Pawas Ranjan , PhD
About me
I am an Engineering Manager at Conviva APAC, guiding their back-end team to provide analytics and optimizations of streaming videos for clients like HBO, ESPN and Hulu. I also set up a back-end team in India to build exciting new products and platforms. I graduated from The Ohio State University in 2012, with a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering. I worked under Prof. Tamal Dey and Prof. Yusu Wang on an in-depth study of, as well as applications of, the discrete Laplace operator in the field of computer graphics. My areas of interest include both theoretical and practical aspects of computer graphics, as well as studying and designing algorithms and systems for parallelism and scalability.
Work experience
Engineering Manager
(Conviva APAC Pvt Ltd, INDIA)
Oct 2017 -
Senior Software Engineer (Mar 2015 - Oct 2017, Conviva Inc USA)
Software Engineer (Apr 2013 - Mar 2015, Conviva Inc USA)
After my graduate studies, I joined Conviva as a software engineer in Spring 2013. Over time, I have steadily progressed through the ranks and am the Engineering Manager for the Platform team in India. Conviva provides insights into, and optimizations of streaming video for several big-name clients (HBO, ESPN, Hulu, Disney, Discovery etc).
I am currently working on an exciting new product for Ad Analytics, leading the platform team in India to design and develop the computation stack to be able to process the data for ad videos at scale in both real-time and offline processing. I am also guiding the Testing team in India, to standardize our test process and tools.
I have previously worked on re-designing our computation framework to reduce discrepancies in metrics; on new metrics for better insights into video quality and end-user experience; moved data from MySQL to HBase with Phoenix as an SQL layer on top; wrote components to save and retrieve the data to Phoenix over HBase; use HyperLogLog algorithm to provide our customers with unique-based metrics over arbitrary time ranges; moved basic analytics code from client video players to our own servers, making clients lighter, and integration a lot easier.
Skills
Java
Scala
Eclipse IDE
SQL
Shell Scripting
Python
Map-Reduce
Spark
HDFS
Git
Maven
Languages
English (Fluent)
Japanese (Intermediate)
Hindi (Native)
Between my undergraduate and graduate schooling, I worked as a research assistant at the Application Software Cell of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay under Prof. S Sudarshan. During this time, I worked on a project involving automation of managing student and faculty housings on their campus.
I worked with one senior developer and the two of us were responsible for talking with the clients, understanding their needs and designing the databases. I was responsible for designing the user interface, as well as the back-end programming.
The front-end was coded using JSP, JS with CSS styling. A Linux box with Apache server and Oracle database with JDBC was used along with LDAP identification.
Education
(Columbus Ohio, USA)
PhD (Computer Science and Engineering)
2007 - 2012
Major : Computer Graphics
Minors : High Performance Computing, Mathematics
I worked with Prof. Tamal Dey and Prof. Yusu Wang towards my doctorate dissertation titled Discrete Laplace Operator: Theory and Applications. I joined as a Masters student in Fall 2007 and switched over to direct PhD during Summer 2008. Please take a look at my Projects and Publications pages for more details on my work while at OSU.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University
(Lonere Maharashtra, INDIA)
B.Tech (Computer Engineering) Gold Medal
2002 - 2006
I finished my undergraduate from Dr. B.A.T.U, Lonere in 2006. During the final year, I did a summer internship at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, with Prof. Supritam Biswas. The internship involved studying and modifying the gcc compiler and its specification, as well as studying literature on parallelizing compilers.
Honors and Awards
Won Conviva Hackathons III, IV and VI. The idea presented in Hackathon III received US Patent.
Gold Medal for outstanding academic performance during B.Tech in 2006
Qualified through Regional Mathematical Olympiad to be chosen as one of 450 students from all over India to take the Indian National Mathematical Olympiad in 2001
Hobbies and interests
Reading novels (mystery, science fiction, humour)
[Authors I like: Sir P. G. Wodehouse, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Sir Terry Pratchett, Iain Banks, Natsuhiko Kyogoku ...]
Watching movies, especially old classics
[Directors I like: Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Christopher Nolan, Cohen brothers, Rian Johnson ...]
Listening to jazz and 40s music
[Artists I like: Louis Armstring, Miles Davis, Oscar Brown Jr, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, The Andrews Sisters, Chuck Berry ...]
Playing and watching soccer
[Avid fan of Manchester United Football Club]