• Experiences,  IIITH,  Students

    Life at Precog: Coolness overloaded

    I first heard about PK and Precog lab from some of my friends in my 4th semester (February 2019). Back then, PK was on sabbatical at my college, IIIT Hyderabad. I had zero research experience & was looking to expand my knowledge in Computer Science to find my passion. I started digging into his work and found his papers very interesting. I and a few of my friends talked to Kanay who was working with him on “The Lok Sabha Elections Project”. He referred us and that’s how we got the opportunity to work with the lab on the #Election2019 project. After working for a few days, I liked the…

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  • Experiences,  IIITH,  Students

    My Journey with Precog

    My journey with Precog started from March 2018 during the 4th semester of college. During that time, I was exploring different fields (for my Honors project) and was trying to find something that’s not only technically challenging but also has an impact on real life problems. With the help of some digging around, I came across PK sir and Precog group from IIIT-D. What piqued my interest was the kind of problems that Precog was working on, especially the ones related to OSM (Online Social Media) and privacy. Being a regular user of such platforms, I had always wondered about the potential and impact of such systems and how analysing…

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  • Experiences,  StudentGiri,  Students

    #ResearchGiri: My expedition with Precog

    It’s fascinating how time flies and how fate works as I sit here and recall my entire journey with Precog, especially with PK. I clearly remember seeing him with his distinct “red cap” for the first time at KCIS during the summer of 2018. Around the same period, there was a buzz among the students that a well-renowned professor has come to IIIT-H for a sabbatical, and at the least, I knew that he would be advising me one day. After learning about him more, I read some of his works, which were impactful and had a social cause to them, and then (a dramatic pause here !) I looked…

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  • ACM India,  ACM India CouncilGiri,  Experiences

    From a Random Idea to 100+ PhD Clinic Sessions, The Journey!

    TLDR; an idea with discussion among PhD students on campus – ACM India elections nomination – Starting PhD Clinic in a humble way with 4 mentors – Getting elected for ACM India Council  – Starting Clinic under ACM umbrella – Curating mentors – Starting AMA sessions – Completing 100+ students and have regular student requests – Amazing feedback from students, faculty and others – Thanks to many for helping with this #StrengthofWellWishers Oct 2019: As part of my Dean of Student Affairs role, I organized Open-House to meet with students on campus, once a month; this was done regularly among UG, Masters, and PhD students separately. During one of these…

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  • Experiences,  StudentGiri,  Students

    Moving Ahead with PreCog and #Profgiri

    Formally, my journey with Precog and PK began on January 4th, 2018 (Precog’s Birthday).  #Preface However, it started in August 2017 when PK gave a talk about the work at PreCog and said they were looking for new members. I instantly connected with the group and their work. I desperately wanted to be a part of the cool projects they were working on. I got back to my room, formatted my Resume, wrote a Statement of Purpose, and sent my application. Like in any good story, I didn’t get through the first time. It was a major disappointment for me, but I knew I had to make my profile better.…

  • Experiences,  IIITD,  StudentGiri,  Students

    My PhD journey … up, down, and then up

    A PhD journey is never easy, and it becomes even more difficult when you are doing it alongside a regular faculty job at IGDTUW. But, there are many factors that have helped me sail through in this journey. The first factor is my PhD advisor (‘PK’ as he likes himself to be called, without the ‘Sir’). This in itself should give you a sense of his humility and down-to-earth attitude. He has been extremely understanding to me all throughout this amazing journey. He is one among those who has dedicated his life to academics. In this journey, I have had so much to learn from him, not just the technical…

  • Experiences,  Students

    A Journey Down the Precog Memory Lane

    My story starts on June 13, 2018. I was on my way to Hyderabad to join as a Research Intern in the CVIT lab. On the train, I was browsing through Facebook lazily, while my mind was wandering elsewhere, wondering what kind of project I would work on at IIIT. As I was scrolling through a few memes in my Facebook feed, I thought it would be absolutely hilarious if I end up working on memes in my research. The very next day, Prof. Jawahar told me that I would be working on a project related to “memes for blind” with Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru.  Thus, I began my wonderful journey…

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  • Experiences,  Students

    At the crossroads: (with) Precog

    Life is a journey through innumerable cross-roads. And at each cross-road, we are going to meet new people, experience new things, and spend our precious time. In January 2019, I (Aanshul Sadaria – IIIT H Class of 2020) came at one such crossroad, not that I knew it was going to be a life-remembering junction of my journey. I happened to remember reading a mail from an unusual named professor – Ponnurangam Kumaraguru asking for students to work on the #Killfie project. It didn’t tingle my senses much due to the fact that it was a more formal mail (which is quite anti-PK) and more importantly because it focussed on…

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  • Experiences,  IIITH,  Students

    Solving ‘cool’ problems, with the coolest of all – Precog!

    My journey starts from back in May 2017. It was the summer when I was starting off with my first ‘social computing’ project. As I had just completed my 2nd year in college, I had almost no knowledge about the research domain. I was looking for professors or researchers in the field of computational social science and social computing to guide me with the technical aspects of the field. This is when I came across PK sir and his research group PreCog in New Delhi. They were doing some really amazing work analyzing social systems and the social web. What really interested me the most was this was all for…

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  • Experiences,  IIITH,  Students

    The Tale of my coincidental thesis featuring Ponguru as the Guru

    The circumstances under which I met Prof PK cannot be exactly called fortuitous, but they do make for an interesting story, nonetheless (if I may say so myself). And am I glad that it happened! Let me start by telling you about this. After the sad demise of my previous thesis advisor (may his soul rest in peace), my previous research work had come to a grinding halt. After running like a headless chicken for a few months, the faculty thought it made more sense for me to dedicate my research hours to a new research topic. To the uninitiated, having to change research topics is not only daunting but…

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