PhDs by graduation year

The list below contains the student's name and dissertation/thesis title of recent graduates.

All graduates are part of the Computer Science Doctoral program unless otherwise indicated - e.g., Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Informatics (IGPI).

2025 - 2026

Yumna Anwar
Deep Learning for Real-World Sound Processing in Healthcare
PhD received December 2025
Advisor: Octav Chipara


Bekir Zahit Demiray (IGPI - Information Science)
Bridging Hydrological Modeling and AI: Advancing Streamflow Forecasting with Multi-Task Learning and Spatio-Temporal Data Improvement
PhD received December 2025
Advisor: Ibrahim Demir


Zhengyang He
Enhancing Software Based Soft Error Resilience in High-Performance Computing Systems Through Cross-layer Optimization and Performance Variation Analysis
PhD received December 2025
Advisor: Guangpeng Li

2024 - 2025

Hussam Habib
How do Social Media Platforms Influence Our Beliefs and Behaviors?
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Rishab Nithyanand


Md Kowsar Hossain
Overcoming communication failures in reliable and real-time cyber-physical networks
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Octav Chipara


Mudathir Mohamed
Extensions to Theories of Relations and Tables in SMT
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Cesare Tinelli


Maaz Bin Musa
Protecting Users Online Privacy Through Enhanced Transparency and Accountability
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Rishab Nithyanand


Ingroj Shrestha
Detection and Mitigation of Biases in Large Language Models Through Diverse Lenses and Methods for Fairness
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Padmini Srinivasan


Mary Wilson (IGPI - Information Science)
Transcriptomic and Metagenomic Characteristics of Visceral Leishmaniasis 
PhD received August 2025
Advisor: Andrew Kitchen


Hammas Bin Tanveer
Towards a Secure and Accessible Internet Over IPV6
PhD received May 2025
Advisor: Rishab Nithyanand


Nahid Zeinali (IGPI - Information Science)
Enhancing Cancer Symptom Detection in Electronic Health Records Using Artificial Intelligence
PhD received May 2025
Advisor: Stephanie White


Rachel Fitzjerrells (IGPI - Information Science)
Determining the Impact of the Microbiome on Health and Disease: Using Standard and Advanced Bioinformatics
PhD received December 2024
Advisor: Ashutosh Mangalam


Shreya Ghimire (IGPI - Information Science)
Advancing Translational Bioinformatics: Techniques for Addressing Research Barriers
PhD received December 2024
Advisor: Alejandro Pezzulo


Osama Khalid
Charting Sensorial Style: New Frontiers in Linguistic Style Analysis
PhD received December 2024
Advisor: Padmini Srinivasan


Arjun Viswanathan
Automating Interactive Theorem Provers and Certifying Automated Theorem Provers
PhD received December 2024
Advisor: Cesare Tinelli

2023 - 2024

Han Bao (IGPI - Information Science)
Estimating Human Mobility Responses to Social Disruptions through Spatio-Temporal Deep Generative Learning Methods
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Juan Pablo Hourcade


Anthony Cantor
A Semantics and a Sequent Calculus for Dual Counterpart Intuitionistic Logic
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Aaron Stump


Flannery Currin
Adapting e-Books and a Teleoperated Agent Designed in Preschool Contexts for Play-Based Group Therapy for Children Developing Social Play, Executive Function, and Adaptive Behavior Skills
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Juan Pablo Hourcade


Michalis Kantartjis (IGPI - Information Science)
Enhancing Public Health Communication and Decision-making: Evaluating the Efficacy of Bivariate Choropleth Mapping Using Eye Tracking
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Juan Pablo Hourcade


Andrew Marmaduke
A Proof Theoretic Redesign of the Calculus of Dependent Lambda Eliminations
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Aaron Stump


Elizabeth Zak (IGPI - Information Science)
Can I Trust This Image?: Evaluating the Relationship Between Information Literacy Skills and the Ability to Identify Visual Misinformation
PhD received August 2024
Advisor: Iulian Vamanu


Alexis Graves (IGPI - Information Science)
A Team Science Characterization of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C)
PhD received May 2024
Advisor: David Eichmann


Hankyu Jang
Healthcare Associated Infections: Computational Modeling, Inference, and Prediction
PhD received December 2023
Advisors: Sriram Pemmaraju and Alberto Segre
Employment: Applied Scientist; Amazon - Buyer Risk Prevention team


