Vineet Pandey

• vipandey~at~ucsd~dot~edu
• Saying my name!
• Contact?

Updated (kind of): Apr 25, 2018

       

Affiliations

Summers

Past Affiliations

News

2016

May 09 - May 12: Let's meet at CHI 2016 in San Jose!

May 06 - May 08: Coming to Development Consortium/ HCI Across Borders Workshop in San Jose?

Apr 01: Read the final copy of my naive collaboration call for Education across Borders at HCI Across Borders workshop at CHI 2016

Mar 30: Done with courses and CSE Research Exam requirement for an intermediate Masters

Mar 15: Flip through my slides on Scaling Learner feedback in MOOCs.
Summary: Automated tools in isolation don't work, seed with instructor wisdom

Feb 29 - Mar 02: Presenting Darwin poster at CSCW 2016 in San Francisco

Feb 07: Check out our webpage for the CHI paper, created by our undergrad super-RA Rachel

Jan 15: Submitted proposal for HCI Across Borders workshop at CHI 2016. Topic: Education across borders. (edit: Accepted)

Jan 10: "Why do sysadmins make config errors that cost millions to your company!?". Read our ArXiv paper about HCI view of configuration problems (w/ Tianyin Xu)

Jan 10: Website update. <howls of joy>

Jan 04: Winter term begins. Plans: Research + one class + exploring SD more

Jan 02: Happy New Year yall! Another year of opportunities..

2015

Dec 15: CHI paper accepted! "Framing Feedback: Choosing Review Environment Features that Support High Quality Peer Assessment", w/ Catherine Hicks and Ailie Fraser

Nov 20: Paper submitted to SIGMOD 2016. (edit: Rejected)

Nov 07: Work-in-progress submitted to CSCW 2016.
(edit: Accepted)

Oct 31: Paper submitted to Learning@Scale2016.
(edit: Rejected)

Sep 26: Paper submitted to CHI 2016.
(edit: Accepted)

Beautiful Vienna summer . Pic

Sep 26: End of summer at IST Austria and Vienna. Back to SD.

July 13: Beginning internship at IST Austria, Vienna. Working w/ Krish: to build tools
(1) to incentivize students in online classes, and
(2) to help them write proofs

May 27: Design of Everyday Things as a class! Excited to TA DSGN 1 in Fall 2015 for Don Norman + Jim Hollan w/ Yasmine

May 27: Let's meet in Vienna!
Spending summer at IST Austria developing techniques + tools to help students generate proofs in online classes

May 23: Phew! Submitted CSCW Paper w/ Catherine Hicks
(edit: Rejected)

May 20: Tweet Tweet Chirp

Apr 09: Our work on Talkabout+ is featured on Jacobs' School of Engineering blog! Also, camera puts on 37 pounds

Mar 30: Spring quarter begins. TA for Professor Kamalika's class IntroAI: Statistical Approach

Mar 20: Throwback to systems days: Patent granted from NetApp work on creating large-scale data archival product.

Mar 20: Winter quarter is over. Courses (Machine Learning and Database Systems) + Teaching (IntroHCI) + some research.

Jan 28: Work-in-Progress about understanding participant motivations in online discussion groups accepted at Learning@Scale 2015!

Jan 5: TAing Scott's Intro HCI Design course in Winter 2015

2014

Dec 20: Fall quarter is over. Course (Principles of Artificial Intelligence) + Teaching (GradHCI). Off to camping in NorCal.

Nov 07: Gave a database seminar on outsourced integrity checks work from summer

Sep 25: TAing Scott's Graduate Human-Computer Interaction Course in Fall 2014

Sep 25: Doubling up as Co-president for Association of Indian Graduate Students at UCSD.

Sep 10: Back at university after an amazing internship at Microsoft Research on security issues in cloud databases. Paper under preparation.

Beautiful summer in Seattle!

Jun 16: Spring quarter is over. Courses (Cryptography and Distributed Systems) + Research

Mar 31: Summer update - I will be interning at Microsoft Research, Redmond.

Mar 21: Winter quarter is over. Courses (Algorithms and Operating Systems) + Research.

