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PK: A ‘guru’ to remember!
At the beginning of my fourth year, I was just a student looking to finish my course credits. Little did I know that I would be picking the most different and interesting course all by pure chance. PK sir had sent an email regarding his privacy and security course and I thought it was intriguing. I applied for the course and to my surprise, the structure was different from every other course I have ever taken. He was always super passionate about his work and that bled into the way he taught as well. PK not only makes content interesting and fun but also forms real connections with students. Multiple…
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Journey with PK – An odyssey known as #profgiri
I am writing this blog after working with PK for close to a year in his sabbatical at IIIT Hyderabad. This blog tries to recapitulate all my experiences of this period – be it the fun, the learning, the work or the course Big Data and Policing. It essentially conveys the journey of PK becoming my guide and friend, rather than just being a professor. Initial contact and the first project The first time I heard about PK was in my 4th semester when I was looking for a summer internship. I remember seeing his profile and showing it to my roommate, to which he said, “Look at his citations!…
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My journey with the Ponguru
I know it is common for Precog students to write this blog, but although not officially a part of Precog Lab, I feel connected to this family of PK and his students. I met PK during his one year sabbatical at IIIT-H during my final year. The first time I met PK is something I can never forget. I had only seen pictures of him or videos of his TED talks, and so I walked in expecting to see the same senior faculty member and was prepared to give a formal introduction of myself. The man I met, however, was much more vivacious and energetic than I expected. After greeting…
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Journey of two years, learnings of a lifetime – My Precog Experience
I remember first hearing about Precog and PK back in 2015 when I was seeking admission to IIIT Delhi. For a freshman in an institute with most of its faculty being graduates from the most prestigious universities around the world, Precog seemed to be one of its crown jewels: headed by a CMU graduate, doing socially relevant work, having several laurels to its name, its members at top places around the world, and as expected being super competitive to get into. As overwhelming as this seemed to me then, I always wanted to work hard, do projects and build my profile so that I can later try and make an…
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Know Our Ministers: Social Media Report Cards of Our Ministers
With the Ministers officially sworn in to serve the new government, we made an attempt to analyze their social media presence. In doing so we have come up with the Social Media Report Cards of the Ministers. We took the listing of the Ministers from the government document issued by the President of India. Among the Ministers who were sworn in on the 30th of May, there were 44 Ministers from Lok Sabha, amongst these 44 (Male = 39 Female = 5), 42 had social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). This blog is dedicated to analyzing the 42 ministers’ (Male = 37 Female = 5) social media presence. The…
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Why PreCog, you ask?
I am writing this blog after spending more than two life-changing-years at PreCog – I joined in December 2016 as an intern and “graduated” as a Research Associate (RA) earlier this year. In my previous blog, I tried to capture my experience as an intern. As an RA, I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to initiate and lead the WhatsApp Misinformation/WhatsFarzi project with some amazing undergrads. Much of the technical details can be found in another blog. It feels extremely satisfying to share that the project I worked on as an intern got published as a full paper at ACM WebScience 2018, and WhatsFarzi got some cool media coverage (ToI article)…
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Precog: The Extraordinary Voyage
I am writing this blog after an exhilarating experience of 3 years spent at Precog. When I started my undergrad four years ago, little could I imagine that I’ll be conducting high impact research, building real-world systems, writing and publishing papers and even presenting them at top conferences across the globe. The freshman version of me just wanted to get a decent paying job! Yet 4 years later, here I am headed to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park and Max Planck Institute for Software Systems under the Maryland-Max Planck joint program. A good part of who I am today, professionally and academically,…
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Live Blog: #Phase7 #LokSabhaElections2019
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Live Blog: #Phase6 #LokSabhaElections2019
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#LokSabhaElections2019 #NCT #Delhi Political Handles, Popularity
The constituencies in the NCT of Delhi are scheduled to go for elections on May 12th as part of phase six, in this analysis we take a closer look at the constituencies, candidates, their social media handles, etc. There are seven constituencies in Delhi, and 164 candidates will be contesting across these constituencies. 148 (90.25%) of the total candidates are males while 16 (9.75%) of the total candidates are females. We went through all the Affidavits* submitted by the candidates to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to collect each candidate’s demographics and social media details. The table below covers the distribution of social media handles that we were able…