PhD Students
Below is a wonderful representation of the varied interests and research of the current CS PhD students. Please note that PhD students voluntarily agree to be listed on this page. Not all students wish to do so. Therefore, this is not a complete listing of current PhD students.
Sarah Abowitz
PhD Student in Computer Science
sarah.abowitz@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics
Advisor: Winnick Family Chair in Technology and Entrepreneurship Professor Gregory Crane
Sara Alam
PhD student in Computer Science
sara.alam@tufts.edu
Research Area: Database Systems and Privacy
Advisor: Assistant Professor Johes Bater
Tahmid Awal
PhD Student in Computer Science
tahmid.awal@tufts.edu
Research Areas: High Performance and Parallel Computing, Neural Operators, AI Agents, AI4Science
Advisor: Ada Lovelace Associate Professor Hari Sundar
Camelia D. Brumar
PhD student in Computer Science
camellia_daniela.brumar@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Data Visualization, Visual Analytics, Machine Learning
Advisor: Professor Remco Chang
Tanushree Burman
PhD Student in Computer Science
tanushree.burman@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human in the Loop Reinforcement Learning, Human-Robot Interaction, Educational Robotics
Advisor: Associate Professor Jivko Sinapov
Maya Deen
PhD Student in Computer Science
mdeen01@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning for Computational Biology
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Timothy Duggan
PhD student in Computer Science: Human-Robot Interaction
timothy.duggan@tufts.edu
Research Areas: AI and Robotics, Foundational Models, Vision-Language-Action Models
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Richard Dzeng
PhD Student in Computer Science
richard.dzeng@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Computational Biology, AI/ML, Bioinformatics
Advisors: Professor Lenore Cowen, Professor Donna Slonim
Budvin Edippuliarachchi
PhD student in Computer Science
Budvin.Edippuliarachchi@tufts.edu
Research Areas: High Performance Computing, Compilers for Scientific Computing
Advisor: Ada Lovelace Associate Professor Hari Sundar
Hiba Eltigani
PhD student in Computer Science
hiba.eltigani@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Computer Networks and Distributed Systems
Advisor: Associate Professor Fahad Dogar
Emily Ertle
PhD student in Computer Science
emily.ertle@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Modeling Diverse Intelligence, Developing Bio-Inspired Polycomputing Frameworks
Advisors: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz, Vannevar Bush Professor Michael Levin
Kaveh Eskandari Miandoab
PhD student in Computer Science
kaveh.eskandari_miandoab@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Natural Language Processing, Large Language Models, AI Safety, AI Fairness
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Maria Fanelle
PhD student in Computer Science
maria.fanelle@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Privacy-preserving Databases, Differential Privacy
Advisor: Assistant Professor Johes Bater
Cynthia Feeney
PhD student in Computer Science
cynthia.feeney@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Data Equity and Machine Learning for Healthcare
Advisor: Wittich Family Assistant Professor Michael Hughes
Jocelyn J. Garcia
PhD Student in Computer Science
jocelyn.garcia@tufts.edu
Research Area: Computational Biology
Advisor: Professor Lenore Cowen
Eric Gibson
PhD student in Computer Science
eric.gibson@tufts.edu
Research Areas: High Performance Computing, Scientific Machine Learning
Advisor: Ada Lovelace Associate Professor Hari Sundar
Shivam Goel
PhD student in Computer Science
shivam.goel@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Neurosymbolic AI, Reinforcement Learning, Robotics
Advisor: Associate Professor Jivko Sinapov
Howard Goldowsky
PhD student in Computer Science: Cognitive Science
howard.goldowsky@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Analogical Reasoning, Hyperdimensional Computing, Neurally-plausible AI
Advisor: Associate Professor Jivko Sinapov
Kashvi Gupta
PhD Student in Computer Science
kashvi.gupta@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Theoretical Computer Science, Cryptography, Anonymous Communications
Advisor: Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor Megumi Ando
Amitis Hamidi
PhD student in Computer Science: Human-Robot Interaction
amitis.hamidi@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Creative Problem-solving and Failure Recovery in Autonomous Agents, Particularly through Hybrid Approaches that Integrate Symbolic Reasoning with Large Language Models
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Rukhshan Haroon
PhD Student in Computer Science
rukhshan.haroon@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Accessibility, Systems, Human-Computer Interaction, Applied Machine Learning
Advisor: Associate Professor Fahad Dogar
Ethan Harvey
PhD student in Computer Science
ethan.harvey@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Machine Learning for Healthcare, Probabilistic Machine Learning, and Bayesian Deep Learning
Advisor: Wittich Family Assistant Professor Michael Hughes
Jiajing Hu
PhD student in Computer Science
jiajing.hu@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Graph Neural Networks, Variational Inference
Advisor: Associate Professor Liping Liu
Jindan Huang
