Faculty

Jason Liu is an Endowed in Computer Science Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida, USA.  Previously, he was a Research Scientist at Dartmouth ISTS in 2003, a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign during 2003-2004. He held a honorary position as Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, China, and was a Visiting Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC)/Laboratory of Information, Networking and Communication Sciences (LINCS). Jason Liu received a B.S. degree from Beijing University of Technology in China in 1993, an M.S. degree from College of William and Mary in 2000, and a Ph.D. degree from Dartmouth College in 2003.

Jason Liu’s research focuses on modeling and simulation, parallel discrete-event simulation, performance modeling and simulation of computer systems and computer networks. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS), SIMULATION, Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International, and IEEE Networking Letters. He is also on the Steering Committee of ACM SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation (SIGSIM-PADS). He served as General Chair or Program Chair for several conferences in related areas. Jason Liu is an NSF CAREER awardee in 2006 and an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2014. His research has been supported by various funding agencies, including NSF, DOE, DOD, DHS, and NIH.

Dr. Trevor Cickovski received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2008. He holds Graduate Faculty status and specializes in teaching hardware and Unix coursework, and is IRB-certified and a member of the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) at FIU. He also is a member of the ACM, IEEE, and the National Learning Assistant Alliance (LAA).

Before coming to FIU Trevor was Discipline Coordinator of Computer Science at Eckerd College, instructing a variety of computer science and cross-disciplinary liberal arts courses. He has received three teaching excellence awards, from the FIU College of Engineering (2019), FIU Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (2017), and from Notre Dame as a graduate instructor (2006). Trevor was named a Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) fellow in 2019, participating in a University-wide effort to improve teaching evaluation and developing a website for CAT referenced in Panther180. He has received funding from Nvidia to bring GPU computing to the classroom.

Trevor is passionate about health and explores roles played the microbiome in maintaining homeostasis. Microbiomes have enormous influence given their ubiquity and involvement in host metabolic reactions. He has explored connections with ADHD, A1AD, COPD, smoking, and red tides using multi-omics approaches that integrate DNA, RNA and metabolites through large-scale processing, GPUs, and network analyses. He has several peer-reviewed publications including JMM, LNBI, Bioinformatics, BMC, ICCABS, IWBBIO, and ACM TCBB. He has received funding from NIJ (epigenetics), and NSF (machine learning and Covid-19 vaccine discovery). Trevor is lead software developer of PluMA, facilitating natural progress by allowing construction of new ideas as plugins in a choice programming language. These can be uniformly tested alongside other plugins and committed to a centralized plugin pool. The PluMA plugin pool has grown from 70 to 225+ plugins from 2019 to 2020, and continues to grow.

Dr. Kemal Akkaya is a full professor in the KF School of Computing and Information Sciences with a joint courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University (FIU). He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2005 and joined the department of Computer Science at Southern Illinois University (SIU) as an assistant professor. Dr. Akkaya was an associate professor at SIU from 2011 to 2014. He was also a visiting professor at The George Washington University in Fall 2013, a Faculty Fellow at Airforce Research Lab in Summer 2020 and visiting faculty at University of Florida Nelms Institute of Connected World in 2021. Dr. Akkaya leads the Advanced Wireless and Security Lab (ADWISE) in the ECE Department. He is also acting as the Research Director for the FIU’s Emerging Preeminent Program in Cybersecurity, which is a university wide interdisciplinary program. His current research interests include security and privacy, internet-of-things, and cyber-physical systems. His research was funded by many agencies and industries including NSF, DoE, AFRL, DHS, NSA, INL, Cisco, and TrendMicro.  Dr. Akkaya is a Fellow of of IEEE. He has published over 270 papers in peer-reviewed journal and conferences with more than 18,000 citations and google h-index of 53. He was listed among the top 2% scientists in the world according to a Stanford University study in 2021 and 2022. Dr. Akkaya received FIU Faculty Senate Excellence in Research Award and FIU College of Engineering and Computing Research Award both in 2020. He also received Top Scholar Award at FIU in 2023. Dr. Akkaya has also received “Top Cited” article award from Elsevier in 2010. He holds 8 patents. More information about his research and lab can be obtained at http://web.eng.fiu.edu/kakkaya/ and http://adwise.fiu.edu/.

Dr. He received his BS and MS degrees in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 1982 and 1984 respectively; and his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Virginia Tech in 1989. He has joined FIU in 2000 after spending 10 years on the faculty at North Dakota State University. Dr. He’s research interests are in software engineering, especially formal methods. He is an internationally known expert on Petri nets. He has published 150 papers in international journals and conferences, and served on more than 80 international conference program committees. He serves on the editorial board of the Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Concurrency Models and several other journals. His research has been funded several major federal agencies including NSF, NASA, ONR, AFRL, and DOE. Dr. He has been a major adviser of 14 Ph.D. and 36 MS graduates.

Learn more about Dr. Iyengar research at Research Commercialization and Impact

Dr. S.S. Iyengar is currently the Distinguished University Professor, Ryder Professor of Computer Science and a former Director of the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU), Miami. He is also the founding director of the Discovery Lab. Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Iyengar was the Roy Paul Daniel’s Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Computer Science department for over 20 years at Lousiana State University. He has also worked as a visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Lab, Jet Propulsion Lab, Satish Dhawan Professor at IISc and Homi Bhabha Professor at IGCAR, Kalpakkam and University of Paris and visited Tsinghua University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) etc. His research interests include High-Performance Algorithms, Biomedical Computing, Sensor Fusion, and Intelligent Systems for the last four decades. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI Program), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Department of Energy / Oak Ridge National Laboratory (DOE/ORNL), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US Army Research Office (URO), and various state agencies and companies. He has served on the US National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health Panels to review proposals in various aspects of Computational Science and has been involved as an external evaluator (ABET-accreditation) for several Computer Science and Engineering Departments across the country and the world. Dr. Iyengar has also served as a research proposal evaluator for the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Iyengar is developing computational measures for predicting DNA mutations during cancer evolution, using wavelet analysis in cancer genome research, and designing smart biomarkers for bioremediation.  His inventions have significantly impacted biomedical engineering and medicine. He recently patented a simple, low-cost device for early intervention in glaucoma, and was involved in early detection of lung cancer by developing a 4D motion model jointly with Southwestern Medical School.

