Aleksandra Korolova

My interests span algorithmic and modeling problems that arise in Internet applications and online social networks. I study: privacy-preserving algorithms, policies, and user experiences; algorithms, data-mining and analytics for social networks and massive scale social data; and algorithmic, economic, and social aspects of online monetization.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, where I was a Cisco Systems Stanford Graduate Fellow advised by Prof. Rajeev Motwani (RIP, Rajeev) and Prof. Ashish Goel. My Ph.D. thesis focused on protecting privacy when mining and sharing user data.

At Stanford, I collaborated with students and faculty from the Research on Algorithms for the Internet group. I was also fortunate to intern at Microsoft Research Search Labs, Facebook, Yahoo! Research, and PARC.

Personal

I grew up in Latvia and graduated from Riga secondary school #40, spending fun weeekends preparing for math olympiads at NMS and learning algorithms at Progmeistars. I am indebted for the many opportunities I have had to my family, amazing teachers at the above institutions and to the George Soros Foundation. If you visit or live in Riga, rent an apartment or office space in the center of Riga.

I loved spending my college years at MIT, and especially enjoyed the classes taught by Prof. Patrick Winston. I first tried doing research in Dan Spielman's error-correcting codes class and Joe Gallian's Duluth REU. At Stanford, I enjoyed learning some randomized algorithms, algorithmic game theory, cognitive science and design thinking. I also had fun advocating for graduate student interests, distributing funding and organizing tax workshops as part of the Graduate Student Council, and serving as a mentor and Center for Teaching and Learning liason for Computer Science TAs.

In my free time, I enjoy traveling, skiing, playing tennis, and learning languages.