Amruta Purandare

Resume/CV

Note: I am currently accepting freelance project assignments on short-term, temporary contract basis. Please feel free to get in touch for any projects or job opportunities. I am also open to discussing full-time employment and telecommute positions.

Education:

Bachelors in Computer Engineering (2002)
Pune University, India

Masters in Computer Science (2004)
University of Minnesota, USA

Masters in Intelligent Systems (2006)

University of Pittsburgh, USA

PhD Candidate in Intelligent Systems (2004-2008)

University of Pittsburgh, USA

Internships:

Employer: SONY Corporation (Tokyo, Japan)
Position: Summer Intern in Intelligent Systems Laboratory
Duration: 3 months (summer 2008)
Type of Industry: Consumer Electronics, Music, Entertainment

Employer: Amazon.com (Seattle, Washington)
Position: Summer Intern in Software Development and Engineering
Duration: 4 months (summer 2005)
Type of Industry: E-Commerce, Retail, Shopping

Academic Research Positions:

Research Staff – Singapore Management University (Singapore)
Division: Information Systems
Duration: 1 yr contract (2009)

Research Assistant – University of Pittsburgh
Division: Intelligent Systems Program
Duration: 3 yrs (2005-2008)

Research Intern – University of Southern California (USC)
Division: Information Sciences Institute
Duration: 3 months (summer 2007)

Research Assistant – University of Minnesota, Duluth
Department: Computer Science
Duration: 2 yrs (2002-2004)

Entrepreneurship:

Company: Devnaar.com (2010-Present)

Nature of Business: Technology consulting and production services in the areas of Semantic Web, E-Commerce, Business Analysis, Multimedia Design & Entertainment.

Projects & Portfolio: View presentation slides or watch video.

Professional Development Courses & Seminars:

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Division: UCLA Extension School - Business Essentials Program
Courses:

Essentials of Writing a Business Plan
Products & Services
Venture Capital
Business Strategy

Entrepreneurial Marketing
International Business

Mergers & Acquisitions

Stanford University
Division: Stanford Center for Professional Development
Seminars:

Strategic Innovation
Game Theory & Strategic Decision-Making
Data Mining for Social Networks

University of Southern California (USC)
Division: Marshall School of Business
Seminar: Leadership - Leading People, Leading Organizations

Cisco Entrepreneur Institute
Workshops:

iExec Enterprise Essentials
Entrepreneurial Mindset
Web 2.0
Growing a Business

Kauffman Foundation
Program: Entrepreneurial Mindset - Tapping your Entrepreneurial IQ
In partnership with Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI)

Awards & Scholarships:

eMindset Scholarship (July 2011)
Kauffman Foundation (USA)

People’s Choice Award (Feb 2006)
Graduate Student Poster Competition
University of Pittsburgh

India Foundation Scholarship (July 2002)
Sakal Foundation (Pune, India)

Best Outgoing Student (May 2002)
Cummins College of Engineering (Pune, India)

Full Scholarship with Financial Aid and Tuition Waiver to attend graduate degree programs (MS/PhD) from University of Minnesota (Duluth/Twin Cities), University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Alberta (Canada)

Publications:

Microsoft Academic Search Profile - http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/305219/amruta-purandare

Technology Innovations & Contributions:

1. Developed a novel algorithm for automatically detecting and analyzing humor in comedy television show FRIENDS. This work was published in one of the top international conferences in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) and presented in Sydney, Australia in July 2006.

2. Developed Text/Web Mining algorithms to automatically collect data about famous artists and celebrities from web documents. This project was done at SONY Corporation, Japan during summer 2008 internship program.

3. Developed Data Mining algorithms to automatically organize product items based on the similarity of their features and product descriptions. This project was done at Amazon.com during summer 2005 internship program.

4. Developed Data Analytics algorithms for predicting the email reply order for Automatic Email Prioritization. This research was conducted in Singapore Management University as part of the Defense Science Organization (DSO) research grant.

5. Designed a Machine Learning framework for analyzing coherence in spoken conversations. This research was carried out at University of Pittsburgh and published in FLAIRS 2008 conference held in Miami, Florida.

6. Worked in the research group of Dr. Diane Litman at University of Pittsburgh to help develop a Speech & Dialog-based Intelligent Tutoring System. The project explored applications of Artificial Intelligence in Education.

7. Implemented semantics demo for analyzing similarities and relations between entities (words or lexical terms) in natural language texts. This project was done at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of University of Southern California (USC) during summer 2007.

8. Won 2nd Prize in Artificial Intelligence & Fuzzy Logic at Concepts-2001, technical/research paper presentation competition organized by Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), India in association with IEEE. The paper presented a prototype model for a language understanding system using parsing and logical inference.

[See project summaries for details]