Jaival Patel

With such an accomplished hacking career, you’d be forgiven for thinking Jaival was much further along than the 11th grade. Inspired by Baymax, the heroic healthcare droid created by protagonist Tadashi Hamada in Disney’s Big Hero 6, Jaival enrolled in a program with Exceed Robotics at age 8. Jaival says that his first experiences coding LEGO® MINDSTORMS® and building home automation systems with Arduino boards sparked an early passion for programming hardware. It wasn’t until his friend introduced him to the Linux terminal that he discovered an interest in software engineering.

As a kid, Jaival was certain he wanted to become an astronaut. At night, he would dream about traversing the galaxies and research the steps to being hired by NASA. But upon realizing that the process involved strenuous physical tests and that only ten applicants out of more than 12,000 end up making the cut, Jaival pivoted to using his love of math and programming to further his dreams of exploring space. Jaival took more than forty courses in computer science and artificial intelligence by the time he finished middle school, and was recognized with his school’s science award in the 8th grade for his work on a planet-detection neural network created using Python.

It was not immediately clear to Jaival how he would be able to use his love of math and programming to break into the space industry. With encouragement from his middle school community, however, Jaival was inspired to grow his skillset as a programmer even further by participating in hackathons. At his first hackathon, XdHacks Mini, Jaival says he was “completely lost,” and ended up missing the mark on the theme of medical hospitality, instead creating a project which optimized signals between Earth and orbiting telescopes. But the support from his peers at the hackathon and the interest his work attracted as the only space-related project encouraged Jaival to make the hackathon experience a staple of his burgeoning career.

Jaival’s high school never had a formal hacking club, even with the student body’s high interest in computer science during the pandemic, so Jaival and his friends took the initiative to create their own. Within a year, the club had attracted more than 400 students from across all grade levels. Jaival has also shared his knowledge with others every chance he’s gotten, providing other students with weekly mentoring in algorithms and competitive programming, along with hosting events to inspire students to ship more projects they are interested in. Jaival has competed in more than thirty hackathons himself, including submitting winning projects at Hack the North and JAMHacks, and has also acted as a mentor at renowned hackathons like Hack the North and UofTHacks.

Jaival also strives to share his knowledge with others in his role as a core Computer Science and Mathematics Researcher for Medium’s Towards Data Science, where he writes articles and creates relevant projects which touch an average of 300 readers a month. Jaival strongly believes “everyone should have the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest and have the resources to fulfill their purpose and dreams.” Putting his goals into action, Jaival and his team at BubbleDAO were able to raise over $10,000 and host 85+ web3 hackathons and in-person events all last summer for new artists and developers to showcase their work. Jaival continues to volunteer as a teaching assistant with CommunityAI, helping young students develop a passion for technology.  Jaival is the author of Beauty Of Mathematics, a book including mathematical proofs of fifteen pure-math theorems and an analysis of their applications to real-world industries. Recently, he worked with Ethereum developers on Radio, which took 2nd place at ETHNewYork and has attracted over 1,000 Web3 developers to date.