As a machine learning (ML) theorist, Xinyuan Cao spent her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech digging into the mathematical foundations of artificial intelligence (AI).
Cao's work has earned her recognition, including the 2024 J.P. Morgan AI Research Ph.D. Fellowship and the 2023 Georgia Tech ARC Fellowship. Last week, she joined the Class of 2026 as she received her Ph.D. in machine learning.
Before starting her next role in AI research, Cao shared the ideas and people that defined her time at Tech.
What did your research focus on?
I work on ML theory, which focuses on building foundations for ML algorithms. We try to understand why certain algorithms work or don’t work from a theoretical perspective. This ensures a better underlying understanding of those algorithms.
What made you interested in studying that topic?
When I was starting my Ph.D., a lot of new AI and ML technologies were coming out , and I was really interested in understanding them. I feel it’s meaningful for us to step back and think about more foundational things. I also like that the research involves a lot of theory that comes from geometry or algebra. Some of these theories could be from 100 years ago, but you can use them to show an algorithm that was just proposed this year.
Why did you choose to study at Georgia Tech?
When I talked to professors here, we found many common interests in the field of machine learning theory, and that was very exciting. Georgia Tech’s CS rankings and the great weather here were also big factors.
Are there any specific people who helped you during your Ph.D. journey?
Definitely my advisor, Santosh Vempala. We’re working in an area that is a combination of very traditional theory and modern technologies, and this makes it hard to define a clear question to focus on. Santosh has been very helpful throughout that experience, and working together has been really nice.
I’ve also worked with Jacob Abernethy and appreciate learning from him. He has an ML theory reading group that I’ve attended frequently, and that’s a good memory for me.
What advice would you give someone interested in pursuing a Ph.D.?
I think it’s important to find the problem that you are truly interested in. In research, you may reach a point where neither you nor your advisor knows how to proceed, and it is unclear whether the problem is even solvable. If you’re not working on something that you really care about, it can be hard to push through and find the motivation to keep working on it and solve it.
What are your plans after graduation?
I have accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vector Institute, where I will continue my AI research.
The research also reveals that most websites that require age verification don’t enforce the policy.
The findings come from a new paper that researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) will present at this week’s IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy conference in San Francisco.
The research team examined Yoti, a London-based company that provides age-verification services for an estimated 60% of websites that require it. Its client list includes Meta, OnlyFans, Sony PlayStation, and TikTok.
The research team determined that the process Yoti uses to verify a person’s age broadcasts the person’s personal information to third- and fourth-party companies.
When a bartender checks an ID, they quickly verify a customer’s date of birth and identity before serving them. Companies like Yoti that employ digital age verification claim their products function the same way, but in a completely private manner.
That analogy has justified laws passed in 25 U.S. states — comprising more than 40% of Americans — mandating the use of digital age verification to gate access to social media and adult online content.
However, by measuring online age verification, researchers reveal that the reality of these systems is far from ideal. The study found that most sites covered by these laws do not appear to enforce age verification.
When sites comply, they force users to use third-party age-verification services like Yoti, which collect and share highly sensitive data with other third parties.
“There have been laws passed and court cases settled on the promise that these companies are incentivized to keep users’ data private” said Assistant Professor Michael A. Specter at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. “We found that reality is starkly different.”
Digital age verification laws are being considered by other legislative bodies to bar minors from social media sites. The problem, Specter and his colleagues argue, is that current methods of age verification are ineffective and create new privacy risks.
“In legal arguments, there have been comparisons to these services acting like a bartender checking IDs,” said Specter. “However, what is really happening is the bartender is making photocopies of the patron’s license and sending it to their food vendors.”
According to the researchers, the data is then sent to credit card companies, IP geolocation services, and data brokers. The researchers found that the information being shared can be used to identify and track devices. For example, a single verification attempt may transmit a user’s facial image, IP address, and device fingerprint to credit card companies.
Aside from privacy concerns, researchers note that differing state policies could lead to what they call the Balkanization of the U.S. web. In other words, users may have access to different parts of the internet depending on the state they are in. This will potentially limit the free exchange of ideas and information.
According to Assistant Professor Harry Oppenheimer of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, users are already accustomed to experiencing the internet differently across countries. However, this may signal the beginning of similar fragmentation within the United States.
“We are going to start seeing comparable differences between U.S. states,” said Oppenheimer. “Users in some states will now have to go through additional steps to access information. Close your laptop in New York before a flight to Dallas and try to load the same web page—now you see two different results.”
“We also observed age verification deployed on websites accessed from New York, which has no law requiring verification,” said Associate Professor Paul Pearce of UC Irvine’s Department of Computer Science.
“We don’t know why these sites are deploying such verification—it could be a move to limit liability or simplify operations. Regardless, it points to an emerging threat for the open Internet where restrictive laws from some states could impact the entire country and beyond.”
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Specter added.
The study, Papers Please: A First Look at Age Verification on the Web, was led by Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Shreyas Minocha, undergraduate Isaac Sheridan, and Oppenheimer, Pearce, and Specter. It is part of the proceedings of the 47th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy and will be presented in San Francisco on May 20.
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The research also reveals that most websites that require age verification don’t enforce the policy.
]]>Communications Officer II at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy
]]>The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia awarded the program the 2026 Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program.
MSHCI program director Dick Henneman and assistant director Carrie Bruce received the award on May 12 during a Board of Regents (BOR) meeting.
Henneman has served as director of the program since 2015, and Bruce has served as assistant director since 2014. The program began in 1996 and has since expanded to be offered by four Georgia Tech schools:
“As we put our award submission together, it was nice for us to reflect on all our hard work and to understand the impact this program has had on students,” Bruce said. “We recently surveyed alums, and so many said they were thankful for the way this program shaped their careers.”
Under the leadership of Henneman and Bruce, the program has achieved a 99% graduation rate, with about 60 graduates per year, up from about 30 since 2015. Henneman said the program has become one of the most competitive of its kind in the world, with an admission rate under 10%.
“We have some incredibly qualified students who are a part of the program,” he said. “We’ve had a number of graduates move into design management positions, and some have started their own companies.”
Henneman and Bruce said that one thing that distinguishes Tech’s MSHCI program is its close partnerships and alignment with industry. The program has an industry advisory board that keeps students informed about the skills companies value.
“We adapted our core classes quite a bit to ensure that they weren’t just getting the academic version of HCI methods,” Bruce said. “Our program is practical and focuses on what they are going to do when they get into industry.”
Though the program continues to grow, Henneman says it has maintained a sense of community among students, which he says is another thing that sets it apart. Many alumni keep in touch and return to offer industry advice, critique resumes, and conduct mock interviews with current students.
“A lot of times graduate school can be all about the individual,” he said. “As we prepare students to go work in industry, it’s all about collaboration and the people you’re working with and learning how to work on teams.”
Georgia Tech had 21 faculty and researchers recognized in the 2026 Regents Awards. From the College of Computing, Santosh Vempala was named a Regents’ Professor, while Srinivas Aluru and Ellen Zegura had their Regents’ titles renewed.
“From my seat, I can feel the energy. I see the momentum. We're all about growth and change,” said Vivek Sarkar, dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair of the College of Computing.
“But those are just words. What's really behind the words is all the hard work put in by all of you.Today's celebration is for the entire College, all of you, and all your hard work.”
Students, faculty, and staff from the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) were among those recognized at the celebration. Their accomplishments reflected a year dedicated to excellence in research, teaching, and service. School of CSE award recipients included:
Two lecturers in the School of Computing Instruction with ties to the School of CSE received awards at the celebration.
