About Me
I am a graduate student at Purdue University. My interests are mainly centered around Security, Data Privacy, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Software engineering.
Education
Purdue University
- Major: Master of Science Programme in Computer Science
- Graduating year: June 2025
- Current Courses: Algorithms, Information Security
Lahore University of Management Science
- Major: Bachelor of Science Programme in Computer Science
- Graduating year: June 2023
- Relevant Courses:
- Algorithms, Data Structures, Discrete Mathematics, Software Engineering
- Networks: Topics in Computer and Network, Network Security, Topics in Internet Research, Network-Centric Computing
- Programming: Advance Programming, Introduction to Programming, Computational Problem Solving
- Systems: Operating Systems. Fundamentals of Computer System
- Data Science: Databases, Computer Vision
- Machine Learning, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Mathematical Foundation of Machine Learning
- Mathematics: Calculus-I & II, Linear Algebra, Introduction to Differential Equation, Operational Research
- Spring'2023 semester: Principles and Techniques of Data Science, Introduction to Data Mining, Theory of Automata, Internet of Things
Technical Skills
- Languages: C/C++, Java, Python, SQL (MySQL, Postgres), Haskell, JavaScript, HTML/CSS
- Frameworks: React, Node.js, Express.Js
- Developer Tools: GitHub, Wireshark, Trello, VS Code, Visual Studio, PyCharm, Amazon Cloud9, Google Colab, Jupyter Notebook, Heroku, Sublime, Firestore, MongoDB, Proteus, Praat, MySQLWorkbench, LATEX
- Libraries: Pandas, NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, Keras, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Scrapy, Scitkit-Learn, BeautifulSoup, cv2, Seaborn, Selenium, OpenCV, Joblib.Parallel, Passport JS, PIL, re, Psycopg, python speech features (Not an exhaustive list)
- Operating Systems: MacOS, Linux, Windows
Research Experience
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Advisors: Dr. Mohammadkazem Taram
Lab: SecArch Lab (Purdue University)
• Completed Literature review
• Computed current performance for several frameworks including JAX, Tensorflow, Pytorch, and Opascus for both private and non-private epochs for MNIST Convolutional Neural Network
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Advisors: Dr. Naveed Bhatti and Dr. Hamad Alizai
Lab: Internet of Things
Idea: The study will concentrate on a Xiaomi IP camera and utilise data analysis of network packets and machine learning methods to identify human vs object motion using encrypted data blocks sent by the camera utilising the UDP and TCP protocols. The project entails utilising a "Alfa awus036nh" router's monitor mode to record and analyse the IP camera's network activity. The proposed initiative seeks to enhance the privacy and security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly IP cameras.
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Advisors: Dr. Yasir Zaki (Professor at NYU), Dr. Talal Rahwan (Professor at NYU), Dr. Muhammad Fareed Zaffar (Professor at LUMS)
Lab: Data Science and AI Lab (NYU)
Idea: We aim to expose biases (e.g., racial, gender) within media channels and compare biases across channels with different polarities in terms of leftist and rightist behavior using Natural Language Processing.
• Scraped more than 1 million article content from New York Times and Fox News via Wayback machine, Selenium, and Beautiful Soup Library.
• Optimised text extraction from article links via joblib.parallel.
• Ran Word2Vec model on text corpus for past 10 years.
• Calculated relative percentage difference of cosine similarities of different ethnicities with respect to white people.
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Advisors: Dr. Umar Iqbal (Postdoc - University of Washington), Dr. Muhammad Fareed Zaffar (Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University)
Lab: Security and Privacy Research Lab (University of Washington)
Idea: The goal is to measure the ad accessibility systematically to understand the experience of visually impaired users.
• Scraped ads using Puppeteer from 20K websites of the Tranco list via an open-source web crawler.
• Measured the frequency of accessibility tokens (e.g., aria-labels, alt-text, aria-live, and aria-hidden) by using html parser.
• Developed a basic Node-based Web Application to classify ad's labels (aria-label and alt-text) as sufficient, limited, or misinformation (dark patterns) against the ad's screenshots.
• Designed survey to understand perception, understanding, and expectations of visually impaired users from advertisements.
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Advisors: Dr. Ayesha Ali (MA Stanford), Dr. Ihsan Ayyub Qazi (Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh), Dr. Agha Ali Raza (Ph.D. Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University)
Lab: National Center of Big Data and Cloud Computing (NCBC, Pakistan)
Idea: The research aims to analyze the relationships between digital literacy and truth discernment, sharing intentions, emotional responses, and confirmation bias especially among low- and middle-income users. This can help in determining which social media users are most prone to fake news.
• Worked as team lead for the whole project.
• Conducted extensive literature review and designed the survey on KoboToolbox.
• Conducted a training session for other interviewees.
• Conducted a pilot field study of 200 in-person interviews.
