I am in my final year as a PhD Candidate from Georgia Institute of Technology in the Computational Science and Engineering department. I am an active member of Polo Club of Data Science. I am on the job market! Take a look at my current CV.
I completed my undergraduate degree in 2011 at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in computer science and mathematics. I'm an avid biker.Summary & Interests
My research blends methods, techniques, and principles from visual analytics and data mining to create new, interactive, scalable tools that empower analysts when exploring, querying, and analyzing large million-edge networks. My work enables analysts to: quickly explore massive graphs from a local perspective (FACETS), visually formulate expressive graph queries with graph autocomplete (VISAGE), and summarize large numbers of graph query results (VIGOR).
Education
Fall 2017
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA
Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering
Adaptive Visual Network Analytics: Algorithms, Interfaces, and Systems for Exploration and Querying.
Adviser: Polo Chau
Committee: Shamkant Navathe, James Abello, Jilles Vreeken, Hanghang Tong, Bistra Dilkina, Alex Endert
Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering
Adaptive Visual Network Analytics: Algorithms, Interfaces, and Systems for Exploration and Querying.
Adviser: Polo Chau
Committee: Shamkant Navathe, James Abello, Jilles Vreeken, Hanghang Tong, Bistra Dilkina, Alex Endert
Spring 2014
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA
Masters in Computational Science and Engineering
Masters in Computational Science and Engineering
2007-2011
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Terre Haute, IN
Double major in Computer Science and Mathematics.
Double major in Computer Science and Mathematics.
Honors & Awards
2017
Best Demo, Honorable Mention at ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference
2015-2017
FLAMEL Fellowship, a doctoral training program designed to innovate in computing, mathematics, material science, and manufacturing to accelerate the creation of new high performance materials.
2011-2015
Presidential Fellowship, offered annually to a select number of highly qualified U.S. citizens or permanent residents, who bring exemplary levels of scholarship and innovation.
Summer 2010
Best Poster, Computational Science and Cybersecurity best paper award at the University of Houston
2007-2011
Deans List, maintain a GPA above 3.5 at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Work Experience
Summer 2016
Pindrop Atlanta, GA
Ph.D. Research Intern
Created a visual analytics system to track the changes in telephone scams. Developed techniques to collect, measure, and chart the landscape of fraud in the telephony channel.
Principal Investigator: Terry Nelms
Ph.D. Research Intern
Created a visual analytics system to track the changes in telephone scams. Developed techniques to collect, measure, and chart the landscape of fraud in the telephony channel.
Principal Investigator: Terry Nelms
Summer 2015
Pindrop Atlanta, GA
Ph.D. Research Intern
Leveraged large heterogeneous data to supplement machine learning methods which improved the quality of fraud detection and prediction. Prototyped a visual-analytics system to flag suspicious call behavior as it occurs.
Principal Investigator: David Dewey
Ph.D. Research Intern
Leveraged large heterogeneous data to supplement machine learning methods which improved the quality of fraud detection and prediction. Prototyped a visual-analytics system to flag suspicious call behavior as it occurs.
Principal Investigator: David Dewey
Summer 2014
Google Mountain View, CA
Ph.D. Software-Engineer Intern
Improving Ad-Quality Filtering - Designed and implemented a series of entropy-based filters to improve the quality of matched ads.
Host: Esteban Real
Ph.D. Software-Engineer Intern
Improving Ad-Quality Filtering - Designed and implemented a series of entropy-based filters to improve the quality of matched ads.
Host: Esteban Real
Fall 2013
LogicBlox Atlanta, GA
Ph.D. Intern
Tested and compared high performance tuple-matching queries on a custom database management system against industry competitors.
Mentor: Molham Aref
Ph.D. Intern
Tested and compared high performance tuple-matching queries on a custom database management system against industry competitors.
Mentor: Molham Aref
Summer 2013
Google, Mountain View, CA
Ph.D. Software-Engineer Intern
Designed methods and visualizations to help engineers interactively compare and contrast predictive-model performance.
Host: Yanli Cai
Ph.D. Software-Engineer Intern
Designed methods and visualizations to help engineers interactively compare and contrast predictive-model performance.
Host: Yanli Cai
Summer 2010
University of Houston
Researched in the Computational Physiology Lab performing thermal facial expression recognition research.
