Who was Mushtaq Ahmad Mirza?
He was my father, he is no longer with us. He is the main reason why this project exists. He passed away on October 29, 2013 and (my) world was never the same again.
Other than the emotional motivation I have other reasons to pursue this goal: Billions of people have gone through the experience of losing a loved one since time immemorial. Convergence of certain technologies gives us the possibility to fundamentally transform the experience of bereavement and loss. This is exactly what I want to achieve in the end. As for my background, I am Senior Data Scientist at Groupon Inc and Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at University of Washington in Tacoma. I am also a Visiting Research Scientist at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. I have been quite fortunate that life’s journey has taken me to wonderful and interesting places: I have worked in a number of domains: eCommerce and UX (Groupon), Health Informatics (KenSci), Game Analytics (Ninja Metrics), Data Mining and Informatics for Pilgrimage Data (GIS Technology Innovation Center at UQU), Biomedical Engineering and Neuroprosthetics (Boston Scientific), Population Studies (Minnesota Population Center) and Energy Sector (Consolidated Edison). In grad school my research was in behavioral modeling and data mining massive online games. In addition to the project described on this website project I am also working on reconstruction and analysis of large scale historical social networks. More information about me and my work can obtained from my website at www.aurumahmad.com
Contact
I can be contacted at maahmad@u.washington.edu