Dhyanesh  Narayanan

Objective

• Stanford University (USA): Master of Science, Computer Science (Specialization in Systems, Distinction in Research in Artificial Intelligence), April 06 (GPA 3.56/4)

• Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India): Bachelor of Technology, Computer Science & Engineering, July 02 (GPA 9.17/10)

• Vasco Furtado, Paulo Pinheiro da Silva, Deborah McGuinness, Priyendra Deshwal, Dhyanesh Narayanan, Juliana Carvalho, Vladia Pinheiro and Cynthia Chang, "Abstracting Web Agent Proofs into Human-Level Justifications", FLAIRS-20: The 20th International FLAIRS Conference, May 7-9, 2007, Florida.
  
  
• Deborah L. McGuinness, Honglei Zeng, Paulo Pinheiro da Silva, Li Ding, Dhyanesh Narayanan, and Mayukh Bhaowal, "Investigations into Trust for Collaborative Information Repositories: A Wikipedia Case Study", Models of Trust for the Web (MTW'06): A workshop at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006), May 22-26, 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland.
  
  
• Dhyanesh Narayanan, S.V.Raghavan, "Sensors On Sea (SOS): A Simple Novel Sensor-based Best-effort System for Ocean Related Disaster Management", International Conference on Intelligent Sensing and Information Processing (ICISIP 2004), January 4-7, 2004, Chennai, India.
  
  
• Dhyanesh Narayanan, G.C.Vineel, S.V.Raghavan, "DEVISE: A Methodology for Building Web Services Based Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises", 12th IEEE International Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (IEEE WETICE 2003), June 09-11, 2003, Linz, Austria.
  
  
• S.V.Raghavan, Dhyanesh Narayanan, "Formal Description of Perfect Security", 15th International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC 2002), August 12-14, 2002, Mumbai, India.
  

• Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, Project: Inference Web (IW): Explanations for the Semantic Web [Oct'04-Jun'05 / Oct'05-Mar'06]

  • [IW Browser]
  
  During my graduate education at Stanford, I also worked as a Research Assistant at the Artificial Intelligence Lab in the CS department on the Inference Web (IW) project. I was primarily tasked with the ownership of IW Browser, an integrated environment to support effective browsing of IW proofs that explain Semantic Web reasoning tasks.
  
  Specific contributions I made to IW Browser include:
  • Adding support for multiple proof rendering strategies, proof styles, and sentence formats
  • Integrating the IW Browser to seamlessly plug-in and operate within the IW "container" environment called the IW Toolkit
  • Studying the design/implementation of an open-source graphical rendering tool called Touchgraph Wikibrowser and adapting it to the needs of IW
  • Extending the IW Browser to leverage Touchgraph capabilities
  • Designing an architecture for supporting the translation of KIF sentences to Natural Language for use in the IW Browser, and implementing a solution for the existing collection of IW Proofs in a case-based, iterative manner.
  • [Leveraging IW for building a Trust Layer for Wikipedia, published at WWW'06]
  
  I collaborated with other members of the AI Lab to investigate the applicability of Proof Markup Language (PML) and Inference Web for building Trust Layer Solutions, in the specific context of aggregated knowledge repositories where provenance may potentially span multiple sources. The project sought to illustrate the effectiveness of the Inference Web approach by employing it in the context of building a Trust Layer for Wikipedia, as a case study.
  
  My specific contributions include:
  • Active involvement in shaping the definition of our approach towards Trust, particularly during brainstorming sessions
  • Designing a robust/extensible Solution Architecture for the Wikipedia Trust Layer
  • Assuming ownership of ensuring overall consistency of our approach from an architectural standpoint.
  • [Derived Rules in IW, published at Flairs-20, 2007]
  
  Raw proofs in Inference Web are inherently unwieldy, use "primitive" inference rules, and contain detail at a fine level of granularity. Derived Rules are a mechanism that can be used for achieving a proof transformation of IW proofs. Derived Rules work by abstracting away details that preclude easy comprehension of the proof, and hence enable better understanding.
  
  My specific tasks included:
  • Consolidation of the existing support and tools available within the IW infrastructure for Derived Rules
  • Adding suitable extensions wherever perceived necessary
  • Creating a unified environment that supports the effective creation, management, and use of Derived Rules in IW.

• Research Projects during MSCS, Stanford University [Sep'04-Mar'06]
  I structured my MSCS coursework at Stanford University in a manner that would offer opportunities for involvement in research (aside from IW), and enable possibilities of networking across domains. The following courses/ research projects were highly rewarding experiences:
  
  
  • [Information Processing for Sensor Networks, Project: DirectSense] This project had an interesting anecdote as its motivation. During one of the lectures, the course instructor (Prof. Leonidas Guibas) pointed out that there was a lack of intuitive user interfaces for Sensor Networks and the intersection of SensorNets and HCI was a fertile ground for interesting research. I was motivated to explore this further and came across a user interface design paradigm called "Direct Manipulation", which appeared very appropriate in the context of SensorNets, and thus conceived of DirectSense. I designed/implemented a prototype of DirectSense that served as a proof-of-concept user interface for Sensor Network Data Visualization, by applying the principles of Direct Manipulation.
    
