At age three, I wanted to be a traffic cop. At age four, I wanted to be Fighter Pilot. At age five, I wanted to be a Tennis Player. At Age eight, I was a Golfer! My father, a Colonel in the Indian Army is an avid golfer. Initially he had to drag to me the course when I was seven years old. Having built me a custom half-size set, he would never give up on me even when I argued with him that golf was such a slow game! But eventually it’s the slowness which teaches you a lot of things. My father taught me all he knew about the game of golf, and one day, when I was 12 years old, I did finally get the better of him. That day on I started training even harder and qualified for the national level tournaments in India.
This led to playing golf all over the world. Sun city, Scotland, Paris, Dubai, Malaysia were all part of golfing journey across the world. Golf was treated as a retirement sport for quite a while. But then came Tiger Woods and proved to the world that the game can be mastered even at the age of 6 and made the game popular among one and all, young and old, all over the world. I think the game owes him a lot for that and I owe my father for giving me the opportunity to play a sport only a selected few get the opportunity to venture into.
Whilst I was golfing my late evenings away, I was also a very proactive student in high school and in my undergraduate educational institution. Since my school days, I would have half a dozen gold medals strung across my neck on the annual athletics meet. I have also represented my high school and Engineering school in basketball tournaments all around India. In School I was always better in Math and Science courses rather than literature subjects. My first introduction to Computer Science was in the 9th grade when we were introduced to C++ programming. From then on there was no looking back. I always chose computer science courses whenever I got the opportunity, including studying Computer Science Engineering at Mumbai University and received my BS in May 2008. After I finished my degree, I received job offers from IBM and Infosys, but after some thought, I instead chose to pursue my masters in Computer Science from Columbia.
I was extremely excited to get into one of the Ivy league schools, Columbia University. Coming from Mumbai, getting used to the fast paced life in New York was no issue at all! What I did need to get accustomed to was the course-load in Columbia Computer Science Grad school. Here again I’ve completed a large number of projects. The following were some highlights for me:
DEJAVIEW : As users interact with the world and their peers through their computers, it is becoming important to archive and later search the information that they have viewed. We created "DejaView", a personal virtual computer recorder that provides a complete record of a desktop computing experience that a user can playback, browse, search, and revive seamlessly. DejaView records visual output, checkpoints corresponding application and file system state, and captures displayed text with contextual information to index the record. A user can then browse and search the record for any visual information that has been displayed on the desktop, and revive and interact with the desktop computing state corresponding to any point in the record. DejaView combines display, operating system, and file system virtualization to provide its functionality transparently without any modifications to applications, window systems, or operating system kernels.
Network Intrusion Detection System
I worked individually on detecting network-based attacks on a system. This involved playing the role of an attackor, defining Nmap commands in order to attack the system without being detected.
Anomaly Detection System
I collected samples of data over the network and created a naive rate-based anomaly detector. Data then collected could be tagged as normal or as an anomaly based on this detector.
I currently work with IntraLinks Inc, in New York City, as an Information Systems Intern. I'm responsible for Information Security projects including the design, prototyping and implementation of a unified security response database.
My work and my golf game will be crossing paths soon enough. As I see it, I can use my golf game to not only increase my focus and concentration, I intend to use it for business purposes as well!
I appreciate the effort Science House has put into bringing this network of scientists together. Its unique and there is a lot to learn from it!
