2021 Celebration of Excellence

Rittika is in the fifth year of the Computer Science BS/MS joint degree program at the University of Illinois. She has been a lead course assistant for CS 225 and CS 225. She volunteers as a facilitator for Girls Who Code. Rittika is a past recipient of an Honorable Mention for the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award and is a James Scholar.

Sami is a rising senior in Computer Science + Linguistics. He's held Software Engineering Internships at COUNTRY Financial, Capital One, Caterpillar, and is spending Summer 2021 interning for Facebook. He taught the student-run freshman honors course CS196 during the Spring and Fall 2020 semesters.

Eric is a current freshman in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He is a James Scholar and hopes to to complete the 5-year masters program.

Felipe Assumpcao is a rising sophomore studying Computer Science. He is a member of Latinos in Computer Science, as well as a research assistant at the Computer Vision and Robotics Laboratory. Felipe will be interning at Node Chronicles in Summer 2021, where he will be working with Blockchain Technology.

Tim is a rising senior studying Computer Science and Math. He is a member of the Laboratory for Parallel Numerical Algorithms where he is investigating parallel graph algorithms with Professor Solomonik. This summer, Tim is developing scalable machine learning infrastructure at C3.ai on the Platform engineering team. He has previously interned at IBM and served as a course assistant for Software Design Studio (CS 126) and Introduction to Computer Science (CS 125).

Nishant will be a junior next year pursuing a dual degree in Computer Science and Statistics. He is also a James Scholar and a member of the Hoeft Technology and Management Class of XXVII. He has various research and internship experience, as well as leadership positions in RSOs like ACM and Project Code

Shresta is a rising junior in Computer Science. At UIUC, she is involved in ACM and HackIllinois, and enjoys exploring the field of AI.

Nick is a junior in Computer Science with a minor in Linguistics. He serves as the President of the Undergraduate Linguistics Society, the League of Linguists, and also works on projects related to AI and language. He has previously served as a course assistant for CS 173 and as a grader for CS 210.

Melissa is a junior Chancellor's Scholar studying Computer Science. She has been involved with the Computer Science Mental Health Committee, Women in Computer Science, and HackIllinois.

Melissa is a junior Chancellor's Scholar studying Computer Science. She has been involved with the Computer Science Mental Health Committee, Women in Computer Science, and HackIllinois.

Melissa is a junior Chancellor's Scholar studying Computer Science. She has been involved with the Computer Science Mental Health Committee, Women in Computer Science, and HackIllinois.

Peiyi is a Junior in Computer Science. She is a James Scholar and a recipient of Tan Family Education Foundation Scholarship. She has been a course assistant for CS 446 and is an upcoming SWE intern for Facebook.

Ananya is a senior in Computer Science and chair of the CS Mental Health Committee. She was also a past recipient of the Carle Illinois Health Maker Lab and has been involved in mental health advocacy at the campus and national level. She has served as a mental health advisor for the federal government, Mental Health America, Google, and other groups and gave a TEDx talk about her journey as an Indian-American college student with a mental illness. She has been awarded by the White House, Carnegie Science Awards, and Mayor of Pittsburgh for her past work in Robotics.

Violetta is a freshman in Computer Science and serves as a course assistant for CS 125.

Rose is a junior Computer Science major. She is a code moderator for CS 242 and has interned with Microsoft.

Teresa is sophomore studying Computer Science. She is currently working for a UIUC-based social networking start up called Hang. She is also a course assistant for CS 126. Last summer she interned at Amazon on the Alexa Automatic Speech Recognition team.

Jaelyn is a freshman studying Computer Science. She was recognized as an Illinois State scholar. Jaelyn has serviced as captain of her high school's varsity T&F and XC team, and participated in the National Honors Society.

Tamun is a 3rd-year Psychology student and has been a course assistant for CS/STAT 107 for 3 semesters. She was a recipient of the Scott Fisher Outstanding Course Assistant award. She hopes to merge her knowledge of Data Science and Psychology to improve the research in psychology.