Max Mahdi Roozbahani received a Dean’s Award, which went to instructors who taught class sizes over 350 students this year. A Class of 2019 CSE alumnus, Roozbahani teaches CSE 6242: Data and Visual Analytics.
Nimisha Roy received the Monica Sweat Outstanding Lecturer in External Engagement Award. She earned her Ph.D. in CSE in 2021.
Professor Polo Chau advises Kim, Palaniappan, and Wright, and recommended them for their awards.
Chau is an associate director of Georgia Tech’s M.S. Analytics program, which won the UPS George D. Smith Prize at the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The award recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of operations research and analytics.
For Kim, the Jackson Fellowship was the latest achievement in a year decorated with accolades. She was one of two School of CSE students to receive the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program award (GRFP). Kim was also selected for a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Research award.
Ph.D. student Abir Haque was CSE’s second NSF GRFP awardee, receiving the grant to advance research in scientific computing. Advised by School of CSE Professor and Associate Chair Edmond Chow, Haque additionally received a Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.
Chow was appointed to several leadership roles this year in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The organization selected Chow as vice president for programs. SIAM also named him as co-chair of next year’s Conference on Computational Science and Engineering.
NSF presented the CAREER award to two CSE faculty. Assistant Professor Yunan Luo received a grant to build artificial intelligence models to study understudied proteins in biology.
Elizabeth Qian is an assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering with a joint appointment in the School of CSE. Her NSF CAREER award will support research developing machine learning methods that learn from multi-fidelity data.
Researchers from the School of CSE were finalists for the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize. Assistant Professor Spencer Bryngelson led a team that included Ph.D. students Ben Wilfong and Anand Radhakrishnan, Research Staff member Dan Vickers, and alumnus Henry Le Berre (CS 2025).
The team achieved the largest computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation to date, exceeding the current record by a factor of 20. The group simulated interacting plumes of 33 rocket thrusters inspired by the SpaceX Super Heavy booster.
Bryngelson advises Melody Lee, an undergraduate student who was one of three Georgia Tech students to receive a Barry Goldwater Scholarship this year. She received the award to continue research at the intersection of quantum computing and CFD.
Assistant Professor Qi Tang received the DOE Early Career Research Award. He is the first-ever faculty member from CSE and the College of Computing to receive the award.
The $875,000 award will support Tang for five years as he researches particle data processing and compression, with applications in fusion, accelerator, and nuclear physics.
Tang was also selected as a Summer Early Career Scholar of Digital Futures at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
Bryngelson and Tang were selected as collaborators for three DOE Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP IV) Centers. The program leverages the academic community to advance science-based modeling and simulation.
One of Tang’s students, Alex de Magalhaes, received a SPARK Award scholarship from the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute. The award recognizes outstanding student engagement in energy research.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded prestigious R01 grants to three CSE faculty, each valued at $1.2 million.
Assistant Professor Anqi Wu is using the grant to study multi-animal social behavior using advanced representation learning and reinforcement learning.
NIH awarded a grant to Assistant Professor Kai Wang and Professor B. Aditya Prakash to build an AI framework to efficiently treat patients diagnosed with diabetes and other chronic diseases.
Prakash advises M.S. student Sudarshan Anand, who claimed two awards at the 2025 International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics. First, Anand was the champion of the conference’s data challenge competition. Then, the conference selected him as a Young Professional NextGen Scholar.
Ph.D. student Yiqiao (Ahren) Jin was selected as a 2026 MLCommons ML and Systems Rising Star. He was one of 39 total awardees and participated at the 2026 ML and Systems Rising Stars workshop is hosted by AMD.
Assistant Professor Victor Fung won a 2025 Google Scholar Program award. He received the award in the Applied Science category for multi-modal scientific agents for in silico materials discovery and inverse design. The Research Scholar Program provided up to $60,000 to early-career professors to support advancement of their research.
This year, the College of Computing selected School of CSE Professor Rich Vuduc as director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Scientific Software Engineering (CSSE). The center was formed in 2022 from an $11 million investment from Schmidt Sciences. Georgia Tech was one of four universities that Schmidt Sciences selected to host a center.
CSSE develops custom software tools and best practices to meet scientists' needs. Overall, this approach accelerates the pace and quality of scientific discovery.
Vuduc advised alumnus Elizabeth Hong (CS 2025), who received a Fulbright U.S.-Korea Presidential STEM Initiative Award. Designed to promote academic and cultural exchange, the award provided graduating college seniors and graduate students funding to pursue independent research projects in Korea on STEM topics of their choice.
Vuduc advises Ph.D. student Max Hawkins, who was selected for the OMSCS Pre-Doctoral Fellowship program.
The program provided Hawkins support to design and teach a one-credit, pass/fail/audit seminar course. Hawkins taught Computing at Scale: The Design, Operation, and Societal Impacts of Data Centers in Fall 2025 and a research course in Spring 2026.
Hawkins also received a $3,000 scholarship through the 7X24 Exchange Atlanta Scholarship Program. He was one of three scholarship recipients awarded to students in the greater Atlanta area with research interests in the data center industry.
Vuduc advises Team Phoenix, Georgia Tech’s student cluster competition team. Team Phoenix placed first among USA participants and sixth internationally at SC25’s IndySCC competition (30 total teams, 12 USA and 18 international). The team was graded on optimizing techniques and running industry standard benchmarks on supercomputers.
The team included computer science undergraduate students Alexander Ichtovkin, Alex Kim, Aiden Lambert, Sahil Samar, Seth Yiming Shi, and Venkata Sai Aditya Reddy Devarapalli. Graduate students Charles Lindsey and Jay Saraha mentored the team coached by Research Scientists Jeff Valdez, Aaron Jezghani, and Will Powell.
Alumni Ziyi (Francis) Yin (Ph.D. CSE-CSE 2024), Rafael Orozco (Ph.D. CSE-CSE 2024), Mathias Louboutin (Ph.D. CS-CSE 2020), and Professor Felix Herrmann received an honorable mention for the Best Paper of 2024 from the journal Geophysics. The award, presented in 2025, recognized the group’s work on WISE: a full-waveform variational inference via subsurface extensions.
Georgia Tech approved both of CSE’s promotion cases this year. Elizabeth Cherry will be promoted to full professor. Srijan Kumar will be promoted to associate professor with tenure.
]]>“From my seat, I can feel the energy. I see the momentum. We're all about growth and change,” said Vivek Sarkar, dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair of the College of Computing.
“But those are just words. What's really behind the words is all the hard work put in by all of you.Today's celebration is for the entire College, all of you, and all your hard work.”
Students, faculty, and staff from the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) were among those recognized at the celebration. Their accomplishments reflected a year dedicated to excellence in research, teaching, and service.
]]>The Georgia Tech Class of 2026 will celebrate one of its most significant accomplishments this week. Among those crossing the stage for the 2026 Spring Commencement is Marina Vemmou, who will be receiving her Ph.D. in computer science.
During her time at Georgia Tech, Vemmou was heavily involved with the School of Computer Science Graduate Student Association, where she served as the student and faculty affairs chair for a term. In 2023, Vemmou received the College of Computing Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, an honor she is especially proud of.
Before finishing this chapter of her academic journey, Vemmou shared about her Ph.D. journey and what she’s taken from the experience.
What did your research focus on?
My general area is computer architecture. I work a lot at the intersection of different components and how we can, instead of trying to optimize each component on its own, coordinate among components so that we get the best performance out of a system without completely changing everything.
