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Virginia Tech’s week of commencement ceremonies is underway! The Graduate School Commencement ceremony was held Wednesday, May 8; the main ceremony is being held today, Friday, May 10; and the Washington, D.C. area ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 12.  

“Graduation is always a bittersweet time for faculty as we applaud our students’ accomplishments,” said Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech and director of the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics. “We very proud of all of them but saying good-bye is not so easy and we are always happy when they stay in touch – as many of them do — to let us know where their research is leading them.”

The following Sanghani Center students are among those who are receiving degrees:

Ph.D. Graduates

Abdulaziz Alhamadani, advised by Chang-Tien Lu, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. His research interests mainly focus on developing efficient and applicable methods of training machine learning models for real-world applications such as pandemic prediction, drug overdose crises, and crisis management in various industries. His additional research areas include natural language processing, such as text classification and building large corpora for low-resource languages, machine learning ethics, and event detection.The title of his dissertation is “Integrated Predictive Modeling and Analytics for Crisis Management.” Alhamadani has joined the Computer Science Department at Florida Polytechnic University as an assistant professor.

Lulwah AlKulaib, advised by Chang-Tien Lu, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. Her research focuses on social media analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing with a special interest in Arabic. The title of her dissertation is “Analyzing Networks with Hypergraphs: Detection, Classification and Prediction.” AlKulaib has joined Kuwait University as an assistant professor in computer science.

Hongjie Chen, advised by Hoda Eldardiry, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. His research lies in the areas of graph neural networks, time-series analysis, and recommendation systems. The title of his dissertation is “Graph-based Time-series Forecasting in Deep Learning.”

Jiaying Gong, advised by Hoda Eldardiry, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. Her research focuses on multisource machine learning and natural language processing. The title of her thesis is “Few-Shot and Zero-Shot Learning for Information Extraction.” Gong will join coreAI, eBay, in New York City, as an applied researcher.

Jianfeng He, advised by Chang-Tien Lu, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. His research focus on computer vision centers on guided image editing. He also focuses on natural language processing, studying uncertainty analysis in its applications (e.g., text classification, few-shot learning, named entity recognition, and text summarization). The title of his dissertation is “Uncertainty Estimation in Natural Language Processing,” for which he received the Department of Computer Science Achievement Award for Best Ph.D. Research. In June, He will join Amazon as an applied scientist in Seattle, Washington. 

Ola Karajeh, advised by Edward Fox, earned a Ph.D. in computer science. Her research interests are graph machine learning, natural language processing, Twitter analysis, and public health. The title of her dissertation is “Improving Text Classification Using Graph-based Methods.”

Andreea Sistrunk, advised by Naren Ramakrishnan, has earned a Ph.D. in computer science. Her research interest is in human-computing Interaction with all forms that data science takes in information processing and its impact on society. She is equally interested in education and methods leveraging the state of the art in pedagogy and andragogy in computer science, advanced math, and engineering. The title of her dissertation is “Designing Human-Centered Collaborative Systems for School Redistricting.” Sistrunk will continue her work with the Geospatial Research Laboratory in the Washington, D.C. area, as a physical research scientist.

Master of Science Degree Graduates

Cho-Ting (Amanda) Lee, advised by Naren Ramakrishnan, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. Her research interests are in data mining and machine learning, with a focus on trade data analytics and anomaly detection. The title of her thesis is “Can an LLM find its way around a spreadsheet?”

Jiayue Lin, advised by Chris North, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. His research focus is on visual analytics and artificial intelligence, with a particular interest in refining deep learning-based image projections using semantic interaction methods. The title of his thesis is “ImageSI: Semantic Interaction for Deep Learning Image Projections.” 

Daniel Palamarchuk, advised by Chris North, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. His research focuses on visualizing temporal text, document, and topic data using pre-transformer embedding methods. The title of his thesis is “Temporal Topic Embeddings with a Compass.” Palamarchuk will work as a programming teacher in the Northern Virginia area and plans on pursuing a Ph.D. 

Ramaraja Ramanujan, advised by Edward Fox, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. His research focuses on data analysis of geospatial and administrative data, conducting statistical verifications and simulations, and visual analytics. The title of his thesis is “Improving Rainfall Index Insurance: Evaluating Effects of Fine-Scale Data and Interactive Tools in the PRF-RI Program.” Ramanujan will join Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, as a software engineer. 

