Sasank Desaraju

Sasank Desaraju

MD/PhD Candidate

CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Project Overview

This is a Jekyll-based academic website built on the Academic Pages template. It serves as a personal portfolio for Sasank Desaraju (MD/PhD Candidate at University of Florida), showcasing publications, talks, teaching experience, and blog posts.

The site is hosted on GitHub Pages at: https://sasank-desaraju.github.io

Technology Stack

  • Static Site Generator: Jekyll (via github-pages gem)
  • Template: Academic Pages (forked from Minimal Mistakes Jekyll Theme)
  • Markdown: Kramdown with GFM input
  • Styling: Sass/SCSS
  • Plugins: jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-feed, jekyll-redirect-from, jekyll-paginate, jekyll-gist

Development Commands

Local Development

Start the local development server:

bundle exec jekyll serve

Or use the provided script:

./local_launch.sh

The site will be available at http://localhost:4000. Jekyll will automatically rebuild on file changes when using the -l flag: bundle exec jekyll serve -l -H localhost

Setup

Install dependencies (first time setup):

bundle install

If encountering errors, delete Gemfile.lock and run bundle install again.

Site Architecture

Collections

Jekyll collections define the main content types, configured in _config.yml:

  • publications (_publications/): Research papers and academic publications
  • talks (_talks/): Conference presentations and talks
  • teaching (_teaching/): Teaching experience and roles
  • portfolio (_portfolio/): Project portfolio items (currently unused)
  • posts (_posts/): Blog posts

Each collection item is a markdown file with YAML frontmatter defining metadata (title, date, venue, etc.).

Key Directories

  • _pages/: Static pages (About, CV, Publications index, etc.)
  • _layouts/: HTML templates that define page structure
    • single.html: Default layout for most content
    • talk.html: Specialized layout for talks
    • archive.html: List/archive views
  • _includes/: Reusable HTML components (author profile, navigation, footer, etc.)
  • _sass/: Sass stylesheets
  • _data/: YAML data files
    • navigation.yml: Defines main site navigation menu
    • authors.yml: Author information
    • ui-text.yml: UI text strings for internationalization
  • _site/: Generated static site (excluded from git)
  • files/: Static files (PDFs, documents) accessible at /files/
  • images/: Image assets
  • assets/: JavaScript and CSS assets

Content Structure

Publications (_publications/*.md):

---
title: "Paper Title"
collection: publications
permalink: /publication/short-name
date: YYYY-MM-DD
venue: 'Journal Name'
paperurl: 'https://doi.org/...'
citation: 'Author list'
---

Talks (_talks/*.md):

---
title: "Talk Title"
collection: talks
type: "Talk"
permalink: /talks/short-name
venue: "Conference Name"
date: YYYY-MM-DD
location: "City, State"
---

Teaching (_teaching/*.md): Similar frontmatter structure with role/course information.

Markdown Generation

The markdown_generator/ directory contains Jupyter notebooks and Python scripts to bulk-generate markdown files from TSV/BibTeX files:

  • publications.py / publications.ipynb: Generate publication markdown from TSV
  • pubsFromBib.py / PubsFromBib.ipynb: Generate publication markdown from BibTeX
  • talks.py / talks.ipynb: Generate talks markdown from TSV

Use these when adding multiple items at once rather than manually creating individual markdown files.

Configuration

Site configuration is in _config.yml:

  • Site metadata (title, description, URL)
  • Author/bio information and social media links
  • Collection definitions and permalink structures
  • Default layouts for each content type
  • Plugin configuration
  • Sass compilation settings

Navigation menu items are defined in _data/navigation.yml.

Git Workflow

The main branch is main. When creating pull requests, use main as the base branch.

GitHub Pages automatically builds and deploys on push to main.

Important Notes

  • Jekyll uses Liquid templating language in layouts and includes
  • Markdown files support both standard markdown and Liquid tags
  • The future: true setting in config allows posts with future dates to be published
  • Static files in files/ directory are directly accessible at https://sasank-desaraju.github.io/files/filename.ext
  • The site excludes certain directories from build (node_modules, vendor, etc.) as defined in _config.yml