Dr. Iyengar is a Member of the European Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Fellow of the Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS), a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Dr. Iyengar has been the Chair for many IEEE conferences in the area of Sensor Networks, Computational Biology, Image processing, etc. He is also the founding editor of the International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, and he has been on the Editorial Board of many IEEE Journals including Transaction on Computers, Transactions and Data Knowledge Engineering, ACM Computing Surveys etc. Dr. Iyengar continues to be very active in multiple professional conferences and workshops in the areas of his research interest.

He was awarded Satish Dhawan Chaired Professorship at IISc, then Roy Paul Daniel Professorship at LSU. He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Indian Institute of Science. In 1998, he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Achievement award and is an IEEE Golden Core Member. He also received a Lifetime Achievement award conferred by International Conference on Agile manufacturing at IIT-BHU. Professor Iyengar is an IEEE Distinguished Visitor, SIAM Distinguished Lecturer, and ACM National Lecturer and has won many other awards like Distinguished Research Master’s award, Hub Cotton award of Faculty Excellence (LSU), Rain Maker awards (LSU), Florida Information Technology award (IT2), Distinguished Research award from Tunisian Mathematical Society etc. Dr. Iyengar was honored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Cybermatics Congress in Atlanta, Georgia, where he received the Outstanding Research Award known as the “Test of Time Award” for his work in creating the Brooks-Iyengar Algorithm (2019).

During the last four decades, he has supervised over 55 Ph.D. students, 100 Master’s students, and many undergraduate students who are now faculty at Major Universities worldwide or Scientists or Engineers at National Labs/Industries around the world. He has published more than 500 research papers, has authored/co-authored and edited 22 books. His books are published by MIT Press, John Wiley, and Sons, CRC Press, Prentice Hall, Springer Verlag, IEEE Computer Society Press, etc. One of his books titled “Introduction to Parallel Algorithms” has been translated to Chinese. During the last thirty years, Dr. Iyengar has brought in over 65 million dollars for research and education. He has been providing the students and faculty with a vision for active learning and collaboration at Louisiana State University, Florida International University, and across many Universities in China and India. He has received many outstanding Journal and Conference Paper awards with his students.

Read more about Dr. Iyengar research at Research Commercialization and Impact/Awards

In 2006, his paper entitled, A Fast Parallel Thinning Algorithm for the Binary Image Skeletonization, was the most frequently read article in the month of January in the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. His innovative work called the Brooks-Iyengar algorithm along with Prof. Richard Brooks from Clemson University is applied in industries to solve real-world applications. Dr. Iyengar’s work has a big impact; in 1988. We discovered “NC algorithms for Recognizing Chordal Graphs and K-trees” [IEEE Trans. on Computers 1988]. This breakthrough result led to the extension of designing fast parallel algorithms by researchers like J.Naor (Stanford), M.Naor (Berkeley), and A.A.Schaffer (AT&T Bell Labs). Professor Iyengar earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at UVCE-Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and a doctoral degree from Mississippi State University. Recently, Dr. Iyengar was awarded the IBM Faculty Award, FIU Top Scholar award, and NRI Gandhi Pravasi Award in London, along with a Medal Of Honor.

Sumit K. Jha is Professor of Computer Science at Florida International University (FIU). Dr. Jha received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, he graduated with B.Tech (Honors) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Dr. Jha has worked on R&D problems at Microsoft Research India, General Motors, INRIA France and the Air Force Research Lab Information Directorate. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), DARPA, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Royal Bank of Canada, the Florida Center for Cybersecurity, and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). He is a full member of the Sigma Xi and is a recipient of the IEEE Orlando Engineering Educator Excellence Award. Dr. Jha was awarded the prestigious Air Force Young Investigator Award and his research has led to four Best Paper awards. Over the last five years, Prof. Jha has published 12 papers in highly selective computer science conferences indexed by CSRankings.

Dr. Narasimhan is a professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing & Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU) and is an expert in the area of Algorithms, Bioinformatics, and Data Science. He recently served as the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computing. Dr. Narasimhan received a B.Tech. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. In 1989 he was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. After being on the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Memphis, he joined Florida International University as an associate professor in 2001 and was promoted to full professor in 2004. Dr. Narasimhan heads the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) in Knight Foundation School of Computing & Information Sciences, and is involved in interdisciplinary research collaborating with diverse groups form different disciplines. He has twice won the Excellence in Research Award from SCIS and also the Excellence in Research Award from FIU. He is on the steering committee of the Biomolecular Sciences Institute. He is on the editorial board of international journals and has been a Program Committee member on numerous international conferences. He has given many Keynote addresses at international conferences and is the recipient of many research, training and equipment grants from Federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, and Army Research Office, and State agencies such as the Florida Department of Health, and from the industry.

Dr. Pissinou has published over two hundred and fifty research papers in peer reviewed journals, conference proceedings and books chapters on networking, telecommunications, distributed systems, mobile computing, security and aspects of nontraditional data management including co-editing over four texts in the area of mobile and wireless networking and systems and over fourteen IEEE and ACM conference volumes. Widely cited in books and research papers, her research has been funded by NSF, DHS, NASA, DOT, DoD, state governments and industry. She has graduated over nineteen Ph.D. students who now hold positions in academia, federal government and industry. Dr. Pissinou has served as the general and technical program chair on a variety of ACM and IEEE conferences. She also served on hundreds of IEEE and ACM program committees, organizing committees, review panels, advisory boards, editorial boards etc. She has served as an editor of many journals including the IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering. She also has been the founder of many professional forums, including the ACM GIS. Dr. Pissinou has given keynote talks at various events and served as consultant to industry. Her achievements have been recognized by her peers, who have given her several awards and honors, including best paper awards.

Dr. Christian Poellabauer is a Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. He received his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 and worked as Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame from 2004 to 2021. At Notre Dame, he also served as Associate Director of the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society and Founding Director of the Applied Analytics and Emerging Technologies Lab. At FIU, he directs the MOSAIC (Mobile Sensing and Analytics) Lab, which focuses on developing novel personal, social, and crowdsensing solutions in a variety of application domains, primarily in the healthcare field. Notable outcomes of his lab’s research include the development of various solutions using mobile devices, wearables, and virtual assistants for the diagnosis of concussions, the rehabilitation progress of amputees and stroke survivors, the monitoring of the progression of neurological conditions, and the detection of depression in college students and PTSD in first responders. Other areas of interest include wireless/sensor/vehicular networks, the Internet-of-Things, and edge computing based AI solutions, just to name a few. He also has strong interest in assisting with students with startup efforts and he is a strong advocate for the early inclusion of undergraduate and high school students in hands-on research projects. He was named a Fulbright Scholar in 2018 and he has co-authored a textbook on Wireless Sensor Networks, which has been translated into Chinese and Persian. His research efforts have been supported by organizations such as the NIH, NSF (including a 2006 CAREER award), Department of Education, and DoD, and numerous private organizations and businesses such as IBM, Toyota, Ford Research, the National Football League, National Geographic, GE Health, Motorola Labs, among others.

