Students are the DNA of faculty! They make our life colorful.

Students are like DNA for faculty, this is something I have always believed in and even tried talking about it wherever possible. I am taking the liberty of describing how the current students that I have are making a difference in the world, at our own level, in particular, I am going to capture the amazing things that the 2014 graduating batch has done and some students who worked with me in the past, who are starting their graduate student life soon. I am only going to talk about students who have spent significant amount of time with me or I would like to think that I played a role in their academic stint.

[List arranged in alphabetical order of last name.]

1. Raghav Anand. B.Tech. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. He has taken multiple of my classes, and did his BTP with me on Fair Fare. He has accepted the Masters in CS / HCI program at University of Washington and deferred it for a year to take up Young India Fellowship. He is very keen on developing liberal arts skills through the YIF program, and then taking up the world of HCI through the Masters program.
2. Sampoorna Biswas. B.Tech. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. She has taken multiple of my classes, and did her BPT with me on Privacy in online social networks. She has accepted the Masters in CS program at University of British Columbia, Canada with full RAship. She will be starting in Fall 2014, she will be working with Prof. Lakshmanan at UBC.
3. Abhishek Bhola. M.Tech. IIITD. 2012 – 2014. Abhishek is doing his Masters thesis with me; he will joining Hikari Tsushin, Inc, Japanese company starting Oct 2014.
4. Karan Gupta. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. He has taken multiple of my classes, and did his BTP with me on Fair Fare. He has accepted the Masters in CS / HCI program at University of Washington. He will be starting in Fall 2014.
5. Mayank Gupta. DTU. 2009 – 2014. He did his BTP with me where I played the external advisor’s role, and he continued working with me for the last one year as Research Associate. He had multiple admits for Masters in CS, and finally decided to go to GaTech CS program starting this Fall 2014. He has been part of many systems that we have built in our group.
6. Neha Gupta. M.Tech. IIITD. 2012 – 2014. She has taken some of my classes and TAed my classed too. She was the first M.Tech. student of the Centre, CERC, that I helped put together. She will joining EMC in Bengaluru starting July 2014.
7. Hemank Lamba. IIITD. 2008 – 2012. He has taken all the courses that I taught during his stint at IIITD, and did his BTP on Network Science. He was very strong on his goals of going to be the best schools for graduate studies (Ph.D.), he got admitted into many schools, including, GaTech, NEU, CMU, etc. He did a quick visit to the campuses in April to decide on the school, and he finally chose CMU and will be joining Ph.D. in the School of Computer Science in Fall 2014. It was an amazing feeling when he went and met Lorrie, my Ph.D. thesis advisor during his visit to CMU, I don’t know to describe this feeling, but when my students meet Lorrie, I get some feeling of “satisfaction” in particular, in situations like these, where Hemank had an admit into CMU and was meeting Professors to make up his mind on where to go.
8. Sudip Mittal. IIITD. 2009 – 2014. He is one of our first students to receive Dual Degree from IIITD, UG & M.Tech. He also had multiple admits for Ph.D. and will be joining UMBC in CS department starting Fall 2014.
9. Apoorv Narang. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. He has taken multiple of my classes, and did his BTP with me on Backpack. Backpack was nominated for Best BTP Award in Engineering category by the evaluation committee. Accepted the Masters in CS / HCI program at University of Washington. Deferred it for a year to take up Backpack full-time as a startup. He is currently frantically (with all enthusiasm and interest) trying to register Backpack as a company, and build a team to take it to the next step.
10. Kanika Narang. IIITD. 2008 – 2012. She has taken all the courses that I taught during her stint at IIITD, and did her BTP on Network Science. She also had admits from multiple schools, and will be joining CS department for Ph.D. at UIUC starting Fall 2014. Kanika and Hemank will have (hopefully) a special space in my faculty career, as they were my first BTP students from IIITD.
11. Aditya Kumar Nayak. IIITD. 2009 – 2014. He has taken a couple of classes with me, and did his BTP on Ingage. Got nominated for Best BTP Award in Entrepreneurship category by the evaluation committee. We already have completed 2 successful sales (made real money) of the product.
12. Apoorv Saini. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. He has taken multiple of my classes, and did his BTP with me on Wizters. Wizters got nominated for Best BTP Award in Engineering category by the evaluation committee. Wizters has already transferred (made real money) to a company in Delhi and they are looking at building a startup around it in the US.
13. Soumya Singh. IIITD. 2010 – 2014. Surprising, has never taken a class with me, but did his BTP on “Stopping Agent Smith from entering the Matrix: Malware Detection and Prevention. Will be joining Airtight Networks.

I have had wonderful experiences with each one of them; for sure, there were ups and downs (which relationship does not have!), but overall, they have added colors to my life. I have learned things from each one them, it is such an awesome feeling that within 5 years of being a faculty, I have had this great opportunity to work with such amazing students who are making some difference in the world. Time will show what and how much they do! I owe each one of them (listed above, many others who have worked with me, and currently working with me) a lot to things.

There are a few other students who are going to grad school for whom I wrote recommendation letters this year, but, given this blog is about students who have spent a lot of time with me, I am not mentioning them here. I am extremely excited about all my current students, I am sure they will do great things which will make them proud and people who are associated with them proud.

I am indebted, fully thankful to all the faculty, researchers, and staff who have influenced me in pursuit of a career as a professor.