XRDS About Us

XRDS: About Us

Editors-in-Chief	Inbal Talgam-Cohen, Sean Follmer
Departments Chief	Vaggelis Giannikas
Feature Editors	Erin Carson, Richard Gomer, Billy Rathje, Hanieh Moshki, Talia Kohen, Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne, Numair Khan
Department Editors	Marinka Zitnik, Finn Kuusisto, Adrian Scoica, Bryan Knowles, Apoorvaa Singh, Somdip Dey, Rohit Goyal, Claudia Schulz, Doris Lee
Digital Content Editor	Pedro Lopes
Web Editors	Shelby Solomon Darnell, Poornima Kalyan Sundaram
Bloggers	Vassilios Karakoidas, Maria Kechagia, Fahad Khalid, Dimitris Mitropoulos, Wolfgang Richter, Olivia Simpson ,Rohit Goyal
XRDS Alumni	Chris Harrison, Peter Kinnaird, Derek Bronish, James Stanier, Malay Bhattacharyya, Rob Simmons, Anirban Basu, Jed Brubaker, Ben Deverett, Daniel Gooch, Debarka Sengupta, Jeffrey Tzu Kwan Valino Koh, Hannah Pileggi, Shawn Freeman, Luigi De Russis, John Kloosterman, Michael Zuba, Ryan Kelly, Virginie Lerays, Arka Bhattacharya

	Inbal Talgam-Cohen Stanford University, USA co - Editor in Chief Inbal Talgam-Cohen is a PhD student at Stanford's theory group. She holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Law from Tel-Aviv University. Her research focuses on algorithmic game theory.
	Sean Follmer MIT, USA co - Editor in Chief Sean Follmer is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab in the Tangible Media Group. He Holds a BS in Engineering from Stanford University. His research in the field of Human Computer Interaction focuses on shape changing user interface technology and interaction patterns.
	Vaggelis Giannikas University of Cambridge, UK Departments Chief Vaggelis Giannikas is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge looking at Intelligent Products and RFID. He holds a BSc in Management Science and Technology from the Athens University of Economics and Business. He has worked as a research associate in Greek research groups and an IT solution provider. His research interests include knowledge-based information systems, supply chain information systems and open source software. Vaggelis also teaches music theory and plays classical guitar.
	Erin Carson University of California - Berkeley, USA Feature Editor Erin Carson is a Ph.D. student in the EECS Department at University of California- Berkeley. Her interests include parallel, scientific, and high performance computing. Erin joined the Crossroads team in Fall 2009 as Chief Copy Editor, and is currently working as a Features Editor.
	Richard Gomer University of Southampton, UK Feature Editor Richard Gomer is a PhD student in the Web and Internet Science group at the University of Southampton, in the UK. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and MSc in Web Science, both from Southampton. His main research interests are around choice architecture and subconscious decision making in online environments, particularly related to productivity and privacy.
	Billy Rathje University of Puget Sound, WA, USA Feature Editor Billy Rathje is a junior at the University of Puget Sound majoring in computer science and English literature. His interests include bioinformatics and scientific computing. He has worked at the Oregon Health & Science University’s Proteomics Research Core, is a writing tutor, and enjoys app development, music, and theatre.
	Hanieh Moshki HEC Montreal, Canada Feature Editor Hanieh Moshki is a Ph.D. student in the Information Technology Department at HEC Montreal. She holds a Master’s degree in Business Engineering and Computer Science from Vienna University of Technology. Her interests include technology-enabled multi-tasking, designing and evaluating interruptions and notifications in collaborative groupware, and design that increases privacy and legal awareness of individual users.
	Talia Kohen Bar Ilan University,Israel Feature Editor Talia Kohen is a masters student in Bar Ilan University studying Computer Science and focusing on Natural Language Processing. She is looking at automatically detecting trends in the historical evolution of words leveraging the Google Books Corpus. Talia was one out of a total of ten Israeli women selected as Google Anita Borg Finalists, and she is a recipient a Bar Ilan scholarship for her studies. She was a member of the Microsoft Women of Excellence program. Previously, she worked as a systems engineer at Raytheon on their tracking and discrimination system after graduating Cornell in Electrical and Computer Engineering with honors. She hopes one day to be the CEO of her own tech company.
	Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne Indiana University- Purdue University, USA Feature Editor Suranga Nath Kasthurirathne is a second year Ph.D. student in Health Informatics at the Indiana University - Purdue University (IUPUI), Indianapolis. He is a long standing contributor to the OpenMRS and OpenHIE projects. He also serves as co-organization administrator to the OpenMRS Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in programs, both of which are focussed on mentoring computer science students to contribute to Open Source programs. Suranga is also a fellow of the Regenstrief Global Health Informatics (GHI) group. His research interests include Global Health Informatics, Standards and interoperability.
