Life @ISI..

It’s always big when you expect it the least..!!

The day I got selected for the Viterbi India Internship program, I was on cloud nine. It’s a different feeling to be amongst few students across the nation, selected for the prestigious program .

I am working under Dr. Kristina Lerman at Information Science Institute, University of Southern California. My office is located in the beautiful city of Marina del Rey.

My research problem is to compare and create different centrality matrices, to find influential people on social media.I am currently working on attention-limited page rank and attention limited alpha-centrality and their approximate versions. The idea is that non-conservative measures works well for social network, also a person will pay less attention to incoming message from a friend if he is connected to many friends in comparison to another person with less friend.

Global exposure!! It was tough in the beginning – new place, different culture, and different mix of people with different accent…but the mantra is “BE YOURSELF!!”, “DON’T LOOSE FOCUS”,”BE PERSISTENT” and everything will fall in place automatically..thanks to PK for being so supportive and guiding me all the way.

It’s different to work here, surrounded with smart and helpful people. People are curious about India – if people use smart phones in India and are they concerned about their privacy…and we had a long discussion. Got a chance to meet different people at ISI, always involved in different activities with great enthusiasm…people here are inspiring!

It’s rigorous in weekdays and complete fun in weekend…i.e. how ISI works!!

Well its almost been a month here and I am enjoying every bit of it…my work…place…people and even my cooking skills have improved…;):P

Stay tuned for more updates on my research.

Below is a pic of mine with my associations with USC / ISI.