Muhammad Hammad Mazhar
Improving the Safety of IoT Systems through Usable Policy Enforcement
PhD received December 2023
Advisor: Alberto Segre
Employment: Assistant Professor; University of Northern Colorado


Qi Qi
Efficient Algorithms for Distributionally Robust Optimization and its Applications
PhD received December 2023
Advisor: Bijaya Adhikari


Momina Tabish
Hidden Truths: Norms in Clinical Practice
PhD received December 2023
Advisor: Padmini Srinivasan


Adnan Ahmed
A Top-Down Look into the Performance of Web Applications
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Rishab Nithyanand
Employment: Research Scientist; CAIDA - University of California San Diego


Dat Hong
Building Interpretable Machine Learning Models for Sequential Data
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Alberto Segre; Tong Wang
Employment: Postdoctoral Research Scholar; Yale School of Management


Christa Jenkins
Elaborating Inductive Definitions in the Calculus of Dependent Lambda Eliminations
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Aaron Stump
Employment: Postdoctoral Research Scholar; Stony Brook University - Computer Science


Cory Kromer-Edwards
Predicting Antibiotic Resistance Using Machine Learning
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Suely Oliveira
Employment: Bioinformatics Scientist/Computer Scientist; JMI Laboratories


Jeehan Malik
Understanding How Emerging Technologies Impact Pedestrian Street-Crossing Behavior
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Jeehan Malik
Employment: Human Factors Engineer; Apple


Muhammed Sit (IGPI - Information Science)
Augmentation and Extrapolation of Streamflow and Rainfall Datasets Using Deep Learning
PhD received August 2023
Advisor: Ibrahim Demir
Employment: Senior Data Scientist; PwC

2022 - 2023

Zhuoning Yuan
Deep AUC Maximization
PhD received May 2023
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Machine Learning Scientist; Netflix


Dixian Zhu
From Distributionally Robust Optimization to Broader Machine Learning Applications
PhD received May 2023
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Postdoctoral Scholar - Genetics; Stanford


Jonathan Rusert
The Dark Side of Text Classification: Addressing the Negative Aspects Plaguing Text Classifiers
PhD received Dec 2022
Advisor: Padmini Srinivasan
Employment: Assistant Professor; Purdue


Dhruv Vyas
Common Configurations and Personalization Systems for Over-The-Counter Hearing Aids
PhD received Dec 2022
Advisor: Octav Chipara
Employment: Post Doctoral Research Fellow; The University of Iowa


Federico Antolini (IGPI - Geoinformatics)
Geospatial Methods for Distributed Flood Attenuation on Riverine Catchments
PhD received August 2022
Advisor: Eric Tate
Employment: Postdoctoral Researcher; Texas A&M University


Sulyun Lee (IGPI - Information Science)
Understanding and Predicting Team Performance—A Collaboration Perspective
PhD received August 2022
Advisor: Kang Zhao
Employment: Data Scientist; Happiest Baby Inc.


Lakshmi Subramanian
Using a Virtual Environment to Study how Pedestrians and Bicyclists Respond to Warning and Intent Communication for Autonomous Vehicles
PhD received August 2022
Advisor: Joe Kearney
Employment: Assistant Professor; Kean University


Xiangyu Wang (IGPI - Information Science)
From Online Engagement to Offline Health Outcomes—Analyzing User Behaviors in Online Health Communities
PhD received August 2022
Advisor: Kang Zhao
Employment: Lecturer UNSW; Business School

2021 - 2022

Wanxin "Mathew" Wang
A Hybrid Inverse-Kinematics Solution to Generate Avatars in Real-Time for Virtual Reality Applications
PhD received May 2022
Advisor: Joe Kearney
Employment: Senior Software Engineer; Garmin International


Umar Iqbal
Towards a Privacy-Preserving Web
PhD received August 2021
Advisor: Zubair Shafiq
Employment: Postdoctoral Scholar; Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; University of Washington


Kyle Peterson (Health Informatics)
Longitudinal Time-to-Event Graph Mining Pipeline For Musculoskeletal Injury Forecasting
PhD received August 2021
Advisor: Karim Abdel-Malek
Employment: Senior AI Research Scientist; VitaliSee | Malum Terminus Technologies Inc.


