Seven Graduate Students Receive CICS Outstanding Graduate Awards

Seven graduate students in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) were selected to receive Outstanding Graduate Awards for the 2018-2019 academic year. The awardees are as follows:

• Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation: Prateek Sharma (PhD '18), John Vilk (PhD '18), and Xiaolan Wang (PhD '18)
• Outstanding Synthesis Project: Su Lin Blodgett and Jarrett Holtz
• Outstanding Teaching Assistant: Rik Sengupta and Jared Yeager.

Prateek Sharma’s dissertation, “Transiency-driven Resource Management for Cloud Computing Platforms,” has made fundamental contributions to the field, as well as practical systems contributions (many have been open sourced). As his advisor Prashant Shenoy remarked, “It is rare that a student’s PhD thesis inspires a whole new (sub)area of research. This thesis has done exactly that.” Sharma is currently an assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington.

John Vilk’s work, “Righting Web Development,” comprises a suite of systems that simplify the development of correct and responsive web applications, several of which have already seen broad adoption. Vilk was advised by Professor Emery Berger and is currently working as a software engineer at Stripe in Corvallis, Oregon.

Xiaolan Wang was recognized for her dissertation, “Improving and Understanding Data Quality in Large-Scale Data Systems,” which makes major contributions in the area of data quality. Wang was advised by Professor Alexandra Meliou, and her paper presented solutions that are broadly applicable in the areas of data quality and management. The work has been published in top-tier data management venues. Xiaolan is currently working as a research scientist at Megagon Labs in Mountain View, California.

Prateek Sharma, John Vilk, and Xiaolan Wang

Su Lin Blodgett and Jarrett Holtz were honored for their interdisciplinary research projects, and Rik Sengupta and Jared Yeager were honored for their exemplary efforts in assisting with course instruction.

The awards were presented at the 11th annual Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy award banquet and ceremony on April 5. Congratulations to all the outstanding students!