I recently gave a talk at a WimNet group meeting regarding my post-Ph.D. job market experiences and lessons learned. A version of the slides that is not Columbia-specific and applicable to many EECS students is available below:
The first part of the talk focused on the job market timelines and demonstrated a step-by-step guide to approaching the job market while keeping the timelines in mind. Below are some additional details related to this part of the talk.
In 2013 I had many opportunities to add new items to my running collection — the states, provinces, and countries where I ran at least one mile outdoors (gyms do not count — it has to be an authentic outdoor experience, with the place’s wind in my hair and its dirt under my feet). The countries and the states that are in this collection at this time are:
Over this year I added 5 new states (Missouri, Tennessee, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Connecticut) and 3 new countries (Belgium, Netherlands, and Italy) to the collection. It was a great year.
I am planning to add as many, and hopefully more, in year 2014. Perhaps the next state will be Louisiana, which I always wanted to visit. Or Florida, which I had visited several times before starting this collection, but somehow not even once after. I recall swimming there, but do not recall running – it must be re-visited. And I must finally see Germany — Munich’s English Garden looks like a fantastic place to go for a nice long run. And it would be particularly wonderful to get to add a couple more continents to the collection, — we shall see how to make that happen!
This is Duck. He is a photographer, never separated from his little camera, and he loves to travel. He joined our household back in August, just in time for a 2-week New York to San Diego road trip.
Here is him leaving for that trip – doesn’t he look excited?!
Our recent cross-country road trip allowed me to add 4 (!) new states to my favorite running collection. The new items in the collection are Tennessee (Memphis), New Mexico (Santa Fe), Arizona (Page), and Nevada (Las Vegas – the glorious Strip!). My hands-down favorite was the run in Arizona, where the hotel manager recommended a lovely 3-mile route through the ATV tracks and a dried-up river (locals called it “a wash”) on the outskirts of town, the scenic and deserted feel of which I absolutely loved. Got some red mud on my running shoes and could not have been happier about that.
I am sometimes asked how I find suitable running routes while traveling. I mostly use the following:
While quite effective for bustling centers of large cities, websites tend to be not as efficient for smaller cities or for suburbs. Thus –
I’ve been thinking lately about how many different types of data I actually worked with. Surely, there are indoor light energy traces that I collected and analyzed in an extensive study that resulted in 2 top-tier papers, a public dataset, and that was used to drive aspects of the design of the EnHANTs and the algorithms and protocols for light-powered nodes. And there are also human and object motion traces that we collected and analyzed in a study of motion energy for the Internet of Things that recently received some media coverage.
But there are also many others, including, but by no means limited to: Continue reading
This post is prompted by a few recent discussions on how to prevent running injuries. I am as injury-prone as runners come: a slew of biomechanical imperfections, a history of knee injuries, a comparatively larger frame, next to no sports in childhood and adolescence. When I started running a few years back, I was plagued by an endless string of injuries of all kinds, mostly to the formerly damaged right knee and the shin on the over-compensating left leg. The injuries got to be so annoying, at times I thought running was not for me. I was 100% sure I could never run a marathon. Yet, over the last two years I trained for a 1/2 ironman and for a marathon nearly injury-free (knock on wood), and am now starting to dream of running ultras and other insane races like this one.
To stop getting injured: Continue reading
Being a total data geek, I keep detailed digitized training logs that go back to December of 2009. I write down what I did – in running, cycling, hiking – everything, – and how it felt, keep track of benchmark times and my concerns about them. I also keep track of key summary statistics and analyze them with MATLAB scripts I’ve perfected over the years (told you I was a data geek). These logs tell many stories – of sports performance, and also of work, life, travel, adventures, occasional real stupidity ( you ran a fast mile in the middle of a long run and three days later somehow your shin hates you, huh! – well, I wonder why that is… ) – a trove of marvelous longitudinal data.
As far back as I remember, I was a fan of clear, catchy, and entertaining visual data representations. Like those that often appear in the National Geographic or the Economist – the engaging ways of presenting scientific facts and data.
Its amazing to live in the world where tools for advanced visualizations are becoming available to the mere mortals. Thank goodness that one no longer needs to be a designer to create them! For example, below are sample word clouds of my CV and my research statement. I love them because they convey the long detailed documents’ feel visually and concisely.
A CV word cloud. Publications included in the CV – hence the predominant role of the IEEE and ACM in the visual.
A research statement word cloud.
Last weekend I conquered Mount Washington Road Race, which has long been on my bucket list. This well-organized, unusual race did not disappoint; I would highly recommend it to folks that are up for its challenges.
While only 7.6 miles long, the route’s average incline is 12%, and peak incline is 22%. There are no breaks from the incline at any points in the race — the mountain road goes up and up and up. There are stickers for cars that take on the challenge of climbing the route of this race. Of course I had to run it. Continue reading
Having seen nothing but my dissertation in the last 6 months, I have been tremendously enjoying an opportunity to scale back on writing and to catch up with the state of the world of innovative pervasive and mobile technology.
Oh, what a beautiful world it is! In the wearable space alone, Continue reading
