Ivan Brugere

AI Research Scientist · Palo Alto, CA 94301 · ivan@ivanbrugere.com

I am currently seeking AI research scientist positions in industry, available immediately, with no hard location constraints.

I am an AI Research Scientist with experience in interdisciplinary biological sciences and high-impact applications for social good. I have a deep interest in graphs/networks. My most recent interests have been in fairness and bias, particularly within complex, graph-structured data. My PhD (defended 2020) focused on data science methodologies for inferring and validating graphs derived from underlying data, with applications in social networks, mobile location privacy, and large-scale multimedia recommendation.

Experience

Research Scientist - AI For Good

Salesforce Research

Worked with several Salesforce non-profit customers and external collaborators. Focused on projects relating to fairness and bias, particularly in AutoML platforms, and novel, structured environments such as graphs/networks.

Jan. 2019-Mar. 2020

Applied Scientist Intern

Amazon AWS

Designed deep learning graph APIs on MXNet. Focused on structured computational models on graphs, and scalability. Part of the Amazon Web Services AI Platforms team. Mentored by Alex Smola.

June 2018- October 2018

Data Science Intern

Microsoft

Developed textual and device models for novelty detection and attribution in the Windows 10 user population. Part of Windows Core Data Science. Mentored by Marcello Hasegawa.

May 2015 - August 2015

Research Intern

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Formulated graph inference problems over several scientific research domains. Mentored by Brian Gallagher

May 2014 - August 2014

Research Fellow

University of Illinois at Chicago

Graph-based models for attribute inference and privacy preservation on real mobile device datasets.

2013 - 2015

Research Intern

Technicolor Research

Rule discovery for biometric sensor time series data for actionable analysis of film audiences. Developed methods to discover and visualize dynamic audience communities. Part of the User Analytics team, mentored by Fernando Silveira.

Summer 2013

Research Assistant

University of Illinois at Chicago

Model selection for graph structure inference and prediction. Focusing on ecology and populations biology domains. Under the direction of Professor Tanya Berger-Wolf.

August 2012 - June 2018

Research Assistant

University of Minnesota

Time series change detection and anomaly detection on large remote sensing datasets. Focused on incorporating spatial aspects for change significance testing, and domain-driven information retrieval. Part of the Global Observatory for Planetary Health and Resources project under the direction of Professor Vipin Kumar. M.S. thesis focused on efficient time-series subsequence similarity search in large datasets.

January 2010 - June 2012

Web Applications Developer

University of Minnesota (Department of Computer Science)
September 2004 - June 2007

Web Applications Developer

University of Minnesota (College of Liberal Arts)
August 2002 - September 2003

Education

University of Illinois at Chicago

Doctor of Philosophy
Computer Science

Thesis: Network Structure Inference: Methodology and Applications (Advisor: Prof. Tanya Berger-Wolf)

2012-2020

University of Minnesota

Master of Science
Computer Science

Thesis: Approximate Search on Massive Spatiotemporal Datasets (Advisor: Prof. Vipin Kumar)

2009-2012

The New School

Master of Arts
International Affairs
2007-2009

University of Minnesota

Bachelor of Science
Computer Science
2002-2007

University of Minnesota

Bachelor of Arts
Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature
2002-2007

Publications

2020

  • "CEGE: Constrained Equitable Graph Editing via Reinforcement Learning" (in submission)
  • "Privacy Shadow: Measuring Node Predictability and Privacy Over Time" (in submission)

2018

  • "Network Structure Inference, A Survey: Motivations, Methods, and Applications," I. Brugere, B. Gallagher, T. Y. Berger-Wolf (ACM Computing Surveys)
  • "Network model selection with task-focused minimum description length," I. Brugere, T.Y. Berger-Wolf (WWW BigNet Workshop on Learning Representations for Big Networks)
  • Coordination Event Detection and Initiator Identification in Time Series Data C. Amornbunchornvej, I. Brugere, A. Strandburg-Peshkin, D. Farine, M.C. Crofoot, T.Y. Berger-Wolf (ACM TKDD)

2017

  • "Evaluating Social Networks Using Task-Focused Network Inference," I. Brugere, C. Kanich, T.Y. Berger-Wolf (SIGKDD MLG Workshop on Mining and Learning in Graphs)
  • "A General Framework for Task-Oriented Network Inference," I. Brugere, C. Kanich, T.Y. Berger-Wolf (SIAM SDM Workshop on Inferring Networks from Non-Network Data)

