1. Human-Computer Interaction Institute
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213-3890
Anind Dey
Charles M. Geschke Chair, and Director
Associate Professor
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
anind@cs.cmu.edu
May 19, 2015
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing this letter to you with a strong recommendation for Navin Kummar H.S. Navin was
an intern with my research group (Ubicomp Lab) in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at
Carnegie Mellon University. He interned with me from September 2014 through May 2015. Let
me begin my letter by saying that it was a wonderful experience and a real pleasure to work with
Navin.
The project that Navin worked on (as part of a team of 2) was to develop a cross-platform (iOS
and Android) mobile app that supported clinical trials in the medical domain of hematology. The
app that he built is currently in use by my clinical partners at the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center. The app, while seemingly simple, had a number of complexities to it. At its core, it
supports patients who are receiving different treatments for hematology-related issues, in self-
reporting data about their condition every day. However, first Navin and his teammate had to
explore a number of cross-platform development tools to identify one that truly met the
requirements of the project (support database storage, setting of timers/alarms, etc.) and that
would actually produce binaries for our two platforms. Second, they had to deal with a set of
changing and strict requirements from our clinical partners. Third, they had to build the app to
prompt the user everyday until a certain condition was met, and only then, a final survey had to
be administered. The logic to determine the end of the clinical condition was non-trivial for the
clinicians to describe, and similarly, non-trivial to implement. This app is critical for my clinical
partners who are conducting a series of clinical trials.
All through the project, Navin was the consummate professional. He was very good at keeping
me up to date on the status of the project, working independently of me (with his teammate) and
did not hesitate to ask questions when he had doubts. The quality of the work he performed, in the
design of the app, the implementation and the testing was extremely high and I was very pleased
with his performance. This was not an easy project to work on, and the fact that the work was
critical to an ongoing partnership and collaboration, added to the importance of the work, and the
importance of having someone I trusted on the project.
Overall, I was extremely pleased with Navin’s work during his internship, and would be very
excited to work with him again in the future. Please consider this letter as a strong
recommendation for Navin for a job with your company.

2. Sincerely,
Anind K. Dey
Information about the recommender
From August 2001 until August 2004, I was a Senior Researcher at Intel Research Berkeley and
an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Computer Science division of UC Berkeley’s EECS
department. I am currently the head of the department (Director) of the Human-Computer
Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I am an Associate Professor in the same
department (with a courtesy appointment in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Computer
Science Department and Machine Learning Department). My research interests lie at the
intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), ubiquitous computing (focusing on sensor-
based computing) and machine learning. Thus my ability to evaluate candidates is based on my
many years of working in the field, my familiarity with research and faculty at highly ranked
schools in my area, on my familiarity with students and faculty at Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley
and CMU in particular, and on my familiarity with the best research being done in my community
at large.