Moosa Yahyazadeh
Improving the resiliency of IoT systems
PhD received August 2021
Advisor: Omar Chowdhury
Employment: Formal Verification Engineer; Apple

2020 - 2021

Shehroze Farooqi
A Measurement-Driven Approach towards Understanding and Detecting Abuse of Third-Party Apps
PhD received May 2021
Advisor: Zubair Shafiq
Employment: Staff Security Researcher; Palo Alto Networks


Shreyas Pai
On the role of Congestion in Distributed Complexity
PhD received May 2021
Advisor: Sriram Pemmaraju
Employment: Postdoctoral Scholar; Theoretical Computer Science group; Aalto University, Finland


Kyle Diederich 
Face-to-Face Collaboration Technology for Children
PhD received August 2020
Advisor: Juan Pablo Hourcade
Employment: Assistant Professor of Computer Science; St. Norbert College, Wisconsin


Mingrui Liu 
Nonconvex Min-max Optimization in Deep Learning: Algorithms and Applications
PhD received August 2020
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Assistant Professor; George Mason University, Virginia


Tanmay Inamdar 
Covering and Clustering with Outliers and Other Constraints
PhD received August 2020
Advisor: Kasturi Varadarajan
Employment: Researcher; Department of Informatics; University of Bergen, Norway

2019 - 2020

Jeff Hajewski
New Parallel Algorithms for Support Vector Machines and Neural Architecture Search
PhD received May 2020
Advisor: Suely Oliveira
Employment: Senior Software Engineer; Noom Inc.


Ryan Brummet
Time Slotted Channel Hopping Policies for Industrial Wireless Networks
PhD received December 2019
Advisor: Octav Chipara
Employment: Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Computer Science, University of Iowa - Iowa City, Iowa


Huyen Le
Understanding the Roles of Humans, Algorithms, and Cyborgs in Political Polarization
PhD received December 2019
Advisor: Zubair Shafiq
Employment: Postdoctoral Research Scholar; Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics; National Center for Toxicological Research, FDA


Thamer Alsulaiman
Speeding up Complex Genetic Mutations Detection in Large Human Genome Data
PhD received August 2019
Advisor: Suely Oliveira
Employment: Visiting Assistant Professor, Computer Science, University of Iowa - Iowa City, Iowa


Ryan McCleeary
Lazy Exact Real Arithmetic Using Floating Point Operations
PhD received August 2019
Advisor: Aaron Stump
Employment: Research Engineer; Galois, Inc. Prior: Research Engineer; Numerica Corporation


Talal Riaz
Symmetry Breaking: Upper and Lower Bounds
PhD received August 2019
Advisor: Sriram Pemmaraju
Employment: Software Engineer, Yelp - San Francisco Bay Area


Yi Xu
Accelerating Convex Optimization in Machine Learning by Leveraging Functional Growth Conditions
PhD received August 2019
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Senior Algorithm Engineer, Alibaba Group (U.S.) Inc. - Greater Seattle Area

2018 - 2019

Pooya Rahimian
The Effect of Latency on Steering Behavior in Virtual Reality
PhD received May 2019
Advisor: Joe Kearney
Employment: Software Engineer, Google; Los Angeles, CA Prior: Lead Software Engineer; Virgin Hyperloop


Sayan Bandyapadhyay
Digging Deeper into Clustering and Covering Problems
PhD received May 2019
Advisor: Kasturi Varadarajan
Employment: Assistant Professor, Portland State University Prior: Postdoctoral Research Scholar, University of Bergen - Bergen, Norway


Sikder Huq
Locally Self-Adjusting Distributed Algorithms
PhD received December 2018
Advisor: Sukumar Ghosh
Employment: Software Development Engineer II, Amazon.com, Seattle, Washington. Prior: Lead Software Engineer, Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, CA; Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa.


Michael Lash
Optimizing Outcomes via Inverse Classification
PhD received December 2018
Advisors: Alberto Segre, Nick Street
Employment: Assistant Professor of Business Analytics, University of Kansas - Lawrence, Kansas


Baoluo (Paul) Meng
Satisfiability Modulo Relations: Theory and Applications
PhD received December 2018
Advisor: Cesare Tinelli
Employment: Lead Engineer & Project Leader, High Assurance System; General Electric Global Research Center - Niskayuna, New York


Yuanyuan Jiang
Full-Body Joint Action in Pedestrian Road Crossing Virtual Environment
PhD received August 2018
Advisor: Joe Kearney
Employment: Assistant Professor, California State University - San Marcos, California


