Even as a 12-year-old in his native India, Surya Sai Brahmendra Ramoju was so fascinated by computers that he once cracked open his brother’s Microsoft computer and took apart its internal components to see what worked.
He risked a major reprimand if his parents saw circuit boards and wires strewn across the floor, making it impossible to get the computer working again.
After some tinkering, it worked, and my brother helped me reassemble it before the adults saw it. But he wanted to learn more.
“What attracted me was the idea that there was a language that you could learn to actually speak and communicate,” says Ramoju, 27. “When I was a kid, it felt like magic, and that curiosity never went away.”
That computer fascination trumped his youthful aspirations to become a pop star like Justin Bieber and ultimately led him from his native coastal city of Visakhapatnam, a port city on the Bay of Bengal, to Northeastern’s Boston campus.
In 2024, I completed my Master’s degree in Data Analytics Engineering from Northeastern Technological University. He said Northeastern University was the only university he applied to after carefully researching its course offerings, reputation and rankings.
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Ramoju currently works in Amazon’s artificial general intelligence division in Boston, where he develops AI computer programs designed to interact with digital interfaces in the real world, such as Alexa HomeAid, which plays your favorite songs or tells you the weather forecast on command, among other things.
At Amazon, Ramoju also works on a variety of Nova interactive computer platforms that can help customers with everything from writing code, creating images and videos, and even helping writers talk about how to break out of “writer’s block.”
“My job is to be at the forefront of getting the highest quality data to improve the way the system works,” Ramoju said, adding that the AI computer systems he is working on are almost human-like.
He also founded the startup Arch AI Research Laboratory (Boston), an independent artificial intelligence research laboratory, and Finder @ Social, a social media site that helps college students securely link and network with other students for social and career networking without anonymous users infiltrating the site.
Mark Meyer, a professor at Northeastern University who mentors student innovation teams and entrepreneurs in the university’s D’Amore McKim School of Business, said Ramojou presented his social media project for advice when he was a student.
Meyer said Ramoju has something planned, but the social media project needs some work.
“Obviously there’s a need to find safe friends on the web, but he needed to be more focused,” Meyer said. “He needed to think about how he could differentiate himself from Facebook and Instagram. That was my criticism. But he’s very quick and competent when it comes to software development.”
Romaju has adapted the platform to allow university students to use it instead of the anonymous users allowed in other systems. It is currently used by more than 190 universities in 12 countries, which helped it win Northeastern University’s 2024 Entrepreneurship Alpha Fund Award, followed by the College of Engineering’s 2025 Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
Along the way, he also participated in a co-op session at One Autism Health in Boston, where he worked on the code for a Boston-based platform and designed an app to help individuals with autism and their caregivers manage care, resources, and find local autism-friendly service providers.
Daniela Ottaiano, a former co-op advisor at Northeastern University who now works as an academic coach in the Boston area, remembers Ramojou as a conscientious and focused student.
“I’m not surprised that he’s doing so well. Nothing about Surya surprises me,” she said. “He was very goal-oriented and organized, but always open to suggestions and advice.”
Ben Brackenwagen, a friend from the Northeast, remembers Ramoju: “One of the most exciting people I’ve ever met. At his core he had a genuine belief in himself. His level of integrity was rare.”
Despite all his success in the world of technology, Ramoju never forgot his love for music. He rents a studio nearby where he writes and performs rhythm and blues music. He has 20,000 subscribers on YouTube and just released his new single “Salt Water Kisses,” a song he wrote and performed.
But it’s computer programming that still fascinates him. Writing computer programs, he said, is like “pursuing a very special kind of freedom,” adding: “The freedom to build something from nothing and watch it become reality as you imagined it.”
