The Thank you note from my PhD Dissertation

I would like to begin with acknowledging some very special people who are the integral parts of my journey this far. Here it goes.

Thank you Dr. Dhillon (Dr. Harpreet S. Dhillon). I cannot express in words how fortunate I am to have an advisor like you. The last five years in Virginia Tech have really been a roller-coster ride. Thank you for introducing me to this wonderful field called stochastic geometry and providing me the necessary guidance to explore this intricate field beyond the application to cellular networks. Our conversations in countless in-person and over-the-phone meetings have always helped me to find a clear path out of any stagnation. You have profoundly influenced my ideas and shaped the way I approach research. Thank you for believing in me from the first day when I joined in the PhD program right after completing my undergrad. I never would have imagined that the small problem of modeling user hotspots in a network will evolve to become a full-fledged book¹ in these five years. Thank you for the hand-holdings I desperately needed in the earlier days of my PhD and the utmost freedom of working on multiple problems of my interest during the later years. Your style of advising will be a role model for me during the professional life that awaits for me after my graduation.

Thank you Mehrnaz (Dr. Mehrnaz Afshang) for being the best mentor. I will always cherish our endless discussions in Durham 470 and your office those went way beyond the particulars of our research problems. I wish I had penned down excerpts of our conversations on the differences and similarities between Indian and Persian cultures. Had you stayed longer, I would have learned a bit of Farsi and you have become fluent in Bengali.

I am indebted to the wonderful professors in Virginia Tech. I sincerely thank Prof. Mike Buehrer for the amazing courses on digital communication and MIMO. I am grateful to Prof. Scotland Leeman for teaching the course of Bayesian statistics in the most interesting way. I am also thankful to Prof. Allen MacKenzie for his lectures on stochastic signals and information theory. These courses have been very helpful in building my background during the formative years in grad school. I would also like to thank my professors at Jadavpur University (JU), India, where I completed my bachelors in engineering. I couldn’t have thanked enough Joydip-Da (Dr. Joydip Saha) for introducing me to the field of mathematical analysis. I am grateful to Swagatam-sir (Dr. Swagatam Das) for inspiring me to pursue doctoral degree abroad when I was in high school, and providing the necessary research exposure during my undergrad days.

My colleagues at Wireless@VT have enriched my graduate life in many ways and deserve a special mention. My interactions with Priyabrata (Priyabrata Parida) and Vishnu (Dr. Vishnu Vardhan Chetlur) have been very fruitful. Thank you Praful (Dr. Praful Mankar) for illuminating me with your deep insights on stochastic geometry. I wish we had started collaborating earlier. I am very fortunate to have shared the lab space with some wonderful people: Morteza Banagar, Mohamed A. Abd-Elmagid, Anish Pradhan, Dr. Mustafa Kishk, Dr. Raghunandan M. Rao, and J. Kartheek Devineni. A special mention to Keerthana (Keerthana Bhogi) who has been working with me from last year on a very challenging problem of topological manifolds. I sincerely wish her a productive career ahead.

It would be an injustice not to acknowledge the assistance I received from Hilda and Nancy from the office of Wireless@VT. They diligently kept the administrative process running so that I never had to worry about my pay-cheques and paper-works.

I sincerely acknowledge Aditya (Dr. Aditya Padaki) and Boon (Dr. Boon Loong Ng) for providing me an intriguing problem during my internship in Samsung research America in the summer of 2019. Also, Raghu, thanks for being the most amazing teammate during the internship. It has been a great pleasure working with you. Thank you Dr. Amitabha Ghosh for hosting me as an intern in Nokia Bell labs in the summer of 2018.

Well, now it is time to thank all my friends and family in Blacksburg, College Park and Calcutta. It is going to be a long list and I sincerely hope I don’t miss out any names. Shantanab-da (Dr. Shantanab Debchoudhury), a big thanks for informing me about Wireless@VT while I was applying for the grad school. Also, thank you for being there as a responsible senior and taking the time for teaching me the essential skills such as driving and cooking. Nath-da (Saurabh Nath), our conversations in the hallways of Norris Hall and the premises of Chasewood Downs did help me to be inquisitive about everything which is the most fundamental attribute of a researcher. I believe you will be renowned for your works on fluid mechanics and I will be proud to be a part of your tenure at Virginia Tech. Thank you Ranit-da (Ranit Mukherjee), Shuchishmita (Shuchismita Biswas), Arit (Arit Das), Paul (Arnab Paul), Sreeya-di (Sreeya Brahma), and Anindya (Sheikh Shadab Towqir) for being the most amazing roommates. I will miss our weekend hangouts, movie nights, and holiday trips. Thank you Abhijit-Da (Dr. Abhijit Sarkar), Shreya-Di (Dr. Shreya Mitra), Gupta-Da (Dr. Arnab Gupta), Poorna-Di (Poorna Goswami), Srijan-Da (Dr. Srijan Sengupta), and Swarnali-Di (Dr. Swarnali Sanyal) for being the elders of my extended family in Blacksburg. Niharika, you have been the center of all the happiness since the day you were born. The Blacksburg chapter of my life will be incomplete without mentioning Esha Dwibedi, Lekha Chowdhuri, Rounak Meyur, Debasmita Biswas, Harsh Sharma, Aniket Jana, and Abinash Padhi. Thank you.

Debdipta (Dr. Debdipta Goswami), I am very fortunate to have you as the best friend, philosopher, and guide. I have always thought your place at College Park as my second home in United States. I wish you will shine as an academician at Princeton University. And yes, we will accomplish our long due plan of the cross country road trip. Speaking of College Park, I must mention the names of two wonderful people: Prithviraj (Prithviraj Dhar) and Soumojit (Soumojit Das). I wish good luck for your careers ahead.

Thank you Ma (Mum) (Krishna Saha) and Baba (Dad) (Chitta Ranjan Saha) for your unwavering support throughout the long road until this day and days to come. I am here only because of you. Any word of thanks or gratitude will fall short for you two being my supportive pillars during my highs and lows, and trusting me with my decisions and accepting my successes and failures whole-heartedly. Your visit to Blacksburg is perhaps the most happiest moment during my grad school. I wish you were here beside me during this special moment of graduation. Thank you Mani (Kanta Saha), Mehson (Pradip Saha), and Suvrajit (Suvrajit Podder) and the other wonderful members of my family for making this journey possible. A person is incomplete without memories and you are the part of my memories.

As I am writing this dissertation, the world is obscured by the dark clouds of a global pandemic (COVID 19). A special mention to all the public heath professionals and medical researchers who are fighting at the forefront. Thanks to everyone who, in the midst of a pandemic, are risking their lives to keep the essential services up and running.

I would like to acknowledge financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF Grants CNS-1617896 and CNS-1923807) for all the projects discussed herein.

It is difficult to weave all the names of the persons and places in a single piece of writing. As a memoir on this account, I tried to draw a word cloud of all those names that I hold very dear to my heart.

The dissertation can be accessed here.

1: Dhillon et al. Poisson cluster process: Theory and Application to Wireless Networks, under preparation, Cambridge University Press, 2021.