Zhe Li
Optimizing Neural Network Structures: Faster Speed, Smaller Size and Less Tuning
PhD received August 2018
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Machine Learning/Computer Vision Engineer, Apple, Cupertino, California


Xiaoxuan Zhang
Online Learning for Imbalance Data: Optimizing the Asymmetric Measures
PhD received August 2018
Advisor: Tianbao Yang
Employment: Senior Data Scientist, Ancestry, San Francisco Bay Area

2017 - 2018

Farley Lai
Stream Processing Optimizations for Mobile Sensing Applications
PhD received August 2017
Advisor: Octav Chipara
Employment: Senior Staff Engineer, Qualcomm, San Diego, California Prior: researcher, NEC Labs America, Princeton, New Jersey

2016 - 2017

Santanu Bhowmick
Multi-Covering Problems and Their Variants
PhD received May 2017
Advisor: Kasturi R. Varadarajan
Employment: Senior Software Engineer - Maps, Apple, Cupertino, California


Shabih Hasan
Mobile Ecological Momentary Assessment based Hearing Aid Evaluations
PhD received May 2017
Advisor: Octav Chipara
Employment: Vice President - Data, Head of Data Analytics; Delos Living LLC, Greater New York City Area


Rahil Sharma
Shared and Distributed Memory Parallel Algorithms to Solve Big Data Problems in Biological, Social Networks, and Spatial Domain Applications
PhD received December 2016
Advisor: Suely Oliveira
Employment: Sr. Staff R&D Engineer; Synopsys, Mountain View, California. Prior: Sr. Staff Software Engineer, Xilinx, San Jose, California Principal Software Engineer, Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, California; Sr. R&D Engineer, Synopsys, Mountain View, California


Vivek Sardeshmukh
Efficient Graph Computing on the Congested Clique
PhD received December 2016
Advisor: Sriram Pemmaraju
Employment: Software Engineer; Google. Prior: Principal Software Engineer, Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, California

2015 - 2016

Xin Xiao
Coresets, Complexity of Shapes, and Total Sensitivity
PhD received May 2016
Advisor: Kasturi Varadarajan
Employment: Software Engineer; Google. Prior: Senior Software Engineer, Mathworks, Natick, Massachusetts


Jason Fries
Modeling Words for Online Sexual Behavior Surveillance and Clinical Text Information Extraction
PhD received August 2015
Advisor: Alberto Segre
Employment: Research Scientist (Formerly Postdoctoral Scholar), Stanford, University, Stanford, California


Valerie (Galluzzi) Liptak
Automatic Recognition of Healthcare Worker Hand Hygiene
PhD received August 2015
Advisor: Ted Herman
Employment: Applied Scientist, Amazon, Seattle, Washington. Prior: Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Software Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana


Mauricio Monsalvo
Computational Applications to Hospital Epidemiology
PhD received August 2015
Advisor: Sriram Pemmaraju
Employment: Postdoctoral Scholar, Centro Nacional de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada de Desastres Naturales (CIGIDEN), Santiago de Chile

2014 - 2015

Chao Yang
From Surveys to Surveillance Strategies: a Case Study of Life Satisfaction
PhD received May 2015
Advisor: Padmini Srinivasan
Employment: Software Engineering Manager - Machine Learning; Meta Prior: Applied Scientist II, Amazon, Seattle, Washington area


Geoffrey Fairchild
Improving Disease Surveillance: Sentinel Surveillance Network Design and Novel Uses of Wikipedia
PhD received December 2014
Advisor: Alberto Segre
Employment: Group Leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico [Formerly Scientist]


Tianyi Liang
Automated Reasoning over String Constraints
PhD received December 2014
Advisor: Cesare Tinelli
Employment: Vice President (Formerly Quantitative Software Engineer); Two Sigma, New York City area


Alessio Signorini
Use of Social Media to Monitor and Predict Outbreaks and Public Opinion on Health Topics
PhD received December 2014
Advisor: Alberto Segre
Employment: Co-founder and CTO; Evidation Health, Menlo Park, California


Lucio Tolentino
Effective and Efficient Algorithms for Simulating Sexually Transmitted Diseases
PhD received December 2014
Advisor: Alberto Segre
Employment: Data Science Manager; Goodway Group. Prior: Senior Data Scientist, Dotdash, New York City area; Computer & Data Scientist, Mashable, New York City area