Researched in the Computational Physiology Lab performing thermal facial expression recognition research.
Summer 2009
University of Iowa
Worked as a software engineer to develop tools for drawing and testing students on organic chemistry.
Worked as a software engineer to develop tools for drawing and testing students on organic chemistry.
Publications
BibTeX
VIGOR: Interactive Visual Exploration of Graph Query Results.
Pienta, R.; Hohman, F.; Endert, A.; Tamersoy, A.; Roundy, K., Gates, C.; Navathe, S.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VAST). 2017.
Pienta, R.; Hohman, F.; Endert, A.; Tamersoy, A.; Roundy, K., Gates, C.; Navathe, S.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VAST). 2017.
BibTeX
Visual Graph Query Construction and Refinement.
Pienta, R.; Hohman, F.; Tamersoy, A.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD). Pages 1587-1590, 2017. [Best Demo: Honorable Mention]
Pienta, R.; Hohman, F.; Tamersoy, A.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD). Pages 1587-1590, 2017. [Best Demo: Honorable Mention]
BibTeX
Carina: Interactive Million-Node Graph Visualization Using Web Browser Technologies.
Fang, D.; Keezer, M.; Williams, J.; Kulkarni, K.; Pienta, R.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion (WWW). Pages 775-776, 2017.
Fang, D.; Keezer, M.; Williams, J.; Kulkarni, K.; Pienta, R.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion (WWW). Pages 775-776, 2017.
BibTeX
FACETS: Adaptive Local Exploration of Large Graphs.
Pienta, R.; Kahng, M.; Lin, Z.; Vreeken, J.; Talukdar, P.; Abello, J.; Parameswaran, G.; and Chau, D. H.
In the Proceedings of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics International Conference on Data Mining (SDM). 2017.
Pienta, R.; Kahng, M.; Lin, Z.; Vreeken, J.; Talukdar, P.; Abello, J.; Parameswaran, G.; and Chau, D. H.
In the Proceedings of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics International Conference on Data Mining (SDM). 2017.
BibTeX
Uncovering the Landscape of Fraud and Spam in the Telephony Channel.
Marzuoli, A.; Kingravi, H. A; Dewey, D.; and Pienta, R.
In the 15th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA). 2016.
Marzuoli, A.; Kingravi, H. A; Dewey, D.; and Pienta, R.
In the 15th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA). 2016.
BibTeX
VISAGE: Interactive Visual Graph Querying.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In the Proceedings of the 13th International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI). 2016.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In the Proceedings of the 13th International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI). 2016.
BibTeX
Making Sense of Graph Query Results: Interactive Summarization and Exploration (Poster).
Pienta, R.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST). 2016.
Pienta, R.; Endert, A.; Navathe, S.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST). 2016.
BibTeX
STEPS: A Spatio-temporal Electric Power Systems Visualization.
Pienta, R.; Xiong, L.; Grijalva, S.; Chau, D. H.; and Kahng, M.
In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion (IUI). 2016.
Pienta, R.; Xiong, L.; Grijalva, S.; Chau, D. H.; and Kahng, M.
In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion (IUI). 2016.
BibTeX
Call me: Gathering threat intelligence on telephony scams to detect fraud.
Marzuoli, A.; Kingravi, H. A; Dewey, D.; Dallas, A.; Calhoun, T.; Nelms, T.; and Pienta,
Blackhat Security Conference. 2016.
Marzuoli, A.; Kingravi, H. A; Dewey, D.; Dallas, A.; Calhoun, T.; Nelms, T.; and Pienta,
Blackhat Security Conference. 2016.
BibTeX
A Visual Analytics Approach to Understanding Care Process Variation and Conformance.
Basole, R. C.; Park, H.; Gupta, M.; Braunstein, M. L.; Chau, D. H.; Thompson, M.; Kumar, V.; Pienta, R.; and Kahng, M.
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Visual Analytics in Healthcare (VAHC). 2015.
Basole, R. C.; Park, H.; Gupta, M.; Braunstein, M. L.; Chau, D. H.; Thompson, M.; Kumar, V.; Pienta, R.; and Kahng, M.
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Visual Analytics in Healthcare (VAHC). 2015.
