M.S./Ph.D. Candidate
 Department of Computer Science
 UMass - Amherst
 140 Governor's Drive
 Amherst, MA 01003-9264

 b o u l a t @c s . u m a s s . e d u
 Telephone: (413) 545-4753
 [more details]

 

B. A.    Economics, Computer Science - Dartmouth College 2001

Research Interests:  Cooperative wireless networks, distributed algorithms for routing in mobile ad-hoc wireless networks, data management in sensor networks, implementation aspects of network algorithms, distributed computational geometry

Current work: Research Assistant in Advanced Computer Networking Group

Advisors: Jim Kurose and Don Towsley

Previous work: From March 2004 until August 2005 I was a Research Associate in the Web, Internet and Networking Group at Boston University Computer Science Department under the supervision of John W. Byers

Publications:

Exact Distributed Voronoi Cell Computation in Sensor Networks,
Boulat A. Bash and Peter J. Desnoyers.
Proc. of the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '07),
Cambridge, MA, April 2007
[pdf]

Approximately Uniform Random Sampling in Sensor Networks,
Boulat A. Bash, John W. Byers and Jeffrey Considine.
Proc. of the 1st Workshop on Data Management in Sensor Networks (DMSN '04),
Toronto, Canada, August 2004.
[ps] [pdf]

Talks:

"Approximately Uniform Random Sampling in Sensor Networks"

  • International Workshop on Data Management for Sensor Networks (DMSN), August 30, 2004, Toronto, Canada. [ppt] [pdf]
  • Harvard University, Computer Science Department, Sensor Networks Research Group, November 22, 2004.

Full Curriculum Vitae

Research

I am primarily interested in designing, analyzing, and implementing practical algorithms for ad-hoc, sensor, and peer-to-peer networks. I am currently working on improving multicast routing in mobile ad hoc wireless networks, as well as enhancing our approximately uniform random sampling approach for sensor networks. My theoretical interest in distributed computational geometry is leading me to consider known problems like Voronoi diagram computation and determination of nodes on the convex hull of the network in the realm of energy-constrained limited-range lossy wireless networks. I have also helped to develop SENS: Simple Extensible Network Simulator and continually work on improving it.

reading list for CBMANET project

Internet Path Failures Study for CMPSCI677

Previous life

My main research effort during and immediately after college was in financial economics. The empirical studies which I carried out required efficient design and implementation of data analysis algorithms and dealing with gargantuan data sets. While working as a research assistant for Prof. Kent Womack at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, I was interested in market microstructure-based long-term initial public offering (IPO) returns predictors. In other words, I looked at sequences of trades on stock exchange and tried to forecast returns of IPOs. This work resulted in an SSRN working paper.

When I joined Quantitative Strategies Group in Investment Management Division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. as an analyst, I conducted research into risk factors in long-short portfolios and took major role in managing an experimental long-short strategy.

I left financial economics because it primary focuses on explaining various existing phenomena and finding ways to back up these explanations with clever manipulation of (usually) noisy data. But I longed to invent solutions to problems. I saw only a limited opportunity to do this in economics.

Publication

Boulat A. Bash,
Post-IPO Flipping and Turnover: Predictive Factors for Long-Run Returns.
Social Science Research Network working paper 623502
May 2001
[ssrn page] [local pdf]

Downloads

TAQAccess is a tool to extract NYSE Transactions and Quotes data into data structures convenient for analysis. It works on all TAQ database CDs/DVDs from its inception in 1993 to present. The source includes examples of using the data structures. Stable version. [taz] [zip]

Excel models developed for Tuck core MBA capital markets class: BondBuilder [xls], FrontierBuilder [xls], and BetaBuilder [xls].

Personal

I am fond of watching baseball, and am a big fan of the Boston Red Sox. The listing of the Red Sox (and their minor league affiliates) games that I saw in person can be found here.

Here are a couple of other Red Sox and baseball resources:

My other hobbies include cross-country skiing, running, swimming, listening to heavy metal, and reading about military history.

I also help out Green Decade Coalition/Newton with web work whenever I can.