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January 30th 2006
Happy new year. A rather late update. I just got the news that our poster and paper titled, " Gesture Based Hand Movement Analysis and Haptic Feedback for Surgical Training", co-authored by myself Kanav Kahol, Dr. Mark Smith from Banner, Priyamvada Tripathi, Dr. John Ferrara from Banner, Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan and Dr. Alan Leibowitz from Banner got selected as one of the best posters in the conferences titled, "Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 14" which was held in Long Beach California from Jan 24th to Jan 27th 2006. That was just great given the high calibre of paperes at the conference as well as this being our first attempt at publishing in the surgical simulation domain. I am grateful to the team from Banner who have been a wonderful support. This is my first Best anything award and It has come at a great time given that I am defending my thesis on Feb 8th 2006. The next update will be on Feb 9th 2006.
November 4th 2005
Proposal I helped my advisor write titled SGER: Incorporation of Psychological Basis of Haptics in the Design of Assistive Haptic User Interfaces just got funded. Wow I finally managed to write something that NSF liked. I feel great, humbled and also feel responsible to produce great results and just continue with this line of research. A word to all my collaborators. One thing I am truly proud of is that it is a group effort. Dr Homa who contributed immensely to the psycholgicla analysis aspect, Dr Hansford who bring in the CG aspect, Dr Panch with multimedia and engineering, Terri Hedgpeth who handles usability have all been equally responsible for this grant. I initiated the process but they have literally taken so much interest in the project. It is very heartening for me as a student to see senior proefssor work so hard and I can only hope that I can be like that too. A word for Laura, Troy, James who have worked with me and tolerated me for so long. Time to get back to work.
October 5th 2005
So a lot has been happenning. My talk in Washington went superbly well. I was amazed at the industrial design perspective on HCI and it was a great learning experience. Went to Italy: specifically Sorrento, Pompeii, Naples, Milan and Rome. My interest in ethics and arts has just started maturing and I couldnt be happier visiting Italy. Enjoyed each and every sculpture I saw and painting I observed. Photos with detailed explanation coming soon. Getting ready for my thesis defense. it is extremely challenging and I feel really stressed. BUt gotta do what I came here for. After that ... we will see. Oh and paper wise, i now have 23 publications! and have 3 submitted. The HUI special issue in IEEE Multimedia just received 30 submissions and I am very happy i could get that done.
August 20th 2005
Summer is almost over. Busy with lots of data collection. I got invited to give a talk on haptic user interfaces in medicine at Industrial Designers of America workshop on Human Factors and Industrial Design. I am honored to get this opportunity and being a student I hope I can live up to the task. Very happy that my paper in Psychonomics got accepted. Due to my increasing workload I am going to be concentrating on my project for sometime and ease up on the other projects. In the personal front, well enjoying reading Peter Singers anthology on ethics. As an engineer, that book has given me exciting insights into how to develop artificial computational engines. Something to try. On a purely philosophical level, it is very stimulating and has broadened my horizons on why and how human behavior emerges. Hence I hope that my conversations on ethics and philosophy will not be mere egotistical views on everyday occurences. Feel a little worked up but then who doesnt. Just planning to carry on.
July 20th 2005
Well a couple of news items. I got selected for Who's Who in America List. Feel kind happy although I know I shouldnt let it get to my head and it is just a material item. Also my course evaluations are out for Spring 2005 course. I actually did better than 2004 version. The course ratings bumped up to 4.32 and the instructor rating to 4.5 Thats pretty good for me. Looking forward to finishing Ayn Rands and get to reading Umberto Eco again. Vegas trip coming up next. Actually looking forward to the conference. seems like a good one. Edelman lecture will be the highlight.
July 9th 2005
So as promised the pictures from India are up on the photos page. I have also managed to write the India and the role of technology article. It is certainly not very controversial but in my intelligentsia circles has given rise to some great discussions. I am very happy with that ofcourse. Here is a hyperlink to it right now. I am going to design a page for it. I would love to hear any feedback on this.
