Varun Ganapathi
PhD Candidate
Computer Science Department
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
varung@cs.stanford.edu
About Me
I am currently a PhD candidate in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. I graduated
from Stanford University in 2005 with a Bachelor's Degree (BS) in
Physics, and with a Master's (MS) in Computer Science in 2007.
Research Interests
I am interested in applying Markov Random Fields(more generally
probabilistic techniques) to problems in natural language processing,
image processing and other domains. Specifically, I am studying
new methods of learning the parameters and structure of graphical
models. I am also interested in transfer learning, collaborative
filtering and convex optimization.
Publications
Constrained Approximate Maximum Entropy Learning,
Varun Ganapathi, David Vickrey, John Duchi and Daphne Koller To appear in UAI 2008. [pdf]
Efficient Structure Learning of Markov Networks
using L1-Regularization,
Su-In Lee, Varun Ganapathi and Daphne Koller To appear in NIPS 2006. [pdf]
Learning vehicular dynamics, with application to modeling helicopters,
Pieter Abbeel, Varun Ganapathi and Andrew Y. Ng. To appear in NIPS 2005. [pdf]
Inverted autonomous helicopter flight via reinforcement
learning, Andrew Y. Ng, Adam Coates, Mark Diel, Varun Ganapathi,
Jamie Schulte, Ben Tse, Eric Berger and Eric Liang. In
International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, 2004. [pdf]
Links
Lua "is a powerful, fast,
lightweight, embeddable scripting language." Use with luajit for best results.
SWIG makes it trivial to wrap C++ classes and use them from Lua.
Class Papers
Simulation of Rigid Body Dynamics in Matlab
This report describes a MATLAB implementation of rigid body dynamics. Includes discussion of quaternions, Runge-Kutta order 4, and the inertia tensor.
[pdf]
Random Code
The following is provided with no guarantees.
Multidimensional Array(mdimarray.h):
Quotes
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat"- Theodore Roosevelt