It's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!
Lewis Carol
My general area of research is in Ubiquitous and Social Computing, where I am interested in developing mathematical and computational models that leverage the proliferation of data and breakthroughs in machine learning to design human-centric systems that accommodate for human needs, capabilities and behaviors.
Specifically my research focus is on sensing, modeling, understanding and predicting human behavior using the “digital traces” that are generated daily in our online and offline lives. In particular my research has focused on viewing “digital traces” in two ways (1) firstly as distinctive realms in which much of human experience now resides. That is studying socio-technical systems and modeling social dynamics of human behavior in these platforms. (2) to view digital data platforms as generalizable microcosms of society and thus develop mathematical and computational models to better understand societies and social phenomenas at different spatial scales. By analyzing the use of technology at these different scales, from the micro level, such as person-to-person or person-to-system interactions, to the macro level, such as population dynamics, I aim to build systems based on better models of human behavior that can help us construct more powerful human centric services.
Current Collaborations
-
![]()
Flower ADAP Collaboration.
My students contribute to the open source flower project which is designed to make federated learning scalable and easy to implement regardless of the underlying language. Check out https://flower.dev
-
![]()
Phenopolis
My students are actively involved in contributing to Phenopolis and building great services to help genetic research. Check out: https://www.phenopolis.co.uk
-
![]()
Nature and Health
My research lab has extensive collaboration with Nature and health division at UW and multiple projects with Seattle Parks and Rec. We use various data sources to understand park visitation patterns. Check out our publications.
Current and Previous Funded Projects
Bullitt Fundation
Improving Recreational Opportunities With Maps and Tools from Crowd-Sourced and Social Media Data. September 2019-Jan 2020
SRCP
Ubiquitous Crowd-sensing Taste Recognition Summer 2021-2022
PhD student Manuja Sharma
EIT ICT
Travel Dashboard: Personalized Mobility for Urban Travelers
2013-2015
Computing for Environment Initiative (UW)
Public lands in public hands: innovative technology and community science for parks and outdoor recreation
2022-2023
The path that has taken me where I currently am
A dream
I received my PhD degree from University College London under supervision of Professor Licia Capra.
A journey
I was a senior researcher at Bell Laboratories from 2012-2016 as part of IoT team based in Dublin. My research focus was primarily on wifi sensing.
A universe
I was a part time lecturer, and affiliate assistant professor of Sociology in University of Washington 2016-2019. During the same time period I was a research consultant at United Nations Global Pulse.