Dr. Raju Rangaswami is a Professor of Computer Science at Florida International University where he directs the Systems Research Laboratory. His work has focused on computer systems and software, including operating systems, distributed systems, storage systems, computer security, and real-time systems as well as application domains such as web services, databases, cloud computing, and mobile computing. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Department of Energy Early CAREER Principal Investigator (ECPI) award, an Intel University Research Office (URO) Award, the IBM Faculty Award, Seagate Technology research award, and Faculty Fellowship awards from NetApp. 

Dr. Rishe has authored 6 books and edited 7 books on database management, location-based data, health informatics, and high performance computing. He is the inventor of 8 U.S. patents on database querying, semantic database performance, Internet data extraction, and computer medicine. Rishe has authored 300 papers in journals and proceedings on databases, software engineering, Geographic Information Systems, Internet, and life sciences. He was awarded over $55 million in research grants by Government and Industry, including NSF, NASA, IBM, DoI, DHS, USGS. Rishe is the Founder and Director of the High Performance Database Research Center at FIU (HPDRC) and of the NSF International FIU-FAU-Dubna-Greenwich Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement (I/UCRC). Rishe is the inaugural FIU Outstanding University Professor and Eminent Chair Professor in Computer Science.

Rishe’s principal projects are TerraFly (a 100 TB database of aerial imagery and Web-based GIS) and Medical Informatics.

Rishe’s TerraFly project has been extensively covered by the worldwide press, including the New York Times, USA Today, NPR, Science and Nature journals, and FOX TV News.

More at http://cake.fiu.edu/Rishe

Dr. Selcuk Uluagac is currently an Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Science at Florida International University, leading the Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab with an additional courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Before, he was a Senior Researcher at Georgia Tech and Symantec. He holds a PhD from Georgia Tech and MS from Carnegie Mellon University in cybersecurity.  He is an expert in the areas of cybersecurity and privacy with an emphasis on their practical aspects (focusing on systems security topics, malware, ransomware, forensics, IoT, CPS, smart systems) and teaches classes in these areas. He has hundreds of papers/studies/publications in the most reputable venues such as NDSS, USENIX Security, IEEE TIFS.  He received US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2015), US Air Force Office of Sponsored Research’s Summer Faculty Fellowship (2015), University of Padova (Italy)’s Faculty Fellowship (2016), Google’s ASPIRE Research award in security and privacy (2021), Faculty Fellowship from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy (2022),  FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Established Faculty with Significant Grants (STEM  Category), (2023), FIU Provost Office Top Scholar Award in Faculty with Notable Gains in Student Learning and Success (Sciences Category) (2021), FIU College of Engineering and Computing Faculty Award in Excellence in Research and Creative Activities (2021), FIU Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor in the College of Engineering and Computing (2020), among others. His research has been funded by numerous government agencies and industry, e.g., NSF, Dept. of Energy, Air Force Research Lab, Dept. of Labor, Cyber Florida, Google, Microsoft, Trend Micro, and Cisco, inter alia.  He is very entrepreneurial and visionary with his research. Many of his research ideas have resulted in patents (10+). He is chairing/serving on the of top-tier security conferences, e.g., NDSS, USENIX Security, ACM CCS, IEEE SP. In 2023, he was the TPC Chair of Security and ML Track of ACM CCS 2023 and was the General Chair of ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec) in 2019. In 2018, he co-chaired the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Annual Expo and Conference. In 2022, he was the TPC Co-Chair of IEEE CNS Conference. He currently serves as the deputy editor in-chief of IEEE TIFS and associate editors of IEEE TMC and Elsevier COMNET journals. More information can be obtained from http://nweb.eng.fiu.edu/selcuk/ and his lab at https://csl.fiu.edu/.

Mark Allen Weiss is Distinguished University Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education of the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University. He served as Interim Founding Director of the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering EDucation (SUCCEED) having previously served for nine years as Associate Director of the School of Computing and Information Sciences. His interests include data structures, algorithms, and education. He is most well-known for his highly-acclaimed Data Structures textbooks, which have been used by a generation of students. Per opensyllabus.org, he ranks among the top book authors in the entire field of computer science.

Professor Weiss is the author of numerous publications in top-rated journals and was recipient of the University’s Excellence in Research Award in 1994. From 1997-2004 he served as a member of the Advanced Placement Computer Science Development Committee, chairing the committee from 2000-2004. The committee designed the curriculum and wrote the AP exams that are now taken by 60,000 high school students annually. In recent years he served as an elected member of the ACM SIGCSE Board, is now co-leading an NSF-funded project to outline a 15-year agenda for CS Education research, with one goal being to assist NSF in setting its research priorities, and he is also working on Broadening Participation in Computing in South Florida. In addition to his Research Award, Professor Weiss is the recipient of the University’s Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2017 FIU Torch Award. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and an ACM Distinguished Educator. He is the recipient of two major ACM and two major IEEE Education awards, namely the 2015 ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education, the 2017 IEEE Computer Society Taylor L. Booth Education Award, the 2018 IEEE Education Society William E. Sayle Achievement in Education Award, and the 2021 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award.

Dr. Leonardo Bobadilla (FIU) is currently an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. He is interested in understanding the information requirements for solving fundamental robotics tasks such as navigation, patrolling, tracking, and motion safety and has deployed test-beds that can track and control a large number of mobile units that require minimal sensing, actuation, and computation. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has received several awards and has published 37 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers. His research articles have appeared in prestigious journals such as IEEE Journal of Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. His research has been sponsored by the Army Research Office, Department of Homeland Security, NSF, and the Ware Foundation. He has graduated three Ph.D. students and one master’s student who are well placed in major companies and universities.

