About Me

I am a Researcher in the Autonomous Systems Research Department at Nokia Bell Labs, where I work on AI/ML systems, decentralized energy systems, autonomous networks, and Web3 infrastructure.

My prior work has spanned over building systems for machine learning that enable explainability and generalizability, building trustworthy and privacy-preserving ML systems, and designing machine learning solutions for ubiquitous computing. My PhD thesis focused on characterizing, evaluating and building trustworthy and privacy-preserving machine learning systems for resource-constrained edge environments.

Prior to joining graduate school, I was a software engineer at IBM where I worked on the z/OS Mainframe. I completed my Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University at Albany, SUNY.

Recent News

• I joined Nokia Bell Labs as a Researcher. (Nov 2023)
• I successfully defended my PhD thesis! (Sep 2023)
• Our paper titled “W4-Groups: Modeling the Who, What, When and Where of Group Behavior Via Mobility Sensing” has been accepted at the ACM CSCW 2024. (Sep 2023)
• Our paper titled “SODA: Protecting Proprietary Information in On-Device Machine Learning Models” has been accepted at the ACM/IEEE SEC 2023. (Sep 2023)
• I was selected as a Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star in the 2023 cohort. (Aug 2023)
• I was awarded the CICS Dissertation Writing Fellowship. (Jan 2023)
• I passed my Thesis Proposal Defense. (Oct 2022)
• We were awarded the Adobe Research Gift Grant to pursue our work on proprietary information in on-device models. (Sep 2022)
• Our short paper titled “Towards Preserving Server-Side Privacy of On-Device Models” has been accepted at The Web Conference (WWW) 2022. (Mar 2022)
• I will be joining Adobe Research as a Research Scientist Intern this summer. (Feb 2022)
• Our paper titled “Measuring and Characterizing Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning” has been accepted at Applied AI Letters. (Oct 2021)
• I was awarded the 2020-2021 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award by CICS, UMass Amherst. (Oct 2021)
• I was awarded the Dean’s Outstanding Anti-Racism Leadership Award by CICS, UMass Amherst. (May 2021)

Publications

1. W4-Groups: Modeling the Who, What, When and Where of Group Behavior Via Mobility Sensing
   Akanksha Atrey, Camellia Zakaria, Rajesh Balan, Prashant Shenoy
   ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) 2024.

2. SODA: Protecting Proprietary Information in On-Device Machine Learning Models
   Akanksha Atrey, Ritwik Sinha, Saayan Mitra, Prashant Shenoy
   ACM/IEEE Symposium of Edge Computing (SEC) 2023.

3. Towards Preserving Server-Side Privacy of On-Device Models.
   Akanksha Atrey, Ritwik Sinha, Somdeb Sarkhel, Saayan Mitra, David Arbour, Akash V. Maharaj, Prashant Shenoy
   The Web Conference (WWW) 2022. [poster]

4. Measuring and Characterizing Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning
   Sam Witty, Jun K. Lee, Emma Tosch, Akanksha Atrey, Kaleigh Clary, Michael L. Littman, David Jensen
   Applied AI Letters 2021.

5. Preserving Privacy in Personalized Models for Distributed Mobile Services
   Akanksha Atrey, Prashant Shenoy, David Jensen
   IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) 2021.

6. Exploring E-petitioning and media: The case of #BringBackOurGirls
   Teresa M. Harrison, Catherine Dumas, Nic DePaula, Tim Fake, Will May, Akanksha Atrey, Jooyeon Lee, Lokesh Rishi, S.S. Ravi
   Government Information Quarterly 2021.

7. New Frontiers in IoT: Networking, Systems, Reliability, and Security Challenges
   Saurabh Bagchi, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Ramesh Govindan, Prashant Shenoy, Akanksha Atrey, Pradipta Ghosh, Ran Xu
   IEEE Internet of Things Journal 2020.

