ABOUT
I am passionate about researching computer networks, more specifically optimizing computer networks for video.
Video will be 82%
of all traffic on the internet by 2021 and computer networks are not ready for the monumental
amount of data that has to be sent in such a short time frame. I have been fortunate enough to have met some fantastic mentors through this
research [Mukund Iyengar, Sudhir (Sid) Ahuja, Victor Lawrence] and
we are in the midst of rolling out a startup company called BlinkCDN to commercialize our findings.
To find out more about my research check out the section below.
I am also a coordinator for the Stevens Venture Center’s
Hackathons. The SVC hosts three hackathons annually,
one
HealthTech Hackathon and two VentureHacks hackathons. The SVC HealthTech Hackathon is the
keynote hackathon the SVC holds. Its objective is find technology solutions to healthcare’s biggest problems, we
discover these problems with the help of our many sponsors. Some sponsors in the past have included Bristol Myers-Squibb,
Hackensack Meridian Health, and philips.
Applications are open to everyone ranging from High
School students to College students to experienced professionals. Part of my responsibility as Coordinator of the
hackathon is to meet and collaborate with these sponsors to find interesting problems that the participants can solve.
I am also in charge of planning, marketing and running the event. VentureHacks is a hackathon series with the goal of
empowering young Stevens students (freshman & sophomores). The hackathon is filled with interesting seminars and guest
speakers to inspire the participants and educate them on the connection between technology and entrepreneurship.
I am a part of the class of 2020 at Stevens Institute of Technology with a major in
Business and Technology and with
concentrations in Management and Information Systems. I am also graduating with a
Graduate Certificate in Software Engineering
from the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
at Stevens.
I am currently looking for graduate school opportunities in the tri-state area where I aspire to write my Master’s Thesis on optimizing wireless
networks for video.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Blink Intelligent Home Wi-Fi Router, Entrepreneurial Startup Project, Co-Founders Dr. Sudhir Ahuja & Dr. Mukund Iyengar
7/2018 - Present
-Implementing dynamic traffic shaping and policing to manage bandwidth for video applications
-Developing Statistical Classification Algorithm & using Packet Inspection to identify video streams
-Accepted as a portfolio company of the Stevens Venture Center, incubator of Stevens Institute
Computer Networks & Multimedia Optimization Research,
Verizon Sponsored Research, led by Bell Labs Fellows Dr. Victor Lawrence & Dr. Sudhir Ahuja
1/2017 - 6/2018
-Data analysis to identify performance improvements in video delivery (MPEG-DASH, HLS, WebRTC, etc)
-Developed prototype content delivery network using Go that tracks video on a world wide scale
Rooms for Humanity, Not for Profit Research Project, led by Professor Dr. Mukund Iyengar
9/2017 - 4/2018
-Developed WebRTC based, peer to peer in browser video chatting platform that minimizes AWS costs
-Analyzed how interactive multimedia traffic is different from standard traffic (QUIC/UDP, RTP)
-Hosted over 700 chats, 200 of them being international since launch in August 2018
Hackathon Director, Stevens Venture Center
1/2018 - Present
-Promote, manage and run one
HealthTech Hackathon and two
VentureHacks Hackathons annually
-Introduced themed hackathons + keynote speakers for VentureHacks
-Manage an annual budget of over $40K with sponsorship from
Bristol Myers-Squibb,
philips, etc.
RESEARCH
I started researching computer networks the winter of my freshman year because of a
Verizon research contract. The partnership with
Verizon was an 18 month,
$450K research
sponsorship to look into video networks. The following spring was mostly spent as a learning experience for me and the
other undergraduate student on the team (
Charles Bethin).
Mukund and
Sid taught us about computer networks, video and how it is transported. I read a lot of great research
papers like,
Resilient Overlay Networks and
A Case for a Coordinated Internet Video Control Plane.
I also learned a lot about
video compression and how that effects how video
is sent. We then started researching MPEG-DASH and a Masters Student (
Sushant Mongia) setup an MPEG-DASH server and
client hosted in our lab. I performed a lot of experiments on the effectiveness of MPEG-DASH and it lead
to the conclusion of that MPEG-DASH causes too much overhead then is required and that video should not be transported with TCP,
but instead UDP. Over the summer, I helped code a CDN that was controlled by a centralized control plane that we called
the Oracle node. This CDN provided me valuable knowledge in coding with go-lang, applying networking concepts and the linux operating system.
In fall 2018 we pivoted to created a low latency video chatting application with
webrtc.
We called this chat system blinkChat which would later become the non-profit
Rooms for
Humanity. We were constantly on the prowl for opportunities to commercialize the chatting system and built a demo that can
be used for ultra fast online auctioning. We pitched this demo to
Sotheby’s, but unfortunately the deal fell through. We then shelved the project for a while, but brought it back in the summer of 2018 to run as a non-profit video chatting application. After the lack of commercial success with blinkChat we reinvigorated our dive into making a fundamental change in how video is transported over the network. While doing this we discovered that the main problem is in the last mile, or the connection from the central ISP to your house. We also discovered that once the connection got to the house, wifi routers were not doing a good job of distributing the connection.
So we set our sights to this specific problem, optimizing the last mile and wifi for video.
I then became the team lead for the computer networks side of the project, focusing on programming algorithms for wifi routers.
Which I am still doing currently! I really enjoy the low level programming and closeness to the operating system. I find this
specific area of computer science the most interesting in my opinion and it is what I want to research and do in the future.
PATENTS
System and framework for slicing network resources for ultra low latency streaming (Approved By Stevens IP Commitee, Pending Application)
Sudhir (Sid) Ahuja, Mukundan Iyengar, Justin Trugman, Charles Bethin Et-al.
System and Framework for extraneously detecting frame losses during a video playback (Approved By Stevens IP Commitee, Pending Application)
Sudhir (Sid) Ahuja, Mukundan Iyengar, Justin Trugman, Charles Bethin Et-al.
HOBBIES & INTERESTS
When I’m not in the lab you can usually find me in my fraternity house (
SigEp)
playing xbox or reading. I really enjoy reading non-fiction educational books. I currently am in the swing of reading
Linux textbooks, the current book I am reading is the
Linux Programming Interface by Michael Karrisk. Its a really good,
in depth overview of the entire linux operating system and kernel. My favorite game is the
Witcher 3, but I am also an avid
Halo fan.