Rachel is a freshman in Computer Science and is a Chancellor's Scholar and James Scholar. On campus, she is involved with the Mentoring Committee of Women in Computer Science, the Asian American Association, and the Corporate Committee of the Engineering Freshman Council.

Minhao is a junior in Computer Science with a dual degree in Mathematics. He is a past recipient of the department's Yunni & Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship, has been a course assistant in CS 374 and 173. His research interests are in Machine Learning and Data Mining.

Ben is a James Scholar and in pursuing a Computer Science degree. He has interned at Allstate and participated in numerous hack-a-thons and conferences at Illinois. His passion is in the intersection of medicine and computer science.

Nathan is a fourth-year undergraduate in CS, with interests in Theoretical Computer Science and Quantum Computing. Earlier this year, he presented Complexity Theory research regarding shallow and noisy quantum circuits at QIP 2021. He will join UC Berkeley's theory group as a Ph.D. student in Fall 2021.

Chris is a junior in Computer Science and Engineering. He is a James Scholar and a current recipient of the Computer Science Visionary Scholarship. Previously, he was on course staff for CS 125. He currently works part time for Motorola Solutions at their Research Park office in Champaign.

Jiaying was a senior in Computer Science in 2020-2021. She has joined the forward data lab lead by Professor Kelvin Chenchuan Chang. Jiaying also participated in the DPI Research Scholars Program as a student researcher. She has also previously received the Tan Family Education Foundation Scholarship.

Charles is a freshman majoring in Computer Science. He is a recipient of the Channing Brown Scholarship and the Legacy Scholarship. He has done a wide variety of volunteer work, from mentoring children in S.T.E.M related topics, helping the elderly with modern technology, to community work.

Yitao Meng is working toward her Bachelor's degree in both Computer Science and Math. She collaborated with two professors as an undergraduate researcher in the field of Machine Learning, and will be continuing her education with graduate studies in Computer Science.

Micah is a freshman in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He was an Illinois State Scholar and National Merit Finalist. He is also a previous recipient of the Chan-Tsai Scholarship.

Nathan is a James Scholar at Grainger studying Computer Science. His interests are medicine and full-stack development. He developed the new CS 128 course with Dr. Nowak and serves as a senior staff member for the course.

Martina is a freshman in Computer Science. She is a State Farm Computer Science Scholar, Engineering Excellence Scholar, and Illinois State Scholar. She is also a James Scholar, and serves as a course assistant for CS 125 in the Spring 2021 semester.

Allison is a junior in Computer Science. She is active in a variety of clubs, including the Rube Goldberg Society, where she serves as Vice President, as well as with the Krannert Center Student Association. She is also working as a data analytics intern at Caterpillar.

Dipro is a senior in Computer Science at UIUC. At Illinois, he has participated in research and teaching. He has worked on domain-specific keyword detection with Professor Kevin Chang at Forward Lab and on distributed Tucker Tensor Completion with Professor Edgar Solomonik at LPNA. He has been an undergraduate course assistant for CS 374 for three semesters. He has completed two software engineer internships at Facebook. Apart from academics and work, he has also been involved with Reflections | Projects, a completely student-run tech conference at UIUC, for three years.

Dipro is a senior in Computer Science at UIUC. At Illinois, he has participated in research and teaching. He has worked on domain-specific keyword detection with Professor Kevin Chang at Forward Lab and on distributed Tucker Tensor Completion with Professor Edgar Solomonik at LPNA. He has been an undergraduate course assistant for CS 374 for three semesters. He has completed two software engineer internships at Facebook. Apart from academics and work, he has also been involved with Reflections | Projects, a completely student-run tech conference at UIUC, for three years.

Patricia is a James Scholar first-year student in Computer Science and an upcoming Explore intern at Microsoft. She is passionate about empowering women and minorities to pursue STEM, and strives to help others as a computer scientist and leader. As a member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, she specifically focuses on community service.