BibTeX
GraSP: Distributed Streaming Graph Partitioning.
Battaglino, C.; Pienta, R.; and Vuduc, R.
In KDD Workshop on High Performance Graph Mining, 2015.
Battaglino, C.; Pienta, R.; and Vuduc, R.
In KDD Workshop on High Performance Graph Mining, 2015.
BibTeX
AdaptiveNav: Adaptive Discovery of Interesting and Surprising Nodes in Large Graphs.
Pienta, R.; Lin, Z.; Kahng, M.; Vreeken, J.; Talukdar, P. P.; Abello, J.; Parameswaran, G.; and Chau., D. H.
In Proceedings of the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST). 2015.
Pienta, R.; Lin, Z.; Kahng, M.; Vreeken, J.; Talukdar, P. P.; Abello, J.; Parameswaran, G.; and Chau., D. H.
In Proceedings of the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST). 2015.
BibTeX
Scalable graph exploration and visualization: Sensemaking challenges and opportunities.
Pienta, R.; Abello, J.; Kahng, M.; and Chau, D. H.
In International Conference on Big Data and Smart Computing, (BIGCOMP). Pages 271-278, 2015.
Pienta, R.; Abello, J.; Kahng, M.; and Chau, D. H.
In International Conference on Big Data and Smart Computing, (BIGCOMP). Pages 271-278, 2015.
BibTeX
Interactive Querying over Large Network Data: Scalability, Visualization, and Interaction Design.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Tong, H.; Endert, A.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion (IUI). Pages 61-64, 2015.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Tong, H.; Endert, A.; and Chau, D. H.
In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion (IUI). Pages 61-64, 2015.
BibTeX
Identifying Successful Investors in the Startup Ecosystem.
Gupta, S.; Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Chau, D. H.; and Basole., R. C.
In 2015 IEEE World Wide Web Conference (WWW). 2015.
Gupta, S.; Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Chau, D. H.; and Basole., R. C.
In 2015 IEEE World Wide Web Conference (WWW). 2015.
BibTeX
MAGE: Matching approximate patterns in richly-attributed graphs.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). Pages 585-590, 2014.
Pienta, R.; Tamersoy, A.; Tong, H.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). Pages 585-590, 2014.
BibTeX
Towards scalable graph computation on mobile devices.
Chen, Y.; Lin, Z.; Pienta, R.; Kahng, M.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). Pages 29-35, 2014.
Chen, Y.; Lin, Z.; Pienta, R.; Kahng, M.; and Chau, D. H.
In IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData). Pages 29-35, 2014.
BibTeX
On the parallel simulation of scale-free networks.
Pienta, R. S.; and Fujimoto, R. M.
In SIGSIM Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (SIGSIM-PADS). Pages 179-188, 2013.
Pienta, R. S.; and Fujimoto, R. M.
In SIGSIM Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (SIGSIM-PADS). Pages 179-188, 2013.
BibTeX
A Comparative Analysis of Thermal and Visual Modalities for Automated Facial Expression Recognition.
Wesley, A.; Buddharaju, P.; Pienta, R.; and Pavlidis, I.
In Advances in Visual Computing - 8th International Symposium (ISVC). Pages 51-60, 2012.
Wesley, A.; Buddharaju, P.; Pienta, R.; and Pavlidis, I.
In Advances in Visual Computing - 8th International Symposium (ISVC). Pages 51-60, 2012.
Invited Talks & Presentations
Adaptive Visual Network Analytics: Algorithms, Interfaces, and Systems for Exploration and Querying.
