PhD Students
Mehdi Azabou
Email: mazabou3@gatech.edu
Program: Machine Learning, ECE
Bio: Mehdi is a fourth-year PhD student in Machine Learning at Georgia Tech. He received his MS in Engineering from CentraleSupelec, France in 2019 and a MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2020. His interests lie in deep learning, computational neuroscience and representation learning on graphs and manifolds. He is excited about finding applications of machine learning that can improve our understanding of the brain and is an enthusiast for dynamic and interactive visualizations that can provide insights into complex data and enable new ways of thinking
Webpage: http://www.mehai.dev/
Zihao Chen
Email: zchen959@gatech.edu
Program: Machine Learning, ECE
Bio: Zihao Chen is a first year PhD student in Machine Learning at Georgia Tech. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Wuhan University and Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from Fudan University in 2023. Zihao is interested in the confluence of machine learning, stochastic dynamics, and optimization theory. His research is currently focused on representation learning and optimization theory. Besides, he applies machine learning and reinforcement learning techniques to solve real-world problems, such as mining factors in the stock market. He leads an active lifestyle, full of jogging, swimming, and fitness.
Divyansha Lachi
Email: divyansha.lachi@gatech.edu
Program: Machine Learning, ECE
Bio: Divyansha Lachi will be joining the lab as a Ph.D. student in Machine Learning in Fall 2023. She received her B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India. She is broadly interested in understanding biological intelligence to build better artificial intelligence. She wants to understand how the brain can robustly learn from just a handful of examples and develop machine-learning models capable of the same. To this end, some of her current interests include incorporating modularity in artificial neural networks (ANN) for functional specialization and improving Graph Neural Networks (GNN) by incorporating topological features of the brain (like long-range transmission). In her free time, Divyansha enjoys playing tennis and binging TV shows.
Webpage: https://divyansha1115.github.io/
Ran Liu
Email: rliu361@gatech.edu
Program: Machine Learning, ECE
Bio: Ran is a Machine Learning PhD student at Georgia Tech. Originally from mainland China, Ran received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from Fudan University with a lot of extra courses in data science, mathematics, and social science. Ran is broadly interested in machine learning and deep learning, and is particularly passionate about problems that utilize advanced machine learning algorithms on challenging practical problems in the field of health. Outside of research, Ran enjoys observing online communities and playing with her super adorable cat whose Instagram is @tiggerisasmalltiger.
Webpage: https://ranliu98.github.io/
Kevin Tynes
Email: kdtynes@gatech.edu
Program: Machine Learning (CSE)
Bio: Kevin is a PhD student in Machine Learning at Georgia Tech. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Kevin’s research has applied machine learning and computer vision methods to consumer images, drug delivery systems, and high-dimensional genomics data. His current interests are in leveraging graph machine learning and multi-modal models to study chemical and biomedical systems. Outside of research, Kevin is passionate about advocating for underrepresented minorities in STEM fields.
Jingyun Xiao
Program: PhD in Machine Learning
Bio: Jingyun will be joining the lab as a PhD student in Machine Learning in the Fall. He received his bachelor’s degree in CS from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and MS in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2023. Jingyun is broadly interested in the intersection topics of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Intelligence, especially Human Intelligence, like inspiring next-generation AI models with HI, 2)understanding HI better with AI tools, 3)exploring hybrid-intelligence by combining AI and HI. Outside research, he enjoys playing badminton, jogging and watching movies.
Masters Students
Vinam Arora
Program: Masters in Electrical & Computer Engineering
Bio: Vinam Arora is a first-year MS student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech. He completed his undergraduate studies in Electronics at the Indian Institution of Technology (IIT) in Roorkee and worked as a Design Engineer at Texas Instruments. During his three years at Texas Instruments, he worked on various projects and gained expertise in different areas such as digital and analog design, verification, and simulation.
Venkataramana (Venky) Ganesh
Program: Masters in Computer Science
Bio: Venky is a first year MS student in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Bachelors (B.Tech Hons.) in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology – Tiruchirappalli, India in 2020 and has since then worked at NVIDIA contributing to Machine Learning on GPUs. His interests broadly lie in exploring how intelligence emerges from the brain, how it can be computed in machines and how to efficiently implement them. His hobbies include sketching, calisthenics and watching sci-fi films/documentaries.
