Curriculum Vitae
Research Areas
- AI Safety, AI Planning, Interpretability, Robotics, Action-Model Learning, and Analysis of Abstractions.
Bio
Pulkit Verma is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Interactive Robotics Group at MIT, where he works with Prof. Julie Shah. His research focuses on the safe and reliable behavior of taskable AI agents. He investigates the minimal set of requirements in an AI system that would enable a user to assess and understand the limits of its safe operability. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Arizona State University, where he worked with Prof. Siddharth Srivastava. Prior to that, he completed his M.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He was awarded the Graduate College Fellowship at ASU in 2023 and received the Best Demo Award at the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) in 2022.
Education
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2018-2024 Ph.D. in Computer Science
Arizona State University- GPA: 4.0 (4.0 scale).
- Advisor: Prof. Siddharth Srivastava.
- Thesis: Data-Efficient Paradigms for Personalized Assessment of Taskable AI Systems.
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2013-2015 M.Tech. in Computer Science & Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India- GPA: 9.07 (10.0 scale).
- Advisor: Prof. Pradip K. Das.
- Thesis: Resource Usage Analysis for Speech Recognition Techniques.
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2007-2011 B.E. in Information Technology
Shri Vaishnav Institute of Technology & Science, India- Capstone Project: Smart Analyzer - Predict and Cache Webpages based on Usage.
Work Experience
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2024-(now) Postdoctoral Associate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.- Working in the Interactive Robotics Group at CSAIL and AeroAstro, MIT.
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2018-2024 Graduate Research Associate
Arizona State University.- Investigating the minimal set of interfaces in an AI system that would enable a user to assess and understand the limits of its safe operability.
- Developed a framework which generates interrogation policies to derive the human interpretable model of an autonomous agent.
- Reduced the STRIPS-model comparison to a planning problem which enabled identifying if two models are not same.
- Modified FF-planner to take PDDL models, initial state, plan as input, and give the final state as output.
- Co-designed the experiments showcasing possible use-case of an NSF project on training lay people to use adaptive AI systems which are safe, robust, and reliable.
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05-08 2023 Research Scientist Intern - AI
Meta.- Working on intersection of AI and Reality Labs.
- Developed a proof of concept system for curriculum personalization using sequential decision making.
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2015-2018 Storage Efficiency Developer
NetApp Inc.- Workload Prediction: Predicted workload on a storage volume based on I/O patterns for All Flash systems. This helped in optimizing data storage and management while keeping the nature of data private to the users.
- File and Volume Clones: Developed features and managed issues related to file and volume clones on UNIX-based NetApp proprietary WAFL file system so as to improve the storage efficiency of enterprise data servers.
- Co-developed a file system component which prevented data loss if files and volumes are cloned or modified when cloud backup is offline.
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2012-2013 iOS Applications Developer
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.- Portfolio Management Applications: Built applications for iPhone and iPad, and developed tools so as to analyze the user portfolio in an interactive way.
- Cross-platform Applications: Cross-platform mobile application development of mobile applications supported on both Android and iOS.
Teaching Experience
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Spring'22 Teaching Assistant for a graduate-level Artificial Intelligence Course at Arizona State University.
- CSE 571 Artificial Intelligence: Ongoing course.
- Taught by Prof. Siddharth Srivastava.
- Delivered hands-on problem solving sessions on Planning Graphs, Markov Decision Processes, Reinforcement Learning, and Neural Networks.
- Co-created the software testbed used to support the course projects.
- Created and graded homework assignments.
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Fall'19 Teaching Assistant for a graduate-level Artificial Intelligence Course at Arizona State University.
- CSE 571 Artificial Intelligence.
- Taught by Prof. Siddharth Srivastava.
- Delivered tutorials on Constraint Satisfaction Problems, PDDL, First Order Logic, and Dynamic Bayesian Networks.
- Co-created the software testbed used to support the course projects.
- Created and graded homework assignments.
- Mentored project groups working on class projects.
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Fall'14 Teaching Assistant for a graduate-level Speech Processing Course at IIT Guwahati, India.
- CS 566 Speech Processing.
- Taught by Prof. Pradip K. Das.
- Mentored students working on class projects and homeworks.
- Graded homework assignments and exams.
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2013-2015 Teaching Assistant for several undergraduate-level Computer Science Lab-Courses at IIT Guwahati, India.
- CS 513 Programming Lab.; Taught by Prof. Sushanta Karmakar.
- CS 462 Graphics Lab.; Taught by Prof. Samit Bhattacharya and Prof. Pinaki Mitra.
- CS 243 Software Engineering Lab.; Taught by Prof. Pradip K. Das.
- Mentored students working on class projects and homeworks.
Service
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2023-2024 - PC Member and Session Chair, 34th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2024).
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2021 - Reviewer, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
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2019 - Volunteer, Southwest Robotics Symposium 2019, Tempe, AZ.
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2014 - Volunteer, National Workshop on GPU Programming and Applications, IIT Guwahati.
Honors and Awards
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2024 - Spring 2024 GPSA Jumpstart Research Grant, ASU.
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2023 - Graduate College Completion Fellowship, Graduate College, ASU.
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2023 - Fall 2023 GPSA Outstanding Research Award, ASU.
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2023 - Fall 2023 GPSA Outstanding Mentor Award, ASU.
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2023 - University (Engineering) Graduate Fellowship, ASU Engineering.
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2023 - SCAI Doctoral Fellowship, School of Computing and AI, ASU.
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2022-2023 - SCAI Conference Travel Award, School of Computing and AI, ASU. (for IJCAI 2022, KR 2022, NeurIPS 2023)
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2022 - Best Demo Award, AAMAS 2022.
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2022 - SCAI Doctoral Fellowship, School of Computing and AI, ASU.
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2022 - Spring 2022 GPSA Teaching Excellence Award, ASU.
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2021 - 2022 - GPSA Individual Travel Grant, ASU. (for AAAI 2021, AAAI 2022, IJCAI 2022, KR 2022)
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2021 - ASU Graduate College Travel Awards. (for AAMAS 2021, ICLR 2021, ICML 2021, IJCAI 2021)
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2018 - Fulton Schools Experiential Learning Grant, Arizona State University.
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2013 - 2015 - Post Graduation Scholarship, All India Council for Technical Education, MHRD, Government of India.
Certifications and Training
- IBM Certified Database Associate - DB2 Universal Database V9 Family.
- Microsoft First Look Clinic Training - Microsoft Windows Server 2009.
- Use Case Modeling and Analysis - IBM Center of Excellence.