Ever since I got into reading papers, it has always fascinated how much knowledge can just a 8 page document hold. How can the 8 page document be currently extending the boundaries of human knowledge? By my blog posts, I want to draw attention of readers towards some of the upcoming concepts in the field of network science. Today I would like to illuminate readers about the topic of competitive influence maximization. The problem of influence maximization is quite a well known and has been studied extensively in the past few decades both by economists and computer scientists. However, to just be complete, lets define the problem of influence maximization…

INDIA2USA: Now it’s been a few weeks since I have come back from UMBC, Maryland, USA after spending the Spring, 2012 semester; and the hangover of the wonderful experience is still there ;-).  The dream started in Dec, 2011, when I first got to know about my plausible visit to UMBC. It was a mixed feeling of shock, excitement, uncertainty and apprehension and 4.5 months seemed a long time… The wait got longer because of some initial glitches like getting the wrong DS2019 documents and the drought of visa appointment dates at the US Embassy, but finally on 20th Jan, I got my golden pass to USA, I had exactly 8…

After working for more than 2 years in one of the India’s largest IT service Provider Company I always had a dream of working for a product based IT Company. The dream began to take a concrete shape on 3-May-2012 late in the evening when I found a mail in my inbox from my Training and Placement Officer asking for resume urgently for an internship opportunity in Microsoft. Initially I was a bit hesitant in sending my resume. I felt that I may not be able to make it through the selection process comprised of resume shortlisting, telephonic interview and then personal interview in the Microsoft campus in Gurgaon scheduled…

I am probably feeling the most satisfied at this point in time after taking up a faculty job! The reasons are many, most importantly my Ph.D. students. As of now, I have 5 Ph.D. students, by the time I am drafting this post, all of them are outside India. Four of the five have traveled international for the first time in their life. If you would have asked me say around Sept. 2011 whether this is something I would have expected, I would have simply said NO. I was keen on trying to give this sort of exposure to students, but, was not aggressively pursuing it. Some time in Sept.…

It’s always big when you expect it the least..!! The day I got selected for the Viterbi India Internship program, I was on cloud nine. It’s a different feeling to be amongst few students across the nation, selected for the prestigious program . I am working under Dr. Kristina Lerman at Information Science Institute, University of Southern California. My office is located in the beautiful city of Marina del Rey. My research problem is to compare and create different centrality matrices, to find influential people on social media.I am currently working on attention-limited page rank and attention limited alpha-centrality and their approximate versions. The idea is that non-conservative measures works…

15th March 2012, I was working in the lab, and suddenly got a mail that me and Vivekanand were nominated for a trip to Singapore for attending a workshop at NUS. It was beyond expectation, and I was delighted, ecstatic, overjoyed and excited all at the same time. It’s beyond description. But then, there was one more hurdle to cross, and we had to wait for the final selection from NUS. I need to apply for this summer school and final selection was by NUS. The application asked my research interest, why NUS should select you and future plans. I filled the application with full enthusiasm. And there it was,…

Amongst 30 unread emails in my inbox, there was one about ‘Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2012’ application which I quickly opened and closed without really reading the content. I had heard about the scholarship before and knew that it was awarded to very few students; mostly from top-notch institutes like the IITs. There was no chance of me getting through, rather read the other emails I thought! But after a lot of persuasion from my father, I grumpily filled out the application form. The application asked for my academic details, achievements (I have a very few!) and a couple of essays, and it took me 8 long hours to…

We, at PreCog, not only do research but also try to build products based on our work for end-users. More often than not, developing scalable, real systems can be a challenging task; much more than just developing the underlying algorithm. It feels good to be part of a research group which has given me perspective to understand the need to create a bridge between research and real-world solutions. Here goes my first PreCog blog entry on one such product we (where I’m the lead) are developing, which aims to detect phishing on Twitter. There has been a lot of research and publications on spam detection on online social media, but there…