Prior to UMass, I spent a great couple of years at Microsoft Research (Silicon Valley) and the Information Theory and Applications Center at UCSD. In 2007, I received my Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. During graduate school, I spent a summer at DIMACS and three summers at the Fundamental Maths Department at Bell Labs. In the dim and distant past, I received the Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (2001) and a B.A. in Mathematics (2000) from the University of Cambridge.
Here's the text of a short bio and a photo.
Since you're here, maybe you'd like to...
- get in contact:
- Mail: College of Information and Computer Sciences, 140 Governor's Drive, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-9264
- Office: Room 334, 140 Governor's Drive (Campus Map and Area Map)
- Email: mcgregor at cs.umass.edu
- read some of my favourite papers (see here for more):
- Analyzing Graph Structure via Linear Measurements and Graph Sketches: Sparsification, Spanners, and Subgraphs
SODA 2012 and PODS 2012 (with K. Ahn and S. Guha). [Slides], [Video], [Poster].
And here's a survey about graph stream algorithms that I recently put together. - Information Cost Tradeoffs for Augmented Index and Streaming Language Recognition
FOCS 2010 (with A. Chakrabarti, G. Cormode, and R. Kondapally). [Slides]. - A Near-Optimal Algorithm for Computing the Entropy of a Stream
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 6 (2010), no. 3, pg. 1-21 (with A. Chakrabarti and G. Cormode). [Slides]. -
Stream Order and Order Statistics: Quantile Estimation in Random-Order Streams
SIAM Journal of Computing, 38 (2009), no. 1, 2044-2059 (with S. Guha) - Robust Lower Bounds for Communication and Stream Computation
STOC 2008 (with A. Chakrabarti and G. Cormode). [Slides].
- Analyzing Graph Structure via Linear Measurements and Graph Sketches: Sparsification, Spanners, and Subgraphs
- submit a great paper to one of the following conferences/workshops that I'm involved with:
- ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2018)
- 35th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2018)
- Linear Sketching as a Tool for Everything, FOCS Workshop (2017)
- 36th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2017)
- Communication Complexity and Applications II, Banff International Research Station (2017)
- Nexus of Information and Computation Theories, Henri Poincare Institute (2016)
- European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2015)
- Towards a Unified Treatment of Dynamic Graphs, Banff International Research Station (2015)
- Algorithms for Large-Scale Graphs, NII Shonan (2014)
- String Processing and Information Retrieval Symposium (SPIRE 2014)
- Communication Complexity and Applications, Banff International Research Station (2014)
- ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2014)
- and for nostalgia's sake, BD3 2013. SPIRE 2013, MASSIVE 2013, Data Streams and Compression (Special Session of CiE 2013), PODS 2013, STOC 2012 Workshop: Algorithms for Distributed and Streaming Data, STOC 2012, FAW 2011, CIKM 2010, DCOSS 2010, SODA 2010, WAPMDS 2009, DIMACS 2009, DCOSS 2008, and CIKM 2008.
- become a Ph.D. student at UMass and work in my group:
- Great! I like the research I do (admittedly I'm biased) but see my papers to make sure you would too. I'm interested in most areas of theory.
- A strong math background is a must for any area of theoretical computer science. A good grasp of probability is particularly useful in my work.
- See here and here for the official application procedure. If you'd like to work with me, mention it in your application and send me an email.
- For general advice about being a Ph.D. student, check out this, this, and everything here.
- Unfortunately, I don't have any funds to support summer interns except for students eligible for the REU program.
- review some slides from recent talks on:
- "Graph Synopses, Sketches, and Streams: A Survey (Part I)" (VLDB Tutorial 2012, Johns Hopkins APL 2011)
- "Crash Course in Data Streams: Part I" and "Part II" (Johns Hopkins APL 2010).
- "Data Streams, Dyck Languages, and Detecting Dubious Data Structures" (University of Edinburgh, Random Graals 2010)
- "Annotations in Data Streams" (INFORMS 2009, IITK WAPMDS 2009)
- "Graph and Geometry Problems in the Data Stream Model" and "Data Streams: Random Order and Multiple Passes" (Barbados Workshop on Computational Complexity 2009).
- "Robust Lower Bounds for Communication and Stream Computation" (STOC 2008)
- "Streaming and Sketching for Distributions" (NIPS 2007)
"We know that five minus four is one
But a cloud minus a sailboat
Have no idea what it is."
-- Another Kind of Mathematics, Nichita Stanescu