Anand Venkataraman

Current

Vice President of Engineering at 33Across Inc.

Past

Director of Engineering at web-juice
Senior Leader at Turn, Inc
Research Scientist at SRI International

Founder & CEO at HashThySelf, LLC
Lecturer at Massey University
Research/Teaching Assistant, Grad Student at Massey University

see less...

3 more...

Education

The Johns Hopkins University
Massey University
Massey University

see less...

Recommended

12 people have recommended Anand

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

My Blog

Anand Venkataraman’s Summary

Anand has over 10 years of years of experience in leadership, research, development and technology transfer. After a brief stint teaching much enjoyed (by students :-) graduate courses in Machine Learning and Algorithms, he led the development of numerous commercial inventions in the Speech Technology Laboratory at SRI International. He subsequently led the document modeling effort for ad-targeting technologies at Turn and as Director of Engineering at WebJuice, he oversaw the design, architecture and deployment of a unified framework for targeting advertisements over multiple delivery channels. At 33Across, Anand is responsible for technology strategy, and building and leading our world-class engineering team. Anand Holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Massey University of New Zealand.

Anand has launched various ideas and products including HashThySelf.com, where as founder and chief architect of an enterprise grade image matching service, he developed the technology to a state where it is currently being licensed to a multinational entertainment company.

Anand is a Build.org volunteer and a member of Amnesty International, PeTA and the American Mensa.

Anand Venkataraman’s Specialties:

Technology strategy, Team-building and motivation

Anand Venkataraman’s Experience

Vice President of Engineering

33Across Inc.

(Computer Software industry)

March 2008 — Present (1 year 9 months)

What does "targeting along the social dimension" mean? At 33Across, we are immersed in answering exactly this question as precisely as possible, even if it means refining the question itself!

Targeting ads in social networks has hitherto meant the tailoring of ads to the contents of profile pages, or body of messages exchanged between friends. But we were one of the first to recognize that "actions speak louder than words" in social networks. When you share something with friends, the simple act of sharing has immensely more significance than perhaps the actual content of the message exchanged. We analyze the enormous sharing graph, composed of billions of edges weighted according to the number of messages flowing through each, and come up with projected reaches of messages routed through each person in the network. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc6ducBEbQE

If you're a rock-star CS dude, you won't feel out of place with the rest of the team. Join us!
Director of Engineering

web-juice

(Computer Software industry)

May 2007 — March 2008 (11 months)

Led engineering efforts, primarily concerned with the architecture and engineering of a unified ad-targeting system for multiple delivery channels and strategic build-vs-buy decisions regarding various issues such as click-fraud analysis and prevention.
Senior Leader

Turn, Inc

(Computer Software industry)

September 2006 — May 2007 (9 months)

Document modeling is a core technology in a targeted ad serving network. My team was directly responsible for determining the best ads to display on publications. By "best", of course, I mean the ads that result in the least viewer fatigue, most value for advertisers and therefore maximum revenue for publishers, possibly such as yourself, and for CPA-based ad-networks (us).

To see an article I authored about Cost-Per-Action advertising, visit: http://login.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=mn-biz&msg=175.1 or http://forums.mercurynews.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=mn-biz&msg=175.1
Research Scientist

SRI International

(Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Software industry)

October 2000 — October 2006 (6 years 1 month)

Innovation, Research and Development in the following areas among others:

1. Speech recognition
2. Speaker recognition
3. Dialogue modeling
4. Language modeling
5. Statistical learning techniques
6. Content discovery and data mining

Principal named inventor on issued US Patent 7,308,404 ("Method and apparatus for speech recognition using a dynamic vocabulary") as well as co-inventor on several others.
Founder & CEO

HashThySelf, LLC

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

December 2005 — December 2005 (1 month)

HashThySelf, LLC, today manages a portfolio of technologies for license, all of which have to do with image search and/or matching (before Riya et al existed even in blogspace). Zetangole (an image-likeness based game), Zetagram (an image-likeness based fortune teller) and QT meter (in the works) are all offshoots of HashThySelf, the core image-matching engine.

The technology was architected and deployed in a scalable way, with an open API for developers to access over the net. In my role of chief architect I managed three team leads and one web-developer who were jointly responsible for the launch of the Internet-based, Palm-Treo based and Nokia-6682 based software clients for HashThySelf and associated services.

The initial business plan proposed the use of image matching as a feature for online-dating and matchmaking sites.
Lecturer

Massey University

(Higher Education industry)

August 1997 — October 2000 (3 years 3 months)

Primary responsibilities included:

o Basic and applied research in computer science.
o Education delivery to undergraduate students.
o Supervision and guidance for graduate students.

During this time, I consulted to industry on various technical issues. As an example, the last three digits of the customer code in any electricity bill in New Zealand are generated today (as of June 2004 anyway) using a CRC checksum-based algorithm that I designed and sold in 1999. See http://www.electricitycommission.govt.nz/pdfs/opdev/servprovinfo/tender/Registry-functional-specification.pdf
Research/Teaching Assistant, Grad Student

Massey University

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

1993 — 1997 (4 years )

Grad work on my uber-cool research topic in Information Theory.

Anand Venkataraman’s Education

The Johns Hopkins University

Post. Doc. , Machine Learning/Language Modeling , 1998 — 1998
Massey University

PhD , Computer Science , 1993 — 1997

Activities and Societies:

Two-time president elect for UniForum New Zealand, the NZ subsidiary of Uniforum Inc.
Massey University

Masters , Computer Science , 1992 — 1993

Activities and Societies:

Accomplished Toastmaster, Two-term President of Massey Toastmasters, Winner at Regionals and Finalist at New Zealand Nationals Public Speaking Competition for Inspirational Speaking.

Additional Information

Anand Venkataraman’s Websites:

My Blog

Anand Venkataraman’s Interests:

Quasi Professional Interests - Mobile applications, Entertainment related apps, Social networking apps. Other interests - Networking, Pottery, Painting (Gouache), Mobile Art, Sci-Fi, Writing (Fiction and Non-fiction)