Pradyumna is a senior in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advised by Professor Christopher W. Fletcher. He is the Lead Course Assistant for CS 241: System Programming and recipient of the Outstanding Course Assistant Award. His research interests are in Security, Systems, and CS Education; his work on next-generation microarchitectural side-channel attacks has led to a co-authored publication at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture. While at Illinois, he has interned at Virtusa, Salesforce, and Facebook, and has helped organize HackIllinois and Reflections | Projections. He will begin a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech this Fall.

Xiangchen has received Bachelor's degree from Illinois in Math and CS. At Illinois, he worked in Data Mining Group with Professor Jiawei Han. He is continuing his Ph.D. in Machine Learning at CMU.

Rohan Suresh is a rising senior pursuing a dual degree in Computer Science and in Econometrics & Quantitative Economics. At Illinois, he has been the Course Instructor for CS 196, an undergraduate researcher at the FORWARD Lab for 2 years, an undergraduate researcher at the Disruption Lab for 1.5 years, and Vice President at his engineering fraternity. This summer he will be interning at Facebook.

Sabrina is currently in her second year at UIUC and is on track to graduate a year early. She was an Illinois State Scholar and part of a mentorship for young girls in low income neighborhoods in high school. She was awarded an Associate's degree in Science during high school from a community college and is involved in volunteering and being a CA for CS 105 at UIUC.

Ishani is a freshman in Computer Science as well as a James Scholar. She is a project manager for CS196. She was also a project manager and developer for Women in Computer Science and the Graphic Design Chair for the Society of Women Engineers.

Ananya is a rising senior studying Computer Science and Brain and Cognitive Science. She's a course assistant for CS 374, and she currently works in Dr. Nancy Amato's lab on skeleton-based motion planning.

Jiaming has received a Bachelor's degree of Science from the University of Illinois in Math and Computer Science. He will continue pursuing a Masters in Computer Science at the University of Illinois as well.

Andrea is a first-year Computer Science student. She was a recipient of the William and Ruth Witt scholarship and she is an Amazon Future Engineer Scholar. She will be interning at Amazon as a software engineer in Summer 2021.

Robert studies Computational Complexity with Professor Michael A. Forbes. He previously received Bachelor's degrees from Illinois in both Computer Science and Mathematics.

Suneer is a M.S. student in Computer Science, and is working at the intersection of human-computer interaction and educational psychology, to bring equity and personalized learning in education. Recognized as the Best All-rounder and OPJEMS scholar in his undergraduate studies at NIT Kurukshetra, he has worked with Royal Bank of Scotland, Teach For India, and is a certified yoga teacher.

Nathanael is a Ph.D. student working in the Parasol lab under Professor Lawrence Rauchwerger and Professor Nancy Amato on Scientific Computing. During his undergraduate studies, he was in the Electrokinetics research group under Professor Martin Bazant, where he worked on numerics and optimization problems for renewable energy applications. He studied Mathematics and Engineering at MIT and joined the lab in 2020.

Tanvi received her Bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon University. She has received the K&L Gates prize, the Mark Stehlik Introductory and Service Teaching Award, the Mark Stehlik undergraduate Impact Award, and the Carnegie Mellon Women's Association Outstanding Senior Award. Her research is on fair algorithm design and content moderation.

Naina is a first year Ph.D. student in Computer Science who graduated last year from the University of Pittsburgh with degrees in Applied Mathematics and Philosophy. She is currently working on research in Social Network Analysis and discovering bias in algorithms.

Rick is a 3rd year Ph.D. student studying user-platform conflicts with Professor Hari Sundaram and Professor Karrie Karahalios. Prior to entering the program, he co-founded seed stage venture firm Refactor Capital and worked at a healthcare startup.

Pedro is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Scientific Computing group. His research focuses on the solution of partial differential equations on high-performance computing systems. In his free time, he is a Zumba instructor and a harp performer. Other honors include Outstanding Graduate Award in Electrical Engineering, the Alfred P. Sloan Scholarship, Siebel Scholar, and the 2020 IBM Research Intern of the Year Award.