What made you interested in studying that topic?
In my mind, it’s kind of like Legos because you have a bunch of building blocks and you’re trying to make something new with them. I find that fascinating. I also like that in computer architecture, there’s never a singlecorrect answer, and everything is a trade-off. I like that extra difficulty.
Why did you choose to study at Georgia Tech?
I think it was a combination of my advisor and the location. I had met with my advisor, Alex Daglis, before and knew I wanted to work with him. I also preferred the urban environment of Georgia Tech.
Are there any specific people who helped you during your Ph.D. journey?
Alex Daglis is the ideal advisor. He’s smart, a good researcher, and an excellent advisor. He truly cares about students, and he’s been involved in everything and has helped so many people, including me.
I also want to shout out the School of Computer Science staff, specifically Tiffany Ntuli. We appreciate the admins and all the work that you do.
What advice would you give someone interested in pursuing a Ph.D.?
Don’t forget that there’s a life outside of your research. The research is great, but it’s not the most important thing. You can take the time to go on a walk, call your family , or see friends.
What’s the most important lesson you learned during your time at Georgia Tech?
Perfection is futile. A lot of students come in expecting that we have to be perfect immediately, that they already know how to write the perfect paper or do research on their own. But the point of a Ph.D. is to learn how to do those things. That was important for me to work through.
What are your plans after graduation?
I want to stay in academia and am considering postdoc positions.
That sense of purpose shaped Spring 2026 Commencement, where School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) graduates celebrated years of research, collaboration, and discovery.
“Today, we celebrate you, your accomplishments, and your potential,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera in his commencement address to Ph.D. graduates.
“I thank you for choosing a career of science and research when some question science and research. We need you to continue on this path. The world needs you.”
In addition to administering its flagship CSE Ph.D. and M.S. programs, the School of CSE offers doctoral degrees in computer science and machine learning. Ph.D. students who received their diplomas and doctoral hoods on May 7 at McCamish Pavilion were:
This semester, 14 CSE doctoral students completed M.S. degrees and will continue their studies at Georgia Tech. They are:
Georgia Tech’s CSE graduate program includes 12 schools and departments participating as home units. These home units represent the colleges of Computing, Engineering, and Sciences. This approach facilitates an immersive, interdisciplinary experience in which students study computational methods within their respective domains.
Georgia Tech celebrated master’s graduates at a May 9 ceremony at Bobby Dodd Stadium. After the Institute celebration, graduates were recognized during ceremonies held by their respective colleges.
Mohammed Wazir Adain (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aditi Agarwal (M.S. CSE 2026)
Sudarshan Anand (M.S. CSE 2026)
Arjun Bansal (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shraddha Bharadwaj (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aarushi Biswas (M.S. CSE 2026)
Anurita Bose (M.S. CSE 2026)
Hao-Cheng Chang (M.S. CSE 2026)
Nai-Jen Cheng (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yida Cheng (M.S. CSE 2026)
Denys Chernenko (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aarushi Vishal Dhanuka (M.S. CSE 2026)
MacKenzie Taylor Starr Drury (M.S. CSE 2026)
Chandra Sekhar Reddy Edula (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shiqi Fan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yuanting Fan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Wen (Ava) Feng (M.S. CSE 2026)
Amrutha Praveen Ganapathiyat Othayoth (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aman Garg (M.S. CSE 2026)
Xin Guan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yunmei Guan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Srihas Gunda (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yihui Han (M.S. CSE 2026)
Keenan Wai-sean Hom (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shiqi Hu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Wenxin Jiang (M.S. CSE 2026)
Harneet Singh Khanuja (M.S. CSE 2026)
Hyunjeong Kim (M.S. CSE 2026)
Vijay Prabhas Kodamalla (M.S. CSE 2026)
Neel Kothari (M.S. CSE 2026)
Ziji Li (M.S. CSE 2026)
Qinye Liu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Ruixin Liu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yibo Liu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shenyifan Lu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Wenliya Lyu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aditya Akash Mavle (M.S. CSE 2026)
Samuel Wesley Moss (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shruti Santosh Murarka (M.S. CSE 2026)
Karthic Palaniappan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shrey P. Patel (M.S. CSE 2026)
Tanish R. Patwa (M.S. CSE 2026)
Tim Minh Phan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Jing Qi (M.S. CSE 2026)
Wanrong Qi (M.S. CSE 2026)
Hui Qiao (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aditya Raghavan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Araceli Rodriguez Vallejo (M.S. CSE 2026)
Chloé Saleh (M.S. CSE 2026)
Vanshika Shah (M.S. CSE 2026)
Kaichen Shen (M.S. CSE 2026)
Bohan Shu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Kunhao Song (M.S. CSE 2026)
Ajeet Karthik Subramanian (M.S. CSE 2026)
Jingyun Sun (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yupeng Tang (M.S. CSE 2026)
Michael Kenneth Thompson (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yu Chu Tsai (M.S. CSE 2026)
Viren Dipin Varma (M.S. CSE 2026)
Aarushi Chetan Wagh (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yiling Wu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yitong Wu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Jiayi Xu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shuyan Yang (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yiming Ye (M.S. CSE 2026)
Zhenghao You (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yijia Zeng (M.S. CSE 2026)
Jinkai Zhan (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yuehan Zhang (M.S. CSE 2026)
Xinyu Zhao (M.S. CSE 2026)
Yuqian Zheng (M.S. CSE 2026)
Alexander Zhou de Magalhaes (M.S. CSE 2026)
Shizhuo Zhu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Xiaoai Zhu (M.S. CSE 2026)
Xinjie Zhu (M.S. CSE 2026)
]]>That sense of purpose shaped Spring 2026 Commencement, where School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) graduates celebrated years of research, collaboration, and discovery.
“Today, we celebrate you, your accomplishments, and your potential,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera in his commencement address to Ph.D. graduates.
“I thank you for choosing a career of science and research when some question science and research. We need you to continue on this path. The world needs you.”
]]>Between orchestra concerts, magic shows, and yo-yo exhibitions, Li thrives in the limelight. In fact, not much rattles his nerves considering the five years of pressure he endured studying computational neuroscience at Tech.
Before he returns to New York City to continue building brain-interface technologies at Meta, we caught up with Li to learn how he keeps such a cool head at Georgia Tech and beyond.
Graduate: Chengrui Li
Research Interests: Computational neuroscience, eye-tracking experiments and data analysis, statistical machine learning
Education: Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE)
Faculty Advisor: School of CSE Assistant Professor Anqi Wu
What persuaded you to attend graduate school at Georgia Tech?
My undergraduate was at Sichuan University in China. We knew that the most cutting-edge technology and research were in the United States, so I participated in an undergraduate exchange program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, during my third year.
I wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience while also becoming very proficient in math and computer science (CS). This led me to apply to the CSE Ph.D. program over others. Georgia Tech’s CS ranking is very high, and the CSE program is very interdisciplinary, which matched my expectations super well. I did attain a solid education in math and CS at Georgia Tech. I also advanced my interest in neuroscience and its application by studying mathematical models and algorithms.
What research project from Georgia Tech are you most proud of?
My variational importance sampling paper is a favorite. That one was based heavily on statistical inference. I spent many hours working through complicated derivation calculations, often half-awake and half-asleep after several late nights.
This paper confirmed to me, though, that innovative research requires both hard work and inspiration, and that this endeavor can be rewarding. The paper was selected as a top 5% spotlight paper at ICLR 2024, a world-leading conference on artificial intelligence research.
Could you share more about your role as a research scientist at Meta?