Bogdan Carbunar is an Associate Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at FIU, and directs the Cyber Security and Privacy Research (CaSPR) Lab, where he develops secure and usable systems.  His research interests are at the intersection of security, privacy and distributed systems, where he derives novel insights through the use of machine learning, applied cryptography and user studies. His recent interests include fraud and abuse detection in online systems (e.g., Google, Facebook, Yelp), mobile authentication and cryptocurrency-based censorship resistance. He has published papers in top tier conferences and journals (see link above for details) some of which have received best paper awards. He holds a PhD in computer science from Purdue University and a BS from Politehnica University Bucharest.

Peter J. Clarke received his BSc. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill) in 1987, MS degree from SUNY Binghamton University in 1996 and PhD in Computer Science from Clemson University in 2003. His research interests are in the areas of software testing, software metrics, model-driven software development, domain-specific modeling languages and computer science education. He has published over 75 research papers and is the PI on several NSF grants. He is a member of: ACM (SIGSOFT, SIGCSE, and SIGAPP); IEEE Computer Society; and the Association for Software Testing (AST).

Dr. Mark A. Finlayson is an Eminent Scholar Chaired Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from MIT in 2012 under the supervision of Patrick H. Winston. He also received his M.S. from MIT in 2001 and his B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1998, both in Electrical Engineering. Before joining SCIS he was a Research Scientist in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) for 2½ years. His research focuses on representing, extracting, and using higher-order semantic patterns in natural language, especially focusing on narrative. His work intersects artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. He directs the Cognac Laboratory (The Cognition, Language, and Culture lab), whose members focus on investigating the science of narrative from a computational point of view. His research has been funded by the NSF, NIH, DARPA, OSD, ONR, DHS, and IBM. He was the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in 2018 and an IBM Faculty Award in 2019. He was named Edison Fellow for Artificial Intelligence for 2019-2021 at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He has received multiple teaching awards at FIU, plus an FIU faculty award for research and creative activities in 2019.

Dr. Christine Lætitia Lisetti is an Associate Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University, and the director of the Affective Social Computing Laboratory (ascl.cs.fiu.edu). She received her Ph.D. in computer science from Florida International University in 1995, and in 1996 she was awarded the Individual Research Award from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to conduct her Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Stanford University, jointly in computer science and psychology. She joined FIU from ENST/Sophia, France where she was a professor, and was previously an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Lisetti’s work on affective social computing aims at creating digital and engaging socially intelligent agents that can interact naturally with humans via expressive multi-modalities in a variety of contexts involving socio-emotional content. Her interests involve research on virtual characters for healthcommunication and behavior change. While in Europe, her research was supported by grants from the European Commission (EC), EUREKA Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA), the Provence-Alpes Cote d’Azur (PACA) Regional R&D Program, and ST Microelectronics. Dr. Lisetti has received funding from Interval Research Corporation, Intel Corporation, Vcom3D, as well as from Federal funding agencies including the Office of Naval Research (ONR), US Army STRICOM, NASA Ames, the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Christine Lisetti is on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, the first journal in her field of research which launched in 2010. She is the recipient of the 2000 AAAI Nils Nilsson Award, and the author of numerous scientific articles. She has served on various program committees of international conferences, she has co-chaired several international events on affective computing, and has been an invited speaker at international conferences. Dr. Lisetti has served as a research expert for the National Science Foundation (USA), for the “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” (FRANCE), for the “Fonds de Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies” (CANADA), and for the European Commission (BELGIUM).

Dr. Deng Pan received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2007. His research interests are generally in high performance switch design and high speed networking. His current research focuses on network function virtualization, data center networking, and energy efficient networking. He has published over fifty peer-reviewed papers in leading refereed journals and conferences, including the IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE INFOCOM, and IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium. He has served as local arrangement co-chair or technical program committee member in many international conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE GLOBECOM, and ICPP.

Dr. Prabakar developed a scheme to access vast amount of spatial data from a semantic database and flyover the data in real-time – this emerged as TerraFly software from High Performance Database Research Center, FIU. He has also designed dynamic mosaicking algorithms for spatial images and integrated vector GIS data with spatial data sets. Towards external funding, eight grant proposals were funded for a total amount of $13.7M with Dr. Prabakar’s role in these proposals as Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, or Senior Investigator. Currently, Dr. Prabakar is working with a team of his colleagues on a fault-tolerant distributed computing grid with large number of sensors.

See Dr. Prabakar’s CV here.

Masoud Sadjadi received the B.S. degree in Hardware Engineering in 1995, the M.S. degree in Software Engineering in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University in 2004. Dr. Sadjadi is currently an Associate Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University, where he has been on the faculty since 2004. He is the Director of the Center of Partnership for International Research & Education (PIRE) funded by the National Science Foundation for $2.3 million. He is also the Director of the Autonomic Cloud Research Laboratory (ACRL) and leads several projects under the Latin American Grid initiative. He has extensive experience in software development and leading large scale software engineering projects both in industry and in academia. Currently, he is collaborating with top researchers in 8 countries and is leading several international collaborative research projects. He is serving as a General Chair of SEKE 2012 and has served as the Program Chair, Co-Chair, and Committee Member of several top-tier international conferences and workshops of his field. He has served as a referee for several IEEE and SP&E journals and as a referee and panelist for several funding agencies including National Science Foundation (NSF), Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), and Florida Sea Grant. His current research interests include Distributed Systems, Software Engineering, Autonomic Computing, High-Performance Computing, Grid Computing, Cloud Computing, Pervasive Systems, and Mobile Computing. He has more than 80 refereed publications and is PI or Co-PI of 17 grants from NSF, IBM, Kaseya, TeraGrid, and FIU for a total of about $6 million. He is a member of the IEEE and can be reached at sadjadi@cs.fiu.edu and http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~sadjadi/.

Dr. Fahad Saeed is an Award-winning Scientist, Entrepreneur, and Tenured Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU), Miami FL and is the director of Saeed Lab at FIU. Dr. Saeed’s research interests are at the intersection of machine-learning, high performance computing and real-world applications, especially in computational biology.

