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!

Current Research Students

  • Nicolas Baret, BS/REU Student, Utah, expected May 2027
  • Md Rahat Zaman, PhD Student, Utah, expected Dec. 2027
  • Sefat E Rahman, PhD Student, Utah, expected Dec. 2027
  • Sudhanva Athreya, PhD Student, Utah, expected May 2028

Current Student Committees

  • Anis Elebiary, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2027 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Hunter Finney, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2027 (Utah, advisor Luis Garcia)
  • Tark Patel, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2027 (Utah, advisor Chris Johnson)
  • Alper Sahıstan, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2027 (Utah, advisor Valerio Pascucci)
  • Guanqun Ma, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2027 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
  • Tara Nourivandi, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2027 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Shadmaan Hye, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2027 (Utah, advisor Kate Isaacs)
  • Shiyi He, PhD Committee Member, expected Dec. 2027 (Utah, advisor Andrew McNutt)
  • Rupal Agarwal, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2028 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
  • Nathan Gorski, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2028 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
  • Dhruv Meduri, PhD Committee Member, expected May 2028 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)

Former Advisees

  • Md Dilshadur Rahman, PhD Student, Utah, Dec. 2026
    • Thesis: Design Space and Tooling for Annotations in Visualizations
    • Last Known Position: Postdoc at Harvard Medical School
  • Arnav Gupta, BS/REU Student, Virginia Tech, Aug. 2026
  • Marianne Martinez, BS/REU Student, Utah, Aug. 2026
  • Rifat Ara Proma, PhD Student, Utah, May 2026
    • Thesis: Reading Between the Lines: Toward Human-Centered Clutter Reduction in Line Charts
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Amazon
  • Annabelle Warner, BS/REU Student, Utah, May 2025
  • 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
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Google
  • Ghulam Jilani Quadri, PhD Student, USF, Dec. 2021
    • Thesis: Constructing Frameworks for Task-Optimized Visualizations
    • Last Known Position: 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
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Meta
  • Hamza Elhamdadi, MS Thesis Student, USF, Aug. 2021
    • Thesis: AffectiveTDA: Using Topological Data Analysis to Improve Analysis and Explainability in Affective Computing
    • Last Known Position: PhD Student at UMass Amherst
  • Collin Chimbwanda, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2021
  • Raquel Garcia, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2021
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Microsoft
  • TJ Kotha, MS Thesis Student, USF, Dec. 2020
    • Thesis: Establishing Topological Data Analysis: A Comparison of Visualization Techniques
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Amazon
  • Junyi Tu, PhD Student, USF, Dec. 2019
    • Thesis: Efficient Algorithms and Applications in Topological Data Analysis
    • Last Known Position: Assistant Professor at Salisbury University
  • Chukwubuikem Umeugwa, BS/REU Student, USF, Dec. 2019
    • Last Known Position: MS Student at the University of Michigan
  • Alejandro Robles, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2018
    • Last Known Position: PhD Student at University of South Florida Dept.\ of Elec.\ Eng.
  • Ashley Suh, BS/REU Student, USF, May 2018
    • Last Known Position: 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
    • Last Known Position: Software Engineer at Microsoft
  • Dhaval Shah, MS Thesis Student, USF, Mar. 2016
    • Thesis: Impact of Visualization on Engineers – A Survey
  • Mustafa Hajij, Postdoc, Louisiana State University, May 2015
    • Last Known Position: Assistant Professor at University of San Fransisco
  • 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
    • Last Known Position: Software Developer at Bazaarvoice
  • Kathryn Rodgers, BS Thesis Student, Utah, May 2013
    • Thesis: Parallel Compression of Time-Variant Scientific Data for Collaborative Visualizations
    • Last Known Position: 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
    • Last Known Position: Technical Leader at Kitware Inc.
  • Hushel Roberts, BS Thesis Student, Utah, Dec. 2011
    • Thesis: High Order Trajectory Approximation of Time Varying Datasets
    • Last Known Position: Senior Software Engineer at 3M

Graduated Student Committees

  • Weiran “Nancy” Lyu, PhD Committee Member, Aug. 2026 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
    • Thesis: Topology-Aware Hashing and Sketching for Scalable Scientific Visualization and Uncertainty Analysis
  • Farhan Rasheed, PhD Committee Member, May 2026 (Linkoping University, advisor Ingrid Hotz)
    • Thesis: Topology-Driven Visual Analysis of Structures in Dynamic Spatial Data
  • Sayef Azad Sakin, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2025 (Utah, advisor Kate Isaacs)
    • Thesis: Event Sequence Visualization Design Considerations and Data Management Techniques
  • Mingzhe Li, PhD Committee Member, Dec. 2025 (Utah, advisor Bei Wang)
    • Thesis: Topological Descriptors for Complex and Scalable Data Analysis: Optimal Transport and Distributed Feature Extraction
  • James Youngblood, MS Thesis Committee Member, Dec. 2025 (Utah, advisor Rogelio Cardona-Rivera)
    • Thesis: Digital Image Transformations Degrade Gaze Prediction Accuracy
  • Saandeep Aathreya, PhD Committee Member, May 2025 (USF, advisor Shaun Canavan)
    • Thesis: Context and Interpretability in Affective Computing Applications
  • 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)
    • Thesis: Multimodal Emotion Recognition using 3D Facial Landmarks, Action Units, and Physiological Data
  • Jaleel Ahmed, MS Thesis Committee Member, May 2019 (USF, advisor Simon Ou)
    • Thesis: Empirical Analysis of Cybersecurity Score
  • 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)
    • Thesis: Emotion Recognition Using Deep Learning with Physiological Data
  • 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)
    • Thesis: Flexible and Feasible Support Measures for Mining Frequent Patterns in Large Labeled Graphs
  • 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)
  • Mavin Martin, MS Project Committee Member, Dec. 2014 (Utah, advisor Chris Johnson)
  • 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