2 0 2 1 L U N C H & L E A R N S E R I E S
This summer our 2021 VU-ISIS interns will have the opportunity to "lunch & learn" with a handful of graduate (and graduated) students and researchers from our department. The experience will be an intimate and informal one, providing the time for important networking, learning, and career building insight each student can carry with them into future opportunities.
2021 SCHEDULE
Thursday, May 27: Shreyas Ramakrishna (recording found here)
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Shreyas Ramakrishna is a 5th year PhD student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is working as a research assistant with Prof. Abhishek Dubey at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems. He received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Technical University Kaiserslautern (Germany) in June 2015 and completed his undergraduate studies in Electrical engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, India in 2012. He is currently working on the Assured Autonomy project. |
Thursday, June 3: Diego Manzanas Lopez (recording found here)
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Diego Manzanas Lopez is an Electrical Engineering (EE) PhD student at Vanderbilt University. Diego joined the VeriVITAL research group in Fall 2017 under Dr. Taylor Johnson's direction, where his work focuses primarily on the development of verification techniques and software tools for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) with Learning-Enabled Components (LEC). Diego has been part of the DARPA Assured Autonomy project for the last two years, wherein he has been working with unmanned underwater vehicles (simulation), from learning the models to safety verification. He has also been involved in the development of the Neural Network Verification (NNV) toolbox which aims to verify, via reachability analysis, multiple neural network architectures as well as control systems where neural network controllers are present. Lastly, he also enjoys working with autonomous drones and cars, and has been a Vanderbilt team member at the last two F1/10 competitions (2019 CPS-IoT Week and 2019 Embedded Systems week) and at the 2019 NSF CPS Challenge (drone). |
Thursday, June 10: Patrick Musau (recording found here)
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Patrick Musau is an Electrical Engineering (EE) PhD student at Vanderbilt University. He joined the VeriVITAL research group in the Summer of 2017 under Dr. Taylor T. Johnson. Patrick's research work focuses primarily in the use of verification techniques and software tools to foster the creation of intelligent autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) with Learning-Enabled Components (LEC). Patrick has been part of the DARPA Assured Autonomy project for the last two years, where he has been working with unmanned underwater vehicles (in simulation), and an autonomous vehicle platform named the F1Tenth (simulation and hardware). He has also been involved in the development of the Neural Network Verification (NNV) toolbox that makes use of reachability analysis techniques to reason about the behavior of a variety of neural network architectures. Patrick, enjoys working with autonomous drones and cars, and over the last couple of years, he has been a member of two Vanderbilt teams that have competed in the F1/10 autonomous racing competitions (2019 CPS-IoT Week and 2019 Embedded Systems week) and at the 2019 NSF CPS Drone Challenge. |
Thursday, June 17: Graduate Program Information Session with Gabriel Luis
(recording found here)
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Gabriel Luis has been the Director of Graduate Recruiting for the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt for almost 3 years, overseeing the recruitment of domestic and international students for undergraduate summer research, Masters and PhD programs in engineering. He has a host of experience in the field domestically and internationally having worked in recruitment, international relations, and teaching prior to joining Vanderbilt. Gabriel is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, English, and Spanish. He received his B.A. from Emory University, and his M.A. from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. For this session, Gabriel is happy to present to you information on Vanderbilt's Masters and FULLY FUNDED Ph.D. programs, and answer any questions. |
Thursday, June 24: Neelanjana Pal - canceled
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Neelanjana Pal is currently pursuing her PhD in Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, USA. She is a graduate research assistant in the veriVITAL lab headed by Dr. Taylor T Johnson, at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems since 2019, which focuses on safe and verifiable AI systems. Her primary research interest is in Automated Verification of Neural Networks using specialized software platforms. Currently, she is working on enhancement of a Neural Network Verification Tool, called NNV developed by the veriVITAL Lab. Her work involves studying the effect of input image perturbations on trained Neural Network Classifiers and checking the robustness of the same using Formal Methods. She completed her undergraduate in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, India in the year 2015. Following graduation she joined Rockwell Automation India Pvt. Ltd and spent 2 years as a Project Engineer |
Thursday, July 1: Ayana Wild - canceled
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Ayana Wild is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. Previously, Ayana received a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University in Computer Science and a bachelor’s degree from Tennessee State University in Mathematics. Ayana joined The Verification and Validation for Intelligent and Trustworthy Autonomy Laboratory (VeriVITAL) at Vanderbilt in the Summer of 2017 which is led by Dr. Taylor T. Johnson. Ayana’s research has mainly focused on finding ways of engaging high school and undergraduate students in computer science through connecting programming and extracurricular or outside of school interests such as art, dance, music, and games. |
Thursday, July 8: Nicole Hutchins (recording found here)
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Nicole Hutchins is a former high school computer science teacher turned researcher focused on CS4ALL. Currently her research targets advancements in educational technology to deepen our insight into how students learn and problem solve with technology. She leverages advances in AI and machine learning to identify and interpret students' learning strategies and visualizes those behaviors to help classroom teachers engage with and support their students. Specifically, her work dives into how students construct computational models and complete engineering design tasks to identify productive and unproductive strategies that support their learning and problem-solving processes. Nicole completes her work as part of the OELE lab led by Dr. Gautam Biswas. |
Thursday, July 15: Nick Potteiger (recording found here)
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Nick Potteiger will be joining Vanderbilt University in the Fall as a Ph.D. student, and last summer worked on the "Assurance, Monitoring and Control of Learning-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems" project under the supervision of Dr. Xenofon Koutsoukos. Nick Potteiger is currently an undergraduate senior majoring in computer science and minoring in mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is excited to speak to you all about his recent application process, getting into a Ph.D. program, and how the VU-ISIS Summer Internship program benefited him for this journey.
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Thursday, August 5: Bernard Serbinowski (recording found here)
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Bernard Serbinowski is a currently a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. Bernard Serbinowski joined Vanderbilt University in the summer of 2019 to pursue his Ph.D. He graduated from the University of Utah with B.S. degres in both Mathematics and Computer Science, cum laude and magna cum laude respectively. Bernard Serbinowski is currently working with Dr. Taylor Johnson and his primary focus is on hyperproperties and on formal safety specifications. Recently, he took part in SSAI's capture the flag contest on behalf of Vervital. |