Keerthan Ramnath
Program: Masters in Computational Science and Engineering
Bio: Keerthan is a MS in Computational Science and Engineering student from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. He graduated with a Master’s in Data Science and Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2022. His interest revolves around applied machine/deep learning and self-supervised learning with a special focus in Computer Vision, NLP, and Neuroscience. During his free time, Keerthan makes music with GarageBand and listens to The Beatles.
Undergraduate Students
Michael Mendelson
Email: michaelmendelson@gatech.edu
Program: BS in Biomedical Engineering
Bio: Michael is a third-year Biomedical Engineering student at Georgia Tech. His academic interests are broad, but he is particularly interested in the intersection between computation and biological processes, especially with regards to neuroscience. Michael is also a budding jazz musician and music producer. He is excited to be able to incorporate many of his interests into the lab, and looks forward to gaining a deeper understanding of the field.
Santosh Nachimuthu
Email: michaelmendelson@gatech.edu
Program: BS in Biomedical Engineering
Bio: Santosh is a 3rd year Biomedical Engineering student at Georgia Tech who is also minoring in Computer Science. He is very interested in better understanding and modeling the brain using computer science. Outside of academics, he enjoys sports, good food, and new music. He wants to contribute to the neurotech field and learn as much as possible from the lab to better understand the brain.
Research Affiliates
Aidan Schneider
Email: aidans@wustl.edu
Program: Computational and Systems Biology
Washington University in St. Louis
Bio: Aidan is a PhD student in Computational & Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis in the Hengen Lab and works in close collaboration with the NerDS Lab. He received a B.S. in Molecular BioSciences & Biotechnology and also a B.S. in Finance from Arizona State University in 2018. Aidan applies deep learning to characterize the influence of behavior, genetics, and anatomy on neuronal computations throughout the brain. He aims to develop models which generalize and transfer successfully across diverse contexts. He also hopes deep learning can facilitate insight from data with minimal pre-processing. Outside the lab, Aidan enjoys hiking and developing tabletop role-playing games.
Mohammad Gheshlaghi Azar
Email: mazar@google.edu
Bio: Mohammad Azar is a staff research scientist at DeepMind labs in London and an Affiliate Researcher in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Azar’s research encompasses a variety of topics in the field of AI and machine learning ranging from self-supervised learning to exploration, Deep RL, graph representation learning and RL theory. Mohammad obtained his master degree from university of Tehran, Iran in Electrical Engineering. Then he obtained his Ph.D. from University of Nijmegen, Netherlands in Biophysics. Dr. Azar then joined the CS department at CMU as a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Professor Emma Brunskill. Afterwards he joined the Kording lab at Northwestern university as a postdoctoral researcher in Computational Neuroscience.
Interns
- Geethika Atmakuri, High School Student (2024)
Alumni
Postdocs:
- Farahnaz Soleimani, 2017-2019 -> Assistant Professor at Oregon State University
Ph.D. students:
- Chi-Heng Lin, 2018-2022; TRIAD Research Fellowship (2020); PhD Thesis: “Understanding Data Manipulation and How to Leverage it to Improve Generalization” -> Now at Samsung Research
Graduate students:
- Jorge Quesada, 2021-2022 (PhD) -> Now in ML PhD @ Georgia Tech
- Aishwarya Balwani, 2018-2021 (PhD) -> Now in Hannah Choi’s lab @ Georgia Tech
- Kyle Milligan, 2018-2020 (PhD) -> Now at Northrup Grumman
- TJ LaGrow, 2017-2019 (PhD); NSF GRFP Honorable Mention -> Now in Shella Keilholz’s lab at Emory
Selected undergraduates and interns:
- Matthew Jin, 2022-2023 (Undergrad) -> Masters @ Stanford
- Carolina Urzay, 2021-2022 (Undergrad) -> Masters @ TU Delft
- Joy M. Jackson, 2021-2022 (Undergrad); REU SURE (2021) – Best Research in the Biomedical Category -> PhD Student
- Zijing Wu, 2020-2021 (Undergrad) -> Anqi Wu’s lab at Georgia Tech
- Max Dabagia, 2018-2020 (Undergrad); NSF GRFP (2020), Presidential Undergraduate Research Award (PURA) (2019) -> Ph.D. at Georgia Tech w/ Santosh Vempala
- Amaal Abdi, 2020-2021 (High School Intern) -> Undergrad at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania
- Joseph Miano, 2018-2020 (Undergrad); PURA (2019) -> MS in CS, AI & ML Associate at JPMorgan Chase
- Alexis Webber, 2019-2019 (Undergrad); Charles Hancock Award for Neuroengineering Research -> Alpha Omega