I have been working on Meta’s electromyography (EMG) neural band. This next-generation human-computer interaction device connects with and navigates Meta’s AI glasses.
With the neural band, you can use finger gestures to control the display content you see through the glasses, like swiping your thumb to scroll the screen, or writing on your lap as if you had a pen in your hand to send WhatsApp messages.
How did your Georgia Tech education prepare you for this role?
By pursuing my Ph.D., I am more proficient in critical thinking, math, coding, and presentation. During my interview, I demonstrated these skills and provided my publication records. This helped me land an internship, enabled my success in that role, and led to a full-time position. Additionally, my background in computational neuroscience best matched the work on the EMG neural band team at a big tech company.
What advice would you give someone interested in graduate school?
First, be clear whether a bachelor’s or master’s degree meets your work needs, or if you are truly interested in a scientific research topic. This interest should be based on your own passion, not the current trends. Interest is an important factor in deciding to pursue a Ph.D. because you have to like the topic and like it for a long time. A Ph.D. will require you to dive deep into a subject you must be genuinely curious about.
Second, we are in a new era with rapid advances in information technology. Time is an invaluable resource and is shaped by technology. You have to think more about your time, consider where and how you spend it, and embrace ways to use it more efficiently.
Can you tell us more about your hobbies and how you keep up with them?
I started learning violin when I was five years old, and magic tricks when I was 11. The brain is a supercomputer suitable for functional computation. Our brain is an interface between the objective and subjective, where computation plays a core role in integrating these exact mechanics into interpretations of the world. This realization was one of the important factors that inspired me to pursue my Ph.D. research in computational neuroscience.
Another comparison I’ve learned after playing violin for 23 years is that the cochlea in our inner ear is a fast Fourier Transformer that simultaneously computes the aesthetic of music for us. Performing magic tricks for 17 years taught me that all the occurrences of seemingly low-probability magic phenomena are achieved by either letting it be a certain event or exhausting all possibilities.
I also have other hobbies, like yo-yo balls. I enjoy performing all these skills in front of audiences. Performing brings me satisfaction when I see excitement and happiness from the people I entertain. I am very grateful to my parents for their cultivation and encouragement in doing things that bring me fulfillment. They taught me to be curious and explore my interests, to enjoy pastimes, and instilled the habit to not give up my passions. These were not secondary things that distracted me from coursework or Ph.D. research, but rather complementary parts of my life that bring out the best in me.
What is your favorite Georgia Tech memory?
I have a lot. For my research, I debated frequently with Anqi Wu, my advisor. These often went late into the night to defend my stances. These challenged my beliefs and made me a stronger scholar, for which I am grateful to Anqi for her time and patience.
I also enjoyed performing in the Georgia Tech symphony orchestra with our great conductor, Chaowen Ting. I was involved with the Georgia Tech Chinese Students and Scholars Association, where I showcased magic and yo-yo performances at organization events.
]]>Between orchestra concerts, magic shows, and yo-yo exhibitions, Li thrives in the limelight. In fact, not much rattles his nerves considering the five years of pressure he endured studying computational neuroscience at Tech.
Before he returns to New York City to continue building brain-interface technologies at Meta, we caught up with Li to learn how he keeps such a cool head at Georgia Tech and beyond.
]]>From AI-powered tools that support dementia care to platforms that translate natural language into data insights, computing students showcased a wide range of software solutions at the Spring 2026 College of Computing Capstone Expo.
Held on April 27 in the Exhibition Hall, the event highlighted the technical skills and creativity of third- and fourth-year students in the School of Computing Instruction (SCI).
The Expo marks the culmination of a semester-long course in which computer science and computational media majors design products that address real-world needs. In the program, students either collaborate with external clients to deliver real-world solutions or develop startup-driven prototypes under the mentorship of industry professionals.
Volunteers from industry and the campus community judge teams on functionality, aesthetics, and presentation.
Winning Teams:
TimeSlips AI Integrated Mobile App
This project is a mobile app with questions and image prompts to support facilitators in meaningfully engaging people with dementia. AI integration transcribes sessions and lets facilitators review them, get feedback, and develop them into stories.
DataChat: Natural Language Analytics for Non-Technical Teams
This project is a ChatGPT-like app where users can upload CSV files (usually sports-related). The app will analyze the CSV file and provide detailed results, including why the results turned out the way they did.
Healthy Actions
This project focuses on preventing weight gain. The web app allows users to assess their health and behaviors at the beginning, midpoint, and end of a 12-week program to track progress and support healthier outcomes.
Georgia Tech alumna Christine Ling (BS Industrial Engineering 2025) mentored two of the winning teams, TimeSlips and Healthy Actions.
“These teams have been a joy to work with from start to finish. They consistently approached their project with thoughtfulness, realism, and a clear sense of purpose,” Ling said.
“What stood out most was their motivation and collaborative spirit. They were proactive in seeking clarification, eager to refine their ideas, and genuinely invested in producing a polished, high‑quality final product. Their steady work ethic and willingness to iterate made them an absolute pleasure to support.”
Entrepreneurial Capstone Winning Teams:
Optimis
This project attributes cloud billing changes to specific runtime behaviors in a developer’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline, helping teams avoid unexpected billing surprises.
PulseAPI
This project converts real application programming interface (API) traffic into an OpenAPI contract and detects deviations from it, helping teams catch breaking changes before they affect production systems.
More photos from the expo are available here.
From AI-powered tools that support dementia care to platforms that translate natural language into data insights, computing students showcased a wide range of software solutions at the Spring 2026 College of Computing Capstone Expo.
]]>For Kathy Tran, choosing to major in computer science (CS) at Georgia Tech was never about narrowing her interests. Drawn to both computing and film, she sought flexibility to explore technical problem-solving alongside creative storytelling.
Through her work as a teaching assistant (TA), a software engineering internship, and independent film projects, Tran learned that her interests didn’t have to fit neatly into a single role. Instead, she built a path that lets both sides grow, sometimes together, sometimes separately.
What drew you to computer science and Georgia Tech?
I’ve always been the type of person who wants to do a million things, so it was difficult for me to decide on one subject to study in college. I was drawn to CS because it is extremely versatile, and I enjoyed Advanced Placement Computer Science A (AP CSA) at Woodland High School in Stockbridge. I could go the practical route and work at a big tech company, or I could take a more creative route and pursue game development or animation. Since computers are ubiquitous in all industries, the possibilities seem endless.
However, another subject I really wanted to study in college is film, as it is my first love. I had to find a school that would give me a balance between an amazing CS education and a film education. I ended up choosing Georgia Tech because not only do we have a top-ranked CS program, but we’re also in the heart of Atlanta, where there are countless film opportunities. This semester, I’ll be graduating with a bachelor’s in computer science with a minor in film and media studies.
How has your experience as a teaching assistant shaped you?
I have been a TA for CS 1332: Data Structures and Algorithms for seven semesters. At first, I just wanted to have an on-campus job and retain fundamental information about CS. However, over the semesters, I ended up really loving the TA community.
Being surrounded by a highly motivated group of people forces you to try to be the best version of yourself. I’ve met people who achieve great things. Seeing them achieve their goals makes it seem like mine aren’t out of reach and only makes me work harder to achieve them.
How have you approached your interests in tech and media?
When I first entered college, I assumed that I needed to perfectly combine the two fields, which led me to restrict myself to the role of a tech artist. I worked as a tech artist for clubs like VGDev and Animation Club, creating 3D models and rigs that can be animated. I also did a VIP in Art and AI, where I created a stop-motion film using 3D models and generative AI.