Dr. Saeed has published 90+ peer-reviewed research papers in leading proceedings, and journals, and 1 Book Chapter, edited 4 Conference Proceedings, 3 special issue journals, and 1 Book. His research is supported by highly competitive grants mainly from National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has been awarded over US$ 3.9 million in external research funds – with more than US$ 2.7 million as a PI (since 2015). He was awarded the NSF Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award bestowed to young and promising scientists in the first two years of their tenure-track position. Most recently he was awarded the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award which is NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. His research has been supported by NVIDIA, Intel/Altera, Xilinx, National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Prior to joining FIU, Prof. Saeed was a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science at Western Michigan University (WMU), Kalamazoo Michigan since Jan 2014. He was tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at WMU in August 2018. Dr. Saeed was a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then a Research Fellow in the Systems Biology Center at National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda MD from Aug 2010 to June 2011 and from June 2011 to January 2014 respectively. He received his PhD in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2010. He has served as a visiting scientist in world-renowned prestigious institutions such as Department of Bio-Systems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE), ETH Zürich, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) and  Epithelial Systems Biology Laboratory (ESBL) at National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr. Saeed is a Senior Member of ACM and also a Senior Member of IEEE. His honors include ThinkSwiss Fellowship (2007,2008), NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship Award (2010), Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) at NIH (2012), NSF CRII Award (2015), WMU Outstanding New Researcher Award (2016), WMU Distinguished Research and Creative Scholarship Award (2018),  , NSF CAREER Award (2017), FIU KFSCIS Excellence in Applied Research Award (2020). More recently he was recognized as “Top Scholar” in “Research and Creative Activities” by FIU in 2022.

Dr. Mo Sha is an Associate Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). Before joining FIU, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Binghamton University – State University of New York. His research interests include wireless networking, Internet of Things, applied machine learning, network security, and cyber-physical systems. He published more than 50 research papers, served on the technical program committees of 16 premier conferences, and reviewed paper for 21 journals. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2021, the NSF CRII award in 2017, and the Educator of the Year in Computer Science award and the Career Champion award at Binghamton University in 2018. He is a senior member of IEEE, a senior and lifetime member of ACM, and a member of Sigma Xi.

Ning Xie received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2012 from MIT. His research interests are in many aspects of algorithmic and complexity theory, including property testing, local computation algorithms, Fourier analysis of Boolean functions, circuit complexity and coding theory. His research has been supported by NSF and U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program.

Dr. Afanasyev is currently an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. Prior joining FIU, he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and before that a postdoctoral scholar in UCLA. His main research focus is on the next generation Internet architecture as part of the Named Data Networking (NDN) project; and his research interests include a variety of topics that are vital for the success of NDN, including scalability of name-based routing, auto-configuration, distributed data synchronization, application and network security. Dr. Afanasyev’s postdoctoral achievements have been recognized by the UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research. He is also leading the development effort of the overall NDN codebase.

Dr. Afanasyev’s particular interest currently is application of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) to Internet-of-Things (IoT), specifically realizing the vision of IoT where applications securely communicate with and about “things” without being concerned about specific details of the devices/controllers that represent things.

M. Hadi Amini is an Assistant Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at FIU. He is the founding director of Sustainability, Optimization, and Learning for InterDependent networks laboratory (www.solidlab.network). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019, where he received his M.Sc. degree in 2015. He also holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science and Technology. Since founding solid lab, his research on advanced machine learning algorithms/optimization and their applications has been extensively funded by various federal and state agencies, with a total funding of $3.6M ($1.82M as PI and $1.78M as Co-PI).

His research interests include distributed machine learning/optimization algorithms, federated learning, interdependent networks, and cyber-physical-social resilience and cybersecurity. Application domains include smart cities, transportation networks, healthcare, and energy systems. Hadi is a Senior Member of IEEE, and a life member of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN), the honor society of IEEE. He served as President of Carnegie Mellon University Energy Science and Innovation Club; as technical program committee of several IEEE and ACM conferences; and as the lead editor for a book series on ‘‘Sustainable Interdependent Networks’’ since 2017. He also serves as Associate Editor of Data Science for Communications (Frontiers in Communications and Networks). He has published more than 150 refereed journal and conference papers, and book chapters. He edited/authored eight books. He is the co-recipient of the best paper award from “2019 IEEE Conference on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence”, 2021 best journal paper award from “Springer Nature Operations Research Forum Journal”, the Excellence in Teaching Award from FIU School of Computing and Information Sciences in 2020, best reviewer award from four IEEE Transactions, the best journal paper award in “Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy”, and the dean’s honorary award from the President of Sharif University of Technology.

Janki Bhimani’s primary research focus revolves around Flash-Based Storage Systems, Big Data Processing, Cloud Computing, High-Performance Computing, and Parallel and Distributed Computing. Her research interest also includes Performance Modeling, Resource Management, and Capacity Planning for various emerging inter-disciplinary research domains. With her extraordinary expertise and extensive experience in the field of new emerging flash-based storage systems and devices, she has made significant contributions to the data storage management community. She is the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Research Award of 2019 from Northeastern University. She also received Best Paper Awards from flagship conferences. Her work is published in highly selective conferences and journals. She is also the main inventor of top graded patents. Hand-in-hand with her research, she is very passionate about teaching and mentoring. Prior to joining at Florida International University, she previously served Northeastern University as an instructor. She also closely worked with research scientists at Samsung Semiconductor Research Labs towards evolving flash-based SSDs. In her free time, Janki is a creative visual artist. Far from home, amidst nature, she finds her inspiration to paint. She enjoys understanding the impact of art on human psychology, and she can painterly bring motivation, healing, and encouragement through the canvas.

Wenqian Dong is an assistant professor of KFSICS department of Florida International University. She studied her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Merced. Her research focuses on high performance computing system (HPC). She is particularly interested in using machine learning techniques to improve performance of scientific applications. During her Ph.D., she has published a set of papers in various top HPC conferences, including two published in the prestigious Supercomputing Conference (SC), the flagship conference in the HPC field. She also received the UCM Bobcat Fellowship in 2018 and 2020. Wenqian was a research intern in the HP labs and is a research intern in the Pacific Northwest National Lab. Her work on power grid simulation was highlighted at the DOE science news and PNNL media.

Dr. Kharraz is an Assistant Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at FIU. Dr. Kharraz is the director of systems security lab (https://theseclab.org) where he conducts research on advanced malware attacks, web and browser security. Dr. Kharraz received his Ph.D. from Northeastern University in Systems Security. He was a postdoctoral researcher for two years in Coordinated Science Lab (CSL) at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign. Dr. Kharraz’s research has been funded by Microsoft AI Security, CITES NSF/IUCRC center, National Security Agency.

