People
Outgoing PhDs and Postdocs

Outgoing Ph.D. Students

Photo of Victor Soares  Bursztyn
Advisor(s): Lawrence Birnbaum
Research Area(s): Natural Language Processing
Thesis Topic: Reading Users: Using Language Models to Close the Pragmatic Gap in Task-Oriented Conversations
Planned PhD Defense Date: Fall 2022
Employment: Research Scientist at Adobe Research
Photo of Aidao Chen
Advisor(s): Aravindan Vijayaraghavan and Anindya De
Research Area(s): Theoretical Machine Learning
Thesis Topic: Algorithms for Learning Mixture Models
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preference: N/A
Photo of Kezhen Chen
Advisor(s): Ken Forbus
Research Area(s): Machine Learning, Neural-Symbolic, Cognitive Modeling, Knowledge Representation & Reasoning, Vision and Language understanding
Thesis Topic: Hybrid Primal Sketch:  A Hybrid Commonsense Visual-Understanding System Combining Analogy and Deep Learning
Planned PhD Defense Date: Fall 2022
Employment Preference: Academia - Research, Industry - Research
Photo of Angel Espinosa Coarasa
Advisor(s): Malcolm MacIver, Brenna Argall
Research Area(s): Computational Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence
Thesis Topic: Recreating mammalian level planning.
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preference: Teaching, Industry, Consulting
Photo of Govinda Dasu
Advisor(s): Haoqi Zhang
Research Area(s): CS Education
Thesis Topic: Process Management for Learning from Professional Source Code
Planned PhD Defense Date: Summer 2023
Employment Preference: LD Talent
Photo of Enrico Deiana
Advisor(s): Simone Campanoni
Research Area(s): Compilers
Thesis Topic: 
I focus on how new programming language abstractions can aid compilers in improving programs' performance, and how tools can help programmers using such abstractions.
PhD Defense Date: Summer 2023
Employment Preference: N/A
Photo of Ryan Louie
Advisor(s): Haoqi Zhang
Research Area(s): Human-Computer Interaction 
Thesis Topic: Human AI Interfaces for creating an AI-enabled social technology for connecting through shared experiences at opportune moments across distance
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preference: N/A
Photo of Liren Shan
Advisor: Konstantin Makarychev
Research Area(s): Theoretical Computer Science
Thesis Topic: Clustering and Graph Partitioning
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preference: Postdoc
Photo of Pattara Sukprasert
Advisor(s): Samir Khuller
Research Area(s): Theory
Thesis Topic: On Finding Good Subgraphs: From Theory to Practice
Planned PhD Defense Date: Summer 2023
Employment Preference: Industry
Photo of Aravind  Reddy Talla
Advisor(s): Konstantin Makarychev, Aravindan Vijayaraghavan
Research Area(s): 
Algorithms and Machine Learning
Thesis Topic:  Algorithmic Aspects of MAP Inference
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preferences: Postdoc
Photo of JaCoya Thompson
Advisor(s): Marcelo Worsley
Research Area(s): Computer Science Education, Educational Technologies, Data Science
Thesis Topic: Designing Educational Technology for Data Visualizations
Planned Defense Date: Winter 2023
Employment Preferences: N/A
Photo of Izaiah Wallace
Advisor(s): Michael Horn
Research Area(s): Graphics and Interactive Media
Thesis Topic: My dissertation will define a process called computational enculturation - a sociocultural approach to computer science education. I will discuss how The emergence of underground computing cultures could assist marginalized communities in this process helping them construct computing identities while fostering engaging, relevant, and meaningful learning experiences. 
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preferences: N/A
Photo of Bingjie Xu
Advisor(s): Jack Tumblin
Research Area(s): Computer Vision, Computational Photography
Thesis Topic: 3D Surface and Subsurface Reconstruction for Cultural Heritage Applications and Eye Tracking
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2023
Employment Preferences: Industry
Photo of Shichao Xu
Advisor(s): Qi Zhu
Research Area(s): Deep representation learning, domain adaptation, self/weakly/semi-supervised learning, transfer learning
Thesis Topic: Learning from Limited or Imperfect Data
Planned PhD Defense Date: Summer 2023
Employment Preferences: Industry
Advisor(s): Robert Findler
Research Area(s): Programming Languages
Thesis Topic: Behavioral boundaries: contracts as state transition systems
Planned PhD Defense Date: Summer 2023
Employment Preferences: N/A

Postdocs Currently on the Job Market

Photo of Sami Davies
Northwestern Advisor(s): Samir Khuller
PhD Institution & Advisor(s): Thomas Rothvoss, University of Washington, Seattle
Research Area(s): Algorithm Design in Theoretical Computer Science
Thesis Topic: Algorithm Design in Theoretical Computer Science
Employment Preference: Academia, Research

 

Photo of Quanquan Liu
Northwestern Advisor(s): Samir Khuller
PhD Institution & Advisor(s): Erik D. Demaine and Julian Shun, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Research Area(s): Scalable and Efficient Graph Algorithms and Analysis Techniques for Modern Machines
Thesis Topic: Scalable and Efficient Graph Algorithms and Analysis Techniques for Modern Machines
Employment Preference: Academia, Research
Photo of Esteban Carisimo
Northwestern Advisor(s): Fabian Bustamante
PhD Institution & Advisor(s): J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin (UBA) and Amogh Dhamdhere (UC San Diego), University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Buenos Aires
Research Area(s): Computer Science, Systems, Internet measurements
Thesis Topic: Internet’s network topology (CDNs, congestion and Latin America)
Employment Preference: Academia
Photo of Yiding Feng
Postdoctoral Position: Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research - New England
Northwestern Advisor(s): Jason Hartline
PhD Institution & Advisor(s) Jason Hartline, Northwestern University
Research Area(s): Theoretical Computer Science, Operations Research, Economics and Computation
Thesis Topic: Mechanism and Information Design, Online Decision Making, Market Design
Employment Preference: Academia