2013

Dec 18: Fall quarter is over. Classes (Computer Architecture, Human-Computer Interaction) + Research.

Nov 05: Acceptance news: Integer representations work (undergraduate thesis) accepted in Journal of Discrete Algorithms, a year after submission. Tired yay!

Oct 03: Fall quarter begins. Checking the scene!

Seminars: Architecture, Design at Large, and Faculty Research

Contact

Lab: 1601, after elevator
Calit2 building
Also called:
1. Qualcomm Institue
2. Atkinson Hall
3. Whatever it is called today
Right opposite CSE building
Map link

Mailing address:
UC San Diego, Computer Science and Engg
9500 Gilman Drive MC0404
La Jolla, CA - 92093-0404
USA

• Publications
• Teaching
• Courses
• Work+Education
• More..

I am a first second third fourth fifth year graduate student in Computer Science at UC San Diego. I work with Professor Scott Klemmer at Design Lab.

I develop techniques that enable people to perform personally-meaningful scientific work using online learning and training material. My research aims to teach anyone to perform science and then create novel knowledge using the scale and diversity of people on the internet. I hope this will make us discuss why our education and research institutions are so insular, especially in the age of internet, and provide some ideas about how we might move ahead. The knowledge of science impacts a diverse planet; in the future, this diverse community may importantly contribute to it.

If you are curious about such scientific social computing systems research, try these:

1. For an overview, skim through my thesis proposal slides (Creating Scientific Theories with Online Learners) or watch the actual proposal video on YouTube
2. For a more hands-on experience, try Gut Instinct (info, login) -- a scientific social computing system -- to learn and uncover secrets about the gut microbiome. This work is in collaboration with the super-amazing folks at American Gut Project and Knight Lab, led by Professor Rob Knight at UC San Diego. Gut Instinct has 950 participants as of Oct 7, 2017. Join now!
3. Looking for a more academic take? Try publications on Google Scholar
4. Just mail me -- vipandey(a)ucsd.edu -- if you have questions and we'll find a slot to chat...

I don't update my website all that frequently;
Here's my resume (Sep 2017):

Research Experience

I design ways to make online education more useful for students, instructors, and researchers.

Currently, I am developing tools to allow online students to perform useful scientific work as part of online learning. Here's our CHI 2017 paper about how learners can create theories about human microbiome using online learning materials.

In my exploratory projects and prototypes, I draw ideas/ techniques from disparate areas like Machine Learning (e.g.: classifying assignment submissions), Crowdsourcing (e.g.: how can online learners do non-trivial work), Programming Languages (e.g.: using program synthesis to provide feedback), Decision theory (to incentivize student participation) and Learning psychology.

Previously, I have built systems and created data structures for a range of problems including efficient integrity checks for databases (SIGMOD 2017), quick failover in a clustered operating system (NetApp internal report), quick arithmetic operations w/ novel integer representations (Journal of Discrete Algorithms 2014, TAMC 2011) and efficient database indexing for flash memory (Journal in Korea - fun times!).

Teaching Experience

I have been Teaching Assistant for four quarters at the university. (Number of students below refers to number of students who filled the post-course surveys)

• Fall 2015: DSGN 1 Introduction to Design
  w/ Don Norman & Jim Hollan, w/ Yasmine Kotturi (TA)
  Summary: Mean 4+ rating (on a scale of 5) on performance by 13 students
  Sample quote: " ..provides thorough and detailed explanations and alternative examples."
  Full Student review
  
  
• Fall 2014: CSE 216/ COGS 230: Graduate Human-Computer Interaction
  w/ Scott Klemmer
  Summary: 14 out of 15 students recommend/ strongly recommend as TA
  Sample quote: "Strong enthusiasm, solid knowledge of the subject "
  Full Student review
  
  
• Winter 2014: CSE 170/ COGS 120: IntroHCI Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction
  w/ Scott Klemmer
  Summary: 18 out of 21 students recommend/ strongly recommend as TA
  Sample quote: " Understands the material and teaches well. I felt like his advice regarding the class could be trusted."
  Full Student review
  
  
• Spring 2014: CSE 150 IntroAI
  w/ Kamalika Chaudhuri
  Summary: Only 3 out of 10 students woult recommend me as TA
  Sample quote: "1) Teaches what is applicable to real life work. 2) He doesn't give enough feedback that could help us finish the HW."
  My understanding: The report shows an even split between students who wanted me to discuss how ML techniques could be applied to real-world problems and others who wanted me to solve more problems in discussion sections
  Full Student review
  
  

Work Experience

Visiting Student, IST Austria
July 2015 - Sep 2015
Evolutionary game-theoretic model for peer feedback in online classes.

