Raja Sambasivan

In a nutshell...

I am a graduate student working towards a Ph.D at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) [CMU web site, Wikipedia entry] in Pittsburgh, PA. When not enjoying the sunny, warm weather (it never rains in Pittsburgh!), You can find me working with many amazing people at the Parallel Data Lab (PDL). I am advised by Professor Greg Ganger and I obtained all of my professional degrees (B.S. -- 2003, M.S. -- 2004, Ph.D. -- ?) from the Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) department at CMU.

On 02/14/07, I was featured in a Piled Higher & Deeper (PhdComics) strip. Check it out here!! In case you're wondering...yes, I firmly believe that CS researchers should wear labcoats. That way, other people will *know* that we're researchers from just a glance...

Office: Collaborative Innovation Center. Second floor. Cube 2221F
E-mail: rajas|AT|andrew.cmu.edu
Office phone: 412-268-5929
Calendar: here (links to Google Calendar)

Research & teaching

My research interests span the field of computer systems, but my current research focuses specifically on distributed filesystems and storage management.

I served as a teaching assistang for the first time during the fall semester of 2005. I was a teaching assistant for 18-746: Storage Systems, an ECE graduate class.

For more information, please see my research, courses, and teaching page and my publications and presentations page.

Hobbies

Those that have met me know, from the fifteen pound camera bag I tote around, that I love photography. Since most of my friends and live subjects tend to get annoyed at the amount of time it takes me to take a single picture of them, I mostly specialize in landscape and architectural photography. Landscapes and buildings don't become agitated regardless of the amount of time it takes me to compose a picture.

The greatest contribution of this site is the wealth of pictures I have uploaded to it. Some of these pictures are artistic, whereas others are of my friends and of various events I have attended. You can see them all at my photography page.

Apart from photography, I am interested in astronomy, american football (my favourite team is the New York Jets), anything involving lego bricks, Dr. Who, biking, racquetball, and squash.

Friends

I am lucky to have met and made friends with many wonderful people from many different places and countries.