Akshay Narayan

About me

I am a Lecturer at the School of Computing in NUS. I received my PhD from NUS in 2020. I was advised by Prof. Leong, Tze Yun. I completed MTech from IIIT-Bangalore in 2012. Before MTech, I worked with NetApp India Pvt., Ltd., for three years.

I am broadly interested in AI planning, sequential decision making, and its applications. My current research is on transfer learning in reinforcement learning. I have explored areas of multi-objective reinforcement learning and hierarchical reinforcement learning during my graduate studies.

Previously I have worked in the area of cloud computing. Some of the projects include smart metering and chargeback as applied to cloud systems, incorporating power awareness in cloud metering (master's thesis project), workload analysis for virtual machine sizing and location in private clouds (research internship with Infosys labs, India) and QoS monitoring and response in cloud systems.

Some of the other projects I have worked on include building a simulation platform to test crowdsourcing algorithms (research internship with Xerox Research Center, India) and short text spam detection.

Publications

Journal articles/Book chapters

• Power-Aware Cloud Metering

  Akshay Narayan and Shrisha Rao, "Power Aware Cloud Metering," IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, vol.7, no.3, pp.440-451, July-Sept. 2014. doi:10.1109/TSC.2013.22

• System of Systems for Quality of Service Observation and Response in Cloud Computing Environments

  Paul Hershey, Shrisha Rao, Charles B. Silio Jr., and Akshay Narayan, "System of Systems for Quality of Service Observation and Response in Cloud Computing Environments," IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, pp.212-222, March 2015. doi:10.1109/JSYST.2013.2295961

• Resource Procurement, Allocation, Metering, and Pricing in Cloud Computing

  Narayan A., Pillai P.S., Prasad A.S., Rao S. (2017). "Resource Procurement, Allocation, Metering, and Pricing in Cloud Computing". In: Chaudhary S., Somani G., Buyya R. (eds) Research Advances in Cloud Computing, pp 141-186. Springer, Singapore. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-5026-8_7

Conference proceedings

• ASD: A Framework for Generation of Task Hierarchies for Transfer in Reinforcement Learning

  Jatin Goyal, Abhijit Madan, Akshay Narayan and Shrisha Rao, "ASD: A Framework for Generation of Task Hierarchies for Transfer in Reinforcement Learning", 2018. Twenty Fifth International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP-18), pp. 313-325, December 2018, Cambodia.

• SEAPoT-RL: Selective Exploration Algorithm for Policy Transfer in RL

  Akshay Narayan, Zhuoru Li and Tze-Yun Leong, "SEAPoT-RL: Selective Exploration Algorithm for Policy Transfer in RL", 2017. Thirty First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17), pp. 4975-4976, February 2017, San Francisco. (Extended Abstract)

• An Efficient Approach to Model-based Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

  Zhuoru Li, Akshay Narayan and Tze-Yun Leong, "An Efficient Approach to Model-based Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning", 2017. Thirty First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-17), pp. 3583-3589, February 2017, San Francisco.

• A Core Task Abstraction Approach to Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

  Zhuoru Li, Akshay Narayan and Tze-Yun Leong, "A Core Task Abstraction Approach to Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning", 2016 . International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS'16), pp. 1411-1412, May 2016, Singapore. (Extended Abstract)

• Cloud-based Mission Observation, Response, Exploitation (CMORE) System

  Hershey, P.; Silio, C.B.; Narayan, A.; Rao, S., "Cloud-based Mission Observation, Response, Exploitation (CMORE) System," 2014. Eighth Annual IEEE Systems Conference (SysCon), pp.317-324, March 31-April 3 2014. doi: 10.1109/SysCon.2014.6819275

• The Curse of 140 Characters: Evaluating the Efficacy of SMS Spam Detection on Android

  Akshay Narayan and Prateek Saxena, "The Curse of 140 Characters: Evaluating the Efficacy of SMS Spam Detection on Android", 2013. Third ACM Workshop on Security and Privacy in Smartphones and Mobile Devices (SPSM '13), pp. 33-42, 4-8 November 2013, Berlin. doi: 10.1145/2516760.2516772

• Smart Metering of Cloud Services

  Narayan, A.; Rao, S.; Ranjan, G.; Dheenadayalan, K., "Smart Metering of Cloud Services," Systems Conference (SysCon), 2012 IEEE International, pp.1-7, 19-22 March 2012 doi: 10.1109/SysCon.2012.6189462

• Analysis of SaaS Business Platform Workloads for Sizing and Collocation

  Ganesan, R.; Sarkar, S.; Narayan, A.;, "Analysis of SaaS Business Platform Workloads for Sizing and Collocation," Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2012 IEEE 5th International Conference on, pp.868-875, 24-29 June 2012 doi: 10.1109/CLOUD.2012.73

• System of Systems to Provide Quality of Service Monitoring, Management and Response in Cloud Computing Environments

  Paul C. Hershey, Shrisha Rao, Charles B. Silio Jr., Akshay Narayan. "System of Systems to Provide Quality of Service Monitoring, Management and Response in Cloud Computing Environments", 7th IEEE International Conference on System of Systems Engineering (SoSE 2012), Genoa, Italy, pp. 314-320, 16-19 July 2012 doi:10.1109/SYSoSE.2012.6384208

• Isosurface Extraction from Hybrid Unstructured Grids Containing Pentahedral Elements

  A. Narayan, J. Sreevalsan-Nair, K. Gaither, and B. Hamann, "Isosurface Extraction from Hybrid Unstructured Grids Containing Pentahedral Elements", in Proceedings of International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications (GRAPP/IVAPP) 2012, February 2012, pp. 660-669.

Teaching

School of Computing, NUS

• CS2113 Software Engineering and Object-oriented Programming : Sem 1: AY-2020/21 | Sem 1: AY-2019/20 | Sem 2: AY-2018/19 | Sem 1: AY-2018/19
• CS2103 Software Engineering : Sem 2: AY-2019/20 | Sem 2: AY-2018/19
• CS3243 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence : Sem 1: AY-2019/20
• CS4246/CS5446 AI Planning and Decision Making : Sem 2: AY-2019/20

School of Computing, NUS [Role: Teaching assistant]

• CS 2013 Software Engineering : Sem 2: AY-2017/18 | Sem 1: AY-2017/18 | Sem 2: AY-2016/17 | Sem 1: AY-2016/17 | Sem 2: AY-2015/16
• CS 2106 Introduction to Operating Systems: Sem 2: AY-2014/15
• CS4246 AI Planning and Decision Making : Sem 1: AY-2014/15 and Sem 1: AY-2013/14

IIIT-Bangalore [Role: Teaching assistant]

• CS110 Operating Systems: Sem 2: AY-2011/12
• PS102 Introductory Discrete Mathematics: Prep Sem: AY-2011/12