Resume




Contact me:
aanand2 [at] uic [dot] edu



PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago from Fall 2006-Present.

Research Assistant at the National Center for Data Mining from Fall 2004-Present.

Member of the Laboratory of Computational Population Biology from Spring 2008-2009.

Research Interests

Machine learning, data mining and information visualization.

I got into Computer Science because Artificial Intelligence fascinated me and I continue to explore the area of making computers process information more like humans.

Professional

Personal

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ANUSHKA ANAND



Research Interests

Developing methods and tools for visual analytics - the use of statistical methods and interactive visualization tools for large data analysis.

Education


Sept 2006 - Present: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), IL [Expected graduation date: May 2012]

May 2006: M.Sc. in Computer Science, UIC, [Cumulative G.P.A 4.0/4.0]

December 2003: B.Sc. in Computer Science, American University of Sharjah (AUS), United Arab Emirates (UAE), [Cumulative G.P.A 4.0/4.0]

Work Experience

August 2004 - Present: Research Assistant in the National Center for Data Mining at UIC, Chicago,IL:

  • VMBT Projects - Visual analytics projects that apply Visual Model-Based Transformations to high-dimensional data and graphs for anomaly detection.
  • Angle - Network Anomaly & Emergent Behavior Detection Project: Developed infrastructure for processing of real-time IP packet data streams along with real-time data mining algorithms that select different data models, find emergent behavior given a model and detect outlying behavior for display on a AJAX web interface. The goal is to find anomalous behaviors looking at local and global structure as large volumes of data are received from four locations across the US.
  • Pantheon Highway Gateway Project: Researched anomaly detection in large sensor data sets and developed statistical models for observed behavior. Designed the database for highway traffic data of the Chicagoland area and developed methods for discovering and visualizing trends, changes and alerts in real-time traffic feeds.
June 2010 - August 2010: Technical Intern at AT&T Research Labs (Shannon Lab), Florham Park, NJ:
  • - Developed analytic and interactive visualization techniques to deal with the challenges of visually analyzing large scale and massively concurrent time series.
May 2005 - August 2005: Engineering Intern at Motorola Inc., Schaumburg, IL:
  • Learned to use Motorola's propriety Dialog Manager and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems to develop applications.
  • Ported Motorola's Dialog Manager and ASR systems from the Linux platform for execution under the Windows platform.
February 2004 - June 2004: Programmer Trainee in Almanaara Innovations LLC., Sharjah, UAE:
  • Designed and developed a software package for an Internet cafe using Windows programming in C++ (team of 3).
  • Designed and implemented a simple, scalable database engine in C++.
March 2004 - April 2004: Research Assistant to Dr. Gasser Auda (Professor and Chair of Computer Science Department at AUS), Sharjah, UAE:
  • Researched and compiled an article on the applications of Modular Neural Networks (MNNs) from 1998-2004.
June 2002 - August 2002: Internship at Reuters Ltd., Dubai Media City (Technical Department), Dubai, UAE:
  • Designed the back-end Personnel and Engineering Activity database.
  • Developed the website for the Activity Tracker Project, to log all the engineering activities in the Gulf Region, using scripting languages.

Publications

  • Wilkinson,L., Anand, A. & Dang, T., N. "CHIRP: A New Classifier based on Composite Hypercubes on Iterated Random Projections." Proceedings of the ACM KDD 2011.
  • Dang, T. N., Wilkinson, L. & Anand, A., "Stacking Graphic Elements to Avoid Over-Plotting," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 16(6), p. 1044-1052, Dec. 2010.
  • Anand, A., Wilkinson, L., Dang-Nhon, T., "An L-infinity Norm Visual Classifier", Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, Dec. 2009
  • Grossman, R., Sabala, M., Connelly, S., Gu, Y., Handley, M., Sulo, R., Turkington, D., Anand, A., Wilkinson, L., Foster, I., Leggett, T., Papka, M., Wilde, M., Mambretti, J., Lucas, B., Tran, J., "Angle: Detecting Anomalies and Emergent Behavior from Distributed Data in Near Real Time", Proceedings of SC07-International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, Nov 2007. (Winner of the High Performance Analytics Challenge)
  • Wilkinson, L., Anand, A. & Grossman, R., "High-Dimensional Visual Analytics: Interactive Exploration Guided by Pairwise Views of Point Distributions", IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 12(6), p. 1363-1372, 2006.
  • Grossman, R. L., Sabala, M., Anand, A., Chaves, J., Vejcik, S. and Zhang, P., "Real Time Change Detection and Alerts from Highway Traffic Data", Proceedings of SC05, Nov. 2005. Winner of the High Performance Analytics Challenge)
  • Wilkinson, L., Anand, A. & Grossman, R., "Graph-theoretic Scagnostics", Proceedings of the IEEE Information Visualization 2005, p. 157-164, 2005.

