People
Outgoing PhDs and Postdocs

Outgoing Ph.D. Students

Photo of Rashna Kumar
Advisor(s): Fabian E. Bustamante
Research Area(s): Computer Networks and Internet Measurements
Thesis Topic: Measuring Internet Centralization on the Web (DNS, CDNs, CAs) and the Underlying Infrastructure
Planned PhD Defense Date: Summer 2024
Photo of Claire Lee
Advisor(s): Professors Alok Choudhary and Wei-Keng Liao
Research Area(s): High-Performance Computing/Machine Learning
Thesis Topic: Data Management Challenges for Scaling Graph Neural Networks in Scientific Workflows
Planned PhD Defense Date: August 2024
Employment Preference: Researcher/Software Developer
Photo of William Hancock
Advisor(s): Professor Ken Forbus
Research Area(s): Event representation and learning, machine learning, knowledge graphs, video game AI, narrative intelligence, computational creativity
Thesis Topic: Qualitative Spatiotemporal Episodic Memory
Planned PhD Defense Date: December 2024
Photo of Mohammad Kavousi
Advisor(s): Professor Yan Chen
Research Area(s): System Security
Thesis Topic: Automating Privilege Configuration in Cloud-native Platforms
Planned PhD Defense Date: Winter 2025
Employment Preference: Teaching faculty, industry
Photo of Sergio Servantez
Advisor(s): Professor Kristian Hammond
Research Area(s): Natural Language Processing (NLP), Legal NLP, Legal AI, Machine Learning
Thesis Topic: Large Language Models as Legal Reasoners
Planned PhD Defense Date: Winter 2025
Photo of Ammar Gilani

Ammar Gilani

Email Ammar
Advisor(s): Professor Han Liu
Research Area(s): Optimization, Computational Biology, Deep Learning
Thesis Topic: Explainable Sequential Optimization
Planned PhD Defense Date: Fall 2024
Employment Preference: Industry Positions
Photo of Gobi Dasu
Advisor(s): Professors Haoqi Zhang and Nell O'Rourke
Research Area(s): CS Education
Thesis Topic: Process Management for Learning from Professional Source Code
Planned PhD Defense Date: Fall 2024
Employment Preference: Currently Engineering Consultant and Founder at LD Talent
Photo of Herminio Bodon
Advisor(s): Professor Marcelo Worsley
Research Area(s): Human Computer Interaction
Thesis Topic: Designing Empowering Learning Experiences for Youth in Puerto Rico
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2025
Employment Preference: 
For Industry: Data Science, Design Research, or Prototyping.
For Academia: Postdocs in topics related to designing tools (data tools, wearables, communication interfaces) for teamwork &/or climate. Broader topics: HCI, or Data Science.
Photo of Maryam Hedayati
Advisor(s): Professor Matt Kay
Research Area(s): Data visualization, HCI
Thesis Topic: Data visualization literacy
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2025
Employment Preference: Teaching-focused positions
Photo of Taylor Olson
Advisor(s): Professor Ken Forbus
Research Area(s): AI, AI ethics, Cognitive Science
Thesis Topic: Formal Theories of Moral Learning and Reasoning
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2025
Employment Preference: Academia and Industry
Photo of Abhraneel Sarma
Advisor(s): Professor Matt Kay
Research Area(s): Human-Computer Interaction, Visualisation
Thesis Topic: Communicating Uncertainty in Data Analysis
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2025
Employment Preference: Academia
Photo of Soroush Shahi
Advisor(s): Professor Nabil Alshurafa
Research Area(s): Machine Learning, Wearable Devices
Thesis Topic: Vision Language Models for Human Activity Recognition
Planned PhD Defense Date: Spring 2025
Employment Preference: Industry and Academia
Photo of John Chen
Advisor(s): Professor Uri Wilensky
Research Area(s): HCI, Learning Science, Applied AI
Thesis Topic: Constructionist Learning Design for Agent-based Modeling and Programming: Increasing Access, Building Scaffolds, and Cultivating Communities
Planned PhD Defense Date: July 2025
Employment Preference: Tenure-track Faculty

Postdocs Currently on the Job Market

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 critical infrastructures
Employment Preference: Academia
Northwestern Advisor(s): Konstantin Makarychev
PhD Institution & Advisor(s): Indiana University, Grigory Yaroslavtsev (Currently George Mason University)
Research Area(s): Continuous Optimization, Machine Learning, Algorithms
Thesis Topic: New Directions in Distributed and Constrained Non-Convex Optimization
Employment Preference: Academia or Industry