Meet the Faculty - Jaideep Srivastava

Tell us about your journey to the University of Minnesota.

I’m originally from India, which is where I completed my undergraduate degree. I started out studying mechanical engineering, which was one of the more popular fields at the time. Eventually I was introduced to computer science through some of my courses, and I spent a lot of time playing chess through one of the mainframe computers at the university. The idea that a machine could play chess really intrigued me, and I switched my studies halfway through undergrad. That’s how I became a computer scientist.

After finishing my undergraduate degree, I searched for places at the cutting edge of the field, which brought me to the U.S. to complete my graduate degree. I studied at the University of California Berkeley, where I got my masters and PhD in computer science. I did some work in industry during my graduate studies at IBM Research, but I really wanted to pursue a career in academia. I wanted an environment where I could interact with students and to decide my own research agenda. That ultimately brought me to the University of Minnesota in 1988 and I’ve been here ever since.

We would love to hear more about your research! What do you hope to accomplish with this work?

I took a sabbatical from 1999-2001 to work at Amazon. At that time, the internet was growing rapidly, especially with ecommerce, and I wanted to learn more about that process. That experience was a great reminder that all of the work we do in a research environment will eventually end up in the hands of companies and users. I really got to interact with social scientists, which is something I have continued ever since. When Amazon collected data about purchases, they were analyzing it using models in psychology, which was an interesting mindset shift for me. Since then, I have had a number of collaborations with folks in the social sciences, and in addition to my appointment in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, I have a courtesy appointment in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Throughout my career, I have worked with data. I used to be a database person and still teach courses in that area. When I started looking at applications, I realized that people want database systems so they can analyze them for patterns and trends. That led me to artificial intelligence and machine learning. I do some core fundamental work in this area, but nowadays, there are two main applied areas for my work - social sciences and healthcare.

The social sciences include communications, advertisement, news media, and social networks, which merges with computing in a new area called computational social science. This work analyzes data and uses it to better understand social science theories. In the healthcare space, we analyze data from wearable devices in an effort to be more proactive in patient care. Healthcare today is driven by adverse health episodes - you feel ill, then you seek care and treatment. It is a reactive process. Wearable devices provide a lot of information about a person’s health and the state of their body, so we are looking at ways to use that data in a proactive way to improve health outcomes. It is also a way to monitor chronic health conditions  and measure the effectiveness of health therapies on your day-to-day health.

What courses do you teach? What can students expect to get out of your course?

I frequently teach CSCI 4707 - Practice of Database Systems. It really serves as a first course in databases, and it is an important component of our data science program, for which I am the director of undergraduate studies. It is a fundamental course in modeling, organizing, storing, and querying large amounts of data. It also reviews the different data science and machine learning algorithms that you can utilize in this process. We do this by reviewing specific case studies from big tech companies, like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. I try to bring as much real-world application to the course as I can. This fall I am teaching CSCI 5707 - Principles of Database Systems, which is the graduate-level version of this course.

What do you like about teaching?

I enjoy working with students. I have taught the same class many times, but it is a different set of students each time and I learn something new from each group. There is always a student that asks a new and interesting question that I had never thought about before. I like to have a major project in my courses, which gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to a real problem. I enjoy helping them go through that learning process, and it really mirrors what they will be doing in the workplace.

What do you do outside of the classroom for fun?

I enjoy walking and spending time with my friends and family. I am also a big time movie and theater buff. My youngest child is actually a theater major, so we enjoy going to the theater together whenever we can.

Favorite spot in the Twin Cities?

I enjoy walking down by the Mississippi Flats behind Coffman Memorial Union, especially when the weather is nice. It is a great way to get outside and enjoy the city. It is my zen time.

Is there anything else that you would like students to know about you?

I have a broad range of experiences from start-ups, to industry, to academia. If students want to explore any of these areas, they are more than welcome to come talk to me.