Chia-Wei Tang, advised by Chris Thomas, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. His research focuses on the development of misinformation detection utilizing multimodal reasoning. The title of his thesis is “M3D: MultiModal MultiDocument Fine-Grained Inconsistency Detection.” Tang is joining Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale, California, as a software engineer. 

Lemara Williams, advised by Chris North, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. Her research centers around visualizing changes in projections over time. The title of her thesis is “TimeLink: Visualizing Diachronic Word Embeddings and Topics.” Williams will continue her studies and is beginning a computer science Ph.D. program in the Fall at the Washington University in St. Louis. 

Xiaona Zhou, advised by Ismini Lourentzou, has earned a master’s degree in computer science. Her research focuses on the applications of data science and machine learning. The title of her master’s thesis is “Hierarchical Bayesian Dataset Selection.” Zhou will be pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Summer offers an opportunity for graduate students at the Sanghani Center to gain real-world experience in their research focus areas by working at major companies and labs across the country. This year these include places like Amazon AWS in Seattle, Washington; JPMorgan Chase & Co in New York City;  the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Bosch in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and the Intel Lab in Santa Clara, California.  

Following is a list of Sanghani Center students – where they are and what they are doing:

Satvik Chekuri, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a natural language processing research intern working remotely with a Deloitte Audit and Assurance Data Science team in New York City. The team’s research focuses on the intersection of knowledge graphs and Large Language Models (LLMs) in the financial domain. His advisor is Edward A. Fox.

Hongjie Chen, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a research scientist intern at Yahoo Research in Sunnyvale, California, working remotely with the advertising team. His advisor is Hoda Eldardiry.

Humaid Desai, a master’s degree student in computer science, is a software engineer intern at Ellucian in Reston, Virginia, working remotely. He is contributing to Ellucian’s SaaS-based solutions using React.js, Node.js, and AWS cloud technologies. His advisor is Hoda Eldardiry.

Jianfeng He, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an applied scientist intern working onsite at Amazon AWS in Seattle, Washington, where he is researching text summarization. His advisor is Chang-Tien Lu.

Adheesh Juvekar, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an applied scientist intern working on generative artificial intelligence onsite at Amazon in Boston, Massachusetts. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Myeongseob Ko, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is a machine learning research intern onsite at Bosch in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is working on a diffusion model. His advisor is Ruoxi Jia.

Shuo Lei, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a graduate research intern onsite at Intel Labs in Santa Clara, California. She is working on developing a new few-shot learning method for multi-modal object detection to lower the effort of human annotation, training effort, and domain adaptation while meeting accuracy requirements for industrial usage. Her advisor is Chang-Tien Lu.

Wei Liu, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a business intelligence intern at Elevance Health in Indianapolis, Indiana, working remotely with the data analysis team. Her advisor is Chris North.

Amarachi Blessing Mbakwe, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an artificial intelligence research associate intern at JPMorgan Chase & Co in New York City, working onsite. She is conducting research on natural language processing-related problems that involve applying Large Language Models (LLMs) in finance. Her advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Makanjuola Ogunleye, a Ph.D student in computer science is a data scientist intern at Intuit, working onsite with the company’s AI Capital team in Mountain View, California. He is contributing to key machine learning products. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Mandar Sharma, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a Ph.D. software engineering intern at Google AI in Kirkland, Washington, where he is working onsite on integrating state-of-the-art in natural language processing to the services provided by Google’s Cloud AI platforms. His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan.

Ying Shen, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a research intern onsite at Apple in New York City, where she is working on diffusion models. Her co-advisors are Lifu Huang and Ismini Lourentzou.

Afrina Tabassum, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a research intern at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, working onsite. She is co-advised by Hoda Eldardiry and Ismini Lourentzou.

Chiawei Tang, a master’s degree student in computer science, is a software engineer intern onsite at Juniper Network in Sunnyvale, California. His work involves creating a simulator designed to emulate the data output from wired network devices such as routers and switches. This strategic initiative facilitates system scalability testing for developers and significantly mitigates the financial impact associated with the procurement of physical hardware. His advisor is Chris Thomas.

