Praveen Rao's Webpage

It has been my pleasure to work with the following students, postdocs, and faculty.

PhD/Postdoc Alumni

@Mizzou

Ahmad Alhonainy (PhD, July 2025, MU); First employment: Assistant Professor, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia
- Dissertation title: Caching Techniques for Reducing the Communication Cost of Federated Learning in IoT Environments
Shivika Prasanna (PhD, July 2024, MU); First employment: Fidelity Investments, MA
- Dissertation title: Scalable Knowledge Graph Construction and Inference on Human Genome Variants
Manas Jyoti Das (Postdoctoral fellow, July 2022 - Aug 2023); Current employment: Assistant Professor, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE)
Arun Zachariah (PhD, July 2022, MU); First employment: NVIDIA, CA
- Dissertation title: A System for Large-Scale Image and Video Retrieval on Everyday Scenes

@UMKC

Nouf Alrasheed (PhD, July 2023, UMKC); First employment: Assistant Professor, University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia
- Dissertation title: Deep Learning for Handwritten Text Recognition in Historical Documents
  - Co-advisor: Prof. Viviana Grieco, UMKC
Srini Bhagavan (PhD, Dec 2021, UMKC); Current employment: IBM, CA
- Dissertation title: FedSmarteum: Secure Federated Matrix Factorization Using Smart Contracts for Multi-Cloud Supply Chain
Monica Senapati (PhD, Dec 2021, UMKC); First employment: Etsy, NY
- Dissertation title: An Approach for Scalable First-Order Rule Learning on Twitter Data
Khulud Alsultan (PhD, Aug 2021, UMKC); First employment: Assistant Professor, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
- Dissertation title: Scalable Acceleration of the Characteristics Mode Analysis Toolbox Using Big Data Techniques
  - Co-advisor: Prof. Ahmed Hassan, UMKC
Mohamed Gharibi (PhD, Dec 2020, UMKC); First employment: IBM, CA
- Dissertation title: Enriching Knowledge Graphs Using Machine Learning Techniques
Anas Katib (PhD, Dec 2018, UMKC); First employment: IBM, CA
- Dissertation title: An Approach for Fast Score Computation in Bayesian Network Structure Learning Over Large-Scale Distributed Data

Oswaldo Cuen Tellez (PhD, June 2016); Current employment: Faculty at Technological Institute of Culiacan, Mexico
- Dissertation title: A Model for Signal Data Management and Processing
- Primary advisor: Prof. Ines F. Vega Lopez (Autonomous Univ. of Sinaloa, Culiacan, MX)

Vasil Slavov (PhD, May 2015, UMKC); First employment: Bloomberg, NY
- Dissertation title: A New Approach for Fast Processing of SPARQL Queries on RDF Quadruples

Visiting Faculty

MS Alumni

@Mizzou

Chandrasekhar Syamala (MS thesis, July 2024)
- Thesis title: An Image-Text Model for Effective Retrieval of Seventeenth-Century Spanish American Notary Records
- Employed by University of Missouri School of Medicine

@UMKC

Dig Vijay Kumar Yarlagadda (MS thesis, December 2017)
- Thesis title: One-Shot Learning Model for Cancer Diagnosis from Histopatholoy Images
- Ph.D. student at Tri-Institutional Program (Rockefeller University, Weil Cornell Medicine, Sloan Kettering Institute)
Brendan O'Connor (MS, Dec 2017)
Pooja Shekhar (MS, Dec 2017)
Vinutha Nuchimaniyanda (MS thesis, May 2016)
- Thesis title: Enabling Large-scale Storage and Retrieval of Whole Slide Images: A Big Data Approach
- Currently employed by Cerner Corporation
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Scholarship recipient
Hastimal Jangid (MS thesis, August 2016)
- Thesis title: Parallel SPARQL Query Execution Using Apache Spark
- Currently employed by Webbmason, Baltimore, MD
Venubabu Kolla (MS thesis, December 2016)
- Thesis title: Improving the Performance of Parallel SPARQL Query Processing on Apache Spark Using Bloom Filters
- First employment: Cerner Corporation, Kansas City, MO
Samaa Gazzaz (MS thesis, August 2017)
- Thesis title: A Data Science Approach to Extracting Insights About Cities and Zones Using Open Government Data
- First employment: Instructor, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia; currently Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Scholarship recipient
- UMKC SUROP grant recipient
- 3rd prize in the ACM Student Research Competition at 2016 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

Vasil Slavov (MS thesis, August 2012)
- Thesis title: A Study of Gossip Algorithms for Internet-Scale Cardinality Estimation of Distributed XML Data
Srivenu Paturi (MS thesis, August 2013)
- Thesis title: A New Filtering Index for Fast Processing of SPARQL Queries, currently employed by Groupon, New York
Dinesh Barenkala (MS thesis, August 2013)
- Thesis title: A Study of Graph Partitioning Techniques for Fast Indexing and Query Processing of a Large RDF Graph, currently employed by DST Systems, Kansas City
Anas Katib (MS thesis, December 2013)
- Thesis title: A Novel Cell Phone Based Application for Tracking the Vaccination Coverage in Rural Communities
Li Wang (MS thesis, December 2014)
- Thesis title: Classification of Clinical Tweets using Apache Mahout, currently employed by Cerner Corporation
Shambavi Varagurmuralidharan (MS thesis, August 2008)

- Thesis title: Dynamic graph mining
Ayush Chaturvedi (MS thesis, April 2009)
- Thesis title: Automatic Paper-to-Reviewer Assignment (co-advised with Prof. E.K. Park), currently employed by NewsMax Media, Florida
Bhavik Shah (MS thesis, December 2009)
- Thesis title: Parallel XML parsing, currently employed by Crunchy Roll, CA
Tivakar Komara Swami (MS thesis, December 2011)
- Thesis title: Distributed Querying of Clinical Documents Modeled Using HL7 v3 Standard, currently employed by GE Software, CA
Dipali Pal (MS, May 2012), currently employed by NAIC, Kansas City
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention

BS Alumni

@Mizzou

@UMKC

Grant Smith (2012) (first employment: IBM)
Andrew Blackton (2012) (employment: Perceptive Software)
Sean Blaes (2012) (employment: Google)
Victoria Wu (2013, 2014)
- Joined Worcester Polytechnic Institute for MS
- ACM/UPE Award recipient
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Scholarship recipient
- UMKC Vice Chancellor's Honor Award recipient
Drew Shoemaker (2015) (employment: Red Nova Labs)

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