Somdeb Sarkhel
CONTACT
INFORMATION
The University of Texas at Dallas
800 W. Campbell Road
Richardson, TX 75080, USA
PERSONAL
I am a PhD candidate in Vibhav Gogate’s Statistical Relational Artificial Intelligence and
machine learning lab at University of Texas at Dallas. I received my master’s degree in
computer science from UT Dallas. Before attending UT Dallas I was working as a software
engineer.
RESEARCH
INTERESTS
I work in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning. My focus is on developing
fast, scalable and accurate inference and learning methods for graphical models and
Markov Logic Networks, a first-order logic extension of graphical models. Currently I am
working on scaling up MAP inference algorithm for Markov Logic Networks. In future I
want to apply my developed algorithms for learning accurate models from real world data.
EDUCATION
University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science, 2011 - August 2016 (expected),
• Advisor: Vibhav Gogate
• Thesis Topic: Scalable Inference and Learning for Markov Logic
• GPA: 4.0
MS, Computer Science, 2011 - August 2013
• GPA: 4.0
email: [email protected]
web: www.utdallas.edu/~somdeb.sarkhel/
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, India
Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology, 2001 – 2005
PUBLICATIONS
[AAAI-15] Deepak Venugopal, Somdeb Sarkhel and Vibhav Gogate, “Just Count the
Satisfied Groundings: Scalable Local-Search and Sampling based Inference in
MLNs”, In 29th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2015 (to appear).
[NIPS-14] Somdeb Sarkhel, Deepak Venugopal, Parag Singla and Vibhav Gogate, “An
Integer Polynomial Programming Based Framework for Lifted MAP Inference”, In
28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2014
[AISTATS-14] Somdeb Sarkhel, Deepak Venugopal, Parag Singla and Vibhav Gogate,
“Lifted MAP Inference for Markov Logic Networks”, In 17th International
Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 2014
[AAAI-13] Somdeb Sarkhel and Vibhav Gogate, “Lifting WALKSAT-Based Local Search
Algorithms for MAP Inference”, In Statistical Relational Artificial Intelligence,
AAAI Workshop, 2013
PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE
Tata Consultancy Services
Application Designer, Kolkata, India
2008 – 2011
• Worked as a team leader leading a team of four, whose responsibility was to
integrate different third party software with existing BaNCS application, a TCS
product to manage pension and life insurance policies.
• As an application designer have designed different frameworks to aid
development of BaNCS application as well as significantly improved
performance of several components of the application
• My primary responsibility included requirement analysis, taking design level
decisions, coordination with other teams and development of new components
and fine-tune of existing components
• My secondary responsibility included recruitment of sincere and diligent
employees for our project and to provide them with necessary training in core
technologies and frameworks used in the project
• Received ‘On The Spot’ award, typically given to top 10% of the employees
Production Support, Peterborough, UK
2007 – 2008
• Deployed and provided technical support for a web-based application
• My responsibility was to review post-production changes, determine feasibility
and risk of those changes as well as to monitor health of the application
• Customer Satisfaction Index was all-time high for this period
• Have not missed a single Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Programmer, Kolkata, India
2005 – 2007
• As a Java/J2ee programmer designed, developed and tested new components
• Was awarded ‘Star of the Month’, typically given to top 5% of the employees
SERVICE
Sub-Reviewer:
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Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI),
Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI),
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML),
Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS),
Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR),
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR),
Co-organized the UAI 2014 Probabilistic Inference Competition –
www.hlt.utdallas.edu/~vgogate/uai14-competition/index.html