Mentorship

Interested in joining my group?
Please check out some of my papers, talk to my current and former students, and then send me an e-mail!

Research Students

Student Committees

  • Mingzhe Li, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2025 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
  • Tark Patel, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2025 (Utah, advisor Chris Johnson)
  • Farhan Rasheed, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2025 (Linkoping University, advisor Ingrid Hotz)
  • James Youngblood, MS Thesis Committee Member, expected May 2025 (Utah, advisor Rogelio Cardona-Rivera)
  • Sayef Azad Sakin, PhD Committee Member, expected Aug. 2025 (Utah, advisor Kate Isaacs)
  • Saandeep Aathreya, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2025 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Tara Nourivandi, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2025 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Nancy Lyu, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2025 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
  • Long Dang, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (USF, advisor Kaiqi Xiong)
  • Shadmaan Hye, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (Utah, advisor Kate Isaacs)
  • Alper Sahstan, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (Utah, advisor Valerio Pascucci)
  • Anis Elebiary, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Hunter Finney, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (Utah, advisor Luis Garcia)
  • Rupal Agarwal, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2026 (USF, advisor Marvin Andujar)

Former Postdocs

  • Mustafa Hajij (PhD 2015, Louisiana State University) → Assistant Professor at University of San Fransisco

Former Students

  • Bhavana Doppalapudi, PhD Student, USF, Dec. 2024
    • Thesis: “Balancing Clarity and Context Through Visualizations for Better Decision-Making”
  • Francis Hahn, BS/REU Student, USF, Dec. 2022
  • Bryan Triana, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2022
    • Software Engineer at Google
  • Ghulam Jilani Quadri, PhD Student, USF, Dec. 2021
    • Thesis: “Constructing Frameworks for Task-Optimized Visualizations”
    • CIFellow Postdoc at UNC Chapel Hill
  • Curtis Davis, MS Thesis Student, USF, Dec. 2021
    • Thesis: “Using Hyper-Dimensional Spanning Trees to Improve Structure Preservation During Dimensionality Reduction”
    • Software Engineer at Meta (Facebook)
  • Hamza Elhamdadi, MS Thesis Student, USF, Aug. 2021
    • Thesis: “AffectiveTDA: Using Topological Data Analysis to Improve Analysis and Explainability in Affective Computing”
    • PhD Student at UMass Amherst
  • Collin Chimbwanda, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2021
  • Raquel Garcia, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2021
    • Software Engineer at Microsoft
  • TJ Kotha, MS Thesis Student, USF, Dec. 2020
    • Thesis: “Establishing Topological Data Analysis: A Comparison of Visualization Techniques”
    • Software Engineer at Amazon
  • Junyi Tu, PhD Student, USF, Dec. 2019
    • Thesis: “Efficient Algorithms and Applications in Topological Data Analysis”
    • Assistant Professor at Salisbury University
  • Chukwubuikem Umeugwa, BS/REU Student, USF, Dec. 2019
    • MS Student at the University of Michigan
  • Alejandro Robles, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2018
    • PhD Student at University of South Florida Dept. of Elec. Eng.
  • Ashley Suh, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2018
    • PhD Student at Tufts
  • Christopher Salgado, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2018
  • Christopher Chen, BS/REU Student, USF, Dec. 2017
  • Hoa Nguyen, PhD Student, Utah, Jan. 2017
    • Thesis: “Data Scalable Approach for Identifying Correlation in Large and Multidimensional Data” Software Engineer at Microsoft
  • Dhaval Shah, MS Thesis Student, USF, Mar. 2016
  • Harsha Gadiraju, MS Project Student, Utah, May 2015
  • Prudhvi Sampara, MS Project Student, Utah, May 2015
  • Yihao Jiang, MS Project Student, Utah, May 2015
  • Kazuhiro Nagai, BS Thesis Student, Utah, Dec. 2014
    • Thesis: “A Quantitative Error Analysis in Volume Rendering”
  • Christopher P. Johnson, BS Thesis Student, Utah, May 2014
    • Thesis: “Uncertainty Visualization for Hypothesis Testing”
  • Teng Lu, MS Project Student, Utah, Dec. 2013
  • Sam Pradeep Gnanasundaram, BS Thesis Student, Utah, Dec. 2013
    • Thesis: “Visualization of Unsteady Vector Fields”
  • Chao Yang, MS Project Student, Utah, May 2013
    • Software Developer at Bazaarvoice
  • Kathryn Rodgers, BS Thesis Student, Utah, May 2013
    • Thesis: “Parallel Compression of Time-Variant Scientific Data for Collaborative Visualizations”
    • Instructor at Boise State University
  • A.N.M. Imroz Choudhury, PhD Student (co-advised by Steve Parker), Utah, May 2012
    • Thesis: “Visualizing program memory behavior using memory reference traces”
    • Technical Leader at Kitware Inc.
  • Hushel Roberts, BS Thesis Student, Utah, Dec. 2011
    • Thesis: “High Order Trajectory Approximation of Time Varying Datasets”
    • Senior Software Engineer at 3M

