Over 400 students have received a Ph.D. degree from the Department since 1985.
2025
Dr. Kasra Darvish, Ph.D. in CS, 2025
Dissertation: From Perceptions to Meaning: Multimodal and Contrastive Machine Learning to Ground Human Intentions and Language
Mentors: Cynthia Matuszek and Frank Ferraro
Dr. Luke Richards, Ph.D. in CS, 2025
Dissertation: Assurance of Machine Learning for Human-Robot Interaction
Mentors: Cynthia Matuszek
Dr. Janerra Allen, Ph.D. in EE, 2025
Dissertation: Functional magnetic resonance imaging of spatiotemporal brain dynamics in patients with schizophrenia
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa
Dr. Hasibul Hasan, Ph.D. in EE, 2025
Dissertation: System development and machine learning for binding protein-based glucose monitoring platform for online bioprocess monitoring
Mentors: Gary Carter
First Position: RICOVR Healthcare
Dr. Farshad Safavi, Ph.D. in CS, 2025
Dissertation: Emotion Recognition via Multimodal Fusion for Human–Robot Interaction Using Deep Learning
Mentors: Ramana Vinjamuri
2024
Dr. Cyrus Bonyadi, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Toward a Unified, Hierarchical Ontology of Consensus Proofs in Autonomous Distributed Computing
Mentors: Alan Sherman
Dr. Enis Golaszewski, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Automatically Binding Cryptographic Context to Messages in Network Protocols Using Formal Methods
Mentors: Alan Sherman
Dr. Sai Sree Laya Chukkapalli, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Towards Preserving Privacy and Building Trust Among the User’s of Cyber Physical Systems
Mentors: Anupam Joshi
First Position: IBM
Current Position: IBM
Dr. Anantaa Kotal, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing Using Generative Models
Mentors: Anupam Joshi
First Position: University of Texas at El Paso
Current Position: University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Priyanka Ranade, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Neurosymbolic Narrative Construction from Open Source Intelligence
Mentors: Anupam Joshi
First Position: DoD
Current Position: DoD
Dr. Jayalakshmi Mangalagiri, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: A Progressive Meta-Algorithm to Synthesize Very Large Super Resolution Images with Fine Details
Mentors: Aryya Gangopadhyay and David Chapman
Dr. Maksim Eren Erin, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Advanced Semi-supervised Tensor Decomposition Methods for Malware Characterization
Mentors: Charles Nicholas
First Position: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Current Position: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dr. Robert Joyce, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Investigating Antivirus Scan Results as a Source of Features and Labels for Machine Learning
Mentors: Charles Nicholas, Edward Raff
First Position: The Shadowserver Foundation
Current Position: Booz Allen Hamilton
Dr. Rachit M. Sood, Ph.D. in CE, 2024
Dissertation: Fabrication and Testing of Photonics and Electronics Devices
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa
First Position: Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc.
