Rithik graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Quantitative and Computational Biology. Prior to joining Arena, Rithik interned at Apple as a Software Engineer on the Siri Product Experience Team, where he built a conversational wellness assessment through Siri, improving upon the Siri COVID-19 Symptom Tracker (iOS 14) and increasing Siri’s ability to have a natural conversation.

At USC, Rithik co-founded a startup that used machine learning to provide apparel recommendations based on consumer tastes, helping users find what to buy faster. He also worked at the USC Michelson Center: Convergent Science Institute in Cancer, where he conducted research which demonstrated that single-cell morphology can serve as a biomarker for aggressive forms of metastatic prostate cancer.