	Numair Khan NYU, USA Feature Editor Numair Khan did his masters in computer science from New York University and is currently engaged in research on the use of graphics processing units for ray tracing. His interests also include augmented reality systems and procedural modeling. A Fulbright scholar, Numair holds a bachelors degree in computer science from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan and spends his leisure time playing squash and reading history.
	Marinka Zitnik University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Department Editor Marinka Zitnik is a Ph.D. student at the University of Ljubljana. She holds a B.Sc. in computer science and mathematics from University of Ljubljana. She also did her research at the University of Toronto, Imperial College London and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. Her interests include mathematical modelling, artificial intelligence, machine learning and probabilistic numerics. Problems she investigates are motivated by current research in bioinformatics and systems biology.
	Finn Kuusisto University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Department Editor Finn Kuusisto is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at University of Wisconsin - Madison. His research is in machine learning, focusing on differential prediction and medical applications.
	Adrian Scoica University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Department Editor Adrian Scoica is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. He holds an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, a BSc in Computer Science from the Politechnica University of Bucharest, and has worked as a Software Engineer on i18n, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing problems at Google. His current research interests the application of novel Machine Learning techniques to Natural Language Processing problems, and in his spare time, he enjoys reading, studying foreign languages, and mountain hiking.
	Bryan Knowles Western Kentucky University, USA Department Editor Bryan Knowles is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Western Kentucky University studying Computer Science and Professional Writing. His interests include Complex Systems and Social Network Analysis. His current research examines stress propagation in group projects.
	Apoorvaa Singh Inderprastha Engineering College, India Department Editor Apoorvaa is an undergraduate student of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, at Inderprastha Engineering College, India. Her interests include networks and security, programming languages, algorithms, game design, use of ICT for education, neural networks in weather forecasting.
	Somdip Dey The University of Manchester, UK Department Editor Somdip Dey is currently a M.Sc. student of Advanced Computer Science with a specialization in Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Manchester. He holds a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Science from St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata, India. His research interests include Applied Cryptography, Information Security, Computer Systems Engineering, Mobile Computing, High Performance Computing, Neurorobotics and e-Learning technologies. When not doing research, Somdip loves to ponder on philosophical problems or go on adventurous trips.
	Rohit Goyal West Chester East High School,USA Department Editor Rohit Goyal is a high school student from Pennsylvania. His main interests include math and computer science, but more specifically, he is interested in data mining and artificial intelligence. Rohit is interested in seeing how computing continues to change society and hopes that more people get involved in computing-related areas.
	Claudia Schulz Imperial College London,UK Department Editor Claudia Schulz studied Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck (Germany) and Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London (UK). She is now a PhD student at Imperial College working on logic-based methods in Artificial Intelligence. Besides her PhD she is an active member and the current chair of the Imperial College ACM Student Chapter.
	Doris Lee University of California, Berkeley, USA Department Editor Doris Lee is a sophomore undergraduate student at University of California, Berkeley studying physics and astronomy. She is interested in applying methods in computer science, such as parallel computing and statistical machine learning, to data from imaging sky surveys or astrophysical simulations. She is also a student at Berkeley's Human Computer Interaction Group, focussing on developing prototyping materials accessible for makers and designer, and technology used for STEM education.
	Pedro Lopes Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany Digital Content Editor Pedro Lopes is a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction lab of Prof. Patrick Baudisch at the Hasso Plattner Institute, Germany. Pedro's research focuses on designing, prototyping & understanding mobile immersive interfaces which allow users to experience haptic feedback, such as realistic forces, using a minimal hardware footprint. Pedro sees himself as a computer scientist, artist & t(h)inker.
	Shelby Solomon Darnell Clemson University, SC, USA Web Editor Shelby S. Darnell is a PhD student in Clemson University's School of Computing. Mr. Darnell's research melds pattern recognition, computational intelligence, and affective computing in order to define and automatically recognize engagement.
	Poornima Kalyan Sundaram University of Southern California, CA, USA Web Editor Poornima is a Masters student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California. She is an active sport programmer. Her interests include Computer Networks and Artificial Intelligence.
	Vassilios Karakoidas Athens University of Economics and Business Blogger Vassilios Karakoidas is a Ph.D. candidate at Athens University of Economics and Business, Department of Management Science and Technology. He holds a B.Sc. in Informatics (University of Piraeus) and a M.Sc. in Information Systems (Athens of Economics and Business). He is now a member of ISTLab/SENSE and a former member of the Health Informatics Laboratory at University of Piraeus. He has been involved in various research projects. In 2008, he co-founded Wizhut, a software company that was involved with various research and development projects. He was leading the design and the implementation effort of warp.ly marketing platform. He is now working part-time with the Total Eclipse development team and he is the lead software architect at Emaginal AG. He is the author of a number of open-source and public-domain software packages and tools. His research interests include Software Engineering, Programming Languages, Operating Systems and Networking. He has published more than 20 scientific articles in refereed scientific journals and conferences.
