Hi, I am Nafisa!
I am a software engineer and a passionate coder with an inclination to data systems, databases, and data in general. I love solving challenging problems, optimizing systems, analyze data to build new systems or improve existing ones, and solving production issues by critically analyzing and debugging several connecting systems with a race against time. While I enjoy my work very much, I love to sketch and do volunteering at different places during my leisure time.
Regarding my background, I have a Master of Mathematics (MMath) in Computer Science degree from the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at University of Waterloo, supervised by Prof. Semih Salihoglu. I completed my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2016.
Contact Info
Email: anzumnafisa13 <at> gmail <dot> com
Find me on: Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn
Work Experience
Software Engineer (Full-time), Presto Automation Inc.
May 2022 to PRESENT
Worked as a back-end software engineer to develop REST API based applications, designed underlying databases, improved performance on existing systems, developed application to consume customer menu (reverse engineer on their system) and automation, designed and developed ETL services, monitor and solve any issue related to production systems.
Platform Engineer (Part-time), Presto Automation Inc.
March 2022 to April 2022 (20hr/week)
Developed serverless lambda applications and improved performance of existing applications
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Waterloo
September 2018 to April 2022
Courses:
CS 638: Principles of Data Management and Use (Fall’21),
CS 348: Introduction to Database Systems (Winter’21, Spring’20, Winter’20, Fall’19, Spring’19),
CS 338: Computer Applications in Business: Databases (Spring’21, Winter'22),
CS 240 (Fall’20), CS136 (Winter’19), CS115 (Fall’18)
Software Engineer, iPay Systems Limited
February 24, 2016 to March 8, 2018
Worked as a full-stack developer to develop REST API based back-end applications, AI based data analytic systems, fully developed advanced CRM, and front-end applications.
Selected Publications
“R2GSync and Edge Views: Practical RDBMS to GDBMS Synchronization”
Nafisa Anzum, Semih Salihoglu
4th Joint International Workshop on Graph Data Management Experiences & Systems (GRADES) and Network Data Analytics (NDA) GRADES-NDA'21, June 2021
“KTabulator: Interactive Ad hoc Table Creation using Knowledge Graphs”
Steven Xia, Nafisa Anzum, Semih Salihoglu, Jian Zhao
Proc. of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (SIGCHI), May 2021
“GraphWrangler: An Interactive Graph View on Relational Data”
Nafisa Anzum, Semih Salihoglu, Daniel Vogel.
Proc. ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD) (Demonstration Track), June 2019
Selected Projects
KTabulator, Research project, University of Waterloo, 2020
An interaction system to gather data in a tabular format from Wikipedia and DBpedia.
Technologies: React
R2GSync, MMath Thesis project, University of Waterloo, 2020
An automatic system to synchronize a GDBMS with the source RDBMS
Technologies: Java, GraphflowDB
GraphWrangler, MMath Thesis project, University of Waterloo, 2019
A system that allows users to connect to an RDBMS and within a few clicks extract graphs out of their tabular data, visualize and explore these graphs, and automatically generate scripts for their ETL pipelines. GraphWrangler adopts the predictive interaction framework and internally uses a data transformation language that is a limited subset of SQL. A demonstration video can be found here.
Technologies: Node.js, AngularJS, MySQL
Academic Excellence and Awards
University of Waterloo Entrance Scholarship, 2020 - 2021.
Selected to attend CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women, April 2020.
University of Waterloo Entrance Scholarship, 2018 - 2019.
ICCIT 2016 Conference Award.
Travel grant scholarship of Grace Hopper Celebration India, 2014.
Inter-Department Database Project Show, Honourable Mention, 2014.
Dean’s List Award in four out of four levels of undergraduate study.
University Merit List Scholarships for excellent results in seven out of eight terms.
Bangladesh Government Scholarship–S.S.C. (General, 2008) and Junior (General, 2005).
Volunteering Activities
Volunteer tutor, House of Friendship, Waterloo (2023 - present)
Volunteer, Pet Petrol (cat shelter), Wallenstein (2023 - present)
Graduate Student Representative, Women in Computer Science, University of Waterloo (2020 - 2022)
Founder and coordinator, Inspiring Female Buetian Book Club (2020-2022)
Invited Reviewer, Fourteenth International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies (UBICOMM 2020)
Recent Activities
October 23, 2021: Our demo paper "Demonstration of GRainDB: A Relational-core Graph-Relational DBMS" got accepted on CIDR 2021!
June 20, 2021: Presented our paper "R2GSync and Edge Views: Practical RDBMS to GDBMS Synchronization" on GRADES-NDA 2021 @SIGMOD. Slides
June 20-25, 2021: I will be attending SIGMOD 2021.
June 08, 2021: Presented our work on 2021 WHJIL Workshop
May 12 and 13, 2021: Presented my first CHI Paper!
May 8-13, 2021: Attending Virtual CHI 2021.
April 26, 2021: Workshop paper accepted on GRADES-NDA'21!
April 09, 2021: Held my first PhD seminar. Details are here: Link.
Me These Days ...
Currently Reading: Awareness (Author: Anthony de Mello), Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age (Author: William Powers)
Currently Watching: Squid Game, MAID, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths
Recently Finished:
Books: The Art of Letting Go, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Author: Sherry Turkle)
Talks and Documentaries: David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Tiger King, Street Food, Rotten
Web Series: Sex Education, Anne with an E
And of course, I am sketching and painting! Check out my latest artwork on my Instagram (nafisa.anzum)