Muntasir Wahed, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a research intern onsite at IBM Research Almaden Lab in San Jose, California, working on the development and application of foundation models. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Zhiyang Xu, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an applied scientist intern onsite at Amazon Alexa in Sunnyvale, California, where he is working on improving dialogue systems. His advisor is Lifu Huang.  

Raquib Bin Yousuf, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is among 25 students from 19 colleges chosen to attend the Washington Post Engineering class in Washington, D.C., this summer. He is working with state of the art artificial intelligence systems to develop new technology for the Washington Post. His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan.

Yi Zeng, a Ph.D. student in computer engineering, is a research scientist intern onsite at Meta in Menlo Park, California, working on artificial intelligence fairness, finding ways to make state of the art AI systems more robust and responsible. His advisor is Ruoxi Jia.

Jingyi Zhang, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a graduate intern working remotely with Amgen’s Computational Biology Group within Clinical Biomarkers & Diagnostics in Thousand Oaks, California. She is taking an active role in developing a data and analytics platform as well as participating in prostate therapeutic area translational computational biology. Her advisor is Lenwood Heath.

Shuaicheng Zhang, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a summer intern onsite at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is conducting research on the generative graph foundation model. His advisor is Dawei Zhou.

Xiaona Zhou, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a University Research Association Sandia Graduate Summer Fellow at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, California. She is onsite working on anomaly detection in time series data. Her advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

With restrictions to working in physical office space still in effect, graduate students at the Sanghani Center are working remotely this summer for companies, labs, and programs from coast to coast. Students are not only gaining real-world experience from internships and other opportunities but, in many cases, they are also able to advance their own research interests.

Following is a list of Sanghani Center students and the work they are doing:

Badour AlBahar, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is a computer vision intern at Adobe Vision group in San Jose, California. She is working on human reposing and animation. Her advisor is Jia-Bin Huang.

Sikiru Adewale, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a software development engineer intern at Amazon Web Service in Seattle, Washington. He is working on data transfer and storage on the AWS snowball device. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Vasanth Reddy Baddam, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an research intern at Siemens in Princeton, New Jersey. He is working on contributing to industrial research projects on leveraging machine learning to analyze multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms and implement them. His advisor is Hoda Eldardiry. 

Subhodip Biswas, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is working on Bayesian optimization techniques for automated machine learning (AutoML) and robust artificial intelligence systems as part of the Journeyman Fellowship he received from the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Research Associateship Program (RAP) administered by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan.

Jie Bu, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a research intern at Carbon 3D in Redwood City, California. He is working on artificial intelligence-powered computational geometry. His advisor is Anuj Karpatne.

Si Chen, a Ph.D. student in computer engineering, is a research intern at InnoPeak Technology in Seattle, Washington. She is working on research on model privacy protection. Her advisor is Ruoxi Jia.

Kai-Hsiang Cheng, a master’s degree student in computer science, is an intern at GTV Media Group in New York City. He is working on the content management system of the media’s platform. His advisor is Chang-Tien Lu.

Riya Dani, a master’s degree student in computer science, is a software engineer intern at Microsoft. She is working on web application developments under Azure. Her advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Debanjan Datta, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an intern on the Amazon Web Services team at Amazon in Seattle, Washington. He is working on time series characterization and classification.  His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan.

Arka Daw, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an applied scientist intern at Amazon Web Services Lambda Science Team in Seattle, Washington.  He is working on developing an automated causal machine learning framework for setting up experiments and estimating causal effects from observational data. His advisor is Anuj Karpatne.

Yue Feng, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is an intern with the Snap Research Creative Vision Team in Santa Monica, California. She is working on a 3D computer vision project. Her advisor is Jia-Bin Huang.

Chen Gao, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is a research intern at Google in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is working on creating video panoramas using a cellphone. His advisor is Jia-Bin Huang.

Jianfeng He, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an intern at Tencent AI Lab in Seattle,Washington. He is working on research about multi-modal dialogue with mentors Linfeng Song and Kun Xu. His advisor is Chang Tien-Lu.