Summer Intern, Microsoft Research
June 2014 - Sep 2014
Data structures for efficient integrity checks on outsourced databases
aka "How I learned to stop worrying and love the cloud for all my database needs". Paper under submission.

Advanced Technology Group, NetApp
July 2011 - May 2013
As a Member of Technical Staff, I worked in teams of 2 or 3 engineers to design, implement and measure the performance of prototypes. We worked to scale up the vaulting capabilities in the existing OS code and to reduce the failover time (drastically!) in a cluster with high availability configuration. The ideas and techniques demonstrated were taken up by multiple product teams and led to patent application and internal papers.

Along with team members, I was selected for Honorable Mention in 'Innovation' and 'Teamwork' categories in semi-annual CTO awards.

Undergraduate research
As an undergraduate, I was lucky to work on diverse research topics with great mentors during research internships.

• Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata (with Dr. Bimal Roy)
  Securely locating nearby devices in an connected environment
  Short paper accepted at Symposium at PASSAT 2009
• Chinese University of Hong Kong (with Prof Sidharth Jaggi)
  Network coding using convolutional codes
• Seoul National University, South Korea
  (Undergraduate thesis, with Professor Srinivasa Rao)
  Integer representations in bit probe model and indexing data structures on flash memory
• Microsoft Research Summer School on Computing for Socio-Economic Development
  Talks and field activities towards understanding how technology can be used towards solving problems in socio-economic development
  

Education

University of California, San Diego
Ph.D. Computer Science (2013 - )

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
B.E. (Hons.) Computer Science (2011)

Coursework

Human-Computer Interaction and Design
• CSE 216: Human-Computer Interaction, w/ Scott Klemmer
• COGS 260: Advanced Seminar in Design, w/ Don Norman

Machine Learning
• CSE 250A: Probabilistic Reason & Learning, w/ Lawrence Saul
• CSE 250B: Learning Algorithms, w/ Sanjoy Dasgupta

Systems
• CSE 221: Operating Systems, w/ Geoff Voelker
• CSE 223B: Distributed Computing & Systems, w/ Alex Snoeren
• CSE 232B: Principles of Database Systems, w/ Yannis Papakonstantinou
• CSE 240A: Principles of Computer Architecture, w/ Dean Tullsen

Theory+Algorithms
• CSE 202: Algorithm Design & Analysis, w/ Russell Impagliazzo
• CSE 207: Modern Cryptography, w/ Mihir Bellare

Others
• CSE 230: Programming Languages, w/ Ranjit Jhala

More information

Before beginning graduate school, I worked at NetApp Research/ Advanced Technology Group towards building new storage products using techniques in low-latency networking, security and more. In my first year at UCSD, I worked with Professor Steven Swanson at the Non-Volatile Systems Lab.

Even before (phew!), I graduated from BITS Pilani in India with an undergraduate degree in Computer Science.

---

I am currently leading the Association of Indian Graduate Students at the university towards organizing events for incoming students and the Indian and university community at large. We barely meet our expenses. Want to help?

I also help organize Annual Alumni Research Talks and Annual Alumni Award for Excellence in Computer Science (defunct now) at BITS Pilani.

Non-CS Publications

Dominant hegemonic voice in Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. Geetha B., Vineet Pandey, Nilanjana Bhattacharya. American Comparative Literature Association Conference at Simon Frazer University, Vancouver, Canada. March 31- April 3 2011.

A longer version was also accepted at Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities.

The other side

Traveling, Outdoors, Sports, Reading, Writing.

देखो मगर प्यार से

My attitude in life is that, unless you’re directly helping to end war, poverty, and homelessness at the same time, you don’t have the right to be ultra-serious. - Sir James Mickens

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