Dr. Kharraz’s research revolves around empirical systems security and privacy. An overarching theme of his research has been to enable evaluating implications of emerging technologies and their associated threats at scale. His research focuses on applying data-driven techniques to build research tools that can assist discovering those threats in a scalable and reliable manner. He has been consistently serving in the program committee of known security venues. His research on in-browser cryptojacking received the best paper award at the Web Conference (WWW) in 2019. He developed a scalable threat intelligence tool, Unveil, which analyzed more than 2 million binaries for more than two years. The output of the system has been used directly in more than 50 research papers.

Dr. Dongsheng Luo is currently an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. He obtained his doctoral degree from the College of Information Science and Technology, Pennsylvania State University in 2022. Before that, he received B.Eng. degree from Beihang University in 2017. His research focuses on data mining, deep learning, and natural language processing. He is particularly interested in developing robust, integrative, and explainable tools that extract clean and human-understandable knowledge from noisy and heterogeneous network data, with applications in neuroscience, system management, and biomedicine.

Dr. Ananda Mohan Mondal is currently an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). His research interests include Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning with Special Interest in Deep Learning, and Bioinformatics.

Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Mondal was an Assistant Professor (2012-2018) of Computer Science in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Claflin University, South Carolina. At Claflin University, a liberal arts and primarily undergraduate teaching institute, Dr. Mondal was a strong proponent of bringing research to undergraduate classes he taught. He developed four courses to introduce his research in Big Data and Bioinformatics to undergraduate students at Claflin University. Students mentored by Dr. Mondal graduated with refereed publications in IEEE BIBE, IEEE BIBM, and BIOCOMP. As the culmination of his career at Claflin, Dr. Mondal received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2017. He was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at Claflin University in August 2018. In Bangladesh, Dr. Mondal served as a Lecturer and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2011.

Dr. Mondal has served as the session chairs for the IEEE BIBM, IEEE BIBE, and BIOCOMP. He is a peer reviewer for Bioinformatics and IEEE BIBM. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, and ISCB.

Dr. Mondal received the Research Excellence Award twice (2015 and 2017) from the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Claflin University. He also received The Attorney William H. and Annette B. Johnson Endowed Annual Faculty Award for Innovative Scientific Research Award at Claflin University (2017). Dr. Mondal is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award (2017).

Cuong Nguyen is an Assistant Professor of the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University. Before joining FIU, he was an Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) from 2018-2021, working on machine learning with applications to computer vision and natural language processing. Before AWS, he was a postdoc at the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore from 2015-2016 and then at the Department of Engineering, Cambridge University from 2016-2018. He received Bachelor and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the School of Computing, National University of Singapore in 2010 and 2015 respectively. His research interests include probabilistic machine learning and artificial intelligence, with applications to real-world problems in computer vision and natural language processing. He has regularly published at top conferences and journals in machine learning and artificial intelligence, including the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

Dr. Agoritsa Polyzou is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). Before joining FIU, she was a postdoctoral Fritz family fellow in the Massive Data Institute (MDI) of McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2020, and her Bachelor in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras, Greece. She is engaging in projects at the intersection of big data, machine learning, ethics, and fairness. Her research interests include data mining, recommender systems, the application of machine learning techniques within educational contexts, and the fairness concerns that arise from their use. Her goal is to help students succeed using data and machine learning models. At the same time, she is interested in ensuring that such models will be fair and responsible.

Dr. Farhad Shirani received his Ph.D. from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2016. He was a Research Assistant Professor at New York University in 2016-2020. His research focuses in the areas of privacy and security, wireless communications, and machine learning.

Dr. Ruimin Sun graduated from University of Florida in 2019 (under Dr. Daniela Oliveira) and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences (working with Dr. Long Lu) at Northeastern University. Her research aims at securing ubiquitous systems (desktop, mobile, IoT/CPS) and protect end users from cyber-attacks through enhanced security mechanisms with intelligent defense strategies. Her research focuses on cyber physical system security, mobile device information privacy, real-time anomaly detection, and system security and reliability.

Dr. Xuyu Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. Before joining FIU, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at California State University, Sacramento. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Auburn University in 2018. His research interests include wireless sensing, Internet of Things, wireless localization, smart health, wireless networks, and AI security. He received the NSF CRII Award in 2021. He was a co-recipient of the Second Prize of the Natural Scientific Award of the Ministry of Education, China, in 2013, the IEEE INFOCOM 2022 Best Demo Award, the IEEE ICC 2022 Best Paper Award, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society 2020 Jack Neubauer Memorial Award, the IEEE GLOBECOM 2019 Best Paper Award, the IEEE ComSoc MMTC Best Journal Paper Award in 2018, the IEEE PIMRC 2017 Best Student Paper Award, and the IEEE SECON 2017 Best Demo Award. He was invited to organize AI health tutorials at CVPR 2020, ICC 2022, and CVPR 2022, a special session at IEEE BHI 2021, and give a keynote speech at CVPM 2020. He is an editor of Elsevier Book titled “Contactless Vital Signs Monitoring”. He is also an associate editor of Elsevier Digital Communications and Networks and a guest editor of ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks.

Dr. Yanzhao Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 2017 and then received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022. His research interests are primarily centered on the intersection of machine learning and computing systems, including machine learning algorithm and system optimizations, deep learning, edge AI, and big data analytics. His work has been published in top venues, including CVPR, ICSE, IEEE ICDCS, IEEE ICDM, IEEE TSC, and ACM TOIS, and won the IEEE CIC 2021 best paper award. He also serves as a reviewer for top conferences and journals, such as ICDE, WWW, CVPR, ECCV, AAAI, IEEE ICDCS, IEEE TKDE, and ACM TOIT.

Wenbin Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing & Information Sciences at Florida International University, and an Associate Member at the Te Ipu o te Mahara Artificial Intelligence Institute. His research investigates the theoretical foundations of machine learning with a focus on societal impact and welfare. In addition, he has worked in a number of application areas, highlighted by work on healthcare, geophysics, transportation, forestry, and finance. He is a recipient of the NSF CRII Award, and best paper awards at FAccT, ICDM (best paper candidate) and DAMI (top 10 articles). He also regularly serves in the organizing committees across computer science and interdisciplinary venues, most recently Volunteer Chair at WSDM’24, Student Program Chair at AIES’23, and Student Travel Award Chair at ICDM’23.

