Nalin
Verma

I build applied AI, and I point it at markets.

I’m a Management Engineering student at Waterloo. I like the part where a messy pile of text turns into something you can actually act on, and I put my own money behind the thesis, which is a good way to find out fast when I’m wrong.

01About

I spent this summer building data and AI solutions for banking clients at Tiger Analytics in Santa Clara. Alongside it I’m an ML researcher at WAT.ai on InsightPulse, and co-founder of Click A Diet, an AI nutrition platform with ~200 paying customers. My interest sits at one intersection: applied AI, capital markets, and the discipline of putting real money into live ones.

Nalin Verma
Degree
BASc Management Engineering
School
University of Waterloo
Grad
April 2030, co-op
Standing
87.67% term avg · Term Distinction
Awards
President's Scholarship of DistinctionEngineering International Student Award$13,500 total
Summer 2025
London School of Economics and Political ScienceAI for Business (A−)
Home
Waterloo, Canada
Languages & Databases

Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn) · SQL (window functions, CTEs, joins) · R · VBA

Machine Learning & AI

Regression · Model evaluation · LLM integration · Evaluation harnesses

Systems & Tooling

PostgreSQL · Supabase · Vercel · Git · Excel (advanced)

02Work history

Click A Diet↗

Mar 2025 → now
Co-founder
AI nutrition platform

I launched an AI service that emails subscribers a personalised 28-day diet plan every month, now reaching around 200 paying customers. Quality was the hard part. I built an evaluation harness that pairs each generated plan with a blind second-model recheck, lifting the pass rate from 5% to 89%. A verification layer sits in front of the customer and blocks any plan failing a calorie floor, a macro target or a condition-specific limit, which cut nutritional error by roughly 95%.

Tiger Analytics

May → Aug 2026
Analytics Consulting Intern
Banking & Financial Services · Santa Clara, USA

I turned transaction-level records into model-ready customer features, writing SQL and Python pipelines that leaned on window functions and CTEs over large banking datasets. That work fed a client's personalized-offer project: I assembled the customer dataset behind the logic deciding which offer each customer saw, and through which channel. Every deliverable shipped with its methodology, assumptions and findings documented, so a reviewer could trace the path from raw data to final output.

WAT.ai↗

Jan 2026 → now
ML Researcher, InsightPulse
Cross-asset financial intelligence

I built the team's baseline regression model in scikit-learn, mapping 8 macroeconomic indicators onto 6 market targets across 10 years of monthly data. The more useful result was a negative one: I found CBOE Volatility Index data leaking into the equity targets, which had inflated our test R² to +0.30. Removing it revealed the true value of −0.52, and that honest baseline is what the rest of the work now builds on.

Purple MicroPort Cardiovascular

May → Aug 2024
Operations & Corporate Intern
Medical devices

My first time using data to drive operational decisions in a regulated industry. I wrote Excel VBA scripts that automated budgeting and cost-tracking during finance reviews, cutting about 20% off the monthly reporting cycle, then broke spend down across cost centres so the finance and operations team could see where costs were actually concentrated.

03Things I'm building
Research

InsightPulse↗

A cross-asset financial intelligence platform. Baseline regression mapping 8 macroeconomic indicators onto 6 market targets over a decade of monthly data, plus the leakage audit that kept the result honest.

Caught VIX leakage inflating test R² to +0.30; true value −0.52.
WAT.ai · Jan 2026 → now
Project

Investment Decision Support System↗

A Python and Google Sheets investment engine that ingests live market data, applies portfolio constraints, and selects allocations across 10 asset classes.

Ranks portfolios by worst-case rather than expected return; Gemini explains each allocation.
Dec 2025
Startup

Click A Diet↗

A nutrition platform running two ways at once: AI-generated personalised diet plans and one-on-one expert dietician consults, under one roof.

~200 paying customers; plan pass rate lifted 5% to 89%.
Co-founder · Mar 2025 → now
Paper

Digital Gaming & Teen Health↗

Designed the survey and analysed responses from 355 teenagers for a peer-reviewed study on the health effects of digital gaming, with Dr. Vinay Goyal, Director of Neurology at Medanta, The Medicity.

Survey design, statistical analysis, academic writing.
Int'l Journal of Advanced Research · Aug 2023
04What the money is doing

A personal portfolio kept since June 2025. Real money, modest sums, tracked carefully. The exposure is ETF-driven and thematic: broad indexes, precious metals, US tech, and one targeted bet on defence. It is a small sum. The point is the process.

Since
June 2025
Holdings
5 sectors, ETFs
Return
+19%
Horizon
5 years plus
01
Broad market
Core

The base the rest sits on.

02
Gold
Hedge

Carry for the tail.

03
Silver
Hedge

The same trade, more beta.

04
Nasdaq 100
US tech

Where the growth still is.

05
Defence
Thematic

A policy cycle, not a whim.

Why ETFs, mostly

At my size, any edge from individual stock picking gets eaten by execution friction and the urge to fiddle. ETFs let me express a thematic view with single-digit expense ratios, no idiosyncratic blow-up risk, and a process I can actually stick to.

Why I'm holding defence

Defence is in a structural reshoring cycle globally: multi-decade capex commitments, indigenization mandates across major economies, a long order book. It is policy-backed rather than cyclical, and the thesis plays out across European primes, US defence, or any clean expression of the trade.

The rules
  1. 01Process before picks.
  2. 02Uncorrelated bets.
  3. 03If it's not a 5-year hold, it's not a buy.
  4. 04Cash is a position.
  5. 05Don't fiddle.

Five sectors, ETF-driven. Not investment advice.

05Write to me

I’m looking for an Applied AI / ML Engineering internship for Winter 2027 at firms that take both AI and capital markets seriously. If that sounds like you, I’d love to talk.

Nalin Verma · 2026Waterloo, Canada