Vedam School of Technology First-Year Students Achieve Global Tech Milestones
In a remarkable shift from traditional engineering education timelines, first-year students at Vedam School of Technology are already making waves in global technology ecosystems. While most top engineering college students aim for such achievements by their third or fourth year, Vedam's approach is enabling breakthroughs within months of starting their academic journey. Two standout students have demonstrated this through open-source development and real-world cybersecurity research, highlighting how early engineering outcomes are rapidly evolving.
Krishiv Mahajan: Open-Source Prodigy in the LFX Mentorship Program
Krishiv Mahajan, a first-year student at Vedam School of Technology, has been selected for the prestigious LFX Mentorship Program (2026 · Term I), a global initiative by The Linux Foundation. He will receive a stipend of ₹2.43 lakhs, as confirmed by the institute. This program connects developers with some of the most active open-source projects worldwide and is renowned for its highly competitive selection process.
Vedam School of Technology reports that Mahajan will contribute to the Karmada project, part of the cloud-native ecosystem under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). His work involves collaborating with experienced maintainers from across the globe on systems used in production environments, not just academic simulations. Subhesh Kumar, Head of Academics at Vedam, emphasizes that selection into LFX typically requires demonstrated ability, consistency, and proof of work—qualities most students build over years. Achieving this in the first year places Mahajan in an exceptionally rare league of early-stage developers breaking into global open-source ecosystems.
Since its inception in 2019, the LFX Mentorship Program has selected over 190 mentees worldwide across 96 mentorship programs, making this a significant global milestone.
Muhammad Sharief: Cybersecurity Breakthrough with HackerOne Bug Bounties
Simultaneously, another first-year student, Muhammad Sharief, has achieved a breakthrough in cybersecurity by earning $5,000 (over ₹4.5 lakhs) in global bug bounties on HackerOne. This platform is the world's largest ethical hacking network, used by major companies like Google, PayPal, and the U.S. Department of Defense.
In a LinkedIn post, Sharief shared that he identified two real vulnerabilities in live systems while working on Chia Network, a blockchain-based platform. These were not sandbox environments or practice exercises but actual infrastructure flaws, meaning his work directly contributed to securing operational systems. His performance has been formally recognized, placing him among the top 10 hackers and currently ranked #3 on the Chia Network leaderboard, with a program reputation score of 137 and an overall HackerOne reputation of 36.
His approach involved:
- Python scripting for automation and proof-of-concept development
- Blockchain protocol analysis to understand node behavior
- Peer-to-peer network testing to analyze communication between distributed systems
- Exploit development to demonstrate real-world impact
Pankaj Kumar, Director and Faculty member at Vedam, notes that this work is typically associated with experienced security researchers. Yet, Sharief accomplished it alongside regular academic coursework, dedicating 3–5 hours daily over several weeks to testing, analyzing, and refining his methods through independent experimentation on real systems.
Institutional Support and Early Industry Exposure
The institute cites similar examples among other first-year students. For instance, Shubham Barik works as a Python and AI Engineering Intern, earning ₹50,000 per month, and Shivansh Ojha serves as a Technical Program Intern at Finzie, earning ₹30,000 per month—all before completing their first year. These are early milestones, with many students yet to receive offer letters from big tech firms, indicating that industry exposure is occurring earlier in academic journeys.
Piyush Nangru, Founder at Vedam School of Technology, states, "If you start coding from day one, achieving these outcomes in the 1st year itself becomes very practical." What enables this shift is Vedam's approach to incubating its 4-year Computer Science & AI Undergraduate program. The focus is on building strong fundamentals early and applying them in real-world contexts. Core areas like programming, data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving are taught through hands-on projects that involve building, breaking, and understanding real systems.
This advanced tech ecosystem is supported by a mentorship-led model under Subhesh Kumar, Head of Academic Delivery (ex-Google SDE, DTU 5-star coder). Learning extends beyond lectures, with continuous feedback through project reviews, one-on-one mentorship, and execution-focused problem-solving. Vedam's modern infrastructure includes an innovation lab, tech classrooms, and an environment that encourages building, experimenting, and shipping real projects from day one.
Subhesh Kumar emphasizes that this approach is crucial in applied domains. Students are consistently supported in preparing for global opportunities, such as contributing to open-source projects like Google Summer of Code (GSoC) or sharpening skills through competitive coding platforms like ICPC, Smart India Hackathon, and Imagine Cup by Microsoft. This ecosystem allows exploration across critical domains like systems engineering, blockchain, cybersecurity, NLP, robotics, and DevOps, where practical understanding and early exposure make a significant difference.
For students interested in hands-on learning, early industry exposure, and becoming future-ready for jobs beyond 2030, admissions are now open for Vedam School of Technology's 4-year Computer Science and AI program (Batch 2026–2030).
