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Abdul Azeez Shaik

Systems that have to actually work.

Co-founder at Contextral, building on-premise AI infrastructure for regulated institutions. Independent author of LegacyRAG, on multi-GPU retrieval over legacy hardware.

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Azeez Shaik

Abdul Azeez Shaik

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About

Computer science, on real hardware.

I'm a Computer Science undergraduate at NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing, co-founder of Contextral, and the sole CS and firmware engineer on NASA's RockSat-X A.R.R.O.W. mission.

Most of my work sits where AI meets constraint: air-gapped labs, compliance boundaries, municipal archives, and a payload that had to survive a suborbital flight.

  • DegreeB.S. Computer Science, expected 2028
  • CollegeYing Wu College of Computing, NJIT
  • MinorBusiness & Information Systems
  • StandingDean's List
  • BasedPrinceton Junction, NJ
Elsewhere LinkedIn as4768@njit.edu
Where I build, and what I build with
  • Contextral
  • NJIT
  • CodePath
  • Base44
Experience

Five roles, one throughline.

A company, a NASA payload, a research lab, a community, and a fellowship, ordered by what carries the most weight, not by date.

  1. Sept. 2025Present
    Co-Founder
    Contextral · Newark, NJ

    Building on-premise AI infrastructure for regulated institutions, covered by NJIT News. Flagship product Virtual Archives is deployed at the Newark City Clerk's Office: HIPAA/FERPA-compliant document intelligence via Ollama, Qdrant, and LangChain.

    AI Infrastructure · On-Prem · Ollama / Qdrant / LangChain

  2. Sept. 2025Present
    Computer Science / AI Lead, A.R.R.O.W. Mission
    NASA RockSat-X · Wallops Island, VA

    Sole CS and firmware engineer for a suborbital payload. Wrote all flight code for SCOUT (SAMD21, Langmuir probe + XBee transmitter) and Overwatch (RA4M1, IMU logger + receiver) through CoDR, PDR, and CDR. Flew the payload in June 2026, then led post-flight telemetry analysis: processed 49,171 IMU samples, diagnosed a 75.3% RF reception rate, and authored the mission's final technical report.

    Flight Software · Firmware · SAMD21 / RA4M1 / XBee

  3. Sept. 2024Present
    Lead Experiment Manager, Developer & Project Manager
    NJIT iXR Research Lab · Under Dr. Margarita Vinnikov

    Oversee all lab experiments and run gesture-based XR studies using Oculus, Unity, Azure, and C#. Nearly doubled participant engagement with 100% consent form completion. Led an independent sub-study in the VROOM project, published at ACM IMX 2026.

    XR Research · Oculus / Unity / C# · Gesture Studies

  4. Sept. 2026Present
    Student Advisory Board Member
    Ying Wu College of Computing Advising · NJIT

    Selected from a competitive applicant pool to advise the YWCC Advising Team on the student experience across computer science, data science, and informatics.

    Student Governance · Advising · Ying Wu College of Computing

  5. Apr. 2026Present
    Community Organizer
    CrowdTheory · EqualSpace, Newark

    A Newark-rooted startup community and event series. Ecosystem building rather than engineering: convening founders, operators, and students around the city's growing tech scene.

    Community · Startup Ecosystem · Newark

  6. 2026
    Innovation & Entrepreneurship Fellow
    Profeta Foundation · Named fellowship

    A competitive, named fellowship backing the founder track with institutional support. Alongside NVIDIA Inception membership for Contextral and Dean's List standing at NJIT.

    Fellowship · NVIDIA Inception · Dean's List

Also: LLM/NLP Engineering Research Assistant at NJIT's Dept. of Humanities & Social Sciences (under Prof. Michael Laudenbach) · Chief Product Officer at Project Elevate · Base44 Ambassador for the NJIT campus · Mentor & Program Experience Advisor at CodePath · Software Engineer at Develop for Good · E-board Social Media Manager at the NJIT Center for Entrepreneurship.

Research

Papers, a preprint, and one poster.

Retrieval on hardware nobody wants to replace, agent behaviour under corpus control, and collaboration inside XR.

Invited as an undergraduate to review for IEEE TKDE. Currently writing on local LLM deployment behaviour across open-source models with NJIT's Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Projects

Things built, mostly on a deadline.

Hackathon builds, products shipped at Contextral and Project Elevate, and a contribution to GPU tooling.

Awards

Named, competitive, and occasionally unserious.

  1. 2026 Featured in NJIT NewsContextral and the Newark DPW work
  2. 2026 Innovation & Entrepreneurship FellowshipProfeta Foundation
  3. 2026 NVIDIA InceptionMember, Contextral
  4. 2025 Best PresenterNJIT AI Exploration Day
  5. 2024– Dean's ListNJIT, ongoing
  6. 2026 1st Place, Amateur TrackHackPrinceton, with Hop-It
  7. 2025 Team CaptainVerizon Foodloops Smart Campus Competition
  8. 2025 1st Place, Intramural BowlingNJIT. Not every credential needs to be serious.
Notable mentions
  • Keynote SpeakerNJIT College Day, 2026
  • PanelistFYEE Conference, 2026
  • Invited ReviewerIEEE TKDE, as an undergraduate
  • Community OrganizerCrowdTheory at EqualSpace, Newark
  • Mentor & Program Experience AdvisorCodePath
  • Software EngineerDevelop for Good, Mates Fund Ltd
  • Social Media Manager, E-boardNJIT Center for Entrepreneurship
  • Research WorkshopIDEAL Institute, 2025