2016

  • "Both Nearest Neighbours and Long-term Affiliates Predict Individual Locations During Collective Movement in Wild Baboons," D. Farine, A. Strandburg-Peshkin, T.Y. Berger-Wolf, B. Ziebart, I. Brugere, J. Li, M. Crofoot (Nature Scientific Reports)

2015

  • "Social Information Improves Location Prediction in the Wild," J. Li, I. Brugere, B. Ziebart, T. Y. Berger-Wolf, M. Crofoot, D. Farine (AAAI Workshop on Trajectory-based Behaviour Analytics)

2014

  • "Modeling and Analysis of Spatiotemporal Social Networks," I. Brugere, V. M.V. Gunturi, and S. Shekhar (Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining)

2012

  • "Approximate Search on Massive Spatiotemporal Datasets," I. Brugere, K. Steinhaeuser, S. Boriah, and V. Kumar (IEEE ICDM Workshop on Spatial and Spatiotemporal Data Mining SSTDM)

2011

  • "Incorporating Natural Variation into Time Series-Based Land Cover Change Identification," V. Mithal, A. Garg, I. Brugere, S. Boriah, V. Kumar, M. Steinbach, C. Potter, and S. Klooster (NASA Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding)
  • "A Study of Time Series Noise Reduction Techniques in the Context of Land Cover Change Detection," X. Chen, V. Mithal, S.R. Vangala, I. Brugere, S. Boriah, and V. Kumar (NASA Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding)
  • "A Novel Time Series Based Approach to Detect Gradual Vegetation Changes in Forests," Y. Chamber, A. Garg, V. Mithal, I. Brugere, M. Lau, V. Krishna, S. Boriah, M. Steinbach, V. Kumar, C. Potter, and S. Klooster (NASA Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding)
  • "GOPHER: Global Observation of Planetary Health and Ecosystem Resources," A. Garg, V. Mithal, Y. Chamber, I. Brugere, V. Chaudhari, M. Dunham, V. Krishna, S. Krishnamurthy, S. Vangala, S. Boriah, M. Steinbach, V. Kumar, A. Cho, JD Stanley, T. Abraham, J. C. Castilla-Rubio, C. Potter, and S.A. Klooster (IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS)

Service

Tutorials
  • "Modeling Data with Networks + Network Embedding: Problems, Methodologies and Frontiers", I. Brugere, B. Perozzi, P. Cui, W. Zhu, J. Pei, T.Y. Berger-Wolf (KDD 2018)
Workshops
  • "PhD Forum", (IEEE ICDM 2019)
  • "NetInf'17: First Workshop on Inferring Networks from Non-Network Data", (SIAM SDM 2017)
  • "Inferring Networks from Non-Network Data", (SIAM AM 2016)
Program Committees

2020: AAAI, ICDM, KDD, SDM

2019: AAAI, CIKM, ICDM, KDD, SDM

2018: KDD

Reviewer

Conferences: AAAI, CIKM, ICDM, IJCAI, KDD, PAKDD, SDM

Journals: ACM CSUR, IMS AOAS, IEEE TKDE, KAIS

Community
  • ACM Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2020 Accessibility Committee
  • Bloomberg Data For Good Exchange 2019 Program Committee
  • Google Lime Campus Ambassador
  • University of Washington-AccessSTEM volunteer
  • ACM SIGKDD Broadening Participation in Data Mining Coordinator, Mentoring Co-Chair (2014, 2016, 2017)
Teaching and Notable Courses
  • Teaching Assistant: Computer Algorithms I (Senior-level)
  • Advanced Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Seminar
  • Advanced Data Mining Seminar
  • Field Course in Computational Ecology at Mpala Research Centre, Kenya

Scholarships & Awards

Scholarships

2014-2016

  • NSF IGERT Electronic Security and Privacy Fellowship
  • University of Illinois at Chicago, Chancellor’s Graduate Research Fellowship

2014

  • Google Lime Scholarship
Awards

2017

  • IEEE ICDM Travel Award
  • SIAM SDM Travel Award

2016

  • ACM Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, Travel Award
  • ACM SIGKDD Broadening Participation in Data Mining Travel Award
  • ACM WSDM Travel Award

2015

  • IEEE ICDM Travel Award
  • ACM Ubicomp Broadening Participation Travel Award
  • ACM SIGKDD Ram Kumar Memorial Travel Award
  • SIAM CSE Travel Award supported by the Sustainable Horizons Institute
  • Fifty for the Future Award supported by the Illinois Technology Foundation

2014

  • ACM BCB Travel Award
  • ACM SIGKDD Broadening Participation in Data Mining Travel Award
  • ACM Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Travel Award

Projects

Coming Soon