Where Abouts?
I am a final year PhD candidate at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I work with Brighten Godfrey and Matt Caesar on networked systems and theory. For my PhD research, I am looking into design of systems and networks with limited memory.
Some of my recent papers are listed below, and a full list can be found here or at Google scholar. Being a researcher, I should always have a particular problem bugging my neurons; I list the most recent problem below as well.
I received the 2012 UIUC Rambus Fellowship (for outstanding performance in computer science and engineering research), 2010 UIUC Wang-Chung Research Award (for excellence in research) and was listed in Spring 2010 list of teachers ranked as excellent by their students (for excellence in teaching; Jeff Erickson's undergraduate algorithms course). I also received National Science Foundation Ireland fellowship for year 2007-08, and Irish Marine Institute fellowship for year 2006-07. In an earlier life, I managed to get an award in the form of an undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.
When I am not doing research, I like traveling (17 countries and counting), playing sudoku (apparently, I am among the world's top 1% fastest Sudoku solvers), solving puzzles and reading papers from arbitrary fields (at the moment, its about social networks). Please don't ask me when I am going to graduate; I'll ask you tough questions about your research!
Selected Recent Projects
Systems: Shortest Paths in Microseconds (Preliminary version in SIGCOMM WOSN), Anteater for ISPs (SIGCOMM)
Networking: Routing with limited memory (INFOCOM), Slick packets (SIGMETRICS), Watchdog for Wireless (INFOCOM)
Distance Oracles: Stretch 2 (PODC), Stretch Less Than 2 (SODA), Linear space oracles (INFOCOM)
Currently on my mind?
warning: my interests change more frequently than Irish weather, but this webpage is updated less frequently than Champaign weather!
Making sense of data modeled as graphs: building low-memory and extremely low-latency systems
Making sense of large-scale data: streaming real-time data, storage versus latency trade-offs
Distance Oracles: building systems based on recent theoretical advances in distance oracle research
What do I do?
A terrible question to answer:
I don't do research! I research!
I still think research is different (and much more enjoyable) than attending classes and writing exams!
I still wonder if I am a scientist, a mathematician, an engineer or just a student! But I know this and this :-)
I still strongly believe that I am correct in being proud of being an IIT-ian. I wish I could be one of the prominent ones.
I still drink more beer than any of my friends. Some of my friends (specially Irish) do come close though :D I still don't (and can't) stand a drop of whiskey / vodka / rum.
I still travel more than I should.
I still do crazier things than most of the my crazy friends. One of my friends considers me as the craziest guy alive (analogous to Morpheus, the most dangerous man alive!)
I still sleep 2-3 hours a day.
I still have my email box opened 24/7. Though I only get to reply to all not-so-urgent emails once in a while.
I still love Apple, Google and Sony products. I use Safari for web-browsing and I own a Dell laptop.
And if you are still interested after reading all this, Yes, I am a PhD Student. I still jump from vertex to vertex on any graph I see, trying to characterize the qualities of these vertices and their edges.
— "I don't play against anybody, I play against the idea of losing!"
— "Love is solving every problem as if its your last!" ("Love is playing every game as if its your last!")
— "Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do!
