Biography:Anima Anandkumar

From HandWiki
Short description: Researcher and Professor of computing
Anima Anandkumar
Alma materIndian Institute of Technology Madras (BS)
Cornell University (MS, PhD)
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of California Irvine
California Institute of Technology
ThesisScalable Algorithms for Distributed Statistical Inference (2009)
Doctoral advisorLang Tong

Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar is the Bren Professor of Computing at California Institute of Technology. Previously, she was a director of Machine Learning research at NVIDIA. Her research considers tensor-algebraic methods, deep learning and non-convex problems.

Education and early career

Anandkumar was born in Mysore. Her parents are both engineers, and her grandfather was a mathematician.[1] Her great-great-grandfather was the Sanskrit scholar R. Shamasastry. She began to study Bharatanatyam and she learnt this style of dancing for many years.[2] She studied electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and graduated in 2004.[1] She joined Cornell University for her graduate studies, earning a PhD under the supervision of Lang Tong in 2009. Her first project looked at distributed statistical estimation.[3] She was an IBM Fellow at Cornell University between 2008 and 2009. Her thesis considered Scalable Algorithms for Distributed Statistical Inference.[2] During her PhD she worked in the networking group at IBM on end-to-end service-level transactions. She was a postdoctoral scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 2010, where she worked in the Stochastic Systems Group with Alan Willsky.[4]

Research

In 2010 Anandkumar joined University of California, Irvine, as an assistant professor. At the time, the technology industry was at the beginning of the big data revolution. Here she started working on tensor decompositions of latent variable models.[5] She joined Microsoft Research in New England as a visiting scientist in 2012. In 2013 she was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to investigate big data and social networks.[6] She was made an assistant professor with tenure at UC Irvine in 2016.[7] She specialised in large-scale machine learning and high-dimensional statistics.[8] Anandkumar was a Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services from 2016 to 2018.[9] She worked with the Apache MXNet tool, introducing new functionality and developing multi-modal processing algorithms.[9][10] She represented Amazon Web Services at the Anita Borg Institute in 2017, the Mulan forum for Chinese women entrepreneurs and Shaastra in 2018, discussing Deep Learning.[11][12] She also worked on Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Lex and Amazon Polly. She was involved with the launch of Amazon SageMaker, an opportunity for developers to use machine learning models.[12] Anandkumar joined the Machine Learning Conference Board of Advisors in 2018.[13] In 2018 Anandkumar joined NVIDIA as Director of Machine Learning Research, and Caltech as the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences.[9][14][15] At NVIDIA she opened a new core laboratories in artificial intelligence and machine learning in Santa Clara.[16][17] She has pushed for governments to invest in robotics and artificial intelligence.[18] She spoke at the 2018 TEDxIndiana University about the algorithms she has developed to process big data.[19][20]

Diversity in technology

Anandkumar is committed to improving diversity in the technology sector. She launched a petition to Timothy A. Gonsalves to try and convince him at the Ministry of Human Resource Development to end gender segregation in the admissions process at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.[21] The petition calls for campus-wide systems to monitor sexual harassment, improved campus security and increased engagement with alumni.[21][22] She has spoken openly about her own experiences of sexual harassment on social media and called for Intel to stop using female acrobats as entertainment at their conference parties.[23] She was one of several campaigners to rename the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems 'NIPS' as NeurIPS.[24] In 2018 she was awarded a The New York Times Good Tech Award.[25]

Controversies

In December 2020, Anandkumar was embroiled in a Twitter controversy, when she published a list of individuals who allegedly followed, liked or supported any Tweets made by Prof Pedro Domingos allegedly in relation to his controversial views on the renaming of NeurIPS, Timnit Gebru's controversial exit at Google, algorithmic bias or cancel culture, or simply followed him on Twitter. She never clarified how she actually came up with that list.[26] She suggested that followers "try and change the mind of [these] fanboys of Pedro[...] Especially junior people".[27] Following prompt backlash from individuals concerned about the circulation of such a blacklist, Anandkumar deactivated her Twitter account temporarily and issued an apology stating "I am by no means perfect. I am sorry if my actions/words have ever created a threatening environment. My intention was to change hearts and minds, and to raise awareness to the struggles that women and minorities face both online and in the real world. I will find better ways to achieve that goal".[28]

