn, collaborate, and apply my skills to impactful challenges across tech and finance.

8+

Projects

2

Research

7.42

CGPA

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Education

Academic Background

Degrees, scores & relevant coursework

B.Tech., Computer Science & Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi

7.42 / 10

Expected 2026

Senior Secondary (Class XII)

Gujarat Secondary & Higher Secondary Education Board (GSEB)

96.06% · 2022

Secondary (Class X)

Gujarat Secondary & Higher Secondary Education Board (GSEB)

99.73% · 2020

Relevant Coursework

Probability & Statistics Statistical Data Analysis Machine Learning Deep Learning Data Mining for Decision Making Personal Finance & Portfolio Management Fiscal & Monetary Policy Principles of Economics Natural Language Processing Data Structures & Algorithms Operating Systems Database Systems Software Engineering Computer Networks

Experience

Work Experience

Industry & professional roles

Intern

HDFC Asset Management Company Limited

Ahmedabad, Gujarat

Jan 2026 – Present
  • Designed Python-based quantitative backtesting frameworks to evaluate fund performance, simulate entry/exit strategies, and support portfolio allocation decisions.
  • Built risk-return metrics pipelines (Sharpe ratio, max drawdown, alpha/beta decomposition) to screen mutual funds and identify consistent outperformers.
  • Conducted risk management analysis — assessed portfolio volatility, downside risk, and stress-test scenarios to support fund-level risk oversight.
  • Managed client portfolio review processes: tracked holdings, monitored performance attribution, and prepared customised portfolio reports for HNI and distributor clients.
  • Engaged directly with clients and distributors to communicate fund insights, address queries, and support relationship management alongside senior advisors.
  • Analysed macroeconomic indicators (rate cycles, inflation, FII flows) and synthesized findings into structured investment reports for cross-functional decision-making.

Projects

Featured Work

Independent & group project contributions

Research

Research Projects

Undergraduate research at IIT Mandi

Audio Liveness Detection: Replay Attack Spoofing (Physical Access)

Undergraduate Researcher · IIT Mandi — Prof. Dr. Padmanabhan

Aug 2025 – Dec 2025 · ASVspoof 2019 & 2021

  • Investigated anti-spoofing for Automatic Speaker Verification (ASV) systems targeting Physical Access (PA) replay attacks; benchmarked baseline models on ASVspoof 2019 & 2021 (~210K and ~990K samples) using Equal Error Rate (EER) — CQCC-GMM (36.33%), LFCC-GMM (39.79%), LFCC-LCNN (42.16%), RawNet2 (46.03%).
  • Achieved EER 5.3% on ASVspoof 2019 using MS-CLAP (Microsoft Contrastive Language-Audio Pretraining) for feature extraction — surpassing the strongest 2019 baseline CQCC-GMM (EER 12%), a 57% relative improvement.
  • Cross-dataset generalization benchmark (2019 train → 2021 test): deployed Wav2Vec2-based model achieving EER 32.3%, outperforming best prior cross-benchmark result of EER ~36.3%.
  • Applied pyroomacoustics data augmentation to simulate room acoustic environments; explored one-class classification for generalization to unseen spoofing attack types.
MS-CLAP Wav2Vec2 RawNet2 pyroomacoustics ASVspoof

Explainability and Chain-of-Thought in Vision-Language Models for Medical Imaging

In this research, we investigated how to enhance the explainability, clinical trust, and reasoning ability of Vision-Language Models (VLMs) in medical imaging applications—particularly for tasks like chest X-ray interpretation and medical visual question answering. We focused on integrating both explainability techniques and Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting to address the growing need for transparent and reliable AI systems in healthcare.

