Amal Agarwal

Education

• Ph.D. 2020

  Ph.D. in Statistics

  Pennsylvania State University

• MS. 2019

  Masters in Statistics

  Pennsylvania State University

• MTech. 2014

  Masters in Engineering Physics

  Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

• BTech. 2014

  Bachelors in Engineering Physics (with a Minor in Statistics)

  Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Appointments

• Sep'22Aug'20

  Data Scientist

  eBay, Search Insights Team

• PresentMay'20

  Alumni Mentor

  Insight Data Science

• Jan'20Sep'19

  Data Science Fellow

  Insight Data Science

• July'20Aug'14

  Graduate Research Assistant

  Pennsylvania State University, Graduate School of Statistics

• April'14July'13

  Teaching Assistant

  Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB), Department of Physics

• July'12May'12

  Intern

  National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan), Department of Power Mechanical Engineering

• July'11May'11

  Intern

  Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Chennai, India), Department of Physics

Honors/Awards/Academic Achievements

• June 2021
  ESIP Grant

  I received the grant with my advisor and collaborators in the geoscience community to improve on GeoNet – a cloud-based open-source platform for an automatic high-throughput monitoring system to safeguard stream water quality.
• August 2020
  Awarded the Doctorate in Statistics

  I successfully defended my dissertation on “Statistical Network Modeling and its Applications in Complex Large-Scale Systems” and was awarded a doctorate in statistics from Pennsylvania State University.
• September 2019
  Insight Data Science Fellow

  I received the Insight Data Science Fellowship, a program in San Francisco that facilitates learning skills relevant in industry and networking with other data scientists. Check out my application SciNet at scinet.me/ that I built over the course of 4 weeks during this program.
• May 2019
  Student Travel Scholarship to 36th ASA QPRC

  

  I was fortunate to receive the travel award to the 36th Quality and Productivity Research Conference in Washington, DC. My presentation focussed on Applications of Statistical Network Analysis and Knowledge Enhanced Neural Networks to Healthcare and Environmental Research. This has been a joint work with my advisor Lingzhou Xue together with our amazing collaborators, Susan Brantley and Tao Wen from Pennstate Geoscience and Jing Mei and Eryu Xia from IBM Research, Beijing.
• May 2018
  Awarded J. Keith Ord Scholarship in Statistics

  The Keith Ord scholarship recognizes outstanding graduate students in statistics with the research focus on environmental or spatial statistics. I am thrilled my collaborative research project in Geosciences has been appreciated at this level. I believe the open source application GeoNet, which I developed as part of this project, has a great potential to assist environmental and geo-scientists in exploring river networks using state of the art statistical methods. This has been a joint project with Dr. Susan Brantley from Department of Geosciences in Penn state, Tao Wen and my advisor Dr. Lingzhou Xue.
• January 2018
  Best Student Paper Award in Risk Analysis, ASA

  

  I am delighted to have my research recognized by the American Statistical Association. My paper titled “Model-Based Clustering of Nonparametric Weighted Networks with Application to Water Pollution Analysis” has been selected for the best student paper award in the Risk Analysis section,  American Statistical Association. I presented this work at JSM 2018 in Vancouver. This has been a joint work with my advisor Dr. Lingzhou Xue.
• 2018
  Student Travel Award and Finalist in student paper competition in IISA

  

  I was fortunate to receive the travel award to the IISA 2018 conference in Florida. I was also selected as a finalist for the best student paper award in the same Conference for the paper titled “Temporal Exponential-Family Random Graph Models with Time-Evolving Latent Block Structure for Dynamic Networks.” This has been a joint work with Kevin Lee and my advisor Dr. Lingzhou Xue.
• 2016-2017
  Selected for a Graduate Research Assistantship at Penn State University

  I was selected for a graduate research assistantship at College of Information Sciences and Technology and Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. This was part of my collaboration with Dr. Susan Brantley and Dr. Zhenhui Li described in more detail in the Research section.
• 2014-2016
  Selected for a Teaching Assistantship at Penn State University

  I was selected for a teaching assistantship at Department of Statistics at Pennsylvania State University.
• 2014
  Ranked 2nd in the Engineering Physics program at IIT Bombay

  I had been consistently ranked 2nd among 15 candidates during my undergraduate studies in the Engineering Physics dual degree program at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. At the end of 5 years, my CPI (Cumulative Performance Index) was 9.19 on a scale of 10.
• 2013
  Limca National Rubik’s Cube Record

  I was awarded Limca certificate of national record for most number of students solving Rubik’s cube together within 30 minutes at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.
• 2012
  Awarded an Internship Completion Certificate at NTHU, Taiwan

  This certificate was awarded to me at the culmination of the Summer Internship Program at the Telecom Electro-acoustics Audio Lab at Department of Power Mechanical Engineering in National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. The work I did in Taiwan led to a followup project and ultimately resulted in two research papers in Journal of Acoustical Society of America. To know more, please check out my Publications.
• 2011
  Yellow belt in Judo conducted by Judo Association of Bombay.

  I was awarded the yellow belt for a rigorous one year training in Judo. My interest has shifted since then and now I am more passionate about Wing Chun.
• 2010
  Best Volunteer Award in National Service Scheme at IIT Bombay
• 2009
  Selected in the Joint Entrance Exam for IIT's

  Among ~500,000 aspirants, my national rank was 2467. This is considered as one of the toughest examinations at the undergraduate level in India.
• 2008
  Outstanding achievement award for being Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) topper in grade 12.

  I was awarded this honor for outstanding cumulative performance of 93% in the high school Board Examinations. This award was given to me at the Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, one of the leading fusion research organizations under the authority of Department of Atomic Energy in India.