Welcome to the Home Page of Aparna Varde

Dr. Aparna Varde holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts with a disseration on Data Mining. She is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. Her work experience includes being a Visiting Senior Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Informatics (MPII) in Saarbrucken, Germany; and a Tenure Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Math and Computer Science at Virginia State University, USA. Aparna obtained her M.S. in Computer Science at WPI after completing her B.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Bombay, India. Her teaching and research interests span Data Mining, Databases and Artificial Intelligence with particular emphasis on interdisciplinary work. She has four years of industrial experience mostly in multinational companies such as Lucent Technologies and Citicorp. Aparna is currently working on collaborative research projects supported by grants from funding agencies in the USA such as NSF, NIH and DOE. Her professional activites include serving as a panelist for NSF, co-chair of ACM CIKM's Ph.D. workshop, reviewer for journals such as IEEE's TKDE and program committee member at conferences such as SIAM's SDM and IEEE's IDCM. She has two software trademarks, a book chapter and several papers in reputed international journals, conferences and workshops. As hobbies she enjoys reading, travel, music, foreign languages, cultural events, some sports and painting. Here is her faculty web page at Montclair State University.

Research Areas

• Web and Text Mining: Temporal Knowledge Discovery; Ranking Issues; Semantics and Ontologies; Markup Languages
• Scientific Data Mining: Green Computing; Computational Estimation; Simulation and Modeling; Image Processing
• Machine Learning: Computational Linguistics issues; Optimization of Algorithms; Search Heuristics and Approximation
• Data Warehousing: Incremental View Maintenance; Distributed Databases

