Mohannad Al Ameedi, a software engineer at Microsoft, was a part-time master’s student in the Department of Computer Science. His advisor was Chang-Tien Lu. Al Ameedi’s research interests are in machine learning, deep learning, and information storage and retrieval.

Nearly half the world’s forests are under threat of deforestation and forest degradation. Forests are at most risk of being destroyed by degradation — slashed trees, bare clearings, newly formed trenches and water gullies, and water clouded by eroding soil — which often leads to deforestation. Forest degradation has an even greater environmental, economic, and […]

Akshita Jha’s primary research focuses on how to prevent automated machine learning models from exacerbating existing biases. “As an example,” Jha said, “the commercial algorithm, COMPAS, used by judges and officers across the United States to assess a defendant’s likelihood to re-offend has been shown to discriminate unfairly against African American defendants.”

Raquib Bin Yousuf is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science. His advisor is Naren Ramakrishnan. Yousuf’s research interests lie at the intersection of natural language processing (NLP) and applied machine learning, with a particular emphasis on large language models (LLMs). Currently, he is focused on exploring and enhancing the ability of LLMs […]

Yi-Chun Chang was a master’s degree student in the Department of Computer Science.  His advisor was Chang-Tien Lu. Chang’s research interest is in using social media analytics to detect threats.

Yi-Chun Chang, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business information management from National Taiwan University, was drawn to pursue a master’s degree in computer science at Virginia Tech by its reputation for quality research and the prospect of working Chang-Tien Lu, now his advisor. “Being a student at the Discovery Analytics Center is amazing,” said […]

Bill Ingram is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science.  He is advised by Edward Fox. His research explores the application of computational methods and techniques for large-scale digital library collections. Specifically, he works within the fields of digital library theory, natural language processing, human-computer interaction, and information retrieval, employing related methods from […]

Arka Daw was a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science.  He was advised by Anuj Karpatne. His research centers around the emerging field of Science-Guided Machine Learning (SGML) where machine learning models are integrated with scientific knowledge (or physics) to ensure better interpretability and generalizability while enforcing scientific consistency.