However, I feel like I thrived when I allowed myself to explore these fields separately. On the technical side, I worked as a software engineering intern at AWS and enjoyed applying my technical design knowledge and problem-solving skills to complete my project. On the media side, I have directed two short films, with In Universe 907 winning an award at Georgia Tech’s Literature, Media, and Communications (LMC) Film Festival.
While these two paths don’t perfectly combine tech and media 50/50, they require both technical and creative skills that satisfy my need to combine my passions.
What are your plans after graduation?
After graduation, I’ll be working as a software engineer at Amazon Web Services and will be moving to Santa Clara, California.
Who has influenced your journey at Georgia Tech?
I have to thank Mary Hudachek-Buswell and Frederic Faulkner for allowing me to serve as their TA for the past three years and for giving me and the other TAs many opportunities to grow both academically and professionally.
What advice would you give to students interested in combining technical and creative fields?
To any student interested in combining technical and creative fields, keep your options open and don’t pigeonhole yourself into one role or industry. Innovations in both fields are constantly being created, and new roles can emerge in the blink of an eye.
Allow yourself to explore all forms of technical and creative fields, and your calling will come about naturally.
That is clearest on the surface, where Shah studied how public statements by businesses and financial institutions shape market behavior. At a deeper level, though, his success was buoyed by support from professors and his mentorship of younger students.
Shah’s ability to connect and invest in others led him to partner with Georgia Tech colleagues and start a financial technology business. He returns to campus this week to officially graduate from Tech, giving us a chance to catch up about his grad school experience and life as an entrepreneur.
Graduate: Agam Shah
Research Interests: Quantitative and computational finance, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, large language models (LLMs)
Education: Ph.D. in Machine Learning, home unit in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE)
Faculty Advisors: Scheller College of Business Professor Sudheer Chava and School of CSE Associate Professor Chao Zhang
What persuaded you to attend graduate school at Georgia Tech?
Georgia Tech’s dedicated College of Computing strongly appealed to me. I was particularly drawn to the interdisciplinary nature of its machine learning Ph.D. program and the School of Computational Science and Engineering, both of which align well with my research interests.
What research project(s) from Georgia Tech are you most proud of and why?
I am proud of all 20-plus research papers I have had the opportunity to contribute to at Georgia Tech. However, if I had to choose one, it would be my work on Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) text analysis, which was also highlighted in the news.
This work is not only well-cited in academic literature, but the language model developed in the paper is also actively used by economists at many of the world’s top central banks, including researchers at the FOMC and the Bank of England. It is also used by leading financial institutions such as BlackRock and Daiwa Securities. Since its release, the model has achieved over 100,000 downloads on Hugging Face.
What can you tell us more about your startup, ZettaQuant?
ZettaQuant aims to solve one of the biggest challenges in using LLMs and agents: working effectively with massive underlying datasets. We serve as a layer between raw data and LLMs, helping distill billions of tokens into the relevant context that models can use.
As a deep-tech startup, we are actively engaging with industry practitioners to better understand how to design and engineer our system to integrate seamlessly with their evolving AI workflows. Given the complexity of the problem we are tackling, particularly in advancing document intelligence systems, we are currently very focused on research and foundational development.
How did your Georgia Tech education prepare you for starting ZettaQuant?
Not just my education, but my entire experience at Georgia Tech, extending beyond the classroom, prepared me for this journey. I met my co-founders at Georgia Tech, and many of the initial use cases we are exploring at ZettaQuant are built on open-source research I conducted there.
In addition to research, I mentored more than 300 students through the Vertically Integrated Project “NLP for Financial Markets.” This experience taught me how to manage teams and think about building systems with a long-term vision.
What advice would you give someone interested in graduate school?
Most people pursue graduate school after already completing more than 15 years of education. Also, people who are admitted to a top school like Georgia Tech are often already well-positioned to secure strong job opportunities. So, graduate school should provide value beyond what you could learn outside the classroom.
Before deciding, think carefully about what you hope to gain from graduate school that you cannot otherwise. Once you enroll, take full advantage of the faculty, research labs, networks, and seminars. Many students underutilize these opportunities during their undergraduate and graduate years.
I would also like to quote the epilogue of my Ph.D. thesis: ‘Advice is abundant; conviction must be your own.’ Build a strong conviction about what you want to achieve from graduate school before committing to it.
What did you do for fun and relaxation while attending Georgia Tech? Do you still keep up with these now?
This may sound unconventional, but I spent a significant amount of time mentoring and teaching throughout my Ph.D. Many of my mentees went on to gain admission to top graduate programs. This included two students I mentored for all four years of their undergraduate studies who later joined the ML Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. They are now teaching and mentoring students, completing a full-circle journey.
Working with mentees and supporting their growth gives me a strong sense of fulfillment and serves as a form of relaxation. In addition, I enjoy listening to music, especially while coding, and I continue to do that today.
What is your favorite Georgia Tech memory?
If I had to choose one favorite memory, beyond the many exciting late nights in the lab, it would be proposing to my wife on Tech Green at Georgia Tech. She is also a Yellow Jacket, having completed her undergraduate degree here and currently pursuing her Ph.D. Our home truly is a hive of Yellow Jackets.
]]>That is clearest on the surface, where Shah studied how public statements by businesses and financial institutions shape market behavior. At a deeper level, though, his success was buoyed by support from professors and his mentorship of younger students.
Shah’s ability to connect and invest in others led him to partner with Georgia Tech colleagues and start a financial technology business. He returns to campus this week to officially graduate from Tech, giving us a chance to catch up about his grad school experience and life as an entrepreneur.
]]>Jack Hayley’s path through Georgia Tech’s computational media program centers on exploring how sound and software work together across film, games, and interactive media.
Before arriving in Atlanta, Hayley attended Yew Chung International School in Chongqing, China, where he completed the Cambridge IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) program, before returning to the United States to earn an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma from the Utica Academy for International Studies.
With longstanding interests in computer science (CS) and digital music, he sought a program that would allow him to develop both simultaneously.
“I wanted a program that had a strong technical foundation but with creative applications in music,” he said.
Georgia Tech’s computational media program stood out for its connection between the College of Computing and the School of Music. By choosing threads in Intelligence and music technology, Hayley explored the intersection of the two disciplines.
Creating Through Code and Sound
At Tech, Hayley explored computing and creativity through programs such as the Robotic Musicianship VIP. He credits Center for Music Technology Professor Gil Weinberg and Ph.D. student Amit Rogel with pushing him to do his best work and for strengthening his confidence in blending technical and artistic approaches.
That blend of mentorship and experimentation carried into his broader creative practice. As technical director of Baja Badlands Productions, a film and multimedia studio he co-founded, he composes music, designs sound, and manages technical production, including the studio’s website.
One of the studio’s recent short films, Myopia, was showcased at several film festivals and received recognition for its original score and cinematography.
He has also collaborated with Georgia Tech’s student organization VGDev and indie developers to create audio for video games.
“I find this to be a great avenue for my combined interests, as creative control of audio often requires software implementation to achieve immersive sound,” he said.
Among his favorite projects is Sleighers, a game he co-led. The project integrated networking systems, 3D modeling, level design, and immersive audio, and was later exhibited at DreamHack Atlanta, where the team gathered feedback from players and developers.
Learning and Leadership
Beyond creative production, Hayley developed technical and leadership skills as a teaching assistant for CS 1332: Data Structures & Algorithms, eventually becoming a head TA.
The role challenged him to communicate complex ideas, support students one-on-one, and coordinate with large instructional teams, thereby deepening his understanding of core CS principles.
