SOP: Statement of Precog

My journey with Precog was a whole life in itself!

Many blogs written before mine have already covered the opportunities, culture, and life at Precog. In this blog, I would like to take a different approach: to write about my past three years in the sequence they happened—and in the process, revisit the beautiful memories created and relearn the life lessons taught.

I remember having no knowledge about the lab or PK when I was applying. I attended an info session about the lab in December 2021, but didn’t think much of it at the time—I was a lateral entry student who had just joined IIIT and had no idea that I had to choose a lab and an advisor. Around February, a friend and I were walking down from Bakul Nivas to OBH when we started discussing applying to Precog. PK had sent a final deadline for applications that very day. While I wasn’t in the mood to apply, both of us thought there was no harm in doing so.

Precog’s application process takes time! PK wanted the application to have an SOP and a CV—something I thought was too much effort just to get into a lab at that time. Over three years later, and having been part of Precog’s recruitment process myself, I stand corrected. Precog consistently recruits candidates with strong potential—something that would not be possible without an extensive recruitment process. Well, there was no way I could have written an SOP in four hours, so I just submitted a PDF with the text: “will share SOP soon.” Within an hour, I received an email from PK asking when I would share the SOP. I had never seen or expected such levels of engagement from a professor before. This is probably when I started holding both Precog and PK in high regard.

Fast forward to my interview, which I feel was pretty cool. I ended up discussing philosophy with PK. While I don’t remember the entire discussion now, I do remember having a long conversation about the ethics and morality of stealing to feed one’s family. I had shown interest in the financial market, and PK was starting a new project with Fidelity Investments. I had my interview in the morning, and I had started working on the project by 4 p.m. the same day. PK’s dedication to his students is unparalleled. While many of my peers would join research labs in the next semester, I had already received a head start.

We celebrated PK’s birthday soon after I joined. Little did I know that I would end up cutting PK’s birthday cake. It was awkward—but definitely an icebreaker. Precog has a tradition of getting the youngest member to cut the cake. Everyone in the lab would giggle at the awkwardness of the person, but then talk to them and help them ease into the lab. I was new, with no other peers from my batch. My seniors had already accomplished so much, and it was intimidating to be there. That cake and the Precog dinner that followed helped me settle in.

A good period of time after I had started working, we realized that the Fidelity project wasn’t moving at the pace we wanted. At the time, I was a bit hesitant to bring this up with PK. But when I did, PK was fine with us dropping the project and picking up a new one. The ability to quit projects midway is something much needed in the field of research, and Precog has provided that time and time again. Later, I worked on two more projects in different fields. Although they didn’t materialize into papers, I gained much-needed technical skills required for the later part of my journey.

In December 2022, I received a Slack message from PK at 5 a.m. I still don’t know how I missed it, but I did. It was probably the only message from PK that I have ever missed. I saw it the next day—it was PK letting me know that he was exploring an opportunity for me to visit the U.S. for a research collaboration. The opportunity was truly life-changing, both for my career and my personal growth. We started working with Dr. Manas Gaur in the upcoming semester on a project related to mental health on social media. Eventually, we published our findings in a workshop at ACM KDD. Following this, Dr. Manas Gaur and Dr. Sanorita Dey invited me to UMBC for a seven-month-long RAship. I’m grateful for that time, as what we worked on later became my MS thesis.

But that was a test in itself. We received several rejections from conferences and had to revisit and improve the work multiple times—ACM WebConf in 2023, multiple ACL Rolling Review submissions, and COLING in October 2024. With every rejection, the time left to have an accepted paper for graduation kept shrinking, and the stress and pressure kept increasing. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have dragged the project on for so long—but it was also hard to let go, since I had worked on it for quite some time. Throughout this process, PK was very supportive. Our work finally got accepted at ACM WebSci in 2025.

Today, as I work at IBM Research—although in an orthogonal field—I know the skills I picked up while working in Precog will help me sail through with ease. PK has always supported his students and treated them with respect even in difficult times. There’s a quote by Julie Garwood that comes to mind: “Respect was earned, not demanded, but dignity was taught by example.” And I think it aptly represents both PK and Precog.

~ Priyanshul Govil, signing off!