Taoran Ji, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an intern at Moody’s Analytics in New York City. He is working on analyzing credit and financial data for the global financial markets, which will drive algorithmic improvements in Moody’s Analytics core machine learning and artificial intelligence-driven products. His advisor is Chang-Tien Lu.

Adheesh Juvekar, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a machine learning and natural language processing intern at Deloitte & Touche LLP. He is working on automatically extracting relevant information from transactional invoices using state of the art deep learning techniques. His advisor is Edward Fox.

M. Maruf, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a machine learning engineering intern at Qualcomm GNSS/location team in Santa Clara, California. He is applying machine learning techniques to hybrid technology fusion for navigation/positioning in mobile, wearable, automotive, and micro-mobility applications. His advisor is Anuj Karpatne.

Nikhil Muralidhar, a Ph.D. student in computer science, received an Applied Machine Learning Summer Research Fellowship at Los Alamos National Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to work with researchers on physics-informed machine learning for modeling adsorption equilibria in fluid mixtures. His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan. 

Makanjuola Ogunleye, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is an application support engineer intern at Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His duties include coding, testing, and implementing complex programs from user specifications. He is also performing client data analysis to support engineering technology to improve and facilitate customer success. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Nishan Pokharel, a master’s degree student in computer science, is a software engineering intern at Capital One in Mclean, Virginia.  He is working on network infrastructure automation. His advisor is Chris North

Avi Seth, a master’s degree student in computer science, is serving as a graduate team leader this summer for Virginia Tech’s Data Science for the Public Good program. The group works on projects that address state, federal, and local government challenges around today’s relevant and critical social issues. His advisor is Ismini Lourentzou.

Mia Taylor, a master’s degree student in computer science, is a software development intern at Amazon Web Services in Seattle, Washington. Her team is working with Comprehend AutoML which allows customers to build customized natural language processing models using their own data. Her advisor is Lifu Huang.

Yiran Xu, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is an intern with the Snap Research Creative Vision Team in Santa Monica, California. He is working on 3D human reconstruction and video generation/manipulation. His advisor is Jia-Bin Huang.

Shuaicheng Zhang, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is a natural language processing (NLP) research intern at Deloitte in New York City. He is part of the Audit and Assurance AI innovation team, working on open information extraction on internal control files to help auditors effortlessly process these files. His advisor is Lifu Huang.

Yuliang Zou, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is a research intern at Waymo in Mountainview, California. He is working on the perception problem for self-driving cars.  His advisor is Jia-Bin Huang.

Along his educational path, Jianfeng He learned an important lesson: Having a good advisor should be the number one priority in choosing a Ph.D. program. The opportunity to work with Chang-Tien Lu drew him to Virginia Tech and the Discovery Analytics Center after spending a short period of time at another university.

He’s focus is on data analysis of social media and he is currently working on image editing based on user requests and text classification based on machine learning.

This research builds upon an interest that began while He was an undergraduate majoring in digital media technology at the Central China Normal University and required to learn media design software, including Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, and MAYA.

“As an undergraduate I was dealing with the media manually, now I want to understand it through AI,” said He.

As a master’s degree student in computer science at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, He researched cross-modal retrieval and had several papers published on this topic, including “Multi-label double-layer learning for cross-modal retrieval” (Neurocomputing, January 2018); “Adaptively Unified Semi-supervised Learning for Cross-Modal Retrieval” (proceedings of the 2017 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) “Efficient Cross-Modal Retrieval Using Social Tag Information Towards Mobile Applications” (2017 International Workshop on Mobility Analytics for Spatio-temporal and Social Data); and “Cross-modal Retrieval by Real Label Partial Least Squares” (proceedings of the 2016 ACM international conference on Multimedia, October 2016).

He came to the United States about a year ago and joined DAC in the Spring 2019 semester.

“What I like most about being at DAC,” said He, “is the friendly student-faculty relationship and student-student relationship.”

He said he has received much appreciated help not only with his research but with navigating many of the things related to day to day living: banking, parking permits, and how to enjoy life in the Northern Virginia area.

Among the things He enjoys doing in his free time are going to the gym, playing badminton, and trying new restaurants.

After earning his Ph.D., He would like to return to China to teach and continue his research at a university there.