To improve interpretability, we leveraged LLaVA-Rad, a vision-language model tailored for radiology, and augmented it with Chain-of-Thought prompting. This allowed the model to generate intermediate reasoning steps while producing diagnostic reports, enhancing both logical structure and factual correctness. The step-by-step reasoning closely resembled the diagnostic thought process used by radiologists, making the AI's predictions more transparent and trustworthy. (Paper)

Explainability Results

In parallel, we explored explainability in the multimodal BioMedCLIP model using Integrated Gradients, a gradient-based attribution method. By applying this technique, we were able to visualize which specific regions in chest X-rays contributed most to the model's predictions. These visual explanations aligned well with expert annotations, allowing clinicians to better understand the model's decision-making process and increasing its usability in real-world scenarios. (Paper)

To further align VLM behavior with clinical standards, we developed MMedPO (Multimodal Medical Preference Optimization)—a novel training pipeline that fine-tunes models based on clinically-aware preference pairs. We curated two types of data: text-based pairs created by introducing factual hallucinations via GPT-4, and image-based pairs generated by injecting noise into lesion areas. These preference datasets were scored for clinical relevance using collaborative setups (for text) and visual heatmaps (for images). During fine-tuning, we used normalized clinical relevance scores as weights, giving higher influence to examples deemed more clinically important. This approach allowed the model to prioritize learning from data that truly matters in a medical context. (Paper)

MMedPO Results

Technologies and Tools Used:

  • 🧠 LLaVA-Rad (Radiology-specific VLM)
  • 🧬 BioMedCLIP (ViT + PubMedBERT)
  • 🧠 Chain-of-Thought Prompt Engineering
  • 🛠️ Integrated Gradients (Torch-based)
  • 🎯 MMedPO (Preference-weighted fine-tuning)

Skills

Technical Skills

Tools & technologies I work with

📊 Quant & Finance

Backtesting Risk-Return Analysis Factor Analysis Options Greeks Portfolio Optimisation

💻 Programming

Python Pandas NumPy SciPy Scikit-learn C++ SQL

🧠 Machine Learning & AI

TensorFlow PyTorch Keras NLP Fine-tuning OpenCV

🛠️ Tools & BI

Excel (VBA) Tableau Power BI Groww API Git/GitHub Kaggle Google Colab

🤝 Soft Skills

Communication Client Relationship Management Team Leadership Adaptability Problem Solving Creativity

Achievements

Certificates & Awards

Certifications and competition highlights

CFA® Level I – Passed

Mar 2026

NISM Series V-A – Certified Mutual Fund Distributor

Feb 2026

NISM Series VIII – Equity Derivatives

Jul 2025

📚 Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Achievements

Aug'22

• JEE Advanced: AIR 2,798

• JEE Mains: AIR 7,826 · 99.18 percentile

🥈 Kaggle LLM Detect AI-Generated Text Competition

Jan'24

• Silver Medal - Top 3% Global Ranking

• Placed 150th out of over 5000 teams worldwide

• Competed in the highly competitive LLM Detect AI-Generated Text challenge

🥇 1st in D.I.S.R.U.P. – Case Study Innovation Challenge by E-Cell, IIT Mandi

Oct'22

🏢 JPMorgan Chase & Co. Quantitative Research Virtual Experience

Feb'25

Completed a simulation focused on quantitative research methods:

  • Analyzed a book of loans to estimate a customers probability of default
  • Used dynamic programming to convert FICO scores into categorical data to predict defaults

Leadership

Activities & Roles

Campus leadership and extracurriculars

Event Manager, Miraz – IIT Mandi

2025

End-to-end planning, coordination and execution of college cultural events.

🎾 IIT Mandi Lawn Tennis Club

Aug'23 - Aug'24

• Coordinator of the IIT Mandi Lawn Tennis Club

• Represented IIT Mandi in the Inter-IIT Sport Meet

🎪 Exodia'23 - Largest Fest of Himalayas

Feb'23 - May'23

• Core Team Member for Planning and Management Team

• Contributed to the organization and execution of the largest cultural fest in the Himalayas

Contact

Get In Touch

Reach out for collaborations or opportunities

Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India