Alumni
It has been my pleasure to work with the following students, postdocs, and faculty.
PhD/Postdoc Alumni
@Mizzou
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); First employment: 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Dissertation title: Deep Learning for Handwritten Text Recognition in Historical Documents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
Prof. Joonho Kwon (Pusan National University, South Korea), 2016-2017
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
Sam Byerly (2025)
Chase Webb (2025)
Matthew Schutz (2024) (first employment: Netflix)
@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)