Aakanksha Chowdhery is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research in the mobility and networking group. Her current research applies tools from signal processing, optimization, and machine learning to next-generation cyber-physical systems and dynamic spectrum access in TV white spaces. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. from the department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University in 2009 and 2013 respectively. Prior to Stanford, she received her B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in 2007. She is a recipient of Paul Baran Marconi Young Scholar Award in 2012 and Stanford's DARE Doctoral fellowship in 2010.
Automated meter reading and internet-of-things (IoT) in the smart grid allows utilities to collect fine-grained electricity readings of households. The consumption data collected by the smart meters and IoT devices enables inferences about behaviors, activities or preferences of the consumers, thereby raising concerns of being potentially privacy invasive. Consumer advocates fear the abuse of inferred information via price discrimination, marketing etc.