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A Precogger’s Epilogue
I’m Aakash Aanegola, a violinist, amateur basketball player, gym rat, and Lego enthusiast. I’ll be joining Goldman Sachs, SLC this summer and I hope to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science soon. With my IIIT Hyderabad chapter closing, I find myself writing this blog to push you towards PreCog (not in a shameless fashion) and to impart my insights from my three semesters with the lab. I’m sure you’re well versed with the ‘PreCog culture’ and its inner mechanisms from other blogs or word of mouth, so I’ll keep my recount personal and crisp. Here are my two cents 🙂 As soon as you step foot on IIIT soil,…
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Precog Thrills: My Epic Ride with an Amazing Academic Crew!
Hey, I’m Amul Agrawal, a B.Tech CS graduate from IIIT Hyderabad’s batch of 2023. Currently, I am working as an SDE at Uber. My college life was an unforgettable experience, filled with many lifelong friends. Throughout my college life, I passionately engaged in two distinct but equally fulfilling pursuits: research and competitive programming (CP). While I was initially drawn to CP due to my fascination with logical problem-solving, I quickly excelled in it and was lucky enough to lead the Programming Club and represent my college at the ICPC World Finals. However, I had limited experience with research and was unsure about its appeal to me. Despite this, I decided…
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A Fascinating Journey with Precog
By the end of my first year, I knew that I wanted to pursue a Masters from a prestigious university like CMU. This meant I needed to build a stellar profile with adequate research experience and strong recommendation letters to have a chance at achieving such a goal. Thus began my research into the various labs and professors of IIIT and this is when I came across Precog. I had heard great things about PK from my seniors at Precog like how he not only looked after your research progress but also concerned himself with your personal growth and development. Moreover, Precog provided a unique opportunity to work on academic…
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Precog: A stepping stone to a brighter future
Intro When I decided to pursue higher studies, I knew I had to make a prolific research profile to get into top-notch graduate schools worldwide. I needed strong letters of recommendation from the best possible professors in my field to achieve this goal. I started searching for professors who could guide my research journey. That’s when I heard about PK from some of my seniors who had worked with him. They spoke highly of his expertise and mentorship style. Joining Precog, PK’s research lab, was a dream for me, and I had planned to work in the lab for two years as an honours student to gain valuable research experience.…
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Disentangling the mysteries of research via PreCog
Research can be daunting, but with the right tools and resources, it can be a rewarding experience. One such resource is the research group Precog, led by Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru or as he likes to be addressed — “PK”. As a research undergraduate, I had a unique experience working with PK for over two years. I say this as throughout my journey; I only met PK “once” in-person towards the end of my second year at PreCog. One of the reasons for this was when I joined, he was a faculty at IIIT Delhi but it was COVID time and by the time we were allowed back on campus, he…
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Precog: You’ll look back and be proud
My journey at Precog began during my third year of college, in December 2020. It’s been challenging, rewarding, humbling, and importantly, the most defining endeavour of my undergrad days. It’s a research group I can’t not mention when talking about my background; it’s the group that doesn’t just grow on your resume – it grows onto you! This blog is a likely inept attempt at the (mammoth) task of summarising the many experiences, learnings, and aspects of the group I value. Growth, whether you like it or not While there’s no shortage of opportunities to grow in college, Precog has been the most multifaceted. It was while working at Precog…
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Passion, Purpose, Precog
I joined Precog as an honours student at the end of my second year of college (summer 2020). I worked on Computational Social Science related research problems, under PK’s purview. My journey has been meaningful and rewarding in many ways! Through this blog, I will share my experiences and detail the aspects I valued the most. Here are some things I loved about being at Precog: Purposeful Work The research done at Precog is very applied and practical in nature. I worked on analysing the spread of Islamophobic hate-speech online and identifying malicious actors. I appreciated that we worked on a current-world problem which made the research timely and pertinent…
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Learn, Bond, Grow @ Precog!
Back in 2020, I was as perplexed as any other second year student when I had to make a choice for a lab and an advisor to pursue my honours. My interests lay in working on applied NLP and real world problems that could have a direct impact on people’s lives and society. After elaborate considerations and weighing my options amongst the many brilliant labs at IIITH, I decided to work WITH Prof. PK at Precog. I’m sincerely thankful to my really cool seniors at Precog who introduced me to the lab, explained to me about the spectrum of work that happens, and guided me in making the right choice.…
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Precog: a low risk, high return investment
Precog has been a constant throughout my college life. Having spent three-plus years at Precog, it is much more than a work experience or research experience on my resume. It is what has defined me and my work interests. In this blog, I will take a shot at the impossible task of summarizing my experience, learnings, and the indelible effect PK and Precog have left on me. Before joining my college, I was very well aware that there existed this majestic lab headed by this mystical professor. My first introduction to Precog was through my brother when I was still in 12th grade. He had applied to Precog but got…
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Precog : A Journey to Remember
Ahh, the precog journey is reaching a logical conclusion with this blog. The blog is going to be a thank you letter, a thank you letter for three beautiful years at Precog, working with PK and fellow precoggers, learning and growing from the wonderful experiences. I will highlight the different projects and experiences at Precog and focus on how they shaped and taught me. Before I begin a piece of advice to anyone thinking about joining/knowing more about Precog culture and work, read these blogs !! (At least that’s what I did while deciding, all of these are experiences straight from the horse’s mouth and will give you excellent insights).…