Professor Weiss received her M.S. in Computer Science Education from Barry University in 1992, and has worked in the computer industry since 1985 in different capacities, mostly in computer education. She has been involved in all facets of the computer industry, including hardware/software installation, repair, troubleshooting, consulting, programming, and (multi-unit) managing training centers for a major Fortune 100 retailer. Professor Weiss worked as a computer consultant/trainer for several large companies and has trained users from various county and government agencies.

Professor Weiss has been teaching in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences since 1989 as an adjunct, and since 1999 as a full-time faculty member, and was promoted to Senior Instructor in 2012, and University Instructor in 2018. She primarily teaches the School’s service courses and since 2000, she has provided World’s Ahead instruction to over 25,000 FIU students. She is the recipient of the School of Computing and Information Science’s Excellence in Teaching award in 2008 and 2013 and the FIU University Excellence in Teaching award in 2015.

Kianoosh Ghoami Boroojeni received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Florida International University in 2017. He received his B.Sc degree from the University of Tehran in 2012. Dr. Boroojeni is the author/co-author of five books published by MIT Press and Springer Publication. He has also published tens of peer-reviewed journal papers and conference proceedings. He received a conference Best Paper Award and has been granted the 2016 Best Graduate Student Research Award by the School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University. His research interests include network optimization and cybersecurity.

As an instructor for SCIS,  Ms. Charters enjoys teaching the courses that start students off in their IT or CS major: COP 1000, COP 2250, COP 3804, and COP 3337. She is passionate about spreading Computer Science education to all children, starting in kindergarten, through elementary, middle, and high school. She also believes that all students at FIU should get a chance to learn how Computer Science impacts their lives, and to dabble in a little bit of coding in languages such as Python and tools like MIT App Inventor. That is why she helped develop a new online course, IDC 1000 – Computer Science for Everyone, which is designed for students who are non-CS and non-IT majors. She would like all students at FIU to consider taking IDC 1000.

Prior to teaching at FIU, Ms. Charters had 2 other careers.  Most recently, she was an educator and teacher-trainer within the Miami-Dade County Public School District.   Her first career was as a Computer Programmer/Analyst for FPL, where she developed mainframe and client/server systems. She is an FIU alumni, and feels blessed to be able to work in SCIS as an Instructor, after having graduated from FIU with a degree in Computer Science many years ago.

Dr. Hernandez is a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Mathematics with Master’s thesis and Doctoral dissertation in the area of Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hiroshima in 1997 and was a postdoctoral researcher in the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology from 1997 to 1999 under the JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Foreign Researchers. He has a career of more than 20 years in higher education, encompassing interdisciplinary areas of Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Dr. Hernandez research interests include computational geometry and its applications, data structures, algorithms, robotics, optimization, and computer science education and has published papers in leading journals and conferences. In the classroom, Dr. Hernandez favors the use of innovative teaching and learning strategies that emphasize an active learning approach.

Over 45 years as a professional software developer and system software specialist, from mainframes to PCs. Now sharing my passion for technology to help launch the next generation of experts.

Caryl Rahn received her Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York College at Potsdam in 1978, and Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989. She spent over 20 years working in industry and taught for about 18 years. She is an author on two United States patents written while working at IBM.

Joslyn Smith, an instructor, joined the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University in 1997. Joslyn came to FIU with fourteen years of teaching experience from the University of the West Indies, as a lecturer in computer science, in the undergraduate program. Mr. Smith holds an M.S and a B.S in mathematics both from Central Connecticut State University, CT. He earned an M.S degree in computer science from the University of New Brunswick Canada, and a non-degree Certificate in computer science from Clarke University, Massachusetts. Mr. Smith also holds a professional certificate in teacher education from the Mico University College, Jamaica. At FIU, Mr. Smith’s major focus in programming language is the object oriented paradigm. Over the years he has attended many conferences on computer science education. He has served as reviewer for the SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education and has reviewed several manuscripts for major publishers such as McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall.

Dr. Kaoutar Ben Ahmed has over 6 years of experience in education and over 11 years of experience in research on the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve real world problems. Dr. Ben Ahmed received her first Ph.D. degree in information science from Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco in 2016. She received her second Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering from the University of South Florida, USA in Dec, 2022. Her main research concerns addressing automatic medical image analysis problems using novel deep learning methods. Dr. Ben Ahmed’s research interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, and deep learning. She is a recipient of the 2018 American Association of University Women Fellowship and the 2015 Fulbright Joint-Supervision Scholarship.

Dr. Juan F. Mancilla-Caceres received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has experience in research both in academia as well as industry, having worked as an Applied Research at Microsoft and as the Director of Data Science and AI for Parknav, a start up in Smart Cities. His teaching and research interests lie in the intersection of AI and Human Computer Interaction, including topics like Ethics in AI, Modelling Human Behavior, and Multidisciplinary Research in general.

Dr. Mustafa Ocal is a distinguished researcher and academic in the field of Computer Science. He holds both a PhD and an MS degree from Florida International University, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. Throughout his doctoral studies, Dr. Ocal’s research has centered on addressing core challenges in these domains, particularly in the realm of data science. His contributions have been recognized through the publication of numerous scientific articles at prestigious conferences and publishers, reflecting his expertise and scholarly impact. Moreover, Dr. Ocal has co-authored a book published by Cambridge University Press. Notably, he also holds a US-Patent for an Artificial Intelligence model of his own creation, demonstrating his innovative approach to problem-solving in the field.

In addition to his research contributions, Dr. Ocal is passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of computer scientists. With a wealth of knowledge and expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing, he excels in effectively conveying complex concepts to students. Dr. Ocal’s extensive teaching experience spans across various universities, where he has delivered both undergraduate and graduate-level courses. He has mentored numerous aspiring computer science students at both undergraduate and graduate levels, providing them with invaluable guidance and support in their academic pursuits.

Dr. Sergio Pisano is an engineer with a passion for teaching and technology.  He received his Bachelor of Science in Systems Engineering at Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela, Master of Science in Telecommunications and Networking at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, and Doctor of Education at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He has worked in a variety of information technology positions and has been teaching since 2011. His academic interests include Game-Based Learning and novel teaching methodologies.

Dr. Gregory Murad Reis is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, an Environmental Finance Fellow at FIU’s Environmental Finance & Risk Management (EFRM), and an Affiliated Faculty in the FIU Institute of Environment. With over 20 years of experience teaching Mathematics and Computer Science courses, Dr. Reis is a highly respected educator with expertise in early, elderly, and special education.