    
  • [Advanced Distributed Systems, Project: Gear] In this project, I sought to study the research issues in the domain of Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs). I had little exposure to VANETs at the start of the course. The instructor brought up a discussion on VANETs during a lecture, and I was drawn towards the domain. I expressed interest in working on VANETs for the course project, and went from there to perform an extensive survey of research in VANETs and identified the open issues. I proposed a framework called Gear, a unified Geo-location based Publish/Subscribe architecture for supporting different classes of communication that may be commonly found to occur between vehicles constituting a VANET. The effectiveness of Gear was evaluated in different publish/subscribe scenarios through simulation (Eg: Traffic Status Alerts, Lane-Change Safety Application for Vehicle Collision Avoidance).
    
    
  • [Research Topics in HCI, Project Nectar] In collaboration with course instructor Prof. Scott Klemmer from the HCI group, I worked on building Nectar, an infrastructure to support field workers for effective collection of semi-structured data. The utility of Nectar was described in the specific context of patient data collection from remote rural areas of developing countries such as India. In addition, Nectar was architected to leverage and complement ButterflyNet, an existing infrastructure developed by the HCI group to enable mobile capture/access for field biologists.

• Research at Network Systems Lab (NSL), IIT Madras [May'02-Sep'04]
  After completing my B.Tech in CS at IIT Madras (May'02), I spent over two years at NSL, pursuing research under the guidance of Dr. S.V.Raghavan. In this period I published three papers in accredited international conferences:
  
  
  • Formal Description of Perfect Security [published at ICCC 2002] This paper seeks to describe security from a theoretical perspective. It provides a formal framework for analyzing the security of a standalone system and extends the formalism to a network of systems.
    
    
  • DEVISE [published at IEEE WETICE 2003] This paper presents DEVISE, a methodology for building Web Services based infrastructures for collaborative enterprises, comprising applications designed as a collection of Web Services and a Computer-Human Interface.
    
    
  • Sensors On Sea (SOS) [published at ICISIP 2004] This paper investigates the applicability of wireless sensors to ocean related disaster management, and proposes a system called Sensors On Sea (SOS) for this purpose. A detailed design and quantitative evaluation of the system are also included.

• Technical Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Apr'10-Present, Windows Phone Team

I work on building Cloud-based quality control infrastructures for automating development and verification of the mobile computing software platform from Microsoft. The focus is on seamless distribution and delivery of verification payloads at scale.
• Software Design Engineer, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Apr'06-Apr'10, Federated Web Services Security Team

I work on various aspects of Federated Web Services Security and am actively involved in adding support for Web Services standards for Federated Security such as WS-Federation. I also worked on the design/implementation of a Policy/Authorization Server for use in regulating access to Web Services from heterogeneous clients.
• Software Design Engineer Intern, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Jun'05-Sep'05, Web Services Security Team

Designed and implemented turnkey deployment use-cases illustrating native support for Federated Security, Custom Tokens, and Multi-Factor Authentication in the Web Services Protocol Stack of Microsoft. These were released with the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Beta2 SDK.
• Project Associate, Network Systems Lab (NSL), May'02-Sep'04, Integrated Computing Environment (ICE)

During my time as a researcher at NSL (May'02-Sep'04), I also worked on a challenging project of institution-wide scale and complexity called ICE. I actively participated in developing an action plan for revamping the complete IT infrastructure of IIT Madras; consolidating the existing resources and upgrading to next generation technologies in all spheres of IT-enabled operations of the institute. In addition, I was extensively involved in two sub-projects:
• IglooNet (Wireless Network for IIT Residence Zone): Proposal, Feasibility Analysis, Design, & Cost Evaluation
• ngDataCenter (Next Generation Data Center solution for IIT): Design & Pilot Implementation
• Project Intern, Motorola, Bangalore, , May '01-July '01, Bluetooth Service Stack Design and Development


• Implemented Device Discovery & Service Discovery Protocols in a Bluetooth device
• Implemented Business Card Exchange Application over Bluetooth Protocol Stack

• One among the 6 students receiving a Distinction in Research with the MSCS degree from Stanford University in the 2005-2006 academic year (a total of 140 MSCS degrees were conferred)
• Second Runner-up, US National Finals (representing the Northwest Region), Microsoft Imagine Cup 2005, Software Design Invitational
• Semi-finalist Finish, Microsoft Imagine Cup 2005, Technology Business Plan Invitational
• All India Runner-up, Asia-Pacific Semi-Finals, Microsoft Imagine Cup 2003, Software Design Invitational
• Special Award of Recognition from Microsoft for contribution to Academic Communities in India, MSDN Dev Nite 2003
• Young Achiever Award 2003 (Academics), Rotary Club of Madras Chenna Patna