Pedro is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Scientific Computing group. His research focuses on the solution of partial differential equations on high-performance computing systems. In his free time, he is a Zumba instructor and a harp performer. Other honors include Outstanding Graduate Award in Electrical Engineering, the Alfred P. Sloan Scholarship, Siebel Scholar, and the 2020 IBM Research Intern of the Year Award.

Bhavya received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from UIUC and is continuing her Ph.D. under Professor ChengXiang Zhai. Her research interests are in Text Mining, applied Machine Learning, and HCI, and their applications in the education and medical domains.

Ansel is a first year Ph.D. student working with Professor Heng Ji on event extraction. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science and Applied Math at UC San Diego where he was the President of the University's Tau Beta Pi chapter. In his free time, Ansel enjoys playing sports and baking.

Beleicia is concluding the second year of her M.S. under Professor Karrie Karahalios. She will be continuing her studies as a Ph.D. student at Stanford University in Fall 2021.

Daniel is a 1st-year Ph.D. Candidate focusing on Natural Language Processing and Efficient AI. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Tech and his M.S. in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington. Daniel has been employed by Neural Magic, Microsoft, Cisco, GE, and Basis Tech.

Xiaohong is in the 5th year of his PhD program. At Illinois, he is developing trustworthy analysis tools that work for all programming languages with Professor Grigore Rosu.

Ti-Chung is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He was the lead TA for CS242 and now CS411 at UIUC. Besides teaching, his research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction and Decision Making.  A recent paper was accepted to CSCW 2021, and his co-authored paper won best paper honorable mention at CHI 2021.

Saikat is a Ph.D. student working with Professor Sasa Misailovic in the Software Engineering and Programming Languages domain. He is currently working on developing novel techniques for testing of Machine Learning frameworks. He has published several research papers in conferences such as FSE and ISSTA. Saikat received the Facebook PhD Fellowship 2019 and 3M Foundation Fellowship 2018 for his research on this topic.

Wesley is an iCan program student who holds a Bachelor's of Science in Physics and is now beginning to study Computer Science, with the goal of one day completing a Master's in it.

Carl is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and he has been conducting research in Natural Language Processing related to the Molecule Maker Lab Institute under Professor Heng Ji. He is from Knoxville, Tennessee, where he completed his Bachelor's degree in Honors Computer Science and Honors Math.

Morgan received her B.A. in Computer Science at U-C Berkeley, and is currently a second year Ph.D. student in the Computers and Education area at the University of Illinois. Based on student rankings, the University has recognized her as a Teacher Ranked as Excellent for two consecutive semesters.

Morgan received her B.A. in Computer Science at U-C Berkeley, and is currently a second year Ph.D. student in the Computers and Education area at the University of Illinois. Based on student rankings, the University has recognized her as a Teacher Ranked as Excellent for two consecutive semesters.

Jason is in his 4th year of Ph.D. studies in Computer Science and was excited to present his latest work involving applying GANs to 3D medical images at SPIE 2021.

Sam is a 2nd year Ph.D. candidate and a Graduate College Fellow. He is working on operating systems for interactive edge systems.

Emily is a 5th year Ph.D. student studying Human-Computer Interaction with Professor Brian Bailey, and is currently a TA for CS 465: User Interface Design. She earned her B.A. summa cum laude from Knox College in 2016 with a major in CS and a self-designed minor in Renaissance and Medieval Studies. She earned an M.S. in CS from UIUC in 2019, and was a Graduate Measurement Science and Engineering Fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 2018-2020.

Kartik is a 4th year Ph.D. student in Computer Science, advised by Professor Chris Fletcher. He is a recipient of the Facebook Ph.D. fellowship for his work in the area of hardware/software infrastructure for Artificial Intelligence.

Chiao Hsieh is a 6th year Ph.D. student in Department of Computer Science. He is one of the main developers behind CyPhyHouse, a multidisciplinary project to provide programming, debugging, and deployment benefits for distributed mobile robotic applications.