Dr. Reis is also an accomplished researcher with a focus on Marine Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and STEM Education. He has mentored over fifty students, including undergraduate, master’s and PhD students in several programs, such as the Science without Borders’s Summer Research Program, NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), and NSF’s Research Experience for Teachers (RET). Dr. Reis has published several papers in conferences and journals on localization and navigation of aquatic robots in GPS-denied environments, analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the ocean, and the development of new technologies for environmental monitoring. He has been Co-PI, Senior Personnel and PI in over 6 million dollars in research grants, such as DoD, FDEP, NSF, and CAPES.

Dr. Reis is also committed to developing robotics curriculum for the K-12 educational system in the United States and in Brazil. His efforts have earned him the 2022 Best Teaching Award at the FIU Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. He was also recognized with the 2019 Best Student Award at Gammon Presbyterian Institute. Besides, he received a nomination for the 2023 FIU Sustainability Award and the 2023 Rewarding Excellence in Teaching Initiative (RETI).

Dr. Reis brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to contribute to a wide range of academic areas. In addition, Dr. Reis is deeply committed to advancing STEM education and environmental research. He has a passion for helping students to develop their skills and explore their interests in these areas, and his dedication to these fields serves as an inspiration to both students and faculty. Dr. Reis is known for his approachable and supportive demeanor. He takes great pride in providing his students with ample opportunities to enhance their scientific skills and cultivate social responsibility, thereby enabling them to succeed in their chosen careers and become responsible and environmentally conscious citizens.

Gregory has also served as the Robotics Coach for the Ultimate Software Academy for Computer Science Education for over 4 years, teaching professional development courses in robotics and coding for K-12 teachers in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). He is currently transforming the K-12 curriculum by including project-based robotics activities and competitions.

Tiana Solis has been teaching at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences for over 20 years. She received her Bachelor and Master degrees in Computer Science from the State University of New York Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome in 1992 & 1994. Ms. Solis was a programmer analyst at the Department of The Attorney General in Hawaii in 2008-2010, a member of the team revamping the State Juvenile Justice Information System. Her research and instructional interests include student success and retention, distance learning, software development, and programming languages.

Dr. Walker has a passion for helping students explore science and technology. She has taught a wide range of technology  and technology related courses at the secondary and post secondary levels. Her teaching interests include programming, web building and cyber security. In addition, she has taught courses exploring the underrepresentation of traditionally underserved populations in science and technology as well as the contributions of women to science and technology. She is passionate about broadening the participation in computer science. Her research interests include the causes of underrepresentation of traditionally underrepresented populations in science and technology and the influence of technology on our perceptions of gender and identity.

Dr. Ahmad Waqas is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University (FIU). Before joining FIU, he was working as an Associate Professor and Head of Department in the Department of Computer Science, Sukkur IBA University Pakistan. He has been involved in research and teaching for more than fourteen years.

Dr. Waqas received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science, International Islamic University Malaysia. He received his MS in Computer Communication and Networks from Sukkur IBA Pakistan, and MCS (Master’s in Computer Science) from University of Karachi with merit positions. His teaching and research interests include Blockchain, Distributed Computing, Computing architectures, Compilers, theoretical computer science, Operating Systems, Data structure and algorithms. He has published quality research papers in renowned international journals and conference proceedings.

Dr. Waqas initiated the Sukkur IBA Journal of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (SJCMS) and served as Chief Editor for four years. He has also organized many international conferences that were technically sponsored by IEEE. He is also working as editorial board member of numerous journals and program committee member for various international conferences.

Richard’s interests are both computer science and economics and he holds Ph.Ds in both fields. His research specializes in the dynamics of complex systems to analyze global financial arbitrage. He has been involved in the development and deployment of algorithmic trading systems and has specialized in Global structural components, with a focus on manufacturing processes. He has over 20 years of hands-on experience in the metal fabrication trade.

Dr. Samira Zad is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. She was an instructor at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Florida Atlantic University. She received her Ph.D. degree from FIU in 2022 (supervised by Dr. Mark Finlayson). During her Ph.D., she received a scholarship from the Department of Homeland Security to support her Ph.D. She also received her M.S. from Northeastern Illinois University in computer science in 2016. Her area of expertise is in natural language processing, machine learning, text mining, semantic analysis, and emotion detection.

Stephanie J. Lunn is an Assistant Professor in the School of Universal Computing, Construction, and Engineering Education and the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University (FIU). She also has a secondary appointment in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (KFSCIS). Her research interests span the fields of computing and engineering education, human-computer interaction, data science, and machine learning.

Previously, Dr. Lunn earned her doctorate in computer science from the KFSCIS at FIU. She also holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from FIU and B.S. and M.S. degrees in neuroscience from the University of Miami. In addition, she served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University (FIU). He also has a secondary appointment in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. Dr. Rahman joined FIU as an Assistant Professor in Spring 2019. Before joining FIU, he was with the Department of Computer Science at Tennessee Tech University. He obtained a Ph.D. in computing and information systems from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2015. Previously, He received BS and MS degrees in computer science and engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Dr. Rahman lead the Analytics of Cyber Defense (ACyD) Lab at FIU. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM.

Immediately after his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Information Sciences from Case Western Reserve University in December 1977, Dr. Jai Navlakha joined Florida International University, where he was promoted to the position of Full Professor in September 1987. He served as the Director of the School of Computer Science in three stints: 1988-1992, 1999-2002, and 2009-2011. From 2006 to 2009, he was the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and the Director of Corporate & Global Programs in the College of Engineering & Computing.

Since 2011, he is the coordinator for internal assessment and ABET accreditation of the BS in CS Program. Under his guidance, the School received its last ABET accreditation in Summer 2017. This Self-Study Report was selected for display of “Well-Prepared Self-Study Reports” at the 2017 ABET Symposium held in April 2017.

His research; in the areas of Program Verification, Analysis of Algorithms, Expert Systems, Neural Network Applications, and Disaster Management; is extensively published in reputed Journals and International Conferences. Currently, he is actively involved in CS education and student mentorship. In March 2018, he taught an intensive one-week self-designed new course on Disaster Informatics at MNIT in Jaipur, India. In May 2018, he was an invited speaker at the NIAS-MAIYA Mentoring Workshop in Bangalore, India.