Sovrin Tolia

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     Sensor Networks
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     Semantic Web

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*Work Experience(Reverse Chronological Order)*
Institution/Company	Hewlett Packard Company, San Diego
Position	Software Design Engineer
Duration	As Long As NOT FIRED
Project	Sensor Networks : Moving from Research to Production.
Responsibilities	Research and Development
Institution/Company	Hewlett Packard Laboratories,Palo Alto
Position	Research Intern
Duration	Summer 2002
Project	Context Spaces aim to provide a new class of document management services in which storage, organization and retrieval of information is based on semantically rich and active meta-data. It enhances the access to existing document resources by making it more proactive, mobile and context-aware. We have designed a new language, Penelope, to realize Context Spaces. Penelope defines the basic programming language concepts, including primitive data types as objects. It uses the message passing model for expressing operations over these objects. The current implementation of Penelope is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model and the Schema specification. The property centric approach and the platform independence provided by RDF makes Penelope suitable for building distributed components. This work on Penelope demonstrates the benefits of expressing data and code in a single unifying language.
Responsibilities	Research and Development
Institution/Company	University of Maryland Baltimore County
Position	Research Assistant
Duration	December 2000-Present
Project	Conduct Research in the area of Semantic Web. Specifically we are investigating the role Darpa Agent Markup Language in marking up contents on the web so that semantics could be attached to the data. Once we have the semantics of data in place, Software agents can pick up this information and enrich their reasoning processes. Towards this end, we have developed a vertical portal ITTalks for illustrating the use of DAML. It serves as a repository of talks, marking them up in DAML so as to be picked by software agents.
Responsibilities	Designer and Developer for ITTalks. Constructing Ontologies for talks, events, schedules and profiles
Institution/Company	Hewlett Packard Laboratories,Palo Alto
Position	Research Intern
Duration	June 2001-August 2001
Project	Conduct Research in the area of Context-Aware Software Agents to prototype the CoolAgent Recommendation system (CoolAgent RS). This context- aware software agent system demonstrates the ability to allow contextual information to be freely distributed among agents so that the meaning of that information can be shared and understood. It provides a flexible infrastructure for agents to capture heterogeneous contextual information in the physical world, and represent that uniformly for machine- processes. It also allows agents to negotiate with other agents in the vicinity for contextual information that is not directly accessible through sensing.
Responsibilities	Designer and Developer for Research Prototype Coolagent RS. Being a Research Lab, the focus was on generating novel ideas and examining their feasibility. To this end, we came very close to filing an Invention Disclosure
Institution/Company	University of Maryland Baltimore County
Position	Teaching Assistant
Duration	August 2000-December 2000
Course	Structure of Programming Languages taken by Dr. Timothy Finin and Dr. Charles Nicholas
Responsibilities	Grading of about 60 students and providing homework solutions
Institution/Company	Citicorp Information Technology Industries Ltd. India
Position	Associate Consultant, COOP-Intern
Duration	June 1999-June 2000, January 1999-May 1999
Project	Promotr-Project Monitoring and Tracking Tool Promotr Synopsis : FLEXIS renamed as PROMOTR is a Project Monitoring and Tracking Tool which automates the entire Gamut of Project Management, Process Management and Defects Tracking. It serves an an effective Decision Support System to enable the Organization to achieve Process Compliance, Adherence to Deadlines and effective Planning and execution of Projects. It is an optimum mix of proven processes and tools addressing all the operational and decision support needs through one solution. Through Promotr, Flexis enables a wide range of activities including estimating , planning organizing and managing of tasks and resources within set constraints. Through Qubase, it builds a process infrastructure of software engineering and management practices. Through Darts it empowers the organization with the ability to assign the root cause of defects, identifying possible process improvement areas and preventing defects. Workflow Automation is an integral part of Promotr. It automates the document flow right from the Project Initiation to the end of the Project life cycle. It enables an automated online Review Response Process which maintains the entire set of changes the document undergoes and can deliver a transition diagram of the changes it underwent. It is based on Fagan's Inspection Model and effectively utilizes the roles of an Owner, Reviewer, Moderator in this review process. Sound features of the Workflow include A Completely Automated Online Review Process Multiple Reviewers at Multiple Roles inspecting from Multiple Viewpoints Complete Folder Maintenance for Document Categorization Task Delegation and Escalation in case of Non-Compliance There are two versions of Promotr, Standard Web Enabled Version for Intranets currently at Release 6.0 and an Internet based version which can be found at http://www.promotr.com
Project	Flexcube Intelligent Framework FIF Synopsis : Flexcube Intelligent Framework is acts as a Active Alert System on any Data Server. It's Unique Messaging Server is designed to handle messaging as varied as Fax, Pager, Email, Web Page Updating and WAP Based Cellular Phone messaging. It is a Four tier architecture with Rule Server at the Fourth Tier. Messaging Server at the third, Application Server at the Second and a Web Based Client as the First one. It's sound features include the following Rule Definition in a Totally User Friendly manner and the Rule Server takes care of mapping it to the internal Measures, Dimensions and Hierarchies in the Database Varied form of Messaging including the State of Art WAP based messaging on WAP enabled cell phones. It utilizes Nokia's WAP toolkit for making this happen. Currently Under Test A Totally generic system which can act as a wrapper on any Data System so as to Alert the User of any deviation to defined norms Lets the User completely specify the messaging parameters for his convenience Completely configurable parameters for make it adapt to any Data store. With Information Technology constantly moving towards Wireless Networks, this product aims at enabling legacy systems to be compliant with these technological changes without any updation in the legacy systems.
Responsibilities	Designer and Developer for both projects Promotr and FIF. Other responsibilities included liason with clients (I was taking care of Lucent Technologies) and showcasing both products at client sites.