Silas is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate advised by Professor Karrie Karahalios. His research focuses on improving interfaces such that people can better control automatic behaviors. In his spare time, he plays classical music on the piano and has won piano competitions in the past.

Silu Huang obtained her Ph.D. degree from UIUC in 2019 summer and is now a senior researcher in Microsoft Research at Redmond. Her work is devoted to simplifying the data science process. She is a previous recipient of the Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship, 3M Fellowship, and Wing Kai Cheng Fellowship during her Ph.D. study.

James is a first-year Ph.D. student working in Theoretical Cryptography with Professor Khurana. He received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Kathleen is in the 1st year of her Ph.D. in Computer Science. At Illinois, she has been a teaching assistant for CS 465 and CS 105. She has also recently had a paper accepted to the Annual Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology.

Unnat Jain is a Ph.D. student building collaborative AI agents with Professors  Alexander Schwing and Svetlana Lazebnik. He received his Master's degree from CS Illinois with a Siebel Scholars recognition and a Bachelor's degree from IIT Kanpur with a Director's Gold Medal recognition.

Saurabh Jha is a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Computer Science department. His research focuses on using Machine Learning Techniques to develop self-driving computer systems, such as Cloud and HPC, and assess the robustness of ML-driven systems. He is the recipient of the IBM 2020 Ph.D. Fellowship. He has won several awards for his research contributions, including ISSRE 2020 Best Paper Award, nominations for SC 2020 Best Student Paper and Best Paper Awards, and several Best Poster Awards.

Berkay received his B.S. from Ohio State University in Computer Science and Engineering with Honors in 2019. 

Aditya is a first year graduate student. He previously completed a M.E. at Harvard and a B.S. at the California Institute of Technology. In between, he spent a few years in the Securities Division of Goldman Sachs. His broad research interest is in working through how both humans and complex algorithms - such as Machine Learning Systems - interact, and how different incentives can lead to interesting properties.

Azhar is a Civil Engineer who is passionate about tech. She is a student of the first cohort of the iCAN (Computer Science Illinois Computing Accelerator for Non-Specialists) program and the recipient of the Facebook iCAN Scholarship. Azhar is a Women in STEM activist who wants to broaden participation of women in engineering and tech industries.

Elizabeth is a first year Ph.D. student. She received a Bachelor's degree from Calvin University, and is now working on Computational Biology using High Performance Computing.

Rucha is a 4th year Ph.D. student advised by Professor Ruta Mehta. She likes teaching, especially apparently CS374, which she has now done 5 times. She hopes everyone is safe and happy and able to learn CS374 and other CS stuff soon.

Wing is a Ph.D. student working with Professor Tao Xie and Professor Darko Marinov. His research aims to improve software dependability by identifying and fixing software problems during the software testing phase.

Charlotte Lambert is a first-year Ph.D. student studying Computer Science. She graduated in 2020 from Vassar College with a B.A. in Computer Science and two minors in Mathematics and Italian. Currently, Charlotte is studying social computing with Professor Eshwar Chandrasekharan, focusing specifically on antisocial and prosocial behavior in online conversation threads.

Manling Li won a Best Demo Paper Award at ACL 2020 for the multimedia knowledge extraction work with Professor Heng Ji, `GAIA: A Fine-grained Multimedia Knowledge Extraction System`. She has been selected as Mavis Future Faculty Fellow, and has published more than 20 papers on knowledge extraction and reasoning.

Stephanie received her Bachelor's in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University and is currently a 2nd year Master's student in Computer Science at Illinois. Her research interests are in computing education and she has been the head teaching assistant for CS101 for the past year.

Shengzhong Liu is currently a Ph.D. student at the Computer Science Department of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on machine learning for Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Intelligent Real-Time Systems, sensor fusion, and social network analysis.

Yunan Luo is a Ph.D. candidate advised by Dr. Jian Peng. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University. His research interests are in Computational Biology and Machine Learning. His research has been recognized by the Baidu Ph.D. Fellowship, the CompGen Ph.D. Fellowship, the C.L. and Jane Liu Award, and the Yunni and Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship.

