Computer Science Data
Resume:
Amit Goyal University of British Columbia, Vancouver
abppjo@r.postjobfree.com
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~goyal
RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am broadly interested in Data Mining, Web Mining with emphasis on Social Networks,
Influence Propagation and Recommender Systems. In my PhD, I explored various aspects of
influence propagation in Social Networks like who influences whom, on what kinds of actions,
with how much probability and how various applications can benefit from Social Influence. In
addition, one of my recent work addresses the problem of Optimal Product Design.
EDUCATION
M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science (Sept 2007 Dec 2012),
University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada.
Topic: Social Influence and its Applications in Social Networks.
Advisor: Laks V. S. Lakshmanan
Bachelors of Technology (B.Tech.) in Computer Science (2001 2005),
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, India.
PUBLICATIONS
[1] Shailendra Agarwal, Amit Goyal, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan. A Data Driven approach to
Optimal Product Design. Submitted in Web Search and Data Mining, WSDM 2013.
Amit Goyal, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan. RecMax: Exploiting Recommender Systems for Fun
[2]
and Profit. In ACM Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, KDD 2012.
Amit Goyal, Francesco Bonchi, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan. A Data-based approach to Social
[3]
Influence Maximization. In International Conference on Very Large Databases, VLDB 2012.
Smriti Bhagat, Amit Goyal, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan. Maximizing Product Adoption in
[4]
Social Networks. In Web Search and Data Mining, WSDM 2012.
Amit Goyal, Wei Lu, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan. Simpath: An Efficient Algorithm for
[5]
Influence Maximization under the Linear Threshold Model. In International Conference
on Data Mining, ICDM 2011.
Amit Goyal, Wei Lu, Laks V.S. Lakshmanan. CELF++: Optimizing the Greedy Algorithm
[6]
for Influence Maximization in Social In Social Networks. In International World Wide
Web Conference, WWW 2011 (Companion Volume).
Amit Goyal, Francesco Bonchi, Laks V.S. Lakshmanan. Learning Influence Probabilities In
[7]
Social Networks, In Web Search and Data Mining, WSDM 2010.
Amit Goyal, Francesco Bonchi, Laks V.S. Lakshmanan. Discovering Leaders from
[8]
Community Actions, In International Conference on Information and
Knowledge Management, CIKM 2008.
Amit Goyal, Francesco Bonchi, Laks V. S. Lakshmanan, Suresh Venkatasubramanian. On
[9]
Minimizing Budget and Time in Influence Propagation over Social Networks. In Social
Network Analysis and Mining, SNAM 2012.
[10] Amit Goyal, Francesco Bonchi, Laks V.S. Lakshmanan, Byung-Won On. Gurumine: a Pattern
Mining System for Discovering Leaders and Tribes, In International Conference on Data
Engineering, ICDE 2009 (Demo paper).
HONORS & AWARDS
Awardee of Faculty of Science Graduate Award at University of British Columbia, Canada
(Jan 2012 Apr 2012).
Recipient of Ph.D. Tuition Fee Award at University of British Columbia (2008 2012).
Recipient of strategic network grant from NSERC BIN (Business Intelligent Network) Canada
(2010-2012).
All India Rank 12 among 200,000 students in the Indian Institute of Technology Joint
Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) 2001.
All India Rank 16 in National Science Talent Search Examination in 1999.
Recipient of the prestigious National Talent Search Examination scholarship awarded by
the Govt. of India. I secured 4th rank in state level exam of the same.
Secured 9th rank in State Science Talent Search Examination scholarship awarded by the
Govt. of Rajasthan, India in 1999.
I was awarded certificate of merit, National Top 1% for National Standard Examination in
Mathematics, at Higher Secondary Level (2001).
Among the top 200 students of the country in the Indian National Physics Olympiad in
2000.
INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCES
Co-founder of Namkis Online Inc.
I opened a startup called Namkis with three other people. This is an iPhone app (link
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/namkis/id521594693?ls=1&mt=8), which lets users to share
their consumer experiences in terms of smiles and scowls . Users can receive
recommendations of great businesses around them. As Co-founder, I was involved in
brainstorming the idea, developing backend (in Java), iPhone app (in Objective-C) and some
parts of website/blog (in PHP, HTML, CSS, jQuery).
Summer Intern in Yahoo! Sunnyvale (June 2008 Aug 2008)
I worked in Advertisement Targeting team, which focus on deriving short term and long term
user interests based on past user activities and thus serve advertisements to them.
Presented a talk and a hack on Yahoo! Quarterly Hack day. Won Newbie Shine Award (out
of 58 entries) and nominated for people s choice award (5 out of 58). In this hack, we
developed a chat bot based on Alice, and was integrated to Y! Answers and Y! Messenger.
Senior Research Engineer in Yahoo!, Bangalore (2005 2007)
Automatic Online Form Filling
We developed machine learning based automated online form-filling framework for
automatically completing user input controls based on previously stored information. The
framework could learn and infer forms of different natures, and map them to a common
schema, thus getting the semantic interpretation of different form fields irrespective of their
layout, language, locale or vertical.
Extracting Information from a Resume
We designed a framework to extract important information from a resume. For example,
name, address, skills, education and work experience details etc.
RELEVANT COURSES (GRADUATE LEVEL)
Data Mining and Machine Learning, Data Management and Mining, Statistical Inference,
Advance Algorithms and Data Structures, Dynamic Programming, Operating Systems, Topics in
Numerical Computations.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
Operating Systems Linux, Solaris, BSD, Debian, AIX, Windows
Programming languages C, C++, JAVA, Objective-C
PHP, Unix Shell, Perl/CGI, Scheme, Prolog, Haskell, Javascript
Scripting
Databases MySQL, Oracle
Others Matlab, HTML, XML, AJAX, SQL, VHDL, Verilog, Prolog, SVN, Perforce, CVS,
J2EE, Spring, Struts, Hibernate.
System Administrator Configuration and maintenance of web/ftp servers, nfs/nis/ldap servers, squid
proxy server, dns server, firewall setup, media streaming server etc.
EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Member of Grad Recruiting Committee, Dept. of Computer Science, UBC (2010-2012).
Web Admin, Database Systems Lab, Dept. of Computer Science, UBC (2007-2009).
Web Admin and Newsletter Editor, Utsav Indian Students Association, UBC (2008-2009).
I was one of the 4 members of Middle Layer Committee (MLC) of IIT Bombay (2004-05). It
is a student body, which looks after Networking and Computer related issues in the institute.
At the same time, it provides technical assistance to the System Administrators and students.
I was the Script Coordinator of PAF (performing arts festival), 2005 for the Dorm (Hostel
Eight). PAF is a one hour-long live play involving original script, music, production etc.
Usually, it requires one-month hard work of about 100 students to make one PAF.
I was the Dramatics Secretary of our Dorm in 2002-03 and participated in various
dramatics events like Street Play, Drams etc. We won the cultural trophy in my tenure.
REFERENCES
Dr. Laks V. S. Lakshmanan (PhD Advisor)
Affiliation: Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia (UBC),
Vancouver, Canada. Email: abppjo@r.postjobfree.com
Dr. Francesco Bonchi
Affiliation: Yahoo! Research, Barcelona. Email: abppjo@r.postjobfree.com
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