Awards and honors

Anandkumar has won several awards and honours, including:[29]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Contributors". IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 54 (7): 3371–3382. 2008. doi:10.1109/TIT.2008.924739. ISSN 0018-9448. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Animashree., Anandkumar (2009). Scalable algorithms for distributed statistical inference. OCLC 458398906. 
  3. ↑ "Anima Anandkumar". http://www.deeplearningindaba.com/anima-anandkumar.html. 
  4. ↑ "Anima Anandkumar". http://www.widsconference.org/anima-anandkumar.html. 
  5. ↑ Anandkumar, Anima; Ge, Rong; Hsu, Daniel; Kakade, Sham M.; Telgarsky, Matus (2012-12-08). Tensor Decompositions for Learning Latent Variable Models. Fort Belvoir, VA. doi:10.21236/ada604494. Bibcode: 2012arXiv1210.7559A. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "NSF Award Search: Award#1251267 - BIGDATA: Small: DA: DCM: Measurement and Learning in Large-Scale Social Networks". https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1251267. 
  7. ↑ "Anima Anandkumar". http://datascience.uci.edu/portfolio-items/anima-anandkumar/. 
  8. ↑ "Speakers | UCLA Anderson School of Management". http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/centers/easton-technology-management-center/events/ces-2019/ces-2017/speakers. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "In the Research Spotlight: Anima Anandkumar". 2017-05-16. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/in-the-research-spotlight-anima-anandkumar/. 
  10. ↑ Lorica, Ben (2017-03-09). "Deep learning that's easy to implement and easy to scale". https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/deep-learning-thats-easy-to-implement-and-easy-to-scale. 
  11. ↑ Amazon Web Services, Distributed Deep Learning, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-0NsApwxGU, retrieved 2019-01-07 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Sugandha Lahoti (2018-09-01). "Anima Anandkumar, the machine learning guru behind AWS bids adieu to AWS". https://hub.packtpub.com/anima-anandkumar-the-machine-learning-guru-behind-aws-bids-adieu-to-aws/. 
  13. ↑ Courtney (2018-07-06). "Dr. Anima Anandkumar has Joined the MLconf Board of Advisors!". https://mlconf.com/dr-anima-anandkumar-has-joined-the-mlconf-board-of-advisors/. 
  14. ↑ "Anima Anandkumar | Research". https://research.nvidia.com/person/anima-anandkumar. 
  15. ↑ "Caltech Celebrates Newest Cohort of Named Professors | Caltech". http://www.caltech.edu/content/caltech-celebrates-newest-cohort-named-professors. 
  16. ↑ NVIDIA, Research at NVIDIA: New Core AI and Machine Learning Lab, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFGGksGUVcg, retrieved 2019-01-07 
  17. ↑ Daily-AI (2018-11-30). "NVIDIA Opening Core AI and ML Research Lab in Santa Clara". https://daily-ai.com/nvidia-opening-core-ai-and-ml-research-lab-in-santa-clara/. 
  18. ↑ "Dr. Anima Anandkumar". https://www.worldgovernmentsummit.org/annual-gathering/2018/speakers/636537495900634483-dr-anima-anandkumar. 
  19. ↑ "Home". https://tedxindianauniversity.com/. 
  20. ↑ "'From Ashes We Rise' TEDxIU talk to feature six speakers". https://www.idsnews.com/article/2018/10/a-variety-of-professionals-to-speak-at-tedxiu. 
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Ghosh, Shubhangi (2018-01-18). "Shaastra Spotlight Interviews: Anima Anandkumar". http://www.t5eiitm.org/2018/01/shaastra-spotlight-interviews-anima-anandkumar/. 
  22. ↑ "More girl students to get admission in IITs from 2018". The Economic Times. 2017-04-15. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/services/education/more-girl-students-to-get-admission-in-iits-from-2018/articleshow/58197318.cms. 
  23. ↑ Simonite, Tom (2018-08-17). "AI Is the Future—But Where Are the Women?". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-researchers-gender-imbalance/. Retrieved 2019-01-07. 
  24. ↑ Simonite, Tom (2018-10-26). "AI Researchers Fight Over Four Letters: NIPS". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-letters-nips/. Retrieved 2019-01-07. 
  25. ↑ Roose, Kevin (2018-12-21). "The 2018 Good Tech Awards". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/technology/year-in-technology-2018.html. 
  26. ↑ Soper, Taylor (16 December 2020). "Retired UW computer science professor embroiled in Twitter spat over AI ethics and 'cancel culture'". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/retired-uw-computer-science-professor-embroiled-twitter-spat-ai-ethics-cancel-culture/. 
  27. ↑ "Archive of Twitter comments, now deleted.". https://twitter.com/AnimaAnandkumar/status/1338282250614411264. 
  28. ↑ "My heartfelt apology". https://anima-ai.org/2020/12/16/my-heartfelt-apology/. 
  29. ↑ "Anima Anandkumar | Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing". 22 September 2016. https://simons.berkeley.edu/people/anima-anandkumar. 
  30. ↑ "Global computing association names 57 fellows for outstanding contributions that propel technology today". Association for Computing Machinery. January 18, 2023. https://www.acm.org/media-center/2023/january/fellows-2022. 
  31. ↑ "Caltech Computing + Mathematical Sciences | News | Anima Anandkumar Elevated to IEEE Fellow". https://cms.caltech.edu/news/1372. 
  32. ↑ "NVIDIA Leaders Honored at VentureBeat Transform 'Women in AI Awards'". 17 July 2020. https://news.developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-leaders-honored-at-venturebeat-transform-women-in-ai-awards/. 
  33. ↑ "Google Research Awards: Fall 2015". 12 February 2016. http://ai.googleblog.com/2016/02/google-research-awards-fall-2015.html. 
  34. ↑ "Anandkumar receives AFOSR Young Investigator Award | Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems". 22 January 2015. https://cml.ics.uci.edu/2015/01/anima-anandkumar-receives-afosr-young-investigator-award/. 
  35. ↑ Anandkumar, Anima. "Office Hour with Anima Anandkumar (UC Irvine): Big data conference: Strata + Hadoop World, March 13 - 16, 2017, San Jose, CA". https://conferences.oreilly.com/strata/strata-ca-2017/public/schedule/detail/58431. 
  36. ↑ "Anandkumar Receives 'Early-Career' Sloan Research Fellowship | Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems". 20 February 2014. https://cml.ics.uci.edu/2014/02/anandkumar-receives-early-career-sloan-research-fellowship/. 
  37. ↑ "Microsoft Research Names Anima Anandkumar a Faculty Fellow | The Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine". http://engineering.uci.edu/news/2013/6/microsoft-research-names-anima-anandkumar-faculty-fellow. 
  38. ↑ "Honors and Awards". http://acsp.ece.cornell.edu/honors.html. 
  39. ↑ Anandkumar, Animashree; Tong, Lang (October 2007). "Type-Based Random Access for Distributed Detection Over Multiaccess Fading Channels". IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 55 (10): 5032–5043. doi:10.1109/tsp.2007.896302. ISSN 1053-587X. Bibcode: 2007ITSP...55.5032A. 



Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Biography:Anima_Anandkumar&oldid=3405367"