Our work on cloud performance management was recently awarded the Test-of-Time award at the ACM/IFIP Middleware Conference held this December at Vanderbilt University. The award is given for a paper that appeared at the conference 10 years or so back and that is considered to have had the greatest impact on the field, be this […]
What I Learned of Computer Science from my Civil Engineering Dad
My Dad is a retired Civil Engineer. He worked most of his professional life for the federal Government of India, for its telecommunications organization (Department of Post and Telecommunications, later split off into Department of Telecommunications). He built countless buildings that housed telephone exchanges, telecommunication network equipment, offices for the organization, and housing quarters for […]
AI Regulation is an Oxymoron No More
California just passed a slew of laws meant to direct development of generative AI tools towards the greater good. Once again, California is taking the lead in belling the cat where ideally we would want legislation to come at the federal level. In this article, I will look at the rationale behind two of these […]
GenAI for Computing Careers: A Sunny Take
A slightly shorter version of this article first appeared in the Times of India on September 24, 2025. Much ink has been spilled discussing what the career prospects are for a CS graduate in this day and age where generative AI has upturned our world. Much of that ink has predicted a gloomy outlook. Here […]
Delightfully Losing One’s Way in Italy: Part 2
For the second half of our travel in Italy, we head further south from Naples, to make Sorrento our base. Another ferry ride, another hour and a half of gazing at the serene brilliant blue water of the Bay of Naples, only broken by the wake of the ferry’s engine. Then we arrive at Sorrento’s […]
Delightfully Losing One’s Way in Italy
My ruminations and bold conclusions are based on a single trip of our family to southern Italy, of two weeks. So the data is sparse and the conclusions would not pass the hypothesis test of even the most sophomoric statistician. But let me indulge in the pleasure of jumping to wild conclusions with little data. […]
The Case for a Public Education
This is the time of the year when about 4 million high-schoolers, and their frazzled parents, will be considering the important, arguably life-changing, decision about which college to enroll in. The well-prepared will have a wealth of desirable choices to choose from, while many others will be staring at a small set of unenviable choices. […]
AI Security Work Is Best Done In Academia or Industry? (2/2)
We left off the last part with arguments for why industry has become the place for major leaps in AI, though with several notable exceptions, both historical and ongoing. In this part, we will consider the counter points that make it attractive for doing AI security work in academic lanes and bylanes. Doubtless, a best-of-both-worlds […]
AI Security Work Is Best Done In Academia or Industry? (1/2)
A question that has been asked in our circles for a few years is what is the best place to do AI research, academia or industry. An insightful Science article from 2023 by Neil Thompson and colleagues at MIT shed light on part of this question in their article “The growing influence of industry in […]
The British Stiff Upper Lip Cracks into a Smile
I was in London for all of two and a half days and while the trip was centered around an official event (an awards ceremony), I packed into the rest my jaunt through London institutions that have fascinated me for long. I managed to pack in that, a whirlwind tour of obeisance to the home […]
Distant Whispers from an Academic Engineer's World 