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Arun Viswanathan, 3rd year Computer Science PhD @ University of Southern California advised by Dr. Clifford Neuman . Graduate Research Assistant @ USC/ISI in Marina Del Rey, California where I collaborate (or have) with Alefiya Hussain, Venkata Pingali, Jelena Mirkovic, Ted Faber, John Wroclawski and Karen Sollins.

Research Objective
Enhance Situational Awareness in large-scale, complex, distributed systems using Data-driven approaches ( or The Fourth Paradigm) combined with insights from Social and Behavioral Sciences.

This has immediate applications in areas like CyberSecurity, Computer Forensics, Smart Grids, Networked Experiment Testbeds and Social Networks (to name a few) where the scale and complexity of such domains, combined with the exaflood of data is creating challenges and opportunities that may have not been witnessed since Gutenberg. Situational Awareness will aid users of these systems in making better sense of their environment by enabling (a) Analysis (b) Diagnosis (c) Discovery and (d) Better decision making.

A more detailed explanation and reasoning behind the statement will be posted soon.

Current Research

ThirdEye is my first attempt to address the challenges described above. This work is being done in the context of two domains: Networking Testbeds and Smart Grids

  • ThirdEye for Diagnosing and Analyzing Networked Testbed Experiments involves applying of data mining, machine learning and visualization techniques to data from experiments and extracting "useful" knowledge from data to assist the experimenter in diagnosing and analyzing his experiments.
  • ThirdEye for Smart Grids would address the challenges of creatingSituational Awareness for understanding and countering security threats in Smart Grids.
    • My Inspirations

    My wife Suchitra, my parents and my best friend Atul are the cornerstones of my life.

    My inspirations for my research pursuit have been and continue to be Venkata Pingali (a great friend, guide and visionary), Rahul Kharge (another great friend and guide) and ideas of the late legendary Microsoft ResearcherJim Gray.

    My mentor-for-life is Raghu Iyer. The following quote by William Arthur Ward summarizes his role in my life: The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

    I am deeply motivated and inspired by work and life of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Dr. Richard Feynman , Mahatma Gandhi, Kurt Godel, Alan Turing, Bertrand Russell, Francis Crick, Steve Jobs, Che Guevara.

    Contemporary Scientists, Writers and Thinkers who inspire me (in no particular order) are Dr. Len Adleman , Bruce Schneier, Ross Anderson, Dan Geer, Gary McGraw, Douglas Hofstadter, Paul Krugman, Nassim Taleb, Fareed Zakaria, Lawrence Lessig, Noam Chomsky, Tom Friedman, Ramchandra Guha, Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahnemann, VS Ramachandran, C.K. Prahalad, Niall Fergusson

    More Trivia

    Reach me arunv@arunviswanathan.com (Use PGP Key for secure communication)

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    More boring details in the CV or check Arun Viswanathan's bibliography