“Being a TA reinforced my understanding of CS concepts as I designed assignments and explained material clearly,” he said.
He also contributed to course development by helping design assignments and synchronous assessments that emphasized application-based learning. His work was recognized by Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning with the Online TA of the Year award.
He credits faculty mentors, including School of Computing Instruction (SCI) faculty member Frederic Faulkner and Interim Chair Mary Hudachek-Buswell, for shaping his growth as an educator.
“They’ve both been instrumental in my development as a leader, and I admire their determination to strengthen the quality of CS undergraduate education at Tech,” he said.
Looking Ahead
During his time at Tech, Hayley interned as a software development engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Atlanta, where he worked on an infrastructure-based solution. The experience reinforced the importance of adaptability in the field.
“What I’ve found from this experience is that software development is not a skill that is solidified once; instead, it necessitates continual lifelong learning,” he said.
After graduation, Hayley will return to AWS as a full-time software development engineer while continuing his creative work in film and game development.
He encourages other students to take full advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities.
“Take advantage of the opportunities Tech has to offer with respect to technology and creativity,” he said.
“I found tailoring these components towards a blend of CS and music allowed me to get the most out of my time here.”
Jack Hayley’s path through Georgia Tech’s computational media program centers on exploring how sound and software work together across film, games, and interactive media.
]]>That plan lasted about three years.
“I initially thought I’d just continue in research without a Ph.D.,” Bhaskar said. “My advisor encouraged me to stay, but I wanted to experience industry first.”
In addition to perspective, working outside academia offered Bhaskar clarity. Over time, he found himself drawn back to the kind of deeper, more impactful research he had glimpsed during his graduate studies. Watching colleagues with doctoral degrees tackle complex problems reinforced his decision.
“I realized I missed research,” he said. “And seeing the kind of work Ph.D. graduates were doing motivated me to apply.”
That decision led him to Georgia Tech, where the strength of its cybersecurity and network security research stood out. The program’s interdisciplinary approach was a major draw.
“Some schools are strong in one area,” he said. “Here, there’s collaboration across domains. That was important to me.”
When Bhaskar arrived, the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy had not yet fully taken shape. Research groups, including the Institute for Information Security and Privacy, were already active, but the school's formal structure emerged during his second year.
Working with his advisor, Paul Pearce, Bhaskar shifted his research focus from binary and static analysis to network security, a transition that required both adjustment and curiosity.
“I wanted to move into something with more direct real-world impact,” he said.
This led him to work on censorship measurement, internet security and privacy, areas where technical findings can have global implications. With guidance from Pearce and support from other faculty working in similar areas, he quickly found his footing.
His favorite research project however, was in fact his first.
In earlier research, unexplained anomalies had appeared in measurement data. At first, the assumption was that they stemmed from geolocation issues. However, after digging deeper, Bhaskar uncovered a different cause: routing changes.
“That discovery showed that routing can significantly affect measurement results,” he said.
What began as a narrow investigation turned into a broader insight. One that reshaped how those measurements could be interpreted.
Along the way, other milestones followed, including his first paper accepted to a top conference.
“That was a big moment,” Bhaskar said.
But beyond publications and research breakthroughs, it’s the day-to-day experience of doctoral life that made the strongest impression.
“The camaraderie stands out the most,” he said. “Especially during deadlines. Everyone is working hard, but you still take time to step away, talk, and support each other.”
That sense of community extended beyond his own lab. Interactions with neighboring groups and researchers in fields like cryptography broadened his perspective and shaped his approach to problems.
“The way different groups think about problems is really valuable,” he said.
Outside the lab, Atlanta played its own role in the experience. From sporting events to concerts, the city offered a balance to the intensity of research.
“There’s a lot to do,” Bhaskar said. “I tried to take advantage of that.”
Now, as he prepares to graduate, the next chapter is already in motion. Bhaskar will move to the West Coast for a post-doctorate security research role at Stanford University, following a summer internship that offers time to reset before the transition.
“Abhi's work is excellent,” said Pearce. “During the course of his Ph.D. he discovered important underlying phenomena that influence how we measure and understand internet censorship and end-to-end network behaviors broadly.”
“He's an outstanding researcher and community leader, and while his contribution as a student to my group and SCP will be missed, we're excited about what he accomplished and his next steps!”
]]>Communications Officer II for the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy
]]>Mizan Rahman knows there’s much that academia and industry can learn from each other.
He’s living proof of it.
The 52-year-old entrepreneur will receive his Ph.D. in human-centered computing (HCC) as he walks across the stage on Thursday at Georgia Tech’s Spring 2026 Ph.D. Commencement.
When Rahman was accepted into the HCC Ph.D. program, he’d already founded three successful tech startups and was an angel investor in numerous others. He also earned a master’s in computational science and engineering from Georgia Tech in 2013.
Rahman took on the challenge of a Ph.D. because he’s always been in pursuit of a holistic view of technology. One perspective he said he needed to understand was that of the end user.
“I’d already done computer science and computational science and engineering, so I wanted to look at the human dimension, the user’s perspectives, and society,” Rahman said. “You’ve got to build technology that fits into our human dynamics.”
Rahman’s journey began as an undergraduate in chemical engineering at Miami Dade College and Florida Atlantic University. He switched to computer science after his roommate, also a CS major, showed him some programming he had been working on.
“I couldn’t sleep after that,” Rahman said. “I was writing software all night. I loved solving problems through technology.”
Early Success
Rahman invented BayBuilder, a strategic sourcing automation technology, in 1999. The software was adopted by major Fortune 500 companies. Rahman estimates it has saved these companies $1 billion in procurement spending.
Baybuilder was acquired by a NASDAQ-listed firm in 2001, and he was ready to start his next company.
“I’ve been an entrepreneur as far back as I can remember,” Rahman said. “I was born with it. If I saw something that didn’t exist, I created it.”
After relocating to Atlanta, Rahman founded a new company, M2SYS Technology. Governments around the world used the company’s innovative identity technology to automate processes and deliver efficient services to citizens. M2SYS also worked with the CDC to treat HIV in Haiti and Zambia, as well as many U.S. hospitals, including Grady Memorial in Atlanta, to protect patients from fraud and receiving the wrong treatment.
Rahman’s most recent startup, CloudApper AI, introduced a new system architecture that generates secure software requiring minimal ongoing maintenance. His non-biased algorithm, which he created during his Ph.D. for CloudApper, is now used by major companies to streamline automated resume analysis and candidate scoring.
Living in Two Worlds
Rahman began his Ph.D. in 2021, but he kept his new venture to himself and his family. He didn’t tell his employees he was pursuing a Ph.D., and he didn’t disclose his industry background to his fellow doctoral students.
“I kept the other side of me far away,” he said. “The people who knew, they knew, but I purposefully didn’t discuss my outside activities and experience. I wanted to fit in, and I think I was able to do that.”
When Rahman was at his company, he was a CEO and entrepreneur, and when he was at Georgia Tech, he was a researcher. But what he was learning as a researcher began to change how he perceived his business.
“I wanted to be a researcher and think like a researcher and not just always think about sales and marketing,” he said. “I started bringing in more ideas about how the user should be thought of in our products. I’m sure they were wondering why I was emphasizing that so much, but it was because I was applying what I was learning in my Ph.D.
“Now I’ve been on both sides, I want to be connected to both in the future, applying research principles and practices in product development and innovation.”