Linjian Ma is a second-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Edgar Solomonik, and his main research interests are Numerical Analysis and High-Performance Computing. Previously, he was awarded Computer Science Gene Golub Fellowship, Kuck Computational Science & Engineering Scholarship, and Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship.

Zane is a final year Ph.D. student working on Network Security with Professor Michael Bailey at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. After graduating, he will become a Postdoc at Georgia Tech.

Zane is a final year Ph.D. student working on Network Security with Professor Michael Bailey at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. After graduating, he will become a Postdoc at Georgia Tech.

Zane is a final year Ph.D. student working on Network Security with Professor Michael Bailey at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. After graduating, he will become a Postdoc at Georgia Tech.

Suleman is a 5th year Ph.D. student working with Professor Geoffrey Herman in Computer Science Education. His current research is focused on discovering common misconceptions in Computer Architecture.

Umang Mathur is a Ph.D. student working with Professor Mahesh Viswanathan on various topics in Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Software Engineering. He will be joining the National University of Singapore in Fall 2021. He has been a recipient of a Google Ph.D. Fellowship, C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student Award, and Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship.

Umang Mathur is a Ph.D. student working with Professor Mahesh Viswanathan on various topics in Programming Languages, Formal Methods, and Software Engineering. He will be joining the National University of Singapore in Fall 2021. He has been a recipient of a Google Ph.D. Fellowship, C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student Award, and Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship.

Patrick is a first year Ph.D. student studying how Machine Learning can be used to enhance Robotics, advised by Professor Kris Hauser. He graduated as valedictorian from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.S. in Engineering. Patrick previously did research on Hardware Level Security with Professor Xuan 'Silvia' Zhang at WashU.

Isaac is a first year graduate student working under the mentorship of Professor Nancy Amato on Robot Navigation and Motion Planning. He is a GEM 2020 University Fellow, as well as a recipient of the 2020 Golub CS Fellowship. His research interests are in Robot Planning under uncertainty and planning in extreme environments.

Vidushi is a Ph.D. student in the Computers and Education area. Outside of research, she is co-president of the CS Graduate Students' Organization, co-president of the graduate Women in CS group, and a member of the CS-CARES committee.

Haoran Qiu is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science, working with Professor Ravi Iyer. Before joining UIUC, he obtained his Bachelor's degree at the University of Hong Kong. His research aims to improve the performance and resilience of large-scale systems, such as Microservices and Serverless Computing Platforms. His recent research work on applying Machine Learning to System Design and Management was accepted at USENIX's 2020 Operating Systems Design and Implementation Symposium.

Zhongzheng is in his 3rd year of his Ph.D. program. He has received the Yunni & Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship and two Amazon AWS Education Research Grants. He has recently interned at NVIDIA, Facebook, and Adobe.

Eilot is a first-year Ph.D. student currently doing research in Geometric graph Theory and algorithms for Metric Spaces. He is also considering problems in Spectral Graph Theory and FPT algorithms.

Kevin is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He is a previous recipient of the Saburo Muroga Endowed Fellowship. He is currently studying information retrieval under Professor ChengXiang Zhai, and plans to work for Trova AI, Inc. during the summer of 2021.

Mariam received a Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. She is passionate about computer science and education. Mariam writes poems and short stories in her spare time and also speaks four languages.

Jingbo Shang is an Assistant Professor at UCSD, jointly appointed by Computer Science and Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. He obtained his Ph.D. from UIUC advised by Professor Jiawei Han in 2019.

Tarique Siddiqui is a researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond. He completed his Ph.D. in 2020 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), advised by Professor Aditya Parameswaran. His research broadly lies in Data Management, Analytics, and Visualization. He is a recipient of the Siebel Scholars Award, ACM SIGMOD Best Paper Award, and ACM Research Highlight.

David is a first year Ph.D. student in Computer Science, specifically in the area of Computers & Education. He is currently working with Professor Craig Zilles to analyze the meta-cognitive skills and self-regulation students employ during computer based exams.

