NAVEEN ASHISH

Research Assistant Professor and Project Leader Calit2 UC-Irvine, 4308 Calit2 Building Irvine,CA 92697 Email: ashish @ ics. uci. edu Voice: 949-824-2991

Introduction

I am an Assistant Research Scientist (Professional Researcher) at Calit2 (pronounce cal-eye-tee-two) at UC-Irvine.

My background and current interests are primarily in data management and artificial intelligence, particularly the application of techniques from the latter to the former. My past and current work is in areas such as information extraction (from text), information integration, information agents, applications of semantic-web technologies and semi-structured data management.

My recent work has primarily been in two domains. The first is emergency response where I am involved with the “SAFIRE” project on situational awareness technologies for fire-fighter safety. The second (more recent) domain is that of biomedical informatics where I am investigating data integration and semantic information management technologies as part of the “BIRN-CC” initiative. Earlier, I lead the SAMI project on situational awareness technologies for disaster response, as part of the larger RESCUE project.

The good thing about being at a university is the opportunity to get involved in a variety of fun things of different kinds. I am a member of:

• The Center for Emergency Response Technologies
• The Center for Biomedical Informatics, and
• The Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems

all at UCI.

Publications, Presentations

(Recent book chapters)

Some of my publications and some recent presentations are available online.

XAR is a system for information extraction from free text. This is an open-source system available to researchers for use.

Prior

I did my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC)  in 1999, and was an RA at USC's Information Sciences Institute. I got my BTech, also in Computer Science, from   IIT, Kanpur in 1993.  Prior to joining UCI in April 2005, I worked for about 4 years at the NASA Ames Research Center .

Here is an academic CV.

Personal, Fun Stuff

• Interesting blogs
• TechCrunch
• KurzweilAI
• General
• For those from India, I am a big fan (to date) of Amitabh Bachchan, here are some of his dialogues from movies.
• And of his Dad, Harivansh Rai as well, check out Madhushala if you understand Hindi.
• Other
• The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project.

If you have gotten this far ..... I was born in Lucknow, India (some time in the 70s) and grew up mostly in Calcutta attending St. Paul's and later La Martiniere high school. Cliché’s aside, Calcutta is a truly unique city and this article (Vir Sanghvi) accurately and eloquently captures what lies at its heart.

And most importantly …. Rayan M. Ashish