Welcome to my website

Niketan R. Pansare (pronounced as "N ih -- k ay -- t uh n")
PhD in Computer Science, Rice University (2009 - present)
Advisor: Chris Jermaine
Email: NP6 at Rice dot Edu
Office: Duncan Hall 2070

My Research

At a very high level, I work in the field of Statistical Databases and Data Mining; and hence most of my research projects involve building systems for performing statistical analysis on large scale data. To address my research problems, I generally resort to Bayesian methodology and use scalable systems (like Hadoop, Hyracks and Datapath).
A key problem that I am very excited about is providing online approximate answers on Map-Reduce systems. Though the problem of Approximate Query Processing has been studied extensively in the field of databases using sampling theory (See OLA97, Ripple Join and DBO), these traditional sampling techniques cannot be applied directly to Map-Reduce systems due to certain challenges (like inspection paradox). These are addressed in my VLDB paper, which also discusses a bayesian model to deal with these challenges.

About Me

I got my Bachelors in Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai and my Masters in Computer Engineering from University of Florida. I am President and (hence de-facto) captain of my university cricket team (RCC) and also am in the committee of Indian Student Association at Rice (ISAR). I have worked as SDE for MAQSoftware, Mumbai and have done summer internships with Microsoft, Seattle and IBM Research, Delhi.
I enjoy exploring new places and have visited Mumbai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Goa, Florida, Miami, Texas, Indianapolis, Seattle, Oregon, New York and few places in Canada. When I am not working, you will find me playing cricket/squash/soccer/frisbee/Table-Tennis, jogging around Rice loop, taking long drives in my super-fast Mustang :P, writing a blog post or trying out things like jet-skiing, kayaking, camping, snorkelling, dancing and reading a non-fiction book (especially Calvin and Hobbes). I also love participating in Indian festivals (like Dahi-Handi, Ganpati, Holi) and inter-cultural events (like International Cultural fair, Halloween, Hispanic party, Independance Day and Renaissance Fair).