JAMMU: Nahush Shrivatsa, a computer science postgraduate student from Jammu, has won the Best Paper Runner-Up award at the 9th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on GeoSpatial Simulation (GeoSim 2026), held in Riverside, California, from November 3 to 6.
Shrivatsa, a second-year Master of Science student at New York University’s (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering, received the recognition for his research paper titled “GeoRecSim: A Multi-Agent Testbed for Recommender System Design”, co-authored with Ekin Ugurel and Professor Takahiro Yabe.
The paper was presented as part of the 34th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems. It was selected for the runner-up honour by an international panel of experts from academia and industry.
The research introduces GeoRecSim, an open-source simulation platform designed to examine how recommendation algorithms influence urban mobility, consumer demand, traffic, emissions and public welfare.
The platform creates a virtual model of a city populated by simulated individuals who make travel and leisure choices based on recommendations. It allows researchers to assess how different recommendation systems affect movement patterns, the distribution of visitors across commercial venues and environmental outcomes.
According to the research team, experiments conducted across four metropolitan areas demonstrated trade-offs between different recommendation approaches, highlighting their potential implications for urban planning and sustainability.
The platform is intended to help researchers, urban planners and technology companies evaluate the wider consequences of recommendation algorithms before deploying changes in real-world settings. Its code and an interactive demonstration are publicly accessible at airecsim.cusp.nyu.edu.
Shrivatsa conducted the research at NYU’s Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP), where he is associated with the Resilient Urban Networks Lab. He developed the simulation software, including its interfaces, spatial databases and data-processing systems, under the guidance of Ugurel and Professor Yabe.
The ACM SIGSPATIAL conference, organised by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Spatial Information, is a major international forum for research in geographic information systems, spatial computing and geospatial data science. Its 34th edition brought together 492 participants and featured 38 sessions and 13 workshops.
As part of the conference programme, Shrivatsa also visited the headquarters of geographic information systems company Esri in Redlands, California, where he interacted with engineers and discussed potential applications of his research.
Shrivatsa completed his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering in 2025. He graduated with a 3.8 GPA and received Dean’s List honours. He is pursuing his master’s degree at NYU, which he is expected to complete in May 2027.
Alongside his academic work, he serves as Technical Program Lead for NYU’s High-Speed Research Network, overseeing a team of six leads and more than 40 students. His previous professional experience includes software engineering roles at Nokia and Washington Tunneling.
The award marks an international recognition for the Jammu-born researcher’s first published research paper.
