About Me

Everything I've wanted you to know about me but could never get you to ask!

I come from Bangalore, India. I received a Phd in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2008. I graduated in 1999 with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

I'm currently trying to teach myself German. It's a fun exercise, and it helps that I spent some time in Berlin. I listen to a lot of music -- mainly any type I can get my hands on, although I'm partial to classical music. I also sing with the University Chorale. Come check out one of our quarterly concerts!

I read a lot -- practically anything but pulp fiction. I interpret that to include comics & cartooning -- some classic favorites include the Far Side, Bloom County, Doonesbury from atleast a decade ago. These days, I've acquired a taste for web comics (the obligatory link to Phd). Sometimes I'm inspired to take up caricaturing and/or cartooning, and for the next couple of weeks strange sketches start appearing on the whiteboards in my office.

I've recently rediscovered the geek in me -- messing around with ruby and css to customise my own personal information management system, a system that I highly recommend for its combination of simplicity and tremendous impact on productivity. I'd also love to know what your favourite life-hacks are.

Somewhere near the top of my todo list is running a half-marathon. It's getting increasingly likely as time passes. Like most people in the happy happy nature place that is the NorthWest, I occasionally indulge in outdoorsy activities like hiking, running, skiing, and driving to the closest Starbucks indie coffee shop. Mmm, coffee...

Someday I will have some actual content here. Till then, you can look at some pictures, or see what's new.