8. Exploratory Not Explanatory: Counterfactual Analysis of Saliency Maps for Deep Reinforcement Learning
   Akanksha Atrey, Kaleigh Clary, David Jensen
   International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020.

9. Identifying When Effect Restoration Will Improve Estimates of Causal Effect
   Hüseyin Oktay, Akanksha Atrey, David Jensen
   SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM) 2019.

10. Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning
    Sam Witty, Jun Ki Lee, Emma Tosch, Akanksha Atrey, Michael Littman, David Jensen
    Critiquing and Correcting Trends in Machine Learning Workshop at NeurIPS 2018.

11. Do Diverse Social Interactions Make Us Smile More Often? Studying Smiles and Diversity Via Social Media Photos
    Vivek K. Singh, Akanksha Atrey, Saket Hegde
    ACM Multimedia (ACMMM) 2017.

12. Towards Measuring Fine-Grained Diversity Using Social Media Photographs
    Vivek K. Singh, Saket Hegde, Akanksha Atrey
    International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) 2017.

13. E-Petitioning and Online Media: The Case of# BringBackOurGirls
    Teresa M. Harrison, Catherine Dumas, Nic DePaula, Tim Fake, Will May, Akanksha Atrey, Jooyeon Lee, Lokesh Rishi, S.S. Ravi
    International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o) 2017. (Best paper award)

14. E-petition Information Diffusion in Online Social Networks
    Catherine Dumas, Akanksha Atrey, Jooyeon Lee, Teresa M. Harrison, Tim Fake, Xiaoyi Zhao, S.S. Ravi
    International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o) 2016.

Awards and Honors

• Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star 2023 (Aug 2023)
• CICS Dissertation Writing Fellowship (Jan 2023)
• Adobe Research Gift Grant (Sep 2022)
• 2020-2021 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (Oct 2021)
• Dean’s Outstanding Anti-Racism Leadership Award (May 2021)
• NSF Travel Grant for WiML 2019 (Dec 2019)
• NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention (Apr 2019)
• Lori A. Clarke Scholarship in Computer Science 2018 (Jun 2018)
• Lita and Stephen Greenwald Research Fund Award 2017 (May 2017)
• ISO President’s Medal for Exemplary Leadership (Apr 2017)
• Spellman Top Academic Achievement Award 2017 (Apr 2017)
• CRA-W Research Scholar (for Grace Hopper Celebration) (Oct 2016)
• Bruce B. and Louise Steen Gravitt Scholarship (May 2016)
• Spellman Top Academic Achievement Award 2016 (Mar 2016)
• Tau Sigma National Honor Society Scholarship (Jan 2016)
• Women and Technology Award and Scholarship (Jun 2015)
• Ross A. Johnston Entrance Scholarship in Math and Statistics (Sep 2013)

Activities

• CICS Community Outreach Student Team – Founder/Chair (Apr 2019 – Aug 2022)
• CICS CARE: PhD Applicant Support Group - Chair (Sep 2020 - May 2022)
• CICS Committee Against Racism and for Equity: Sustaining – Chair (Jun 2020 – Sep 2020)
• ACM E-Energy - Volunteer (June 2020)
• ACM/IEE IoTDI – Volunteer (Apr 2020)
• CS Social – Chair (Sep 2019 – May 2020)
• CS New Student Committee – Chair (Sep 2017 – May 2020)
• Indian Student Association – Vice President (Apr 2018 – May 2019)
• CS Social– Chair (Sep 2017 – May 2018)
• Indian Student Organization – Vice President (Jun 2016 – Dec 2016)
• Tau Sigma National Honor Society – President (Jun 2016 – Dec 2016)
• Transfer Student Peer Mentor (Sep 2015 – Dec 2016)
• Tau Sigma National Honor Society – Secretary (Mar 2015 – Mar 2016)
• Asian Pacific American Conference – Logistics Chair (Jan 2015 – Apr 2015)