Graduated Student Committees

  • Tianze Chen, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2024 (USF, advisor Yu Sun)
    • Thesis: “Robotic Multi-Object Grasping from a Pile: Techniques and Algorithms for Enhanced Dexterity”
  • Fangfei (Fei) Lan, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2024 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
    • Thesis: “Ensemble Analysis and Uncertainty Visualization with Graphical Descriptors: From Theory to Application”
  • Devin Lange, PhD Committee Member, Aug. 2024 (Utah, advisor Alex Lex)
    • Thesis: “Is That Right? Data Visualizations for Scientific Quality Control”
  • Jennifer Adorno Nieves, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2023 (USF, advisor Jay Ligatti)
    • Thesis: “Refining the Machine Learning Pipeline for US-based Public Transit Systems”
  • Ashley Suh, PhD Committee Member, May 2023 (Tufts, advisor Remco Chang)
    • Thesis: “From Exploratory to Hypothesis-Driven Visual Data Analysis”
  • Sarah Garcia, PhD Committee Member, May 2023 (USF, advisor Marvin Andujar)
    • Thesis: “Exploring Scalability of Multimodal User Interface Design in Virtual and Augmented Reality”
  • Utkarsh Tamrakar, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2022 (USF, advisor Yu Sun)
    • Thesis: “Predicting the Number of Objects in a Robotic Grasp”
  • Chengcheng Mou, PhD Committee Member, May 2022 (USF, advisor Yicheng Tu)
    • Thesis: “Computing Group-By and Aggregate in Massively Parallel Systems”
  • Steven Hernandez, PhD Committee Member, May 2022 (USF, advisor Tempestt Neal)
    • Thesis: “On the Reliability of Wearable Sensors for Assessing Movement Disorder-Related Gait Quality and Imbalance: A Case Study of Multiple Sclerosis”
  • Zhengping Luo, PhD Committee Chairman, June 2021 (USF, advisor Zhuo Lu)
    • Thesis: “Security Attacks and Defenses in Cyber Systems: From an AI Perspective”
  • Zachariah Beasley, PhD Committee Member, Aug. 2020 (USF, advisor Les Piegl)
    • Thesis: “Sentiment Analysis in Peer Review”
  • Rupal Agarwal, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2020 (USF, advisor Marvin Andujar)
  • Upama Nakarmi, PhD Committee Chairman, May 2020 (USF, advisor Mahshid Naeini)
    • Thesis: “Reliability Analysis of Power Grids and its Interdependent Infrastructures: An Interaction Graph-based Approach”
  • David Paulius, PhD Committee Member, May 2020 (USF, advisor Yu Sun)
    • Thesis: “From Manipulation Learning to Task Planning: Functional Object-Oriented Network for Service Robotics”
  • Diego Fabiano Santalices, MS Thesis Committee Member, Dec. 2019 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Jaleel Ahmed, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2019 (USF, advisor Simon Ou)
  • Essa Alhazmi, PhD Committee Member, May 2019 (USF, advisor Adriana Iamnitchi)
    • Thesis: “Phenomena of Social Dynamics in Online Games”
  • Astha Sharma, MS Thesis Committee Member, Dec. 2018 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Elsayed Ahmed, PhD Committee Chairman, Dec. 2018 (USF, advisor Dmytro Savchuk)
    • Thesis: “Groups Generated by Automata Arising from Transformations of the Boundaries of Rooted Trees”
  • Pratool Bharti, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2017 (USF, advisor Sriram Chellappan)
    • Thesis: “Context-based Human Activity Recognition Using Multimodal Wearable Sensors”
  • Jinghan Meng, MS Thesis Committee Member, Aug. 2017 (USF, advisor Yicheng Tu)
  • Wathsala Widanagamaachchi, PhD Committee Member, May 2017 (Utah, advisor Valerio Pascucci)
    • Thesis: “Interactive Visualization and Exploration of Feature Evolution in Dynamic Data”
    • Researcher at Veterans Affairs
  • Evren Bozgeyikli, PhD Committee Member, October 2016 (USF, advisor Andrew Raij)
    • Thesis: “Evaluating Virtual Reality Locomotion Techniques for Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder”
    • Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona
  • Lal Bozgeyikli, PhD Committee Member, October 2016 (USF, advisor Andrew Raij)
    • Thesis: “Virtual Reality for Training Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Design Considerations”
    • Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona
  • Anurag Panwar, MS Thesis Committee Member, Mar. 2016 (USF, advisor Sriram Chellappan)
  • Kazuhiro Nagai, BS Thesis Student, Dec. 2014
    • Thesis: “A Quantitative Error Analysis in Volume Rendering”
  • Mavin Martin, MS Project Committee Member, Dec. 2014 (Utah, advisor Chris Johnson)
  • Sam Pradeep Gnanasundaram, BS Thesis Student, Dec. 2013
    • Thesis: “Visualization of Unsteady Vector Fields”
  • Kathryn Rodgers, BS Thesis Student, May 2013
    • Thesis: “Parallel Compression of Time-Variant Scientific Data for Collaborative Visualizations”
    • Instructor at Boise State University
  • Sridhar Vukkadapu, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2013
  • Suraj Kumar Sahu, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2013
  • Brian Summa, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2012 (Utah, advisor Valerio Pascucci)
    • Thesis: “Interactive Digital Photography at Scale”
    • Assistant Professor at Tulane