What's New

• May 2011 My first neuroscience journal article. Really hoping the next ones come out faster!
• May 2011 Singing with the Pacific Camerata! Renaissance/Baroque music, good to be back.
• Apr 2011 Softball in the spring! The department team (earthpigs) made it to the consolation playoffs..
• Jan 2011 Best of times/ worst of times and all that. It's been a fascinating year, and I'm quite hopeful for this year's prospects.
• Nov 2010 Annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Postered there, as is becoming the norm now :)
• Aug 2010 My first neuroscience paper, to appear at NIPS 2010! Took long enough, here's hoping the next one(s) come out faster.
• Apr 2010 Playing with the cogsci softball team Earthpigs! Another step towards being a jock.
• Feb 2010 Presenting a poster at COSYNE 2010! Another step towards being a neuroscientist.
• Jan 2010 New year, new job, new hopes and plans! I'm a postdoc in cognitive science at UCSD, working with Angela Yu. Here's to 2010 :)
• Oct 2009 My first ever talk at the annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting!
• Jul 2009 In San Diego for two months, visiting the Department of Cognitive Science.
• Apr 2009 Sitting in on two classes: NeuBeh503 (cognitive and systems neuroscience) and Quantitative Methods in Psychology. Also finally learning to swim!
• Mar 2009 Performed Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms with the Cascadian Chorale. A gorgeous piece of music. In other news, the Parody Bits (aka CSE Band) performed for the prospective grad students.
• Feb 2009 Sitting in on Neuroanatomy (neubeh502) and Psy506 (core concepts in cognitive science). Also going to COSYNE 2009, the computational and systems neuroscience meeting.
• Dec 2008 In San Diego to participate in my first set of fMRI experiments!
• Oct 2008 Sitting in on two neuroscience classes: NeuBeh501 (molecular and cellular neurobiology), and Psy448 (neuroscience of vision).
• Sep 27, 2008 The CSE Band will perform at the pit party for members and friends of CSE, and to welcome the new grad students!
• Sep 2008 Visiting the Daw Lab in new york city. Dear god, NYC is so expensive.
• Aug 2008 Attended an NSF panel in Princeton. Look ma, I'm all growed up now.
• Jun 2008 I am now a postdoc at UW CSE. I'm hoping to focus more intensively on neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
• May 16, 2008 Come to the CSE Band TGIF! We have new songs, it'll be great.
• May 2008 Traveling to Saarbrucken to visit the Max Planck Institute.
• Apr 2008 Spent some time in Florence for CHI, and in Bangalore for fun.
• Mar 2008 The CSE Band has been resurrected! Our premiere performance was at the prospective student visit day.
• Mar 13, 2008 I successfully defended my thesis! I shall henceforth be known as Herr Doktor.
• Mar 2008 Poster at CVPR. Alaska in the summer!
• Feb 2008 In Salt Lake City for COSYNE (the conference on computational and systems neuroscience).
• Dec 2007 Two papers at CHI 2008! Looking forward to Florence in the spring.
• Dec 2007 Three choral concerts! I sang with the University Chorale and the Recital Choir this quarter, with rehearsals every day.
• Nov 3-7, 2007 My first SfN (Society for Neuroscience) meeting, at San Diego. With 25,000 38,000 people it promises to be a hoot. And maybe I'll even learn something!
• Oct 2007 Put up some travel pictures on the interweb. Let me know if you see something you like.
• Jun 2007 I'm continuing with my voice lessons, after a long break.
• May 2007 I'm now associated with the idea of subconscious Human-Aided computing! This is work Desney and I did at MSR.
• May 2007 In Hawaii for the Neural Engg conference and to present two papers.
• Jan-Mar 2007 I will be interning at Microsoft Research, with Desney Tan.
• Dec 2006 The Brain-controlled Humanoid Robot has been getting some press recently.
• Sep 2006 Time for my annual summer migration to Europe! I spent some time in Finland, Austria and Germany, also in the process presenting my paper at the BCI conference in Graz.
• May 22, 2006 We sing songs of War and Peace, at the Meany theater, 7:30pm. We are now an "internationally touring choir", having just returned from Victoria, BC!
• Apr 2006 TAing the new course on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). We will read representative papers in both invasive and noninvasive BCIs, and explore SOTA techniques in BCI research.
• Mar 9&10 2006 Singing Mozart's Mass in C Minor at the Meany Hall with the U. Symphony, in celebration of Wolfgang's 250th birthday. This is a recent completion of Mozart's incomplete score by Robert F. Levin, and is some truly enjoyable music. Come join us!
• Jan 2006 Paper on adaptivity in the Berlin BCI accepted to Journal of Neural Engineering!
• Dec 2005 At the NIPS conference in Vancouver. It is hands down the coolest computer science related conference there is (although SIGGRAPH does come close). To be followed by a visit to the old motherland!
• Oct 2005 This is what I do for a living! My first time as a Brain-Computer Interface subject in the Berlin BCI , controlling that cursor by thoughts alone. Look ma, no hands!
• July 2005 Who says computer science types don't have fun? I experimented with poster layouts for the AAAI conference, and finally settled on a spiral layout for the poster. Take a look! (And here's a slightly bigger version)
• June 2005 Lots of traveling coming up: Albany NY in mid-june for the BCI International Meeting, Pittsburgh PA early july for the AAAI conference, and back to Deutschland in late July for a 3 month trip. And from there, onwards thru Europe! I could use some travel companions, though...
• May 2005 U. Chorale Spring Concert, titled Songs of the Open Road, and appropriately enough we had a mini-concert-tour of Portland, Olympia and Tacoma. A singing Pradeep is a happy Pradeep!
• May 2005 Paper on classifying EMG for prosthetic devices accepted to AAAI 2005!
• Apr 2005 Spending a month in Deutschland at the Fraunhofer Institute, Berlin. A good chance to pick up some German! (I mean the language, of course. What were you thinking?)
• Mar 2005 Singing with the UW Combined Choir & Symphony concert, titled "Romantic Masters: Brahms and Verdi", at Meany Hall.
• Dec 2004 Vancouver and Whistler for the NIPS conference.
• Flash From The Past -- this is a play written by Sorin Lerner, the only play I have ever acted in. Needless to say it was a stellar performance!
• Oct 2004 Pumpkin carving for halloween!
• Sep 2004 Trip to Austria for the BCI '04 workshop. Saw Vienna, Salzburg (Mozart's birthplace) and Graz (Arnold Schwarzenegger's birthplace)....and Rigoletto at the Wien opera house!
• Aug 2004 Poster on graphical models for BCI accepted to NIPS 2004!
• Aug 2004 Check out the cool videos of the EMG-driven robotic arm!
• Jan 2004 More voice lessons (I'm finally beginning to get the hang of singing!), lindy hop, and university choir. Coming up: Mar 11/12 UW combined chorus and symphony concert at Meany Theater. Also my voice class recital on 13th March at Brechemin. yay!
• Dec 08, 2003 My brother Sandeep gets married! Welcome to the family Rashmi!
• Oct '03 Taking voice lessons this quarter. And a real eye-opener it is, too....singing is *hard*, and a lot of work and thought goes into a performance. Still, oodles of fun for free. Its good to be in grad school and have someone else pay for your indulgences :)
• Sep '03 Moving to the new department building! It's been long in the waiting but it should be worth it!
• Aug '03 Sang of "Summer Pleasures" with the University Chorale. Light summery funstuff.
• Jul '03 Enjoying the gorgeous Seattle summer, although it is a wee bit too hot. Been busy sampling from the huge variety of outdoor activities the Northwest is famous for -- canoeing, jet skiing, hiking, camping, whitewater rafting, it's all good stuf!
• Jul '03 Our EEG capture equipment is here! One step closer to pushing the envelope on brain-computer interfacing research :).
• Jun '03 Sang in not one but TWO concerts---June 5 at Meany Theater with University Singers, and June 6 at Kane Hall with Unleashed. Lotsa singing and mostly fun.
• Apr '03 Joining the University Singers -- it's a campus choir. We're singing "world music" this quarter.Demo on navigable XML query results accepted to SIGMOD 2003!
• Dec 11 Unleashed Winter A Capella Concert! We had a whale of a time, and I think the audience liked it too...one of 'em said "It was great, even pradeep!" :) I think I'm beginning to like this a capella thing :)
• Dec 7 Caroling in downtown Seattle for figgy pudding--loads of  fun! This was with Unleashed--an a capella group at UW.  In case you are wondering what a capella is, click on the horses!
• Sep '02 Drove up from SF to Seattle via Mt. Hood, Crater lake, Columbia river--yes I know that is not the shortest path up :) My first taste of how many thousands of square miles in the US can look totally uninhabited...and still have people living in the middle of it :)
• Sep '02 Went biking from Seattle to Vancouver. That's 180 miles in 2.5 days on an untrained posterior -- ouch! :) But it was fun :)