• Performed data analysis and found that older individuals, females, those less educated, and people with lower household expenses are likely to have poor digital literacy. -
Advisors: Dr. Zaffar Ayub Qazi (Postdoc - UC Berkeley)
Idea: Our project's primary goal is to understand optimal user experience when it comes to watching live events within an online setting.
• Developed a MERN-based web application that serves the same stream at three distinct bitrates.
• Collected TV streams and used Open Broadcasting System to serve over RTMP protocol at a fixed bitrate to the server, which then used FFmpeg to convert the video to different bitrates.
• Used a simple HTML video player to show the video to the user.
• Results showed that a stream that facilitated a less frequent rebuffering rate and moderate quality was the most preferred.
Projects
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Github: https://github.com/choka
Idea: My team of five members developed a web application, choka.com, which inspires to revolutionise the tutoring industry by streamlining the matching process between tutors and students. Students can compare and select tutors. Likewise, tutors can have flexibility over their schedules and teach students a specific subjects. We followed agile methodology.
• Conducted students' and teachers' interview to analyse requirements of the user.
• Designed our prototype on Figma.
• Developed web app using FERN stack (Google Firebase, Express, React, Node.JS)
• Tested the app and corrected the errors.
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• Collected data by recording 600 hundred sentences (Urdu, English and Mixed Languge) using Praat software.
• Built language recognition models using different techniques such as Kernelized Support Vector and Neural Networks.
• Achieved 91% accuracy.
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Idea: The project used Multi-Camera System and combined visual recognition and multi-camera geometry and build a application to detect mask and non-mask people.
• Recorded data using a Multi-camera Setup.
• Achieved 87% accuracy for Mask/Non-Mask Person Detection using YOLO object detector.
• Visualise Ob ject Detection on Orthographic Top-View.
• Detected COVID-19 SOP Violation and generated a Heatmap Visualization on the top-view.
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Idea: Implementing a Chat Application introduced me to some fundamental concepts of socket programming and Computer Networking. I implemented a chat application (like messenger) that will allow users to reliably transfer messages and files using UDP in python.
Work Experience
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Experience: 3 years
I had the privilege to work in a competitive research environment since my junior year on projects focused on Deep Fakes, Bias in Media, and Ad Accessibility. I worked with international researchers from the Security and Privacy Research Lab (University of Washington), Data Science and AI Lab (NYU), National Center of Big Data and Cloud Computing (NCBC, Pakistan), and Internet Security and Privacy Lab (ISPL, LUMS). In the past two years, I have gained experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computational Social Science, Internet Measurement, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Network Security, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Web Development. -
Instructor: Dr. Mobin Javed
Time: January 2023 - Present
I designed and graded assignments and programming labs on web, usable, network, software security and cryptography modules. -
Instructor: Dr. Murtaza Taj
I designed programming assignments, held bi-weekly office hours to assist a class of approximately 80 students. I also graded quizzes, written homework, and programming assignments and held tutorials to assist better learning. I designed semester long project on Lane Analysis for Autonomous Vehicle as well. -
Instructor: Dr. Mobin Javed
I designed and graded assignments on Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues, Trees, Hashing and Sorting algorithms. I held tutorial and office hours twice a week to help a class of approximately 100 students. -
Instructor: Dr. Shafay Shumail
I assist, grade, and mentore students in groups of up to 11 during weekly labs. Additionally, I support student learning objectives through personalized and small group assistance during weekly office hours and holding weekly tutorials. I also mentore and grade groups of students in their final project.
Leadership
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• Held training programs, and career counselling sessions for high school female students to inspire them to join STEM field.
• Held programming classes for women to encourage female participation in CondingGuru (Annual IEEE LUMS Hackathon).
• Collected funds to set up computer labs in underprivileged school.
• Hosted panel talks on Gender Gap in Tech.
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Society: LUMS Women in Computing
I drafted the curriculum and taught python to a class of 30+ aspiring female computer scientists. -
Selected for SSE Peer Support System at Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Technology and Office. My role was to ease the transition to university life for incoming first year batch.
Awards
- Graduated with High Distinction in Undergraduate
- Dean's Honor List 2019-2020 & 2020-2021 & 2021-2022 & 2022-2023
- Merit Scholarship 2020-2021 & 2022-2023
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- 2nd Runner-ups in “Asian Regional Space Settlement Design competition” held by NASA
- Honorable Distinction in CEATS Math Contest
- Head Girl in O'Levels Student Council
- Co-Chaired Historical Arab League in LUMUN Model UN Conference
- President of Science Society in A'Levels
- Lead LUMS Team in Lahore Science Exhibition (helped students build DYI pinhole cameras)
- Silver medal in Badminton singles
- Best Basketball player
- Event Head LUMS' Psifi Science Olympiad
- Vice President Environmental Society
Community Service
- Distributed masks and sanitizers during COVID.
- Collected funds for ration drives.
- Create awareness for menstrual hygiene and health among women in villages.
- Handled micro-finance cases and collect funds to help the needy.
- Conducted English Language and technical workshops with CARE foundation for teachers working in underserved areas and raised funds to buy furniture for school.