My ASSETS 2005 paper on doctoral symposium got accepted damn happy about that. The paper from ICCV was rejected but the editors remarks were very pleasing. They said developing such a database is an interesting research direction and one that is not necessarily out of the scope of ICCV. However we needed to show more work, which is something I agree with. This pleased me that they were open to new ideas (something I have been convincing Troy that they will be..) What else been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rands (labeled as one of the greatest novel ever). Frankly finding it boring but will continue. Oh and purchased Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty which is just magnificent in its explanations of how beauty has been defined and understood over centuries. Just got another one of his novels. As soon as I am done with Atlas Shrugged I will pick these up.
June 24th 2005
I am back in town . India visit was great. I saw a lot of positive things in India this time, prosperity, growth, infrastructure, lesser corruption stuff I was really proud about. I am just hoping that I can write up something concrete about some of my observations on the socio-economic state of the country. Work is going full-steam now. I do have a my PREMi paper not being accepted report. Somethign I am not very happy about but will have to reserve my further comments based on the reviews. All a part of the learning game! I also visited CVPR 20005 in San Diego which was great. San Diego happens to be my favorite town. Tried pretty hard to meet up with Dr Ramachandran, one of the well-known neurologists. Pretty sure he didnt even read my mail! But no harm in trying I guess. Getting a little irritated with this hunting for job thing. But lets see. Oh and for pictures I should upload them very soon.
April 29th 2005
I finally got done with the comprehensive exams. I was very happy that my advisor liked my presentation and that Terri Hedgpeth who is a disability research specilast really applauded my presentation. It was very nice and humbling to hear this from her as it means a lot. Dr Panch was as usual very helpful. In fact my whole committee was just great who spared time from their schedules to read my 160 pager and help me improve my document. I did pass BTW. Oh and my paper to ACM Workshop on Multimedia information systems was accepted! Hopefully we will also manage to extend this to a journal paper. PS: Thanks to Pia for editing my research proposal and being a great colleague. Also Troy, Laura who have continually supported my research. A lot of my peers did attend which made me feel great also.
April 26th 2005
A couple of things to report. First i wrote my research proposal and have got it delivered to my committee. Working on my comps now. Also I found out that some professor in Fatih university is using my CSE 408 multimedia information systems to teach his class. He ofcourse acknowledges it. That was great for me. Oh and writing my third grant for NSF. Defending on 29th of April 2005. Also my paper for CVAVI 2005 got accepted today so thats great news!
March 20th 2005
I have scheduled my thesis defense to be on April 29th 2005. I hope to defend final thesis by November or October 2005. Having written the haptics white paper and other haptics paper plus all the work already done I am hoping I can stick to this timeline.
March 16th 2005
Dr Panch, Dr Li and Myself finally submitted the NIJ grant for sensor surveillance and biometrics. My work on motion analysis was a part of this grant. I also wrote the surveillance proposal. It is a grant for $900K and we were chosen from an initial pool for final submission. Hoping for the best. I have recently submitted four papers phew! ICCV 2005, CVAVI 2005, MIS2005 and PreMi 2005.
March 6th 2005
My grant for Universal access call got rejected :(. I was very dissapointed as I was hoping for a positive response. The reviews were good, very good and good and a competitive rating rom the panel. Given that it was written in 6 days I am not that dissapointed. We will re-submit the grant now in May3rd. I am hoping that now that we have published papers, made the first prototype and are working on the usability testing we will get a positive response this time.
March 4th 2005
A day of personal loss. My grandma passed away and it left me immensely hurt. I hope to contiue working and furthering her ambition and her desire to see me succeed.
March 1st 2005
Mayo Clinic visit. Went really well and we will be furthering our collaboration on neural rehabilitation. This will be in addition to the Attentional network modeling project with Dr Caselli.
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