Sydney software engineer and researcher Rahul Dev Tripathi has secured a fully funded PhD position at the University of California, Los Angeles after receiving a competitive scholarship offer from the US university.
The scholarship covers tuition costs that can often run into hundreds of thousands of dollars at leading American institutions. Speaking about the opportunity, Tripathi said: “Considering the funding cuts imposed on many US universities, I feel incredibly lucky to receive a fully funded offer to study in the United States.”
Tripathi studied at Sydney Grammar School, where he graduated with an ATAR of 99.50 before completing First Class Honours in Software Engineering and Mathematics at the University of New South Wales. During his time at university, he also founded AuthNTick Identity Services, a Sydney-based technology startup focused on workforce verification and background screening.
AuthNTick is approved by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and aligned with the Defence Industry Security Program. The company provides police checks, identity validation, visa and work entitlement verification, and pre-employment screening services for organisations.
Professor Vijay Sivaraman from UNSW praised his research work across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, network systems and virtual reality.
Tripathi said his research direction became clearer after reaching out to postgraduate students and becoming involved in existing university projects.
“While studying at UNSW, I initially wasn’t sure what my specific research interests were,” Rahul explained. “To figure it out,
“I started investigating the projects being funded by my department and identifying the postdoctoral and PhD students working on them.”
I formed strong friendships with those seniors and asked if I could assist with their research. This proactive approach gave me invaluable insight into writing research papers and conducting experiments for high-level PhD projects.”
His research work expanded in 2023 when he co-authored papers presented at ACM SIGMETRICS and IEEE conferences, examining virtual reality network activity and user experience under different network conditions.
Tripathi also co-invented an Australian provisional patent linked to metaverse monitoring technology and later presented research findings to industry figures including the AWS Chief Information Security Officer. His work was also showcased at MetaCom in Hong Kong.
His family said they were proud to see him begin the next stage of his academic journey in Los Angeles. His father, Dev Tripathi, is President Hindi Samaaj and a cybersecurity consultant, while his mother, Gunjan Tripathi, works as a community manager at Camden Council.
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