Tanvi Bajpai

Hi hello!

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I do research in Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

CV • email • LinkedIn

I'm currently on the job market looking for positions in Industry and Academia!

Read on to learn more about my research experience and interests!


"Theory and HCI? That's an interesting combination..."

I began my PhD journey with a focus on TCS research, driven by my passion for mathematics and algorithm design. This passion, coupled with my drive to tackle relevant real-world challenges, led me to explore how to better incorporate diversity and fairness in algorithms. As I delved deeper into this topic, I realized that to fully understand how algorithms function in real-world contexts—and how they can be used to benefit people—I needed to engage in more human-facing, applied research. This insight led me to pursue work in HCI, where I concentrated on online community governance and moderation.


Throughout the course of my PhD, I developed and refined skills and insights from each field separately and critically examined how my expertise in each area could be combined. As a result, I have gained a novel perspective on how research tools from TCS and HCI can be integrated to effectively design and analyze socio-technical algorithmic systems.


In addition to my academic pursuits, I spent 15 months as a Data Science Research Intern at AliveCor, where I honed my skills in Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Data Analysis. This experience not only enhanced my research and analytical toolkit but also introduced me to a new application domain. This opportunity allowed me to learn about a new field and identify and address open problems within it.


Overall, I am a researcher who integrates skills from CS Theory, HCI, and ML/AI. This versatility equips me to identify and tackle interesting questions from a diverse range of problem spaces, making me a strong interdisciplinary researcher who is excited to work on new challenges and innovative problems.



Publications


[TCS] Covering with Few Submodular Constraints: A Generalized Approach to Fair Covering.
Tanvi Bajpai, Chandra Chekuri, and Pooja Kulkarni
pre-print; to be submitted for peer review in November 2024


[HCI ∩ TCS] Modeling the Modqueue: Towards Understanding and Improving Report Resolution on Reddit.
Tanvi Bajpai and Eshwar Chandrasekharan
pre-print; submitted for peer review in September 2024
[arXiv]


[TCS] Bicriteria Approximation Algorithms for Priority Matroid Median.
Tanvi Bajpai and Chandra Chekuri
ACM International Conference on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems
[APPROX '23, Full Version]


[HCI] Measuring User-Moderator Alignment on r/ChangeMyView.
Vinay Koshy, Tanvi Bajpai, Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Hari Sundaram, Karrie Karahalios
ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing
**Received Best Paper Award!**
[CSCW '23]


[HCI] ConvEx: A Visual Conversation Exploration System for Discord Moderators.
Frederick Choi, Tanvi Bajpai, Sowmya Pratipati, Eshwar Chandrasekharan
ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing
[CSCW '23]


[HCI] Harmonizing the Cacophony with MIC: An Affordance-aware Framework for Platform Moderation.
Tanvi Bajpai, Drshika Asher, Anwesa Goswami, and Eshwar Chandrasekharan
ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing
[CSCW '22]
Talks: [Tanvi's Conference Talk]


[TCS] Revisiting Priority k-Center: Fairness and Outliers.
Tanvi Bajpai, Deeparnab Chakrabarty, Chandra Chekuri, and Maryam Negahbani
International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming
[ICALP '21, Full Version]
Talks: [Maryam's Reading Group Talk, Tanvi's Conference Talk]


[TCS] A New System-Wide Diversity Measure for Recommendations with Efficient Algorithms.
Arda Antikacioglu, Tanvi Bajpai, and R. Ravi
SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science, Volume 1, Issue 4.
[SIMODS '19, arXiv]


For more information about my work experience, teaching, honors and awards, etc. check out my CV.

Don't hesitate to reach out via email, LinkedIn, or carrier pigeon!



Miscellaneous

As a great philosopher once said: "Work Hard, Play Hard" :)