About

I began my research career focusing on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and handwriting recognition, following a Ph.D. in Computer Science from SUNY at Buffalo, and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, India. I have since led research and product development in a number of areas including data analytics, pen computing, multimodal interfaces and human computation, at IBM Almaden Research Center, Narus Inc and HP Labs.

Over the last eight years, I led a large team of applied researchers and engineers at eBay focused on buyer personalization, recommendations, and computational advertising.

I consider myself truly fortunate to have had the opportunity in the course of my research career to explore user-centered design and innovation processes, and disciplines such as Human Computer Interaction and Machine Learning; these areas are at the core of many of the areas I have worked in, such as document analysis and recognition, pen computing, handwriting recognition, gestural and multimodal interaction, technology for development, crowdsourced human computation, and enterprise data analytics. And they are clearly at the core of what is coming – a society where humans coexist with autonomous agents and intelligent robots.

Over a career spanning many different research labs and R&D organizations in individual contributor and research management roles – IBM Research, HP Labs, Narus Inc., HP Personal Systems, Xerox Research, PARC, Conduent, eBay – it has been fascinating to observe and understand how different organizations have attempted to create and sustain the spirit of invention and innovation. Each organization is deeply embedded in a work culture of its own creation, and succeeds at some aspects, while struggling with others.

My many research interests span data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, user experience design, and product and service innovation.

Personal

I currently live in Rush, a suburb of Rochester, NY. Rush is a “right to farm” community. I don’t do any farming yet but who knows.

I was born in California and grew up in Bombay, India. Came to Buffalo, NY for graduate school, worked in California for a few years and went back to India, this time to Bangalore.

My third “tour” of the US has brought me back to Western New York, where I have lived since 2014.

On Nandi

In Hindu mythology, Nandi is the steed and devoted companion of Lord Shiva. Typically depicted as a large bull, he is associated with the qualities of dharma (righteous conduct), purity, focus, steadfast devotion and joy.

Qualities we aspire to as we navigate the complexities of the world we live in.

I welcome your feedback on the contents of this site ! I can be reached at srig at acm dot org.

Acknowledgement

Some posts were drafted and refined with the assistance of AI-based writing tools. The ideas, perspectives, and interpretations are my own; the tools were used as an aid for structuring, clarity, and editing.