Jun 28, 2017
Ph.D. Defense, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA
Apr 6, 2016
Ph.D. Proposal, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA
VISAGE: Visual Graph Query Construction and Refinement
May 18, 2017
IEEE SIGMOD Best-of Demonstration Session, Chicago, IL, USA
May 15, 2017
IEEE SIGMOD Demonstration, Chicago, IL, USA
Nov 8, 2016
Georgia Tech Hot CSE Presentation, Atlanta, GA, USA
Jun 10, 2016
ACM AVI Paper Talk, Bari, Italy
Mar 30, 2016
ACM IUI Poster Presentation and Fast Forward, Atlanta, GA, USA
VIGOR: Visualizing, Summarizing, and Comparing Graph Query Results
Oct 2, 2017
(to appear) IEEE VAST Paper Presentation, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Oct 26, 2016
IEEE VIS Poster Presentation and Fast Forward, Baltimore, MD, USA
FACETS: Adaptive Local Exploration of Large Graphs
Apr 28, 2017
SIAM SDM Paper Talk, Houston, TX, USA
Apr 17, 2017
Presentation at Machine Learning at Georgia Tech (ML@GT), Atlanta, GA, USA
Oct 26, 2015
IEEE VIS Poster Presentation and Fast Forward, Chicago, IL, USA
Pindrop Culminating Research Presentation
Aug 12, 2016
Presentation to Management and Research at Pindrop, Atlanta, GA, USA
Aug 9, 2015
Presentation to Research and Engineering at Pindrop, Atlanta, GA, USA
Google Intern Final Presentation
Aug 12, 2016
Presentation to managers to launch my code at Google! Mountain View, CA, USA
Aug 9, 2015
Presentation of completed projects at Google, Mountain View, CA, USA
FLAMEL (NSF Fellowship)
Apr 25, 2017
Presentation to Board of Directors, Atlanta, GA, USA
Nov 19, 2016
Human in the loop material science image segmentation, Atlanta, GA, USA
Aug 9, 2016
Invited Panelist, Atlanta, GA, USA
Mar 12, 2016
Computational Material Science Chalk Talk, Atlanta, GA, USA
Jan 12, 2015
Invited Panelist, Atlanta, GA, USA
MAGE: Approximate Graph Querying
Mar 28, 2015
Georgia Tech Hot CSE Presentation, Atlanta, DC, USA
Oct 28, 2014
IEEE Bigdata Paper Talk, Washington, DC, USA
STEPS: Spatio-temporal Electrical Network Visualization
Mar 8, 2016
ACM IUI Short Paper Talk, Sonoma, CA, USA
Fraud in the telephony channel
Dec 19, 2016
IEEE ICMLA Paper Talk, Irvine, CA, USA
Nerd Nite: Nerdy Talks for Everyone
Sep 9, 2016
Is Dwarf Fortress Art?, Atlanta, GA, USA
Aug 22, 2016
Findings from Mining Craigslist Missed Connections, Atlanta, GA, USA
InvestorRank: Identifying Successful Investors in the Startup Ecosystem
May 19, 2015
IEEE WWW Short Paper Talk, Florence, Italy
Teaching
Spring 2016
Volunteer Instructor Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
As part of the FLAMEL program, taught how the use the python programming language for material science automation, modeling, and analysis.
Spring 2015
Guest Lecturer Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
Guest lectured in the Data and Visual Analytics course (CSE 6242) for Polo Chau. Over 180 students!
Guest lectured in the Data and Visual Analytics course (CSE 6242) for Polo Chau. Over 180 students!
Spring 2014
Graduate Teaching Assistant Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
Assisted in teaching and administering the graduate Data and Visual Analytics (CSE 6242). Over 100 students!
Assisted in teaching and administering the graduate Data and Visual Analytics (CSE 6242). Over 100 students!
Spring 2012
Graduate Teaching Assistant Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA
Assisted in teaching and administering Advanced Modeling and Simulation: Fundamentals & Implementation (CSE6730).
Assisted in teaching and administering Advanced Modeling and Simulation: Fundamentals & Implementation (CSE6730).
Mentor
2015-2017
Dezhi Fang, Undergraduate, CSE
2015
Srishti Gupta, Master's Student, CSE
2013-2014
Zhiyuan Lin, Undergraduate, CS
2013
Yiqi Chen, Undergraduate, CS
Technical Skills
Programming
Python C/C++ Javascript Matlab Java R SQL Cypher
HPC
MPI OpenMP MapReduce
Visualization
D3 React WebGL OpenGl jQuery
Professional & Academic Service
Reviewer or Program Committee Member
2015-2016
KDD
2016
WWW
2017
SDM
2014-2016
CHI
2014-2016
IUI
2017
TIST Journal
2017
BigData
2016-2017
IDEA Workshop
Society Member
2016-2017
Society for Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
2014-2017
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
2012-2017
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2009-2011
Member of Pi Mu Epsilon
2008-2011
Member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon
2009-2011
Vice President of Upsilon Pi Epsilon
