Mikaela Cashman

About Me:

  • I am a postdoctoral research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Biosciences Division working under Dr. Dan Jacobson.

  • I received my PhD in Computer Science at Iowa State University and my Masters in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

  • My research centers around the application of software engineering methods to the scientific domain (mainly the Biosciences).

  • My technical areas of interest include: software testing, machine learning, systems biology, and synthetic biology. I have further interest in bioinformatics workflows and algorithms, high performance computing, and in GPU programming.

  • My research aspirations focus on building bridges and severing as an interpreter between the computational and biological sciences.

PUBLICATIONS

Mikaela Cashman, Justin Firestone, Myra B. Cohen, Thammasak Thianniwet, & Wei Niu. An Empirical Investigation of Organic Software Product Lines. In Empirical Software Engineering. Accepted December 2020.

Urjoshi Sinha, Mikaela Cashman, Myra B. Cohen. Using a Genetic Algorithm to Optimize Configurations in a Data-Driven Application. In International Symposium on Search Based Software Engineering. October 2020. Pages 137-152. (link)

Jennie L Catlett, Jonathan Catazaro, Mikaela Cashman, Sean Carr, Robert Powers, Myra B Cohen, Nicole R Buan. Metabolic Feedback Inhibition Influences Metabolite Secretion by the Human Gut Symbiont Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. mSystems September 2020, 5 (5). (link)

Mikaela Cashman, Justin Firestone, Myra B. Cohen, Thammasak Thianniwet, & Wei Niu. DNA as Features: Organic Software Product Lines. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Systems and Software Product Line Conference (SPLC). September 2019. Pages 108-118. Received Best Student Paper Award (link)

Mikaela Cashman, Myra B. Cohen, Priya Ranjan, & Robert W. Cottingham. Navigating the Maze: The Impact of Configurability in Bioinformatics Software. In Proceedings of the 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE). September 2018. Pages 757-767. Received ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (link)

Mikaela Cashman, Jennie L. Catlett, Myra B. Cohen, Nicole Buan, Zahmeeth Sakkaff, Massimiliano Pierobon, & Christine A. Kelley. BioSIMP: Using Software Testing Techniques for Sampling and Inference in Biological Organisms. ICSE workshop on Software Engineering for Computational Science (SE4S). September 2017. Pages 2-8. (link)

Zahmeeth Sakkaff, Jennie L. Catlett, Mikaela Cashman, Massimiliano Pierobon, Nicole R. Buan, Myra B. Cohen, & Christine A. Kelley. End-to-End Molecular Communication Channels in Cell Metabolism: An Information Theoretic Study. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication (NanoCom). May 2017. Pages 1-6. Received Best Paper Award (link)

Mikaela Cashman. Using Software Testing Techniques to Infer Biological Models. Master's Thesis. December 2016. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (link)

Hema Srikanth, Mikaela Cashman, & Myra B. Cohen. Test Case Prioritization of Build Acceptance Tests for an Enterprise Cloud Application: An Industrial Case Study. Journal of Systems and Software. Volume 119, September 2016. Pages 122-135. (link)


COURSES TAUGHT AS TEACHING ASSISTANT

Software Engineering II

  • Assisted in development of material for new Software Engineering Major (course's first run). Took daily notes and communicated effectiveness of material with Professors.

  • Lectured and monitored labs, office hours, graded assignment and quizzes.

Software Engineering

  • This course included a semester

  • Responsible for grading, holding office hours, managing semester long team projects

Computer Science/Computer Engineering Capstone

  • Responsible for grading, held office hours, develop new class modules, maintain class Wiki page

Introduction to Computer Science

  • This introductory course was taught in Alice, and educational drag-and-drop style programming language. Assignments were creative based tasks.

  • Responsible for grading, managing undergraduate TAs, holding office hours

Undergraduate Teaching/Tutoring

  • Computer Science 1-2, Calculus 1-3, Foundations of Advanced Mathematics