Dr. Zachary Pardos

Founder (Equivalence Systems), Associate Professor of Education (UC Berkeley)

Dr. Zachary Pardos is the founder of Equivalence Systems and CourseWise. As Associate Professor of Education at UC Berkeley and director of the Computational Approaches to Human Learning (CAHL) research lab, Pardos combines his pioneering research in knowledge representation, recommender systems, and Human-AI collaborations with practical applications that serve tens of thousands of students, administrators, and faculty nationwide. CAHL’s groundbreaking research in ML approaches to course articulation – demonstrating how enrollment data and course descriptions can identify academically equivalent courses across institutions – directly informs CourseWise’s mission to re-envision credit mobility and the transfer experience. Pardos’s research has earned recognition through publications in premier venues including NeurIPS, SIGCHI, Science, and Computers & Education, with recent accolades including the 2024 Tools Competition Growth Award and EDM2024 Best Short Paper Award. His trajectory from National Science Foundation Fellowship recipient and MIT postdoctoral researcher to world-renowned expert in educational AI demonstrates his unique ability to translate computational research into practical educational solutions. Through his teaching of keystone courses like Data Mining & Analytics and Digital Learning Environments, combined with affiliate appointments in Berkeley’s cognitive science and data science programs, Pardos bridges computational rigor with educational impact, ensuring CourseWise transforms institutional pathways while maintaining student-centered design principles.

Angikaar Singh Chana

Chief Operating Officer

Angikaar Singh Chana serves as COO at Equivalence Systems, where he functions as the day-to-day and technical liaison between 70+ institutions, vital collaboration partners, and the CourseWise development team. Building on his Master’s in Information & Data Science (MIDS) from UC Berkeley and his award-winning tenure as Lead GSI for Prof. Zach Pardos’s course on Data Mining & Analytics, Chana’s exposure to influential projects at CAHL sparked his interest in applying AI to education. This experience led him to Equivalence Systems, where he develops operational workflows and partner relations to position CourseWise for national success. Chana has previously served as Berkeley’s Graduate Assembly VP and, later, Staff Assembly Chair-elect, where he represented 12,000 postgraduates and 24,000 staff while navigating Academic Senate and Executive Search committee service, negotiating with the Chancellor’s Cabinet, and managing $6M in student fee assets. This intimate view into educational governance across administration, faculty, and student constituencies uniquely positions Chana to navigate the complex dynamics necessary for successful CourseWise adoption and implementation.

Yuk Man (Natalie) Chan

Lead UI/UX Designer

Yuk Man (Natalie) Chan serves as the Lead UI/UX Designer for CourseWise, where her expertise in educational technology and human-computer interaction drives the platform’s user experience and design strategy. Drawing from her Master’s in Information Management and Systems (MIMS) from UC Berkeley’s School of Information, Chan is passionate about crafting experiences that are not only visually engaging but also deeply intuitive and functional. At Berkeley’s CAHL lab, Chan collaborates with Prof. Zach Pardos on OATutor – the world’s first fully open-source adaptive tutoring system – directly informing her approach to CourseWise. Chan’s design philosophy is grounded in both academic recognition and hands-on innovation, exemplified by her Dr. James R. Chen Award for Playscape, an outdoor play system that invites children to learn about local biodiversity while engaging in playful learning. Chan’s blend of research-driven insight and practical design expertise uniquely positions her to prioritize functionality, accessibility, and responsiveness to diverse stakeholder needs, ensuring CourseWise remains adaptive to the evolving landscape of higher education transfer and articulation challenges.

Siddharth Adelkar

Visiting Research Scientist

Siddharth Adelkar is a Visiting Research Scientist with over 15 years of product development experience, recently earning his Master’s in Information Management and Systems (MIMS) from UC Berkeley’s School of Information. As a Research Data Analyst at Berkeley’s CAHL lab, Adelkar has collaborated with Prof. Zach Pardos on responsible artificial intelligence applications in educational contexts. He applies his CAHL research to CourseWise, leveraging his expertise in automated course articulation and transfer student success to refine our platform’s ML algorithms and spearhead interoperability efforts. Adelkar brings a unique combination of technical expertise and social impact focus, having co-founded the award-winning People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), a digital journalism platform that has attracted over 1.5 million readers and received 63 journalism awards. His research contributions have been recognized at leading conferences, including receiving the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, positioning him at the forefront of educational AI and learning technologies.