PURPOSE FOR JOINING SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS NETWORK AT TOPTAL

Working smart is designed to take you from dreams distillation to an effective action plan that

propels you towards meaningful goals

-- Charlene Fike

The future that I envisage for myself is that of being a lifelong scholar and developer carrying out path breaking research in the field of Machine Learning and Data Mining and sharing this knowledge with young curious minds through teaching. To realize this career goal and attain excellence in this field through continuous research and implementation of theoretical concepts in real life situations, I covet to join the community of software developer on Toptal. My primary interest focuses in applying data mining particularly graph mining in community detection in brain networks. I worked on a project that involves detection of communities in time across Normal and Alzheimer patients. I have strong interest in data mining, machine learning, computational intelligence and software engineering. I holds a BS degree with first class with distinction in computer science from Ambedkar Institute of Advanced Communication Technologies and Research. I hold my MS in software engineering from Delhi Technological University with University honors.

My journey in the world of technology commenced during my schooling years, when I first learnt the language of programming. It opened an exotic window of communication for me. My expressions in this language or programs gradually evolved from amateurish console-dependent patterns and menus to rich multi-threaded GUI applications. This interest in combination with my strong foundation in Mathematics proved decisive for my motivation to choose Computer Science as major for my undergraduate studies.

When one follows their passion, work does not seem like work. It becomes a cause for motivation to learn more. The four year course transformed my excitement and enthusiasm for CS into a focused learning process and comprehensive knowledge. Undergraduate study gave me a flavor of various areas but course on Data Mining and Warehousing, Data Structures, Algorithm Analysis and Design and Software Engineering interested me the most. I could relate with the utility of Data Mining and Intelligence in real world very easily. I gained valuable experience through my opted electives-AI, Software Engineering and Requirement and Estimation Techniques.

Moving ahead on the learning ladder and as an attempt to upgrade my academic knowledge and professional prowess in my field of interest, I joined reputed Delhi Technological University to pursue Masters’ in Computer Science. Through undergrad I had realized that I enjoyed doing innovative work, especially when it has far-reaching practical applications. My first tryst with full scale research came in the form of yearlong thesis work on “Performance Evaluation of AODV, DSDV and DSR in various Mobility Scenarios”. I carried out meticulous study of firewall using security detection tool and improved chaos based video encryption using harmony search. This thesis work accorded me insights into the fundamental approach towards an experiment. I was appreciated for my work, which gave me tremendous satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. This experience taught me that research is not about solving a problem in just one attempt. It is about perseverance, about determination, about relishing the joy of having an authority on an area. I also experienced the joy of research by making an impact, by doing things independently and in a smarter way. My work on this project was published as tutorial paper in IJCAIT Journal, impact factor 0.405. I have also worked on a minor project, “Performance evaluation of AODV and DSDV

MANET protocols in mobility Scenarios”. Besides my own many other minor projects and research work, I have assisted my faculty on “Network Intrusion Detection using Fuzzy Logic” and B. Tech students on “Brute Force Attack on Double Mod RSA”. At the end of my graduate studies, I was able to publish my paper “Genetically improved logistic regression using radial basis function for robust software effort prediction” as a chapter in the book “Machine Intelligence and Signal Processing” by springer. My research articles “Comparison between Nearest Neighbors and Bayesian classifier for demand forecasting in supply chain management” and Multi-Objective Biogeography Based optimization for generating optimal trade-offs in Reservoir Operations” have been selected in 12^th IEEE International Conference E3-C3 2015. During my graduate studies, I got the prestigious MHRD Scholarship for obtaining 99.75 percentile in Graduate Aptitude Test Examination out of approx. 250,000 candidates.

Eager to test myself in the real world, I have pursued many internships which have been an invaluable learning experiences. I joined National Informatics Center, Delhi where I worked on “Software Security-Static Buffer Overflow Analysis in Object Oriented Programming Environment- a Comparative Study”. I actively carried out Software Testing of JBOSS Application Server using Mu-Java, Mu-Eclipse, Eclipse IDE and Jumble. My research paper on this was published in IJCAIT Journal, impact factor 0.405. Yearlong research internship at Defense Terrain Research Laboratory, DRDO, Delhi was a very relevant exposure in the field of Swarm Intelligence, Machine Learning and Image Processing and I gained expertise in ERADUS, ARC-GIS, MATLAB, C/C++, Java. My papers are accepted for publication in INDIAcom 2015, Elsevier and IEEE Workshop of Machine Intelligence and Signal Processing 2014 (in Poster Presentation) and accepted for publishing in LNCS springer. I have also pursued certification courses in Java, Advanced Java and Oracle Java along with being an AMCAT certified Software Engineer and Data Processing Specialist to enhance my knowledge of Programming and Data mining. I passed with ‘Excellent’ Grade in Java Certification from NIIT Delhi.

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to work as a research intern at National University of Singapore, School of Computing working on community detection in social media after my graduate studies. The experience gained from the project assisted me in working with Prof. Bogdanov on my current research project which is related to resting state fMRI data.

Besides academic pursuits, participation in extracurricular activities have been very enriching. I love playing basketball and badminton and was Silver medalist in Inter Collegiate Badminton tournament (2010). I was the Captain of the department basketball team during UG course. I am also an active member of SSE-DTU, IAENG-HONGKONG, ICST and Internet Society in my masters. I am associated with three organizations, which are start-ups but have potential to rise. Foundation Research Initiative (FRI) Group is a registered NGO for Research which aims at providing data sets, images and code modules for young researchers. Computational Intelligence Research Group (CIRG) is involved in research activities in field of nature inspired intelligence, computational social science machine learning and data analytics. We are working on a project SLEPS (Self Learning Electoral Prediction System) here. Another start up on ERP is Infinity ERP Solutions. It keep activities are accounting, auditing, Conference management, GPS, crowdsourcing and machine learning based ERP risk Assessment (web site: www.ierpsolutions.com).

Now, I wish to go deeper into areas that interest me, so as to quench my thirst for knowledge, to answer the questions that continue to obsess me. I want to make a positive difference in this world;

I want to be remembered. I value the academic life in State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany for the freedom of thought it allows. In a career this freedom and allowance for creativity is extremely important. Your University has been conducting commendable research work in the field of Machine Learning and Data Analytics which closely match with my research interests.

Machine learning and Optimization is one of the field of research at SUNY which is close to my research interest. Moreover, the courses that are taught at SUNY are applied Data Mining, Mining Massive Datasets, Algorithm Design, Machine learning, Anomalous Pattern Detection, Computational Intractability and Statistics which play an essential role in building the necessary infrastructure for path breaking. Recently, In the past, I have worked on various projects such as :Page Ranking using power Iteration Method, Video Source Identification using Support Vector Machines, Community Detection in evolving social media net (during my internship at National University of Singapore) , Above project extended to its application in resting state fMRI Data using N-Cuts and R-Cuts, Anomalous pattern detection in Time-series multi-variant data and Mining influential events by ego-net using GDELT Database.

Embarking on a research and developmental career certainly requires perseverance as well as the willingness to do whatever it takes to solve a problem. For me the motivation to carry out research and implemental exploration comes from the curiosity to discover how far I can push myself. Because of the satisfaction that I feel from doing a job well, I give my best in the work that I do, as evident from my academic record as well. Over the past few years I have learnt to work more independently. I am sure that with strong academic background and the motivation to do outstanding job, I would be able to add value to software developer network at Toptal. Hence, I sincerely hope to be considered as a freelance developer in Toptal community