I am currently a Research Scientist at Google. My interests are in thinking beyond clicks -- Developing a rigorous, multi-scale approach to understanding the web user, by combining the benefits of eye-tracking, cursor-tracking and click log analyses. Potential applications of my work include fast and scalable evaluation of design, content and ad effectiveness, beyond existing click-based solutions. My work leverages techniques from Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Psychology.

Before joining Google, I spent two fascinating years at Yahoo! Research in the MicroEconomics and Social Systems group headed by Preston McAfee. In particular, I was a member of the Internet Experience Group headed by Elizabeth Churchill, where I was introduced to Human Computer Interaction. Apart from the fun of learning how things work in the web industry, I had the good fortune of interacting and collaborating with very smart and humble Computer Scientists and Economists. 

Beyond publications and patents, one of my key accomplishments while at Yahoo! Research was that I co-developed a state-of-the-art dynamic, adaptable, learning system that works in unconstrained environments. This system is now 2 years old, and continues to fill me with delight. My collaborator Debo and I named the system Aparajita -- a sanskrit word meaning "one that cannot be conquered/defeated". (yep, this is my daughter.) 

In a past life, prior to joining Yahoo! Research in July 2010, I was a researcher in Computational Neuroscience. In my postdoc at Caltech, I was mentored by Pietro PeronaChristof Koch and Antonio Rangel, with whom I worked on neurally plausible models of human visuo-economic decision making and visual search. During my postdoc, I also had a chance to collaborate with folks at University Rochester and Harvard. Our work was published in PNAS, Nature Neuroscience, NIPS, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Vision. 

I secured a Ph.D. in Computer Science from USC in Fall 2006. I was Laurent Itti's first Ph.D. student and enjoyed working with him on models of visual attention. Our work in this area was published in Neuron (spotlight, and Faculty of 1000 citation), Vision Research, Journal of Vision, NIPS, and CVPR.

I got a Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Kharagpur in 2001. These years were memorable. Among other things, I met my husband, Debo.

You can find my CV here. 

List of my publications is here.