Dr. Mehdi Rezaee, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: From Latent Knowledge Gathering to Side Information Injection in Discrete Sequential Models
Mentors: Frank Ferraro
First Position: Machine Learning Engineer, Adobe
Current Position: Machine Learning Engineer, Adobe
Dr. Muntasir Mahmud, Ph.D. in EE, 2024
Dissertation: Protocols for Air-Water Communication and Underwater Localization using Nonlinear Optoacoustic Links
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
Dr. Shorooq Alaskar, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Optimized Dynamic Electric Vehicles Charging in Smart Cities
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
Dr. Abdulaziz Alshaeri, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Supporting Secure and Privacy-Preserving Interactions in Intelligent Transportation Systems
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
First Position: Assistant Professor King Khalid University
Dr. Mona Alkanhal, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Lightweight Mutual Authentication Protocols for IoT Systems
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
Dr. Md Toufiq Hasan Anik, Ph.D. in CE, 2024
Dissertation: The Impact of Device Aging on the Resiliency of Cryptographic Devices Against Physical Attacks
Mentors: Naghmeh Karimi
Dr. Dingyi Pei, Ph.D. in EE, 2024
Dissertation: The Role of Synergies in Controlling Human-Machine Interfaces
Mentors: Ramana Vinjamuri
Dr. Rui Jin, Ph.D. in EE, 2024
Dissertation: Flexible FMRI Data Analysis Using Machine Learning
Mentors: Seung-Jun Kim
Dr. Khondoker Hossain, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Trojan (Backdoor) Attack Detection in Deep Neural Networks
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: Research Scientist, GE Aerospace
Current Position: Research Scientist, GE Aerospace
Dr. Mohammad Mahmudul Alam, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Neuro-symbolic Representations and their Applications to Deep Learning
Mentors: Tim Oates and Ed Raff
First Position: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dr. Arnab Neelim Mazumder, Ph.D. in CE, 2024
Dissertation: Reg-Tune: A Regression-focused Fine-tuning Technique for Energy-efficient Embedded Deployment
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin
Dr. Hasib-Al Rashid, Ph.D. in CE, 2024
Dissertation: HAC-M-DNN: Hardware Aware Compression of Sustainable Multimodal Deep Neural Networks for Efficient Real-time Edge Deployment
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin
First Position: Zywie, Inc.
Current Position: Amazon Web Services
Dr. Bharat Prakash, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Language Guided Hierarchical Agents
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin and Tim Oates
First Position: Qualcomm
Current Position: Qualcomm
Dr. Benjamin R. Gabrielson, Ph.D. in EE, 2024
Dissertation: Efficient Methods for Higher-Order Factorizations: Accuracy, Scalability, and Generalization
Mentors: Tülay Adali
Dr. Lawrence J. Sebald, Ph.D. in CS, 2024
Dissertation: Shigure – A high-performance object storage system with rich metadata provided by a distributed ledger
Mentors: Yaacov Yesha
2023
Dr. Aritran Piplai, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: Knowledge Graphs and Reinforcement Learning: a Hybrid Approach for Cybersecurity Tasks
Mentors: Anupam Joshi
First Position: Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Nicholas R. Allgood, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: A Quantum Solution for Calculation of Optimal Cluster Centers
Mentors: Charles Nicholas
First Position: KetPsiShield
Current Position: KetPsiShield
Dr. Hedyeh Bagherzadeh, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Investigations for Novel Coil Designs
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa
Dr. Md Sadique Hasan, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Instrumentation, microfluidics and machine learning for rapid, ultrasensitive, and high throughput bioburden detection
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa and Govin Rao
First Position: ORISE Fellow, FDA
Current Position: ORISE Fellow, FDA
Dr. Vipin Pillai, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: Learning Explainable Models using Self-Supervised Learning
Mentors: Hamed Pirsiavash
First Position: Amazon
Current Position: Amazon
Dr. Akshayvarun Subramanya, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: A Closer Look at Adversarial Robustness of Deep Networks for Visual Recognition
Mentors: Hamed Pirsiavash
First Position: Apple
Current Position: Apple
Dr. Qitao Xie, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Deep Learning Based Chatbot in Fintech Applications
Mentors: Jianwu Wang and Qingquan Zhang
First Position: Endurance International Group
Current Position: Endurance International Group
