Lalit Agarwal

Master of Math - Coursework option

Was your undergraduate in CS? If not, what did you study?
I hold a Bachelor of Technology in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from India but my major was in Computer Science. 

Why did you choose graduate studies and why did you choose graduate studies in CS?
I wanted to explore certain areas in CS such as information security, machine learning in detail which motivated me to apply for graduate studies. 

What is your research area and why did you choose it?
I am not involved in a research project as I am in the coursework program at the University of Waterloo. However, my areas of interests are human-computer interaction, information security and privacy.

Who is your supervisor and why did you choose to work with him/her?
Since I am in the coursework program, I don't have a supervisor currently.

Why did you choose Waterloo for graduate studies? If you did your undergraduate at Waterloo, why did you stay?
Since UWaterloo is highly reputed for its Computer Science program, it was always on my top five universities list I wanted to do my graduate studies at. Also since I was highly inspired by the research work being done by the Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CRYSP) group at UWaterloo, I wanted to come to UWaterloo and get an opportunity to work with the group. 

What sort of research/projects are you working on?
As part of a HCI course which I took in fall 2014, I worked on developing a crowd-sourcing platform to identify plagiarism across languages. I am still working on improving the performance of the system and evaluating the results. 

What classes are you taking? What has been your favourite class so far?
I took a 600-level course on introduction to artificial intelligence in fall 2014 and it was a learning experience for me as it was my first course in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I am taking a course on cryptography and network security in winter 2015 which is being taught by Professor D. Stinson and I am looking forward to it.