On Precog, PK (and everything else that fits between the two entities)

So, what is Precog? A research group, a culture, a lifestyle? At the risk of sounding unbelievably corny, I’m going to go ahead with the last one. But really, it was.  

Ever since we had arrived at IIIT-Delhi almost four years ago, Precog (along with Dr. PK) had been one of the most “heard about” groups over here. Some of our batch-mates had already started working for Find-A-Way and Backpack, while most of us were still trying to work on our skill-sets to even be able to think of doing the same somewhere down the line.

Fast forward to the summers before the 4th year, I finally thought that I had the skills, and more importantly, the motivation to apply to Precog. There was no other professor or group at IIIT-Delhi working in the domain of Natural Language Processing, something I was deeply interested in exploring at the time. Hence, this seemed like a natural choice. The applications for Precog are a task by themselves, requiring a complete statement of purpose (SoP) and everything. I spent quite a bit of time writing this, polishing my resume, and finally applied. Unfortunately, I didn’t get in. So why am I writing this blog? I don’t know, you’ve been Punked.

Kidding. I spent the summers doing other things, tried to fill up some possible holes in that SoP and my resume, and re-applied for the coming semester. This time, I got the instructions for a task which was a part of the selection process, followed by the interview with PK’s senior students, and finally one with PK himself. The reason I mention these steps is that I was completely awed by them when the process was happening. The task itself gave me an idea of the kind of work I might be doing later on, which was pretty cool. The interviews were rigorous and detailed, a step one couldn’t cross purely by hand-waving. Come the semester’s first week, and I was added to the core mailing list.

Now, this addition to the mailing list, is a blessing and curse all by itself. We used to get like 5 emails a day, and this was probably an inactive day. Found it slightly annoying then, miss it quite a bit now. So, while we cribbed about these emails on a regular basis, each of us knew on the inside how cool they were. They kept us in touch with the latest items related to data science and even computer science in general, kept us updated about what other work our peers at Precog were doing, and while all this seems trivial when stated like this, it was great in that it kept the blood flowing – it kept us regularly motivated.

Other such half-blessing-half-curse traditions include(d) the weekly “What’s Up Sessions” and the “Brainstorm (BM) Sessions”. In the former, we all gathered to discuss in a little more detail what everyone was .. well, up to. Again, I found these to be great because they sort of gave us the feeling that everyone cares about every project. Ideas for all projects were discussed by everyone, all opinions were taken into consideration. When a group was writing a paper, it was presented to and reviewed by everyone. This was probably one of the practices that I think is somewhat unique to Precog. As undergrads, we did not spend all our time working in the same space as the Ph.D students and the RAs, and hence, it was these sessions that helped us build rapports with other Precog members.

The mentorship was amazing as well. I joined the text-team with Indira Sen, Kushagra Singh and Nalin Gupta, with Indira mentoring us for the most parts – and I cannot thank her enough for being so unbelievably patient and understanding with everything. Apart from this, PK was completely supportive regarding well, everything – including other commitments (uni applications, exams, health, everything), and it’s really important to mention this because those took huge time chunks in our semesters. He also conducted a couple of sessions to help us with our SoPs for applications, which was pretty cool (apart from being crazily helpful, of course). We even got lucky enough to once get to interact with Dr. Hari Sundaram, a professor at UIUC.

One of my other interests at the time apart from NLP was Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which interestingly stemmed from having taken one of PK’s courses in one of my earlier semesters. So, I along with three other batch-mates had decided to take part in a related competition. PK even guided us with that and provided us with constructive feedback for some of our work. Basically, the overall growth model was wholeheartedly supported, which was a fresh blessing.

Also, great perks! Birthdays, Precog anniversaries, graduation, achievements (!), not a single occasion went by without a lot of activity on the mail threads and PK’s invites to the lab with sweet, sweet promises of ice-creams and cakes. Again, this probably sounds cheesy but it was these kind of activities that truly made me feel like I was a part of a family.

Overall, I think Precog has some great practices and systems set in place to ensure that all of us stay motivated to keep working hard, as well as have a bit of fun while we’re at it. I only have one regret – not joining early enough. So, a piece of unsolicited advice if you’re a student in your third, second or even first year – don’t hesitate in applying “early”. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to publish anything in my relatively short duration here, but even then, the experience was nothing short of perfect and (needless to say) a critical part of my time at IIIT-Delhi and well, life.