Abhinandan Pal
অভিনন্দন পাল
PhD Candidate at the School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
PhD Candidate at the School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Originally from Chinsurah, West Bengal, India, I'm currently pursuing my PhD in the Theory of Computer Science Group at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Mirco Giacobbe. Prior to this, I completed my undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani, where I received the President of India Gold Medal and the department's first prize. During this period, I had the privilege of engaging in research at École Normale Supérieure Ulm, Università degli Studi di Padova, and École Normale Supérieure Paris Saclay, supervised by Caterina Urban, Francesco Ranzato, Marco Zanella, and Mihaela Sighireanu.
In Bengali, I'm অভিনন্দন পাল. Ignore Google Translate.
Contact: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Email: a.pal@bham.ac.uk, abhinandan.mike123@gmail.com.
News
18th September 2023 -> Started PhD at the University of Birmingham.
7th December 2023 -> Received President of India Gold Medal and Department First Prize at IIIT Kalyani
16th January 2024 -> Presented a paper at VMCAI'24
17th January 2024 -> Presented a poster at POPL SRC'24
Interests
Hardware Verification | Safe AI | Static Analysis | Programming Languages | Formal Methods | Abstract Interpretation | Model Checking
Awards
PRESIDENT OF INDIA GOLD MEDAL | Awarded to one student at each INI (IIT, IIIT, NIT, etc.) | Dec. 2023
ACM SRC BRONZE MEDAL | Undergraduate Category at SPLASH’22 New Zealand | Dec. 2022
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy (Computer Science) [Ongoing]
PhD at the School of Computer Science | University of Birmingham | Sept. 2023 - Sept. 2027 | Supervisor: Mirco Giacobbe | Topic: Machine Learning Approaches for Formal Verification
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Bachelor of Technology (Computer Science)
B.Tech. Computer Science and Engineering | Indian Institute of Information Technology, Kalyani | August 2019 - July 2023 | Thesis : Qiwi: A Beginner-Friendly Quantum Language
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Indian School Certificate (Science)
Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations | Don Bosco School, Bandel | 2007 - 2019
Research Experience
École Normale Supérieure (Intern)
RESEARCH INTERN | École Normale Supérieure | Nov 2022 – Apr 2023
• Advisor: Dr. Caterina Urban
• Attention Robustness of Neural Networks
• Verifying Attention Robustness of CNNs using Abstract Interpretation
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Università degli Studi di Padova (Intern)
RESEARCH INTERN | Università degli Studi di Padova | May 2022 – July 2022
• Advisor: Prof. Francesco Ranzato, Dr. Caterina Urban, Dr. Marco Zanella
• Project: Feature ranking and fairness analysis of SVMs using abstract interpretation
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École Normale Supérieure (Intern)
RESEARCH INTERN | École Normale Supérieure | Nov. 2021 – Jan 2022
• Advisor: Dr. Caterina Urban
• Project: Libra [Fairness certification of decision-making software]
• Redesigned an existing static analysis for certifying fairness of neural networks by intelligently exploiting GPU
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École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay (Intern)
RESEARCH INTERN | École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay | June 2021 – July 2021
• Advisor: Prof. Mihaela Sighireanu
• ANR Project CoLiS (Correctness of Linux Scripts)
• Developed specification-based test for POSIX utilities manipulating the file system
Publications
Machine Learning Verification
Abhinandan Pal, Francesco Ranzato, Caterina Urban, Marco Zanella. “Abstract Interpretation-Based Feature Importance for Support Vector Machines”. In International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI'24) (pp. 27-49). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. [Paper] [Talk]
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Abhinandan Pal “PiR (πr): Probabilistic Interpretation of Robustness” Extended Abstract for the Student Research Competition track of the 51st ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL SRC ’24), January 14–20, 2022, London, United Kingdom. [Paper] [Poster]
Quantum Programming Languages
Abhinandan Pal, Anubhab Ghosh. “Qiwi: A Beginner Friendly Quantum Language” In Companion Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH Companion ’22), December 5–10, 2022, Auckland, New Zealand. [Paper]
Teaching/Talks
Spring 2024
Post Graduate Teaching Associate | University of Birmingham | Module: Team Project
For BSc in Computer Science, 2nd year
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Post Graduate Teaching Associate | University of Birmingham | Module: Data Structures and Algorithm
For Conversion MSc in Computer Science
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Invited Talk | University of Oxford | OXCAV seminar series
Topic: Projects I worked on with Inria while living in India
Autumn 2023
Post Graduate Teaching Associate | University of Birmingham | Module: Computer-Aided Verification
For BSc/MSci in Computer Science, 3rd and 4th year
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Facts and Snacks (Weekly Department Talk) | University of Birmingham
Topic: Explainability of Support Vector Machine
Spring 2023
Antique Seminar (Weekly Seminar at Research Group) | École normale supérieure
Topic: Explainability of Support Vector Machine
Academic Service
2023
CIKM'24
Student Volenteer
2024
CAV'24
AEC Member
SAS'24
AEC Member
ECOOP'24
AEC Member
SIGPLAN-M
Mentor