Dr. Michael A. Tope, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Near Optimal Sampling to Discover and Bound the Communication Rate of a Discrete Memoryless Channel
Mentors: Joel Morris
First Position: DoD
Current Position: DoD
Dr. Samit S Shivadekar, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: A Streaming Tensor Decomposition Analysis for Earth Science Informatics
Mentors: Milton Halem
First Position: Visiting Lecturer, UMBC
Current Position: Visiting Lecturer, UMBC
Dr. Fahad Sayeed Siddiqui, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: Predicting Sleep Disordered Breathing Events
Mentors: Nilanjan Banerjee
Dr. William Walton, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Multi-View Mammographic Image Registration Using Convolutional Neural Networks
Mentors: Seung-Jun Kim
First Position: JHU APL
Current Position: JHU APL
Dr. Hao Chen, Ph.D. in EE, 2023
Dissertation: Complex Radio Scene Analysis: Supervised and Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches
Mentors: Seung-Jun Kim
Dr. Balaji Viswanathan, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: Building Likeable Robots for Seniors: Enhancing Emotional Connection, Communication and Safety through Human-Robot Interaction
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: Invento Robotics
Current Position: Invento Robotics
Dr. Irina Belyaeva, Ph.D. in CS, 2023
Dissertation: Tensor Methods for Joint Analysis and Fusion of Brain Imaging Data: Application to fMRI and MEG Analysis and Fusion
Mentors: Tulay Adali
First Position: Johns Hopkins Medicine
Current Position: Johns Hopkins Medicine
2022
Dr. Qingyuan Zheng, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Machine Learning Can Help Humans Create Art
Mentors: Adam Bargteil
First Position: Tencent Americas
Current Position: Tencent Americas
Dr. Jie Chen, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Low Rank and Sparse Representation-based Approaches to Hyperspectral Detection
Mentors: Chein-I Chang
First Position: Research Fellow, Mayo Clinic
Dr. Zhen Qi, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Stability and Accessibility of Turing Rolls, Soliton Crystals, and Single Solitons in Microresonators
Mentors: Curtis Menyuk
Dr. Joseph R. Collins, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Topological Time Series Classification
Mentors: David Chapman
First Position: Northrop Grumman
Current Position: Northrop Grumman
Dr. Sumit Menon, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Semi-Supervised Expectation Maximization with Contrastive Outlier Removal.
Mentors: David Chapman
First Position: Home Depot
Current Position: Home Depot
Dr. Deepa Gupta, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Brain Connectivity Biomarker Characterization by Using EEG and TMS techniques
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa
First Position: Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience
Current Position: Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience
Dr. Aniruddha Saha, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Backdoor Attacks in Computer Vision: Towards Adversarially Robust Machine Learning Models
Mentors: Hamed Pirsiavash
First Position: University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
Current Position: University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
Dr. Brian Wayne Stevens, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Interweave Cognitive Radio for 4G Long Term Evolution and 5G New Radio Self-Reliant Networks
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
First Position: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Current Position: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Dr. Md Shafiqul Islam, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Analysis and Protocols to Establish Downlink for Communication Across the Air-Water Interface
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
First Position: Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
Current Position: Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
Dr. Yousef Ebrahimi, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Anonymity of the Base-Station in Wireless Sensor Networks
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
First Position: Cisco
Current Position: Cisco
Dr. Lalouani Wassila, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: AI Cyber threat in cyber physical systems
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
First Position: Towson University
Current Position: Towson University
Dr. Haneen, M Bawayan, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Management Techniques for Reliable Microgrid Operation
Mentors: Mohamed Younis
Dr. Trevor Kroeger, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: On the Resiliency of Physical Unclonable Functions against Power Analysis Attacks
Mentors: Naghmeh
First Position: JHU APL
Current Position: JHU APL