Posters

  • Anand, A., Wilkinson, L. and Dang, T.N., "Using Random Projections to Identify Class-Separating Variables in High-Dimensional Spaces." IEEE Visual Analytics in Science and Technology, 2011. (Best Poster)
  • Anand, A., Wilkinson, L. and Dang, T.N., "CHIRP: A New Classifier based on Random Projections and Covering." 5th Annual Workshop for Women in Machine Learning, Dec. 2010.
  • Anand, A., Anderson, J. & Berger-Wolf, T., "Predicting Orientation Selectivity in Primary Visual Cortex", Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, May 2010.
  • Anand, A., Grossman, R., Handley, M., Sulo, R., Wilkinson, L., "Identifying and Querying Local and Large-Scale Structures Using L-infinity Norms in Visual Analytics", Proceedings of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, Oct 2007.
  • Sulo, R., Anand, A., Wilkinson, L., Grossman, R. & Eick, S., "Topographically Based Real-Time Traffic Anomaly Detection in a Metropolitan Highway System", Proceedings of the IEEE Information Visualization 2006.

Invited Talks

  • Anushka Anand and Simon Urbanek. Interactive Visualization of Multiple Time Series Interface Symposium 2011, June 2011.
  • Anand, A., Wilkinson, L., and Dang, T. N., "CHIRP: A New Classifier based on Random Projections and Covering." Dept. of Statistics Colloquium, Iowa State University, Nov. 2010.

Achievements & Awards


May 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011: UIC CS Department Student Leadership and Service Award recipient for initiatives in the Computer Science Graduate Student Association.

Apr. 2008, 2010, 2011: Chancellors Student Service & Leadership Award recipient for initiatives in Computer Science Student groups and Graduate Student Council.

Sep. 2009: HP Scholarship recipient to attend the Grace Hopper Conference 2009.
Dec. 2008: Google Workshop for Women Engineers travel award recipient.

Oct. 2007, 2006: Recipient of the UIC CS department travel award to the Grace Hopper Conference of Women in Computing (Oct 17-20, 2007, Orlandom FL; Oct. 4-7 2006, San Diego, CA).

Jun. 2004: President's Cup graduation award - highest G.P.A class of 2004 (AUS).

Fall 2000 - Fall 2003: AUS Chancellor's Scholarship.

Mar. 2003, 2002: First place in U.A.E National Programming Contest.

Feb. 2003, 2002: Second place (2003) and first place (2002) in AUS Programming Contest.

Nov. 2002: Sixth place in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Arab and African Regional Programming Contest at Cairo.

Computer Skills

  • Programming: Java, Python, C++, SQL.
  • Databases: PostGreSQL, MySQL.
  • Graphics Applications: Adobe Photoshop 6.0, Adobe Illustrator 8.0, GIMP.

Activities


Aug. 2011-Aug. 2012: Student member of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute.

Jun. 2011-Jun. 2012: Chair of the Chicago Chapter of the ACM.

Mar. 2011:Reviewer for IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 2011.

May 2009-Jun. 2011: President of the Computer Science Graduate Student Association (CSGSA).

May 2009-Jun. 2011: Secretary of the Graduate Student Council.

Fall 2007-Spring 2011: unofficial President of the Women in Computer Science group.

Dec. 2010: Reviewer for Eurographics/IEEE Symposium on Visualization 2010.

Nov. 2009-Jun. 2010: The UIC student representative on the Search Committee for the President of the University of Illinois.

Apr. 2010: Project leader managing 11 volunteers at a community service site for UIC Cares Day.

Jun. 2009: Volunteered organizing Summer Super Math for elementary kids at the Oak Park Public Library.

May 2009: Women In Science and Engineering ambassador aiding in UIC campus tour day for Young Women's Leadership Charter School.

Fall 2004-Spring 2009: Committee member of the CSGSA and student representative to faculty meetings. I organized weekly Faculty Mentor Lunches with graduate students (Fall 2007-Spring 2008), events such as talks or seminars and some of the weekly Friday socials.

Fall 2008-Spring 2009: Student subcommittee member of the Chancellors Committee on the Status of Women at UIC.

Apr. 2009: Project leader managing 7 volunteers at a community service site for UIC Cares Day.

Mar. 2009: Special awards judge at the 59th Annual Chicago Public Schools Science Fair for the Association of Women in Science.

Mar. 2008: General Judge at the 58th Annual Chicago Public Schools Science Fair.

Fall 2005 - Fall 2006: Computer Science representative in the Graduate Student Council at UIC.

Mar. 2006: Reviewer for IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 2006.

Aug. 2005: Student volunteer at the ACM Knowledge Discovery and Datamining conference, Chicago, IL.

Fall 2002 - Spring 2003: President of the ACM Student Chapter at AUS.



References

Available on request.


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