Chenkai is a 1st year Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He received Bachelor’s degrees from University of Michigan in Computer Science and Statistics.

Rohan's research interests are Real-Time and Embedded Systems. His work at the 2016 IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium received the Best Presentation Award. Similarly, the work at the 2019 IEEE Euromicro Conference of Real-Time Systems conference was nominated for Best Paper Award. Two of his works presented at the 2020 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium won the Best Student Paper Award and Best Paper Award. Rohan is a recipient of the Sara and Sohaib Abbasi Fellowship (2016-2021), and in 2017 was one of the finalists of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship Award (QInF).

Lilia is a first-year Ph.D. student interested in Distributed Systems Reliability, working with Professor Tianyin Xu. She enjoys helping the systems community through service, including serving for the OSDI'21 Artifact Evaluation Committee.

Hung is a Spring 2021 graduate of our MS degree program. He has been a part of CS 233's teaching staff for four semesters, where he worked behind the scenes to support assignment grading and cheating detection.

Wenyu is a 4th year graduate student working on the intersection of Automated Software Engineering and Mobile Computing. He is passionate about designing efficient and effective approaches for finding defects in mobile applications that dominant people's life.

Xuan is a 4th-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Jiawei Han. Her research interests are in Text Mining, especially information extraction with minimum human supervision and its applications for scientific discoveries. Xuan has interned with IBM research - AI.

Jackson has recieved his Bachelor's degree from Illinois State University in Math, with a focus in teaching. He is now a part of the iCAN program and intends to pursue his Master's degree in 
Computer Science. He loves spending time with his friends, working on tough problems, and videogames.

Leah is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in Computer Science being supervised by Professor El-Kebir. Her research area is Computational Biology and focuses on developing algorithms for cancer genomics research.

Haoyang Wen is currently a Master's student in Computer Science. He is working with Professor Heng Ji on natural language processing. His work has been published at top conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, and COLING. He has interned with IBM, participated in programming competitions, and won several gold medals in ACM-ICPC Asia regionals.

Carl has graduated from UIUC under Professor Jiawei Han and now is an assistant professor in Computer Science at Emory University.

Andrew is a second year MS student in Computer Science. He is working on distributed systems with Assistant Professor Tianyin Xu. Andrew won the Siebel Scholars award with the support of his amazing advisor.

Jiyong Yu is a 4th year Ph.D. student major in Computer Science at UIUC. He is advised by Professor Chris Fletcher. Jiyong's research interest lies in secure hardware design, microarchitectural side-channel defenses, and confidential computing. Jiyong has published several papers of high impact at top-tier conferences in computer architecture and security.  Some of Jiyong's publications have also been featured in journals like CACM highlight and IEEE MICRO Top-Picks. Jiyong has won multiple awards, including Best Paper Awards at MICRO'19, Distinguished Paper Award Honorable Mentions at NDSS'19, Intel Hardware Security Academic Award Finalist, CSAW'19 Applied Research Finalists and Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.

Jiyong Yu is a 4th year Ph.D. student major in Computer Science at UIUC. He is advised by Professor Chris Fletcher. Jiyong's research interest lies in secure hardware design, microarchitectural side-channel defenses, and confidential computing. Jiyong has published several papers of high impact at top-tier conferences in computer architecture and security.  Some of Jiyong's publications have also been featured in journals like CACM highlight and IEEE MICRO Top-Picks. Jiyong has won multiple awards, including Best Paper Awards at MICRO'19, Distinguished Paper Award Honorable Mentions at NDSS'19, Intel Hardware Security Academic Award Finalist, CSAW'19 Applied Research Finalists and Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.

In Fall 2020, Dr. Kari George joined Illinois CS as a postdoctoral research associate after completing a PhD at UCLA.

A Grants and Contract Specialist for Illinois Computer Science, Jonathon Manuel joined the department in October 2018. 

One of the longest serving members of the department, Julie Owens joined Illinois Computer Science in 2003. She is currently a Senior Grants and Contracts Coordinator.