Building Community Through Makerspaces
When it came time for Rahman to choose a subject for his dissertation, he returned to his roots and looked for ways technology can support young entrepreneurs and their startups. That’s when he began conducting research in makerspaces.
“I wanted to find out how we can bring innovation to a scale where anybody can participate,” he said. “I saw this happening in makerspaces where regular people learn, collaborate, and build products and companies from scratch. I saw that the community at large is facing a sustainability crisis.”
Rahman argued in his dissertation that makerspaces can play a significant role in local innovation. When people struggle to survive, it disrupts communities in numerous ways.
Rahman details four studies conducted over three-and-a-half years that show how socio-technical factors drive organizational sustainability in makerspaces and how AI tools can foster an innovative culture within them.
“The compelling thing about his research is that he shows that people come to makerspaces for the tools, but they stay for the people,” said Rosa Arriaga, associate professor and Rahman’s advisor.
“He has plenty of work from his ethnographic research that shows that a makerspace can have all the tech and resources, but if there isn’t cohesion among the people, there’s a problem.”
It Takes a Village
Rahman is the first to admit that it’s not possible for one man to run a company while pursuing a Ph.D. He needed a community. This starts with his family. His wife, Mohu Sultana, now serves as interim CEO of M2SYS and has supported Rahman throughout his Ph.D. research.
The Georgia Tech community has been part of Rahman’s life in some way since he started his career.
Sultana holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Tech, and their daughter, Malisha Rahman, is graduating this week with a bachelor’s in economics and international affairs. Malisha Rahman has also been accepted into the HCC program and will begin her Ph.D. in the fall.
Rahman said that any student who wants to create a tech startup will have an advantage from access to Georgia Tech’s network.
“The Georgia Tech startup community is fantastic,” he said. “There is a tremendous amount of knowledge here, and the research community can help shape the next big thing. We have CREATE-X, a place where you can find mentorship from faculty who started in industry. You’ll learn things I wish I knew before I started.”
]]>Mizan Rahman, a 52-year-old entrepreneur with three successful tech startups, is completing his Ph.D. in human-centered computing. Driven by a desire to understand the human dimension of technology, his dissertation focused on makerspaces as hubs for community-driven innovation, arguing that social cohesion — not just tools and resources — is key to their sustainability. Rahman credits his academic journey with transforming how he approaches product development, and he now aims to bridge industry and research going forward.
This week, Time Magazine named CrowdStrike and Pindrop Security among the 10 Most Influential Software Companies of 2026.
CrowdStrike and Pindrop appear on TIME’s new list alongside some of the world’s best-known computing companies, including Adobe, Microsoft, and Palantir. Released on April 27 as part of the outlet’s TIME100 Companies: Industry Leaders series, this recognition underscores their rising influence.
“It’s exciting to see that two out of the ten companies on this list were founded by alumni and faculty from the College of Computing. We are bursting with pride,” said Vivek Sarkar, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing. “This recognition reflects the strength of our academic and research programs, as well as the impact of our commitment to fostering a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.
"It also highlights how we are empowering our students and faculty to translate bold, innovative ideas into successful ventures. Looking ahead, we will further integrate entrepreneurial thinking with the computational and AI foundations embedded throughout our curriculum.”
Their inclusion on TIME’s list this year is especially notable because both CrowdStrike and Pindrop address the growing cybersecurity threat landscape, including deepfakes.
GT Computing alumnus Vijay Balasubramaniyan (PhD CS 2011) co-founded Pindrop in 2011 with his doctoral advisor, Mustaque Ahamad, and Georgia Tech alumnus Paul Judge (PhD CS 2002). It commercialized his doctoral research to help call centers determine whether callers are legitimate.
The company has also developed a deepfake protection product and recently raised $100 million in capital funding to expand its deepfake video detection business. During this expansion, the company developed Pindrop Pulse, which TIME named one of the Best Inventions of 2025.
“Identity, consent, and accountability are society’s contracts. Deepfakes erode all three,” Balasubramaniyan told TIME.
Pindrop technology can confirm participants' identities in audio/video conference calls within a few seconds.
“Vijay’s Ph.D. research was of the highest quality, and the Pindrop paper was published in one of the top-tier security conferences,” said Ahamad, Regents' Entrepreneur and interim chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy.
“However, because of his work experience before coming to Georgia Tech, he also focused on the real-world relevance of his research, which led to the launch of Pindrop Security. He is a great example of impactful research that students conduct in our laboratories.”
Like Pindrop, CrowdStrike was founded to counter emerging digital threats and has evolved to combat growing AI-powered security challenges. Dmitri Alperovitch (CS 2001, MS InfoSec 2003) co-founded the company and served as chief technology officer at its 2012 launch.
Alperovitch, recently inducted into the College of Computing Hall of Fame, played a pivotal role in securing more than $150 million in capital investments for the company, helping pave the way for CrowdStrike to become one of the world’s leading cybersecurity companies. In fact, its client list includes nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies.
“What appealed to me in cybersecurity is that you are never really done,” Alperovitch said during a recent campus fireside chat with students.
“As long as there are human beings out there that want to do you harm, there are always security problems to solve.”
Asked about the founding of CrowdStrike, Alperovitch described investigating a 2010 breach at Google by a nation-state actor as a pivotal moment for him.
“The industry refused to acknowledge this was a widespread problem, and that realization led me to start CrowdStrike,” he said. “You no longer just have to be better than your competitors. You must stay proactive and vigilant.”
Alperovitch is the co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and the bestselling author of World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century.
]]>Sr. Communications Manager
Georgia Tech College of Computing
albert.snedeker@cc.gatech.edu
]]>“I am pleased to be able to recognize all of this hard work,” said Dean Vivek Sarkar during the ceremony.
One student, two staff members, and four faculty members were nominated by their SCP peers and received awards for their achievements over the past year.
Yibin Yang (Ph.D. CS 2025) was awarded a 2025 Dissertation Award for his thesis on zero-knowledge proofs in real-world problems. SCP Professor and Senior Associate Chair Vlad Kolesnikov advised Yang and acknowledged that Yang’s work advances the field of cryptography.
Yang contributed to the advancement of zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computations, while also building toolchains that are faster and more usable than existing systems. His work earned a distinguished paper award at the 2023 ACM CCS, and he also served as an RSAC Security Scholar.
In the staff category, Mary Helen Hayes was awarded the Outstanding Staff Leadership Award, and Gina Anderson received the Ruthie Book Outstanding Staff Team Member Award.
The Outstanding Staff Leadership Award is given to a full-time administrative staff member in recognition of an outstanding record of leadership that has resulted in a significant positive impact on the College of Computing, the Institute, or the computing community. Hayes was nominated by four faculty and staff members for this award for her steady presence in SCP since she began her role as director of research operations in 2024.
The Ruthie Book Outstanding Staff Team Member Award is presented to a staff member in recognition of their outstanding performance in honor of Ruthie Book, who exemplified excellence in her work. Anderson was nominated by SCP faculty and staff for her outstanding leadership and mentorship as assistant director of business operations.
Both received praise for their hard work from the college as well as from their supervisor, Senior Academic Officer Jan Morian.
“I am so incredibly proud of our staff in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy who won awards this year at the College of Computing Annual Awards ceremony,” she said.
“Mary Helen Hayes and Regina Anderson are truly outstanding staff members who exemplify Georgia Tech’s values. Their leadership has contributed substantially to the success of the school.”
The College of Computing also recognized four SCP faculty members for excellence in teaching and research during the college’s annual award ceremony.