	Maria Kechagia Athens University of Economics and Business Blogger Maria Kechagia is a Ph.D. candidate at Athens University of Economics and Business, in the Department of Management Science and Technology. She holds a B.Sc. in Management Science and Technology and an M.Sc. in Computing (Software Engineering) from Imperial College London. She has participated in EU funded R&D projects. Currently, she is the project manager ofthe STEREO project. She is an IEEE student and IEEE Women In Engineering (WIE) member, as well as an ACM student and ACM-Women (ACM-W) member. Her research interests include the design and implementation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the study of open source software.
	Fahad Khalid Hasso Plattner Institut Blogger Fahad Khalid is a Ph.D. student with the HPI Research School on Service Oriented Systems Engineering, and member of the Operating Systems and Middleware Group. His research is in the area of programming models for Hybrid Parallel Computing. He focuses on devising strategies and developing frameworks that make it possible to balance the productivity vs. performance tradeoff inherent in programming massively parallel accelerator architectures. In addition to his core research, Fahad is involved in interdisciplinary collaborative projects focusing on parallel simulations for Computational Biology and Geophysics. The collaboration partners for these projects are Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences. Prior to joining the HPI, Fahad has worked as software developer for large-scale telecommunications software systems such as the Ericsson Real-time Charging system. He has also worked as system architect for a Provisioning & Service Activation product. He has over five years of professional experience in software design, development, as well as automated testing. Fahad studied Computer Science in Pakistan, and Artificial Intelligence in Sweden.
	Dimitris Mitropoulos Athens University of Economics and Business Blogger Dimitris Mitropoulos is a researcher at the Athens University of Economics and Business. During his studies he has worked in the industry as a software engineer and has been involved in several EU funded R&D projects. His research interests include information security, intrusion detection systems, static code analysis and software engineering.
	Wolfgang Richter Carnegie Mellon University Blogger Wolfgang Richter is a 5th-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. He has won research and teaching awards at both Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia where he received his BS in Computer Science with Highest Honors. During his tenure as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon he has been supported by an NSF Fellowship and an IBM Research Fellowship. His research interests lie in distributed systems and cloud computing. He has collaborated predominantly with researchers at Carnegie Mellon, IBM Research, Intel Research, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. His thesis work was proposed in February 2014, and a publication related to this work received the best paper award at IC2E'14. He plans on defending his thesis and graduating in December 2014.
	Olivia Simpson University of California, San Diego Blogger Olivia Simpson is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at University of California, San Diego. Her research interests are in graph theory and network science—problems such as clustering approximating properties of graphs. She is a contributor for the XRDS blog, writing on results and thoughts in theoretical computer science.

XRDS Alumni
	Chris Harrison Carnegie Mellon University, USA Former Editor-in-Chief Chris Harrison is a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on novel interaction techniques and input technologies - especially those that enable (small) mobile devices to appropriate (large) everyday surfaces for interaction. Chris Joined XRDS in the Summer of 2009 as Editor-in-Chief. Chris left XRDS to focus on writing his dissertation.
	Peter Kinnaird Carnegie Mellon University, USA former co-Editor in Chief Peter Kinnaird is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute. He holds a Masters in HCI and a BS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. His research focuses on social computing, crowdsourcing, and civic participation.
	Derek Bronish Ohio State University, USA Department Editor Derek Bronish is a Ph.D. student at the Ohio State University. Derek received his undergraduate and Master's degrees at Ohio State, majoring in Computer Science & Engineering and minoring in Philosophy and Linguistics. His research concerns automated verification of functional programming languages. He enjoys teaching, playing guitar, and collecting fountain pens.
	James Stanier University of Sussex, UK Departments Chief 2009-2011 James served as Departments Chief of XRDS from 2009 to 2011. During this time he was completing his doctorate at the University of Sussex, where he was exploring ways to compile programs using data flow information to make them smaller and faster. Now, James currently works at Brandwatch as a researcher and developer. Some of the projects that he has worked on recently include influence metrics for web pages, discovering Twitter trends automatically, and prototyping quick ways of finding similar web pages.
	Malay Bhattacharyya Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India Feature Editor Malay Bhattacharyya is a Ph.D. student at the Machine Intelligence Unit of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India since 2007. He encompasses the broad domains of graph theory, soft computing, computational biology, and bioinformatics in his research. He also enjoys sketching and writing songs. He has about thirty research publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and proceedings of international conferences. Malay is with XRDS since the beginning of 2009.