Dr. Ajinkya Borle, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Quantum Optimization for Linear Algebra Problems
Mentors: Samuel Lomonaco
First Position: UMBC
Current Position: UMBC
Dr. Rami Mowakeaa, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Lifelong Multitask Learning Algorithms: Nonlinearity, Scalability, and Applications
Mentors: Seung-Jun Kim and Tulay Adali
Dr. Hakju Oh, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Agile Lifecycle Management of Standards for Data Exchange
Mentors: Tim Finin
First Position: NIST
Current Position: NIST
Dr. Yao Yao, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Innovative Radio Frequency Signal Application in Sensing and Communication
Mentors: Ting Zhu
Dr. Xin Liu, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Leveraging Backscatter for Ultra-Low-Power Wireless Sensing Networks
Mentors: Ting Zhu
First Position: Ohio State University
Current Position: Ohio State University
Dr. Wei Wang, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Efficient and reliable cross-technology communication in heterogeneous IoT networks
Mentors: Ting Zhu
First Position: Intelligent Automation
Current Position: Intelligent Automation
Dr. Seyed-Morteza Hosseini, Ph.D. in CE, 2022
Dissertation: Energy-Efficient Implementation of Neural Networks Compressed with Cyclic Sparsely Connected Architectures
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin
First Position: Qualcomm
Current Position: Qualcomm
Dr. Asmita Korde-Patel, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Systematic Effects of Compressive Sensing for Time-Series Photometric Measurements for Space Observatories
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin and Richard K. Barry
First Position: NASA Goddard Space Flight Cente
Current Position: NASA Goddard Space Flight Cente
Dr. Mohammad Abu Baker Siddique Akhonda Akhonda, Ph.D. in EE, 2022
Dissertation: Common and Distinct Subspace Analysis in Data fusion: Application to the Fusion of Brain Imaging Data
Mentors: Tulay Adali
First Position: National Institutes of Health
Current Position: National Institutes of Health
Dr. Wu Yusen, Ph.D. in CS, 2022
Dissertation: Building Scalable, Trusted, and Decentralized Byzantine Fault Tolerance Systems for IoT
Mentors: Yelena Yesha and Phuong Nguyen
First Position: University of Miami Institute for Data Science and Computing.
Current Position: University of Miami Institute for Data Science and Computing.
2021
Dr. Farid Javani, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Privacy-Preserving Protocols with Oblivious Transfer and Mix Networks
Mentors: Alan Sherman
First Position: Meta
Current Position: Meta
Dr. Chao Liu, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Building Practical, Efficient, and Reliable Fault-Tolerant Distributed Systems
Mentors: Alan Sherman and Haibin Zhang
Dr. Andre T. Nguyen, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Uncertainty for Malware Detection and CyberDefense
Mentors: Charles Nicholas and Edward Raff
First Position: JURA Bio
Current Position: JURA Bio
Dr. Kenneth Ma, Ph.D. in EE, 2021
Dissertation: An Iterative Training Sampling Approach to Training Sample Augmentation and Data Expansion for Hyperspectral Image Classification
Mentors: Chein-I Chang
First Position: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Current Position: Data Scientist at Peraton Inc.
Dr. Avani Dave, Ph.D. in CE, 2021
Dissertation: Towards the Design of Resiliant Embedded Systems
Mentors: Chintan Patel and Nilanjan Banerjee
First Position: Intel Corporation
Current Position: Intel Corporation
Dr. Nisha Pillai, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Interactive Robots with Probabilistic Conceptualization and Optimized Perceptual Understanding
Mentors: Cynthia Matuszek
First Position: Postdoc/Univ of Mississippi
Current Position: Postdoc/Univ of Mississippi
Dr. Hedyeh Bagherzadeh, Ph.D. in EE, 2021
Dissertation: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Investigations for Novel Coil Designs
Mentors: Fow-Sen Choa
Dr. Henan Zhao, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: The Perceptually Accurate Visual Display of Quantitative Quantum Physics Data
Mentors: Marc Olano
First Position: Siemens Digital Industries Software
Current Position: Siemens Digital Industries Software
Dr. Tiantian Xie, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Cache and Bandwidth Aware Real-time Subsurface Scattering
Mentors: Marc Olano
First Position: Epic Games
Current Position: Epic Games
Dr. Kaushik Velusamy, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Orchestrating Non-Blocking Asynchronous Framework for HPC Systems and Applications
Mentors: Milton Halem
First Position: Argonne National Laboratory
Current Position: Argonne National Laboratory
Dr. Akshay Peshave, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Unsupervised Thematic Phrase Extraction From Single Text Artifact