Publications

• Aparna Varde --- Challenging Research Issues in Data Mining, Databases and Information Retrieval --- In ACM SIGKDD Explorations Journal, 2009, Volume 11, Issue 1, pp. 49 - 52.
• Aparna Varde, Fabian Suchanek, Richi Nayak and Pierre Senellart --- Knowledge Discovery over Deep Web, Semantic Web and XML --- In Proceedings of DASFAA 2009, Brisbane, Australia, pp. 784 - 788.
• Aparna Varde and Jian Pei --- Advances in Information and Knowledge Management --- In ACM SIGIR Forum Journal, 2008, Volume 42, Issue 1, pp. 29 - 35.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner and Sally Fahrenholz --- XML Based Markup Languages for Specific Domains --- Book Chapter to appear in "Web Based Support Systems", Springer, 2008.
• Aparna Varde, Stephen Bique, Elke Rundensteiner, David Brown, Jianyu Liang, Richard Sisson Jr., Ehsan Sheybani and Brian Sayre --- Component Selection to Optimize Distance Function Learning in Complex Scientific Data Sets --- In Proceedings of DEXA 2008, Turin, Italy, September 2008, pp. 269 - 282.
• Aparna Varde, Shuhui Ma, Mohammed Maniruzzaman, David Brown, Elke Rundensteiner and Richard Sisson Jr., Comparing Mathematical and Heuristic Approaches for Scientific Data Analysis, In the Journal of Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AIEDAM-08), Cambridge University Press, 2008, Volume 22, pp. 53 - 69.
• Aparna Varde and Jian Pei --- Proceedings of the First Ph.D. Workshop in CIKM, PIKM 2007 --- ACM CIKM 2007, Lisbon, Portugal, November 2007.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner and Richard Sisson Jr. --- AutoDomainMine: A Graphical Data Mining System for Process Optimization --- In Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD, Beijing, China, June 2007, pp. 1103 - 1105.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner, Giti Javidi, Ehsan Sheybani and Jianyu Liang --- Learning the Relative Importance of Features in Image Data --- In Proceedings of IEEE ICDE's DBRank-07, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2007, pp. 237 - 244.
• Aparna Varde, Jianyu Liang, Elke A. Rundensteiner, and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Mining Images of Material Nanostructure Data --- Invited paper in ICDCIT-06, Bhubhaneswar, India, December 2006, pp. 403 - 413.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, David C. Brown, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Designing Semantics-Preserving Cluster Representatives for Scientific Input Conditions --- In Proceedings of ACM CIKM-06, Arlington, Virginia, November 2006, pp. 708 - 717.
• Aparna S. Varde, Edwin F. Begley and Sally Fahrenholz-Mann --- MatML: XML for Information Exchange with Materials Property Data --- In Proceedings of ACM KDD's DM-SSP-06, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 2006.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, David C. Brown, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Integrating Clustering and Classification for Estimating Process Variables in Materials Science --- In Proceedings of AAAI-06, Poster Track, Boston, Massachusetts, July 2006.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, David C. Brown, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Effectiveness of Domain-Specific Cluster Representatives for Graphical Plots --- In Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD's IQIS-06, Chicago, Illinois, June 2006.
• Richard D. Sisson Jr. and Aparna Varde --- Data Mining in Heat Treating: From QuenchMiner to AutoDomainMine --- Published in Heat Treating Progress, March / April 2006.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- LearnMet: Learning Domain-Specific Distance Metrics for Plots of Scientific Functions --- In the Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP), 2006, Springer Publishers, Special Issue on "Multimedia Data Mining", 2007, Volume 35, pp. 29 - 53.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard Sisson Jr. --- Estimating Heat Transfer Coefficients as a Function of Temperature by Data Mining --- In Proceedings of ASM's HTS-05, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, September 2005.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Learning Semantics-Preserving Distance Metrics for Clustering Graphical Data --- In Proceedings of ACM SIGKDD's MDM-05, Chicago, Illinois, USA, August 2005, pp. 107 - 112.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner, Carolina Ruiz, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Data Mining over Graphical Results of Experiments with Domain Semantics --- In Proceedings of ACM SIGART's ICICIS-05, Special Session on Mining Complex Patterns, Cairo, Egypt, March 2005, pp. 603-611.
• Aparna Varde, Elke Rundensteiner, Murali Mani, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Semantic Extensions to Domain-Specific Markup Languages --- In Proceedings of IEEE's CCCT-04, Austin, Texas, USA, 14-17 August 2004, pp. 55-60.
• Aparna S. Varde, Makiko Takahashi, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Matthew O. Ward, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- Apriori Algorithm and Game-of-Life for Predictive Analysis in Materials Science --- Published in the International Journal of Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems (KES), IOS Press, Netherlands, 2004, Volume 8, Number 4, pp. 213-228.
• Richard Sisson Jr. and Aparna Varde --- Data Mining: Promoting E-Business in Heat Treating --- Published in Heat Treating Progress, March / April 2004.
• Aparna S. Varde, Makiko Takahashi, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Matthew O. Ward, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- QuenchMiner: Decision Support for Optimization of Heat Treating Processes --- In Proceedings of IEEE's IICAI-03, Hyderabad, India, 18-20 December 2003, pp. 993-1003.
• Aparna S. Varde, Elke A. Rundensteiner, Mohammed Maniruzzaman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. --- The QuenchMiner Expert System for Quenching and Distortion Control --- In Proceedings of ASM's HTS-03, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, 15-18 September, 2003, pp. 174 - 183.
• Shuhui Ma, Aparna S. Varde, Makiko Takahashi, Darrell K. Rondeau, Md. Maniruzzaman and R. D. Sisson Jr. --- Quenching - Understanding, Controling and Optimizing the Process --- In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Quenching and the Control of Distortion, Beijing, China, May 2003.
• Aparna S. Varde and Elke A. Rundensteiner --- MEDWRAP: Consistent View Maintenance over Distributed Multi-Relation Sources --- In Proceedings of DEXA-02, Aix-en-Provence, France, September 2-6, 2002, pp. 341-350.
• Aparna Varde and Elke Rundensteiner --- SWECCA for Data Warehouse Maintenance --- In Proceedings of SCI-02, Orlando, Florida, USA, July 14-18, 2002, pp. 352-357.
• Aparna S. Varde --- Data Warehousing and Data Extraction on the World Wide Web --- In Proceedings of WebTech-99 Somerset, New Jersey, USA, November 1999, Track 19.

