Ravi Tandon, a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has joined the university's Discovery Analytics Center’s growing team of research scientists.

The Discovery Analytics Center, which is is housed in the Department of Computer Science and receives support from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, will harness Tandon’s knowledge of information theory in order to improve the quality of data collected in its large-scale research projects.

Tandon, who recently received an award from the National Science Foundation’s Communication and Information Foundations Program, earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland. Following graduation, he became a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University.

In his recent appointment with the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology, Tandon worked extensively on physical data security, wireless communication, and cloud security. His research focuses on using information theoretical principles to solve contemporary problems.

“The synergy between my research interests and the mission of the Discovery Analytics Center is very promising,” said Tandon. “My addition to the center gives me the opportunity to focus on using information theoretic tools to address the most urgent needs of society, specifically within the Early Model-Based Event Recognition using Surrogates (EMBERS) project.”

Tandon will take a two-tiered approach to data analytics by investigating techniques to produce reliable communication over noisy channels while developing tools for cleansing “noisy” data. He will also develop post-processing tools for improving multi-source data fusion. 

Tackling the problem of noise and figuring out the best methods for fusing data from different sources will allow the Discovery Analytics Center’s EMBERS project to predict outbreaks of social illness and unrest with greater accuracy.

The Discovery Analytics Center comprises faculty and students from various disciplines, including computer science, electrical and computer engineering, statistics, and mathematics. The center has operations on the Blacksburg campus and also at the Virginia Tech Research Center -- Arlington

Written by Emily Kathleen Alberts

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