PhD student in Computer Science
jindan.huang@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human-Robot Interaction
Advisor: Assistant Professor Elaine Short
Tian Huang
PhD student in Computer Science
tian.huang@tufts.edu
Research Area: Anonymous Communication
Advisor: Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor Megumi Ando
Linnea Hultman
PhD Student in Computer Science: Cognitive Science
linnea.hultman@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing
Advisor: Professor JP de Ruiter
Oluwatomilola Idowu
PhD student in Computer Science
oluwatomilola.idowu@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human Factors of Security and Privacy
Advisors: Lin Family Assistant Professor Daniel Votipka , Assistant Professor Johes Bater
Dale Jacobs
PhD student in Computer Science
dale.jacobs@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Quantum Information, Complexity Theory
Advisors: Assistant Professor Saeed Mehraban, Associate Professor Vladimir Podolskii
John Jeang
PhD student in Computer Science
jjeang01@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Quantum Computing and Computational Complexity
Advisor: Associate Professor Vladimir Podolskii
Wendan Jiang
PhD Student in Computer Science
wendan.jiang@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human-Computer Interaction, Educational Technology, Learning Science
Advisor: Associate Professor Fahad Dogar
Sam Katzman
PhD Student in Computer Science
samuel.katzman@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Quantum Computing and Information, Theoretical Computer Science
Advisor: Assistant Professor Saeed Mehraban
Sahand Khoshdel
PhD Student in Computer Science
skhosh02@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, Multi-Agent Systems
Advisor: Assistant Professor Reuth Mirsky
Anes Kim
PhD Student in Computer Science: Cognitive Science
anes.kim@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human-Computer Interaction, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Cognitive Science
Advisor: Professor Robert Jacob
Soo Hyung (Sally) Kim
PhD Student in Computer Science
soo_hyung.kim@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning for Healthcare
Advisor: Wittich Family Assistant Professor Michael Hughes
Blessing Kolawole
PhD student in Computer Science
Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Data Science, Health Equity
Advisor: Associate Professor Valencia Koomson
Katie Kowalyshyn
PhD Student in Computer Science
katharine.kowalyshyn@tufts.edu
Research Areas: LLM Interpretability, LLM Multilingualism, LLM Fairness and Biases
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Mengkeat Lao
PhD Student in Computer Science
mengkeat.lao@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning for Systems Biology
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Sipei Li
PhD student in Computer Science
sipei.li@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning
Advisor: Associate Professor Alva Couch
Susie Li
PhD Student in Computer Science
suyang.li@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Visualization, Visual Analytics
Advisor: Professor Remco Chang
Yukun Li
PhD student in Computer Science
yukun.li@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning
Advisor: Associate Professor Liping Liu
Daniel Little
PhD student in Computer Science
daniel.little@tufts.edu
Research Area: Reinforcement Learning
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Max Liu
PhD student in Computer Science
lan.liu@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Interested in debugging and improving performance of distributed systems, especially ones built with microservices.
Advisor: Ankur and Mari Sahu Assistant Professor Raja Sambasivan
Weiwei Lou
PhD student in Computer Science
weiwei.lou@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Drug Discovery, Disease Gene Discovery, and Machine Learning in Computational Biology
Advisor: Professor Lenore Cowen
Helen Lu
PhD student in Computer Science
hlu07@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human-Robot Interaction
Advisor: Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Panagiotis Lymperopoulos
PhD student in Computer Science
panagiotis.lymperopoulos@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Deep Learning, Neurosymbolic AI
Advisor: Associate Professor Liping Liu
Hannah Marsh
PhD student in Computer Science
hannah@cs.tufts.edu
Research Areas: Anonymous Communication Protocols, Computational Geometry
Advisor: Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor Megumi Ando
Ziyao Mou
PhD Student in Computer Science
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Human-in-the-loop Learning, Trustworthy AI
Advisor: Wittich Family Assistant Professor Michael Hughes
Mavis Murdock
PhD Student in Computer Science
mavis.murdock@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human-Robot Interaction
Advisor: Assistant Professor Elaine Short
Judah Nava Valdivia
PhD Student in Computer Science
judah.nava@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Cloud Systems, Distributed Systems
Advisor: Assistant Professor Ankit Bhardwaj
Alberto Naveira Montalvo
PhD Student in Computer Science
alberto.naveira@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Systems Biology
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Hayley Owens
PhD Student in Computer Science
hayley.owens@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human-robot interaction