Professional Activities

• Panelist for National Science Foundation (NSF) of USA
  • Division of Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS): Cyber Enabled Discovery and Innovation Program (CDI)
• Journal Reviewer
  • AIEDAM: Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (Cambridge University Press), 2009
  • TKDE: Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE), 2007
  • DKE: Data and Knowledge Engineering (Elsevier), 2007, 2008, 2009
  • VDLB: Very Large Databases (Springer), 2008
  • IS: Information Systems (Elsevier), 2007
• Workshop Co-Chair
  • PIKM 2007: ACM CIKM's 1st Ph.D. workshop on Information and Knowledge Management
  • PIKM 2008: ACM CIKM's 2nd Ph.D. workshop on Information and Knowledge Management
• Program Committee Member
  • ER 2009: International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (Springer)
  • EDBT 2009: Extending Database Technology conference (Springer)
  • ICDM 2008: International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE)
  • DEXA 2008: Databases and Expert System Applications conference (Springer)
  • SDM 2008: Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Data Mining conference (SIAM)
  • WAIM 2008: Web Age Information Management conference - Demo Track (IEEE)
  • ISDIKS 2007: International Symposium on Data Information and Knowledge Spectrum (IEEE)
  • KDD MDM 2007: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference - Multimedia Data Mining workshop (ACM)
• External Reviewer
  • CIKM 2005: Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (ACM)
  • VLDB 2005: Very Large Databases conference (Springer)
• Organization Volunteer
  • ICDE 2004: International Conference on Data Engineering (IEEE)
  • HTS 2003: Heat Treating Society Conference (ASM International)
  • KDD 2006: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference (ACM)
• Membership of Technical Societies
  • Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society
  • IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
  • ACM: Association of Computing Machinery
  • AAAI: Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
  • ASM International: The Materials Information Society
• Other Professional Involvement
  • Steering Committee Member of Consortium for MatML (Materials Markup Language) since Oct 2004
  • Invited Speaker at ICDCIT 2006 (International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology)
  • Collaborator on Grants through the USA's NSF (National Science Foundation), NIH (National Institute of Health) and DOE (Department of Energy) since August 2006
  
  

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  Leadership Positions

  • Member of Faculty Search Committee in Computer Science at Virginia State University
  • Graduate Student Representative in Faculty Meetings, WPI CS Department August 2004 to April 2005
  • President, CS-GSO, WPI August 2001 to August 2002
  • Executive Committee Member, 4A-Organization, Lucent Technologies, North Andover, MA, June 2000 to May 2001
  • Vice President, ISO, WPI January 1998 to December 1998
  • Treasurer, IEEE Student Chapter in Engineering College, Bombay, India, August 1993 - May 1994. Chapter won IEEE Region 10 Award
  
  

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  Hobbies and Interests

  • Reading: Literature, Mystery, Humor, Non-fiction, Astrology...
  • Travel: Done some sightseeing, e.g., Taj Mahal in Agra, Greek-Roman Museum in Alexandria, Statue of Liberty in New York etc., Had occasional adventures such as river-rafting in Maine, glider-plane flying at Worcester Airport, Snow Tubing in Nashoba Valley, Ice Skating near Worcester, Hiking at Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire and Climbing the Pyramids at Giza near Cairo in Egypt.
  • Music: Play keyboards a little, Listen to music from different countries.
  • Foreign Languages: Speak, read and write elementary German, Speak basic Chinese and of course, some Indian languages, Grasp a few other languages... Thanks to the multi-cultural groups at work as seen in these pictures --- DSRG team at a graduation lunch and Materials Science team at a student welcome party in WPI.
  • Cultural Events: Elocution, Debates, Dramatics, Creative Writing.
  • Sports: Ping-pong, Badminton, beginner-level Tennis.
  • Painting: Used to paint simple landscapes etc... very long ago, nowadays just paint Rangoli sometimes.

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  New Contact Information

  Dr. Aparna S. Varde
  Assistant Professor
  Department of Computer Science
  Montclair State University
  Montclair, NJ 07043, USA
  Phone: 973-655-4292
  Montclair E-mail: vardea@mail..montclair.edu
  WPI E-mail: aparna@cs.wpi.edu