Graduating PhDs in 2015-2016

Muhammad Adnan

Advisor: Rajesh Gupta
Dissertation Title: Spatio-Temporal Load Deferral Algorithms for Energy Use Optimization
Current Employment: Bangladesh Univ of Eng&Tech/CSE Dept; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Assist Prof (Tenure Track)
home page   Email: madnan at ucsd dot edu

Sheeraz Ahmad

Advisor: Angela Yu
Dissertation Title: Learning and Decision Making in Active Cognition
Current Employment: Amazon; Seattle, WA; Research Scientist
home page   Email: sahmad at ucsd dot edu

Arash Arfaee

Advisor: Patrick Mercier and Vilayanur Ramachandran
Dissertation Title: Transcranial Electric Field Stimulation

Prospective Employment: TBA

home page   Email: aarfaee at ucsd dot edu

Bharathan Bajali 

Advisor: Rajesh Gupta & Yuvraj Agarwal 
Dissertation Title: Software Augmented Buildings: Exploiting Existing Infrastructure to Improve Energy Efficiency and Comfort in Commercial Buildings
Current Employment: UCLA; Los Angeles, CA; PostDoc
Email: bbalaji at ucsd dot edu

Neha Chachra

Advisors: Stefan Savage & Geoff Voelker 
Dissertation Title: Understanding URL Abuse for Profit
Current Employment: Facebook; Menlo Park, CA; Research Scientist
home page   Email: nchachra at ucsd dot edu

Matthew Der

Advisors: Lawrence Saul, Stefan Savage, & Geoff Voelker 
Dissertation Title: Investigating Large-Scale Internet Abuse Through Web Page Classification
Current Employment: Notch Inc; Richmond, VA; Chief Technology Officer
 home page  Email: mfder at ucsd dot edu

Stephen Foster

Advisors: William Griswold and Sorin Lerner
Dissertation Title: Three Paradigms for Mixing Coding and Games: Coding in a Game, Coding as a Game, and Coding for a Game
Current Employment: ThoughtSTEM, LLC; San Diego, CA; CEO
home page   Email: srfoster at ucsd dot edu

Geoffrey Gamble 

Advisors: Garrison Cottrell & Robert Hecht-Nielsen
Dissertation Title: Biologically Plausible Control of Fast Reaching Movements Using Non-Traditional Cost Functions
Current Employment:  Augmented Data; San Diego, CA; Co-Founder & CTO
Email: ggamble at ucsd dot edu

Tristan Halvorson 

Advisors: Geoffrey Voelker & Stefan Savage
Dissertation Title: Registration Intent in the Domain Name Market
Current Employment: Google; Seattle, WA; Software Engineer
home page   Email: trhalvor at ucsd dot edu

Pingfan Meng 

Advisors: Ryan Kastner 
Dissertation Title: Learning Optimizations for Hardware Accelerated Designs
Current Employment: Intel; Portland, OR; Research Scientist
Email: pmeng at ucsd dot edu

Laura Pina 

Advisor: William Griswold
Dissertation Title: Designing Personal Health Technologies: An Ecological Approach
Current Employment: Univ of WA; Seattle, WA; Research Assist (CSE/Human Centered Design&Eng Dept)
home page   Email: lrpina at ucsd dot edu

Abbas Rahimi

Advisor: Rajesh Gupta
Dissertation Title: From Variability-Tolerance to Approximate Computing via Computing Architectures
Current Employment: UC Berkeley/EECS Dept; Berkeley, CA; Postdoc 
home page   Email: abrahimi at ucsd dot edu

Malveeka Tewari 

Advisors: George Porter & Amin Vahdat 
Dissertation Title: Enabling Fine-Grained Network Flow Management in Data Center Networks and Servers
Current Employment: Current Employment: Google; Mountain View, CA: Software Engineer
home page Email: mtewari at ucsd dot edu

Matthew Tong 

Advisor: Garrison Cottrell 
Dissertation Title: Explorations in Salience Using Natural Statistics
Current Employment: Univ of Texas, Austin/Center for Perceptual Systems; Research Associate
home page   email: mhtong at gmail dot com 

Bhanu Vattikonda 

Advisor: Alex Snoeren 
Dissertation Title: An Advertiser Centered Approach to Improve Sponsored Search Effectiveness
Current Employment: Apple Inc; Cupertino, CA; IOS Power Analytics Engineer
home page   Email: bvattiko at ucsd dot edu