Congrats to CSE Alums Who Have Accepted Faculty Positions
CSE is pleased to announce that a number of recent alumni from our PhD program have accepted positions as faculty at institutions of higher learning. Read below to learn more about these new faculty. You can also browse a larger list of our alumni who hold faculty positions at institutions around the world.
Lauren Biernacki (PhD CSE 2023) has joined Lafayette College as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Her area of research lies at the intersection of computer architecture and security, where I study how to prevent data breaches by embedding encryption protections in hardware. In this work, she designs, prototypes, and evaluates custom hardware designs, engineering novel computer architectures that are dynamic, expressive, and performant security solutions. She is passionate about research, teaching, and spreading the joys of computer science with the younger generation. Lauren’s dissertation at Michigan was “Achieving Security and Privacy via Encrypted Architectures.” She was advised by Prof. S. Jack Hu Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Todd Austin.
Laura Biester (PhD 2023) has joined Middlebury College as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science, beginning Fall 2023. Her research interests are at the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computational Social Science, and her PhD thesis focused on modeling change in language over time for individuals with depression, primarily using social media data. She has also done work on perspectivism in NLP, bias in language, and Clinical NLP. Laura’s dissertation at Michigan was “Understanding, Modeling and Leveraging Temporal Change in Mental Health.” She was advised by Jance M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science Rada Mihalcea.
Karthik Desingh (PhD CSE 2020) has joined the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, beginning Fall 2023. His research interests broadly lie at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning and his research focuses on addressing problems in sensing and perceiving the world for robot grasping, manipulation, and navigation. More precisely, he focuses on providing perceptual capabilities for robots using deep learning and probabilistic techniques to enable them to interact with objects and perform tasks in unstructured environments. Karthik’s dissertation at Michigan was “Efficient Belief Propagation for Perception and Manipulation in Clutter.” He was advised by Professor Chad Jenkins.
Tanvir Ahmed Khan (PhD 2023) has joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, beginning Fall 2023. His research interests are in building systems techniques to enable efficient data center processing, which is challenging due to rapid growth in data and software complexity along with the ongoing slowdown in hardware performance scaling. By combining insights from computer architecture, compilers, and operating systems, Ihe designs techniques to enable near-ideal micro-architectural structures via profile-guided optimizations. Tanvir’s dissertation at Michigan was “Rescuing Data Center Processors.” He was advised by Professor Baris Kasikci.
Fan Lai (PhD 2022) has joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science, beginning Fall 2024. Her research brings together machine learning, systems, and computer networking to develop systems for the era of pervasive, efficient ML and data analytics in the cloud, and up to the planetary scale. Her systems have been adopted by big companies such as Meta, LinkedIn, and Cisco. Fan’s dissertation at Michigan was “Minimalist Systems for Pervasive Machine Learning.” She was advised by Professor Mosharaf Chowdhury.
Allison McDonald (PhD 2022) has joined Boston University as an Assistant Professor of Computing and Data Sciences, beginning Fall 2023. Her research interests lie at the intersection of privacy, security, and society, and her work aims to understand how technology exacerbates marginalization using both qualitative and large-scale data-driven methods, and to mitigate inequality through designing safer systems and advancing policy discussions. Allison’s dissertation at Michigan was “Advancing Digital Safety for High-Risk Communities.” She was advised by Professors J. Alex Halderman and Florian Schaub.
Austin Rovinski (PhD 2022) has joined New York University as an Assistant Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering, beginning Fall 2023. Austin is passionate about chip design, and his research interests span the areas of computer architecture, very large-scale integration (VLSI), and electronic design automation (EDA). In particular, Austin is interested in creating fast, high-quality EDA frameworks and prototyping next-generation chiplet-based systems. Austin has led the development of several novel chip prototypes and made substantial contributions to agile hardware design methodologies. Austin’s dissertation at Michigan was “Towards Free, Open, and Ubiquitous Hardware Design.” He was advised by Professor Ron Dreslinski.
Xintong Wang (PhD CSE 2021) has joined Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science, beginning Fall 2023. Her research interests lie in the intersection of computer science and economics, and her work aims to develop computational tools to understand the behaviors and strategic interactions of agents and to design effective mechanisms or economic systems that can achieve desired social objectives. Xintong’s dissertation at Michigan was “Computational Modeling and Design of Financial Markets: Towards Manipulation-Resistant and Expressive Markets.” She was advised by Lynn A. Conway Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Michael P. Wellman.
Charlie Welch (PhD 2021) has joined McMaster University as an Assistant Professor of Computing and Software, beginning Fall 2024. His research focuses on the frontiers of customizable language generation and models of perception. He is interested in how attributes of text, such as toxicity and empathy, interact and can be used for mutual improvement, and is investigating how these techniques can be used to study stylistic attributes as well as populations. By better modeling both people and properties of language, he hopes to both make language technology more useful and to better understand how diverse groups of people view the world. Charlie’s dissertation at Michigan was “Leveraging Longitudinal Data for Personalized Prediction and Word Representations.” He was advised by Jance M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science Rada Mihalcea.