Advisor: Assistant Professor Elaine Short
Sveta Paster
PhD Student in Computer Science
svetlana.paster@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human-Robot Interactions, Goal and Plan Recognition
Advisor: Assistant Professor Reuth Mirsky
Daniel Peng
PhD Student in Computer Science
daniel.peng@tufts.edu
Research Area: Computational Geometry
Advisors: Associate Professor James Murphy, Professor Diane Souvaine
Carson Powers
PhD student in Computer Science
carson.powers@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human Factors, Threat Modeling, Reverse Engineering
Advisors: Lin Family Assistant Professor Daniel Votipka, Professor and Chair of Computer Science Jeff Foster
Morgan Prior
PhD student in Computer Science
morgan.prior@tufts.edu
Research Area: Computational Complexity
Advisor: Associate Professor Vladimir Podolskii
Julia Santaniello
PhD student in Computer Science: Human-Robot Interaction
julia.santaniello@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, Brain-Computer Interfaces
Advisor: Associate Professor Jivko Sinapov, Professor Robert Jacob
Anna Sheaffer
PhD student in Computer Science: Cognitive Science
anna.sheaffer@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human-Computer Interaction, Brain-Computer Interfaces
Advisor: Professor Robert Jacob
Alexey Slizkov
PhD student in Computer Science
aleksei.slizkov@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Theoretical Computer Science, Group Theory, Deep Learning
Advisors: Associate Professor Vladimir Podolskii, Assistant Professor Saeed Mehraban
Sasha Spala
PhD student in Computer Science
sasha.spala@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Computational Linguistics, Data Visualization, HCI, Document Intelligence
Advisor: Winnick Family Chair in Technology and Entrepreneurship Professor Gregory Crane
James Staley
PhD student in Computer Science
james.staley625703@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Human-Robot Interaction, Model-based Reinforcement Learning
Advisor: Assistant Professor Elaine Short
Ash Sze
PhD student in Computer Science
ash.sze@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Biological Databases, Large Language Models
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Atticus Thacker
PhD student in Computer Science
atticus.thacker@tufts.edu
Research Area: Computational Geometry
Advisor: Professor Diane Souvaine
Saurabh Totey
PhD Student in Computer Science
saurabh.totey@tufts.edu
Research Area: Quantum Computing
Advisors: Assistant Professor Saeed Mehraban, Associate Professor Vladimir Podolskii
Paulina Trifonova
PhD Student in Computer Science
paulina.trifonova@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Computational Geometry, Computational Biology
Advisors: Professor Lenore Cowen, Professor Diane Souvaine
Danelle Tuchman
PhD Student in Computer Science
danelle.tuchman@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Swarming Robotics, Machine Learning, Human Robot Interaction
Advisors: Assistant Professor Markus Nemitz, Karol Family Applied Technology Professor Matthias Scheutz
Muhammad Umair
PhD student in Computer Science: Human-Robot Interaction
muammad.umair@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Conversational AI, Dialogue Systems, Language in Human Robot Interaction
Advisors: Professor J.P. de Ruiter, Associate Professor Liping Liu
Madeleine van Zuylen
PhD Student in Computer Science
madeleine.van_zuylen@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Systems Biology
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Van Tien Vu
PhD Student in Computer Science
tien.vu@tufts.edu
Research Area: Deep Learning
Advisor: Professor Mai Vu
Daniel Wang
PhD Student in Computer Science
dwang21@tufts.edu
Research Area: Human-Computer Interactions
Advisor: Assistant Professor Jaylin Herskovitz
Yinkai Wang
PhD Student in Computer Science
yinkai.wang@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Shane Williams
PhD Student in Computer Science
shane.williams@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Uncertainty Quantification for Medical Machine Learning, Probabilistic Machine Learning
Advisor: Wittich Family Assistant Professor Michael Hughes
Xiaoyu Xia
PhD student in Computer Science
xiaoyu.xia@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Data Science and Machine Learning
Advisor: Professor Abani Patra
Hang Yu
PhD student in Computer Science
hang.yu625917@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Interactive Reinforcement Learning, Human-Robot Interaction
Advisor: Assistant Professor Elaine Short
Tomislav Zabcic-Matic
PhD Student in Computer Science
tomislav.zabcic_matic@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Distributed Systems, Distributed Tracing, Cloud Debugging
Advisor: Ankur and Mari Sahu Assistant Professor Raja Sambasivan
Zhaoqi Zhang
PhD student in Computer Science
zhaoqi.zhang@tufts.edu
Research Areas: Distributed System, Microservices, Cloud Observability, Kernel & Hardware Instrumentation
Advisor: Ankur and Mari Sahu Assistant Professor Raja Sambasivan
Frederick Zhang
PhD student in Computer Science
frederick.zhang@tufts.edu
Research Area: Machine Learning for Computational Biology
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun
Yan Zhou Chen
PhD student in Computer Science
yan.zhou_chen@tufts.edu
Research Area: Application of Machine Learning for Systems Biology and Metabolomics
Advisor: Professor Soha Hassoun