	Rob Simmons Carnegie Mellon University, USA Department Editor Rob Simmons is a fifth-year graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department. He research is aimed at using computers to prove that concurrent programs and distributed systems work the way their designers intended.
	Dr. Anirban Basu Tokai University, Japan Department Editor Anirban is a Post-doctoral Researcher at Kikuchi lab at Tokai University working on a Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications funded project in collaboration with Waseda University, Hitachi, NEC and KDDI. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex working with the Foundations of Software Systems group.
	Jed Brubaker, UC Irvine, USA Feature Editor Jed Brubaker is a PhD candidate in Informatics at the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine. His research focuses on digital identity, social computing, social media. He previously earned his M.A. at Georgetown University in Communication, Culture and Technology, and his B.S. at the University of Utah in Psychology.
	Ben Deverett McGill University, Canada Department Editor Ben Deverett is a third year undergraduate student at McGill University studying neuroscience and computer science. He has an interest in neural computation. He enjoys playing music, acting, snowboarding, and the outdoors.
	Daniel Gooch University of Bath, UK Department Editor Daniel is a Ph.D. student at the University of Bath where he also completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. His interests lie within the HCI field, most specifically in Tangible Interaction and Social Presence although anything else which is interesting may gather some attention... Outside university, his interests include karate, scouting and most outdoor activities. When not studying he can be found at people.bath.ac.uk/~dg216 or in the dojo.
	Debarka Sengupta Indian Statistical Institute, India Department Editor Debarka Sengupta is currently a research fellow in the Machine Intelligence Unit of Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is an early third year PhD candidate with interest in computational biology. His current research focuses on modeling of the miRNA mediated regulations in human. His research interest also covers some specific domains of the classical electoral theories of Economics. This software engineer turned researcher likes to sing when he is not in front of a computer. He is a gold medalist in North Indian classical music.
	Jeffrey Tzu Kwan Valino Koh National University of Singapore, Singapore Department Editor Jef is a PhD Candidate at the National University of Singapore, where his research interests focus on various topics regarding interactivity and experiential design. Before pursuing his PhD he worked as a catwalk designer for PRADA as well as an exhibition designer for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. He has also exhibited as an artist at venues such as the Barbican and Southbank Centre in London, UK and for festivals such as the Singapore Design Festival in 2009.
	Hannah Pileggi Georgia Institute of Technology, USA Feature Editor Hannah Pileggi is a second-year Ph.D. student working jointly in the Information Interfaces (ii) Lab and Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research is in designing, implementing, and evaluating interactive visualization systems that aid in insight-gathering for collaborative groups of people, most recently in working to motivate the bystanders of cyberbullying. She earned her B.Sc. from Carnegie Mellon in statistics.
	Shawn Freeman University of Waterloo, Canada Department Editor Shawn Freeman is currently a Masters student at University of Waterloo. He is studying Management Science in the Department of Engineering alongside his employment in the Energy industry. Shawn has a passion for travel and has studied in Australia. When he is not traveling the globe you can find him enjoying intense games of squash, relaxing jogs with his dog and adventures in the nearby mountains. His technical interests are data structures, knowledge management and business process management.
	Luigi De Russis Politecnico di Torino, Italy Department Editor Luigi De Russis is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science and Automation of Politecnico di Torino. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 2010. His current research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction, with a particular interest on distributed user interfaces and interaction techniques applied to smart environments and intelligent domotic systems.
	John Kloosterman Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA Department Editor John Kloosterman is a student at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, United States. His interests include programming languages and compilers, computing and society, and the application of computing to the humanities.
	Michael Zuba University of Connecticut, USA Feature Editor Michael Zuba is a Ph.D. candidate in the Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSN) Lab at the University of Connecticut (UConn). His research is in underwater acoustic communication and networking, autonomous vehicle networks, computer security and biomedical informatics. He earned his B.S. and M.S. from UConn .
	Ryan Kelly University of Bath, United Kingdom Feature Editor Ryan Kelly is a PhD student in the HCI group at the University of Bath. He holds a Masters in HCI and a BSc in Applied Psychology & Computing. His current research explores how people divide work and remain aware of joint progress during computer-mediated collaboration.
	Virginie Lerays Universite Denis Diderot, Paris 7, France Feature Editor Virginie Lerays is a PhD student at LIAFA's algorithmic and complexity group (Paris 7). She holds her master degree in Mathematics and Logic in Paris 7 and her research focuses on complexity theory and quantum computing.
	Arka Bhattacharya Columbia University, New York, USA Department Editor Arka Bhattacharya is a first year graduate student at the Columbia University in New York, studying mathematics, theoretical computer science and physics. His research interests include algorithms, complexity theory, quantum computation and number theory. Know about his research.