Assistant Professor Teodora Baluta received the Junior Faculty Teaching Award for developing a new graduate-level course that brought together generative artificial intelligence (AI) security, adversarial machine learning, cryptography, and differential privacy. Her nominator, SCP Associate Professor Vassilis Zikas, said the course bridged a critical gap in a rapidly evolving area of computing.
For his role in leading Team Atlanta to victory in the DARPA AI Cyber Challenge, Professor Taesoo Kim received the Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award. His nominator, Regents Professor Wenke Lee, praised the team’s performance, which not only won the competition but also beat the combined score of all other competitors. The AI developed by Team Atlanta is now open sourced with the Open Source Security Foundation.
Associate Professor Frank Li received the Junior Faculty Research Award for establishing world-class research BEES Lab at Georgia Tech. One of his nominators, Associate Professor Saman Zonouz, put Li’s name forward for his work empirically evaluating and improving internet security and privacy from an operational standpoint.
Finally, Associate Professor Brendan Saltaformaggio received the Mid-Career Faculty Research Award. Zikas nominated him for establishing internationally recognized research in cybersecurity forensics, malware analysis, AI security, and software supply chain security. Saltaformaggio’s research highlights include the discovery of over $2 billion in stolen funds on the Ethereum blockchain.
"We know SCP faculty conduct highly impactful research that is of the highest quality,” said SCP Interim Chair Mustaque Ahamad. “Our faculty receiving research awards at all levels recognizes this and shows how we are working to realize SCP’s vision of creating security for everyone and everything."
]]>Communications Officer II at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy
]]>Now, the team is working with the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to ensure that its breakthrough doesn’t remain confined to a competition environment. The team’s new initiative, OSS-CRS, aims to standardize and operationalize cyber reasoning systems (CRSs) for real-world use.
“The AI Cyber Challenge pushed the boundaries of autonomous software security, with seven teams developing systems capable of finding and remediating vulnerabilities at scale,” said Andrew Chin, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student and lead on the OSS-CRS program.
“However, after the competition’s conclusion, it has been difficult to apply these advancements to the open-source community due to infrastructure incompatibilities and the lack of long-term maintenance for the open-sourced CRS implementations.”
To address this gap, Georgia Tech’s Systems Software Lab (SSLab), directed by Professor Taesoo Kim, is leading the development of OSS-CRS, which provides both a common framework for CRS development and the infrastructure needed to deploy these systems seamlessly across open-source projects.
As part of this effort, the team has ported its competition-winning system, Atlantis, into the OSS-CRS framework. The move makes it compatible with laptops and other everyday machines with flexible resource and budget configurations.
Interoperability is also central to the framework’s design. Atlantis can be combined with other CRSs to improve performance, including systems developed by fellow AIxCC finalists and newer agentic, command-line-based tools. This modular approach reflects a key lesson the team learned from the competition: collaboration between systems can outperform any single solution.
OSS-CRS has been accepted as a sandbox project within OpenSSF’s AI/ML Security Working Group, a milestone that brings added technical guidance and community support to the project. This includes:
The collaboration will also foster stronger connections with open-source maintainers, helping streamline vulnerability disclosure and remediation workflows.
]]>They would normally get this in their natural habitats while foraging for food and staying alert to predators that might target calves.
However, the four elephants reside at Zoo Atlanta, so they don’t have to worry about these things.
That’s why zoo caretakers are always on the lookout for better ways to help their elephants exercise their brains.
The caretakers at Zoo Atlanta found one when they met Arianna Mastali, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. Mastali designed an audio enrichment wall to help stimulate Zoo Atlanta’s elephants.
Many zoos build concrete enrichment walls to foster elephant problem-solving and critical thinking. The walls usually have holes for the elephants to reach through with their trunks as they search for food, treats, or playful objects on the other side.
Mastali enhanced Zoo Atlanta’s enrichment wall by adding an interactive audio component. A nearby speaker system emits distinctive low-frequency tones when an elephant sticks its trunk into a hole.
“They’re intelligent creatures that require a lot of complexity in their habitat,” Mastali said. “We wanted to add to that complexity while giving them more control.”
Mastali’s system uses cameras and computer vision to detect when an elephant’s trunk is inside a hole and then sends a signal to the speakers to play a sound.
Mastali is a member of the Georgia Tech Animal Lab, directed by School of IC professor Melody Jackson. The lab often uses sensing technology to enhance animal wellness.
Mastali said she tried incorporating sensing devices into her project several times. She constructed an insert made of PVC pipe and attached a sensor to its base that used infrared beams to detect the elephant’s trunk.
However, she said it was difficult to account for the elephants’ strength. Their trunks would break the insert after a day or two.
She pivoted toward computer vision to remove the risk of damage and keep the enrichment wall as close to natural as possible.
“A big lesson we learned was that using existing materials the elephants are already familiar with was the best way to do things, and it simplified our design process,” she said.
Shane Rosse, a student in Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, assisted Mastali with the computer vision component.
Mastali observed the elephants’ behavior at the wall seven days before and seven days after the installation of the audio enrichment system.
The number of times the elephants approached the wall after installation increased by 176%, and time spent at the wall increased by 71%
“We weren’t sure at first if they would care that much, so it was great to see how much time they spent at the wall, especially our less dominant females,” said Kirby Miller, senior elephant caretaker at Zoo Atlanta. “They seem to like it the most.”
Miller said the elephants used to only approach the wall when they knew there was food behind it. That started to change after the audio enrichment system was installed.
“We would be off somewhere else, and we’d hear the speaker playing the sounds, and we knew there wasn’t any food back there,” Miller said. “Tara had her trunk in one of the holes, just listening to the sound. That let us know they do like it, and they’re very curious about it.”
Miller said because elephants have sharp memories and acute senses of hearing and smell, their habitats must be designed with that in mind.
Zoo Atlanta’s African Savanna elephant habitat was redesigned in 2019. In addition to the enrichment wall, it includes a bathing pond, two waterfalls, and swing boom devices that hold hay for elephants to eat as they would in the wild.
Miller said elephants sheltered at any zoo or conservation would benefit from enrichment devices enhanced by technology.
“I think anything they can participate in that gives them choice and control is great for all zoo elephants,” she said. “It depends on the elephants, but with our elephants, they can hear much higher frequencies than we can. That noise isn’t that loud for us, but for them, they’re feeling that noise, and they can hear much more, which makes it more stimulating for them.”
]]>The elephant enrichment wall at Zoo Atlanta recently received an upgrade thanks to a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student. Arianna Mastali designed an audio enrichment system that uses computer vision to detect when an elephant sticks its trunk into the enrichment wall as it searches for food. The system then sends a signal to play a unique tone from a nearby speaker that corresponds to each hole. So far, Mastali has found that elephant wall interactions have increased by 176%, and the elephants are visiting the wall even when there isn't food behind it.
]]>The College recognized outstanding achievements across faculty, staff, and students during the 35th Annual College of Computing Awards celebration, held on April 20 in the Klaus Atrium. Hosted by Dean Vivek Sarkar, the luncheon highlighted significant contributions to the College community, with several honorees from the School of Computing Instruction (SCI).
Undergraduate awards were presented by Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Olufisayo Omojokun, recognizing excellence in leadership, teaching, and research.
Undergraduate Awards:
Faculty Awards:
The celebration underscored SCI’s impact within the College, highlighting the breadth of excellence within its community.
The College recognized outstanding achievements across faculty, staff, and students during the 35th Annual College of Computing Awards celebration. Hosted by Dean Vivek Sarkar, the luncheon highlighted significant contributions to the College community, with several honorees from the School of Computing Instruction (SCI).
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