My Research Team:

• Me: Yanjun Qi (Faculty at Department of Computer Science, in University of Virginia)
• Related UVa Qdata Team Links: [Group Research Blog] + [Group Research Talk Videos] + [Group GitHub]

Alumni from my UVa Team (2013-2024)

• As Ph.D.:
  • Zhe Wang (2019--2024 May, UVa PhD.; Dissertation Title: Toward Out-Of-Distribution Generalization Of Deep Learning Models; Now: at AWS AI/ML Science)
  • Arshdeep Sekhon (2017--2022, Ph.D.; Relational Structure Discovery for Deep Learning; Now: at Miscrosoft Science)
  • Jack Lanchantin (2015--2021, Ph.D.; Dissertation: Modeling Interactions with Deep Learning; Now: at Facebook Research)
  • Ritambhara Singh (2013--2018 May, PhD.; Dissertation: Fast and Interpretable Classification of Sequential Data [deepchrome.net]; Now: Assistant Professor at Computer Science Department of Brown University (deferred to 2019; 18-19 at U.Washington))
  • Beilun Wang (2013--2018 Aug, PhD.; Dissertation: Fast and Scalable Joint Estimators for Learning Sparse Gaussian Graphical Models from Heterogeneous Data with Additional Knowledge [jointnets.org]; Now: Assistant Professor at School of Computer Science and Engineering of Southeast University in China. Promoted to Associate Professor in 2019.
  • Weilin Xu (2014--2019 May, PhD.; co-advisor: Dr. Dave Evans; Dissertation: Improving Robustness of Neural Networks using Domain Knowledge [evademl.org]; Now: Research Staff Member at Intel Research Lab, Oregon.
• as Master of Engineering / Science:
  • Kevin Ivey (2019--2023, UVA MS-research RA)
  • Jefferey Yoo (2020--2021, master-thesis advised; Now @ Hyperconnect Startup); Thesis title: ”Towards Improving Adversarial Training of NLP Models";)
  • Sanchit Sinha (2020--2021, master-thesis advised; Now @ UVa PhD program); Thesis title: ”Perturbing Inputs for Fragile Interpretations in Deep Natural Language Processing";)
  • Derrick Blakely (2017--2019, UVA master graduate; under-capstone and master thesis advised;) Thesis title: "FastGSK: Fast and Efficient Sequence Analysis Using Gapped String Kernels".
  • Ji Gao (2016--2019, PhD Candidate;) Thesis title: "Black-box Generation of Adversarial Text Sequences to Evade Deep Learning Classifiers".
  • Zeming Lin (2014--2015, Master student and also under-thesis advised; now @ Research Engineer in Facebook AI Research!); Thesis title: "MUST-CNN: A multilayer shift-and-stitch deep convolutional architecture for sequence-based protein structure prediction".
  • Nicholas Janus (2013--2015, Master graduate; now @ Acquia ); master-project "Supervised Complex Detection: a Cytoscape App for supervised detection of complexes in protein interaction networks".
  • Sarah Masud Preum (2013--2015, master graduate; now PhD student @ UVA Sensor group); master-thesis "MAPer: A Multi-scale Adaptive Personalized Model for Temporal Human Behavior Prediction".
  • Tung Dao (2013--2014, master graduate; now @ Google)
• as B.S.:
  • Hanyu Liu, Chengyuan Cai, / B.S. thesis's "Expanding Scope: Adapting English Adversarial Attacks to Chinese.
  • Kevin Ivey (2019--2023, UVA under-research RA, under-thesis advised)
  • Jake Grigsby (2020--2022, under-thesis advised;)
  • Dillon Lue, Chengyuan Cai (2022 Spring) as undergraduate research students
  • Mint Lin, Tahmid Kazih: (2021 Spring) as undergraduate research students
  • Yuchen Sun, Alan Zheng, Soukarya Ghosh: (2020) as capstone undergraduate research students
  • Jack Morris (2019--2020 Oct, under- thesis advised; Now @ Google) Thesis title: ”TextAttack: A Framework for Adversarial Attacks in Natural Language Processing"; )
  • Jefferey Yoo (2018--2021, under-thesis advised; Now @ UVA master) Thesis title: ”Searching for a Search Method: Benchmarking Search Algorithms for Generating NLP Adversarial Examples";)
  • Eli Lifland (2019 Oct--2020 June, under-thesis advised; Now @ Facebook) Thesis title: ”Reevaluating Adversarial Examples in Natural Language")
  • Eric Wang (2018--2020 May, under-distinguished-major thesis advised; Now @ UVA) Thesis title: ”Data Processing for ChromeGCN on CAD";
  • Brandon Liu (2018--2019 May, under-distinguished-major thesis advised; Now @ Google) Thesis title: ”Sanity Checker: Evaluations for Deep Neural Network Interpretability Tools"; )
  • Zhaoyang Wang (2018--2019 May, under-research project advised; Now @ Columbia Graduate program) Project Title: JointNets: an end-to-end R package for sparse high-dimensional Gaussian graphical model estimation, visualization, simulation and evaluation.