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: GE Research
Current Position: GE Research
Dr. Hang Gao, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Towards Learning A Better Text Encoder
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: ebay
Current Position: ebay
Dr. Ashwinkumar Ganesan, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Supervised Training Strategies for Low Resource Language Processing
Mentors: Tim Oates and Frank Ferraro
First Position: Amazon
Current Position: Amazon
Dr. Colin William Shea, Ph.D. in CE, 2021
Dissertation: Homogeneous Scheduling of Deep Neural Networks
Mentors: Tinoosh Mohsenin
First Position: Boeing Research & Technology ·
Current Position: Boeing Research & Technology ·
Dr. Isaac K. Mativo, Ph.D. in CS, 2021
Dissertation: Novel Machine Learning Tools to Enhance Mortality Prediction
Mentors: Yelena Yesha
First Position: Director of Development Projects, PointCross Life Sciences
Current Position: UMBC
2020
Dr. James W Shey, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Power Supply Analysis for Device Verification
Mentors: Chintan Patel
First Position: Assistant Professor at United States Naval Academy
Current Position: Assistant Professor at United States Naval Academy
Dr. Seyed Ehsan Jamali Mahabadi, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Modeling phase noise and responsivity in photodetectors
Mentors: Curtis Menyuk
First Position: University of Southern Florida
Current Position: Silvaco
Dr. Smriti Prathapan, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Design Space Exploration of Data-centric Architectures
Mentors: Milton Halem
First Position: University of Miami
Current Position: University of Miami
Dr. Dorsa Ziaei, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Deep Machine Learning Solutions for Feature Identification and Detection for Very Large Medical mages
Mentors: Milton Halem
First Position: Computational Scientist II at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research
Current Position: Computational Scientist II at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research
Dr. Hadis Dashtestani, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Multivariate Statistical Learning for Multimodal Neuroimaging Data Fusion
Mentors: Milton Halem
First Position: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Current Position: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Dr. Ramin Ayanzadeh, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Advance Problem-Solving with Quantum Annealers
Mentors: Milton Halem and Tim Finin
First Position: UMBC
Current Position: UMBC
Dr. Stanislav Bobovych, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Low-Power Context Aware Hierarchical System Design
Mentors: Nilanjan Banerjee and Ryan Robucci
Dr. Kevin M. Pritchard, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Signal Processing, Performance Metrics, and Lifetime of a 6LiF:ZnS(Ag) Neutronc Detector with WLS Fibers and SIPM Photodetector
Mentors: Ryan Robucci
First Position: NIST
Current Position: NIST
Dr. Brien J Croteau, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Attack-Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems
Mentors: Ryan Robucci
First Position: U.S. Navy
Current Position: U.S. Navy
Dr. Filip J. Dabek, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Analysis of Irregular Event Sequences in Healthcare using Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Visualization
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: Research Scientist, Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Current Position: Research Scientist, Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Dr. Sunil Gandhi, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Artifact Removal From Electroencephalography Data
Mentors: Tim Oates
First Position: Amazon
Current Position: Amazon
Dr. Zicheng Chi, Ph.D. in CE, 2020
Dissertation: Enabling Seamless Communication and RF sensing among Heterogeneous IoT Devices
Mentors: Ting Zhu
First Position: Cleveland State University.
Current Position: Cleveland State University.
Dr. Qunfang Long, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Data-driven Techniques for the Study of Brain Dynamics and Identification of Subgroups: Application to Multi-subject Resting-state fMRI Data
Mentors: Tulay Adali
First Position: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),
Current Position: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK),
Dr. Suchita Bhinge, Ph.D. in EE, 2020
Dissertation: Adaptive Constrained Independent Vector Analysis: Application to Large-Scale fMRI Analysis
Mentors: Tulay Adali
First Position: AggDirect
Current Position: AggDirect
Dr. Alexander Kaplunovich, Ph.D. in CS, 2020
Dissertation: Real-time Automatic Hyperparameter Tuning for Deep Learning in Serverless Cloud
Mentors: Yelena Yesha
First Position: CEO Cloudtalk
Current Position: CEO Cloudtalk