Academics
Last updated on Monday - July 08, 2019
Work Experience
CERN
June 2019 - Present
Openlab Summer Student with the File Storage team
Developing the diagnosis and remediation platform through expert anomaly detection systems for the CERN cloud sync utility, which would enable the automation of mitigation procedures for troubleshooting tasks.
National University of Singapore
Jan - May 2019
Visiting Researcher
Worked on developing novel high-dimensional Bayesian optimization algorithms using generalized tree-structured additive models defined on overlapping variable instances, making the kernel learning much more efficient.
Information Systems and Machine Learning Lab, University of Hildesheim
May - July 2018
Research Intern under Prof. Lars Schmidt-Thieme
Worked with the Information Systems and Machine Learning Lab (ISMLL) under Prof. Lars Schmidt-Thieme on the extrapolation of partially trained learning curves across different datasets through deep CNNs, which outperform the state of the art Bayesian counterparts, to automate the process of architecture search and meta-modeling. (paper currently under review)
Nutanix Inc.
May - July 2017
Software Developer Intern
Worked with the Stargate team on the development and automation of user-defined hierarchical I/O throttling policies for VMs and Volume Groups through interfaces such as RPC, CLI and REST. Also integrated the Undefined Behavior Sanitizer (UBSan) for GCC for catching bugs related to integer overflows and misaligned pointers at runtime.
Scientific Analysis Group, Defence Research and Development Organization
May - July 2016
Swarm Intelligence Research Intern
Worked under Dr. S. K. Pal on developing hybrid versions of nature inspired swarm optimization algorithms, Artificial Bee Colony and Firefly algorithm, by coupling with genetic and evolution techniques and introducing new control parameters, for solving NP Hard problems such as Integer Factorization and the Set Covering Problem.
Education
Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi
July 2014 — May 2019
Integrated Dual Degree (B.Tech + M.Tech) in Computer Science and Engineering.
Current GPA: 9.65/10.
Delhi Public School Rohini, Delhi
2014
All India Senior School Certificate Examination under the aegis of the Central Board of Secondary Education.
Score: 98%.
Delhi Public School, Agra
2012
All India Secondary School Examination under the aegis of the Central Board of Secondary Education.
CGPA: 10/10.
Publications
- Ishank Arora, Eric Han, Jonathan Scarlett, K. K. Shukla, ”High-Dimensional Bayesian Optimization via Tree-Structured Generalized Additive Models”, IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) Recent Results, 2019.
- Ishank Arora, Anant Dadu, Mridula Verma, K. K. Shukla, ”Random Projections of Fischer Linear Discriminant Classifier for Multi-Class Classification”, in proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence, September 2016, Olten, Switzerland.
Research Projects
Novel iteration for Stocachastic Proximal Gradient Descent with Adaptive Restart
September - November 2017
Guide: Prof. K. K. Shukla, IIT (BHU) Varanasi
Worked on developing a new iterative scheme for Stochastic Proximal Gradient incorporating Nesterov's acceleration, variance reduction and adaptive restart to significantly increase the rate of convergence achieved by current state of the art. The work is currently under evaluation.
Proof of Convergence for a two stage Crossover for Multiobjective Optimization
January - April 2017
Guide: Prof. K. K. Shukla, IIT (BHU) Varanasi
Implemented a two-stage crossover (TSX) operator for more efficient exploration of the search space and analyzed for assumptions and situations where the operator can be guaranteed to converge to a global optimum. Analyzed the polynomial probability distributions involved and proposed a comprehensive proof, through the use of homogeneous finite Markov chains, that the operator maintains an elitist population obeying Holland’s Schema Theorem and hence can be guaranteed to converge.
AGD based algorithm for datasets with overlapping group structure
January - April 2016
Guide: Prof. K. K. Shukla, IIT (BHU) Varanasi
The extension of the group lasso feature selection involving overlapping groups presents multiple challenges in optimizing the choice of appropriate features. Implemented an algorithm for calculating the proximal operator associated with the group lasso penalty using Accelerated Gradient Descent(AGD).
Proof of Convergence for a two stage Crossover for Multiobjective Optimization
August - November 2015
Guide: Prof. K. K. Shukla, IIT (BHU) Varanasi
For datasets with fewer samples than dimensions, discriminant classifiers provide poor results due to non-invertibility of the covariance matrices. Employed an ensemble of random projections of Fischer Linear Discriminant classifiers to perform multiclass classification for datasets having the aforementioned setting and extended the generalization error bounds.
Software Projects
Generalized Reduced Gradient Algorithm
March 2018
Implemented the generalized reduced gradient (GRG) algorithm based on implicit variable elimination to solve unconstrained optimization problems using Symbolic Python.
Secure voting protocol with multiple Central Tabulating Facilities
October 2017
Implemented a secure voting protocol based on homomorphic encryption with numerous Central Tabulating Facilities (CTFs), where the vote preference of each voter is hidden from the CTFs.
Health-Keep
February 2017
An android application which notifies the user of the diseases spreading in their locality and precautionary measures to be taken, by forming clusters of the reported cases and testing whether the user’s location lies in any of the clusters through various heuristics, using data supplied by doctors and hospitals to report cases.
Relational Algebra implementation in C++
October 2016
Implemented the procedural query language, which operates on relations using some specified operators, such as select, project, cartesian product, join and aggregate operations to answer user-defined queries.
Live Gesture Recognition
April 2016
An application to detect the arm gestures of the subject using the gyroscope sensors in android phones and deep neural networks in TensorFlow, implemented through socket programming.
REST API for Health Prediction
March 2016
Built an API in Python to predict the risk factor of diabetes in pregnant women, as well as the chance of mortality in patients admitted to ICU using an ensemble of Fischer Linear Discriminant Classifiers, Support Vector Machines and Random Forest Classifiers.
Web Development, Codefest'16
February 2016
Developed the website and registration portal for Codefest 2016, the annual fest of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT BHU. The back-end was developed in Django. The website had over 100,000 views and 5000 registrations from 96 countries.
Nine Men’s Morris for Windows Store
November 2015
Developed the single player as well as the two-player implementation of Nine Men’s Morris board game for Windows 10 using extensive AI through Alpha-Beta Pruning.
Numerical Algorithms in Python
March 2015
A web application to implement and illustrate through animations Linear system solvers - Gauss-Jordan eliminations and Gauss-Siedel method; Polynomial solvers - Secant Regula-Falsi and Newton-Raphson; and Lagrange’s method of interpolation.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant, ITW-1: Information Technology Workshop-I
Spring semester, 2018
Took tutorial sessions and prepared laboratory assignments on BASH scripting and advanced Python.
Teaching Assistant, CSO-101: Introduction to Computer Programming and Linux
Fall semester, 2016 and Spring semester, 2017
Responsibilities included taking laboratory and tutorial sessions for the students, and setting assignment and lab exam problems.
Positions of Responsibility
• Convener, Codefest 2017, the annual festival of Computer Engineering Society, IIT (BHU) Varanasi. 2017
• Joint Secretary, Club of Programmers, IIT (BHU) Varanasi. 2016-2017
• Co-coordinator of A-Mazed, the autonomous grid-following robotics event of Technex 2016. 2016
• Student Representative of the Department Undergraduate Committee (DUGC), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT (BHU), Varanasi. 2015-2016