  • Jennifer Fang (2018--2019 May, under-capstone thesis advised; Now @ Facebook) Thesis title: ”Visualization of the DeepWordBug Adversarial Algorithm";
  • Eamon Collins (2017--2019 May, under-capstone thesis advised; Now @ Epic) ”iGakco-SVM: A Fast String Kernel for DNA and Protein Sequence Classification;
  • William Zhang (2018--2019, undergraduate research independent study advised;
  • Zachary Skemp (2017--2018 May, Undergraduate capstone student; Under Thesis: Designing an Intelligent System to Bring Medical Information to Patients ; now @ CapitalOne)
  • Christopher chen (2017--2018 May, Undergraduate capstone student; Under Team Thesis: (together with Derrick and Eamon) ”iGakco-SVM: A Fast String Kernel for DNA and Protein Sequence Classification; now @ Epic)
  • Muthuraman Chidambaram (2016--2017 Aug, undergraduate researcher; now @ Google Brain); under-thesis "Style Transfer Generative Adversarial Networks: Learning to Play Chess Differently".
  • Andrew Norton (2016--2017 Aug, capstone thesis advised; now @ CapitalOne) ; under-thesis "Adversarial-Playground: A visualization suite showing how adversarial examples fool deep learning".
  • Chandan Singh (2016--2017 May, capstone thesis advised; now @ Berkely EECS PhD program); under-thesis "A Constrained, Weighted-L1 Minimization Approach for Joint Discovery of Heterogeneous Neural Connectivity Graphs".
  • Sarah Mohamed (2015--2016, undergraduate student, Capstone thesis advised; now @ Harvard Graduate program); under-thesis "Supervised Complex Detection: a Cytoscape App for supervised detection of complexes in protein interaction networks".
  • Sugandha Agrawal (2015--2016, undergraduate student, capstone thesis advised; now @ Bloomberg);
  • Anat Gilboa (2014--2015, undergraduate student, capstone thesis advised; now @ InvestmentBank);
  • Jasdev Singh (2013--2014, undergraduate capstone thesis advised; now @ Startup); Under-thesis "Bridging Data and Dance Music".
• As Colloborating Students / Research Associates
  • Paola Cascante-Bonilla (UVA CS, Ph.D., 2020-2024; Now: tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University (SUNY))
  • InKee Kim (UVA CS, PhD, 2014--2018 May; Now: Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Georgia. )
  • Feiyu Xiong (Drexel Univ EE, Advisor: Moshe Kam, Defense done in 2015)
  • Jiaqi Gong (UVA EE, Postdoc, 2014--2015; then Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
  • Wang, Ke (UVA CS, Postdoc, 2014-2015; Now: Research Scientist at UVA Data Science Institute)
  • Dimitrios Diochnos (UVA CS Hobby Postdoc fellow, 2015--2018 May; Now: Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma.)
  • Feiyu Xiong (2012-2015, colloborating PhD student; PhD from Drexel Univ EE; Then: Group Lead @ Alibaba Inc.)
  • Dmitriy Bespalov (Drexel Univ CSE, advisor: Dr. Ali Shokoufandeh, Defense done in Dec. 2012)
  • Yevgeny Tkach (2018 Oct--May 2019, As Visiting scholar)
  • Bhairavy Puviindran (UVA REU Summer research student, 2019 Summer) from University of South Carolina, Department of Biomedical Engineering
  • Emily Leo (UVA REU Summer research student, 2019 Summer) from University of Maryland, College Park, Department of Biomedical Engineering
  • Ipsita Pradhan (UVA REU Summer research student, 2018 Summer) from University of South Carolina, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Mentoring before 2013 Fall

• Yun Wang (PrincetonU. EE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Summer 2013)
• Yan Li (PrincetonU. ORFE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Summer 2013)
• Ye Xu (Dartmouth College CS PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Spring 2013)
• Salim Chowdhury (CMU SCS PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Summer 2012)
• Dimitrije Jevremovic (UMN CSE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Summer 2011)
• Yunlong He (Gatech CSE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Summer 2011, Summer 2012)
• Sujatha Das (PSU CSE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Fall 2010-Spring 2011)
• Dmitriy Bespalov (Drexel Univ CSE PhD graduate, NEC Labs Intern Spring 2011- Fall 2011)
• Xia Ning (UMN PhD graduate, summer intern of NEC Labs 2010)
• Alexandros ILIADIS (UColumbia PhD graduate, summer intern of NEC Labs 2010)
• Xi Chen (CMU PhD graduate, summer intern of NEC Labs 2010)
• Pavel Kuksa (Rutgers PhD graduate, summer intern of NEC Labs 2009)
• Guoyang Shen (graduate researcher, NEC Research Beijing, 2008)
• Lisa Gabor (undergraduate, summer intern of Pitt 2007)
• Kamaldeep Singh (undergraduate, summer intern of Pitt 2007)