{"id":15,"date":"2017-08-28T16:20:21","date_gmt":"2017-08-28T20:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2026-03-10T08:19:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:19:43","slug":"people","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/people\/","title":{"rendered":"People"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>Faculty<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/people.bu.edu\/staro\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prof. David Starobinski<\/a>\u00a0(staro@bu.edu)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/people.bu.edu\/trachten\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prof. Ari Trachtenberg<\/a>\u00a0(trachten@bu.edu)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Current\u00a0Students<\/h2>\n<h3><em>Ph.D.<\/em><\/h3>\n<table style=\"border-color: transparent; background-color: transparent;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 130px;\"><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-636x634.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"634\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-789\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-636x634.jpg 636w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-1024x1021.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-768x766.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-1536x1531.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/sevval.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><\/td>\n<td><strong>Sevval Simsek (sevvals@bu.edu)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>Sevval has a background in Computer Sciences and Engineering, and completed her BSc and MSc studies in Sabanci University (Turkey), where she also completed a Mathematics minor program. She completed her Master&#8217;s with a thesis focused on secure and privacy preserving identification in IoT network communications, and subsequently joined the BU Electrical and Computer Engineering PhD Program in 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span aria-label=\"\" class=\"c-mrkdwn__br\" data-stringify-type=\"paragraph-break\"><\/span><span>Her current research focuses on securing the Software supply chain, exploring Machine Learning methods to improve Cyber Security Operations. Her work explores how Knowledge Graphs can help understand vulnerability data better, improve data quality model accuracy, and fix erroneous data inside large datasets. Her other work VDGraph aims to create a holistic and queryable dependency-vulnerability graph that transforms how developers manage and resolve vulnerabilities in their dependency stack.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 130px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/nislab\/files\/2024\/02\/kevin.jpg\" alt=\"Kevin (Xingyu) Chen\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-782 size-medium\" width=\"636\" height=\"423\" \/><\/td>\n<td><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/xingyu-chen-404095251\/\">Kevin (Xingyu) Chen<\/a> (chxy517@bu.edu | <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Chenxy517\">Github<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kevin received his Master&#8217;s in Computer Engineering in January 2024, subsequently joining the PhD program in September 2024. His current research focuses on data reconciliation protocols of (blockchain) network and open source library (Gensync) providing a variety of data synchronization protocols. He has contributed to the measurement and development of a novel synchronization protocol (SREP). He is one of the maintainers of Gensync and helped publish software package on various platforms including macports, homebrew and Debian.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><strong>Tasha Adler (tyadler@bu.edu) <\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<table style=\"border-color: transparent; background-color: transparent;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 130px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/nislab\/files\/2026\/03\/unnamed-477x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"477\" height=\"636\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-835\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2026\/03\/unnamed-477x636.jpg 477w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2026\/03\/unnamed.jpg 649w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 477px) 100vw, 477px\" \/><\/td>\n<td><strong><span style=\"font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;\"><span>Jiguang Yu (<\/span><a href=\"mailto:jyu768@bu.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">jyu768@bu.edu<\/a><span>)<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>Jiguang&#8217;s current research focuses on algorithmic game theory and optimisation for complex network systems, and solving resource allocation problems. He is now developing physics-based mechanisms for dynamic spectrum sharing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In previous research, he employed stochastic processes and numerical analysis to investigate phenomena in multiscale systems, ranging from stem cell and tumour microenvironments to ecological systems. He will be an IGS Summer Fellow, a program designed to support his research projects on planetary health and sustainability transitions in future systems.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h3><em>Undergraduate<\/em><\/h3>\n<table width=\"740\" height=\"201\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha-636x424.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"424\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-819\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha-636x424.jpg 636w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/files\/2025\/10\/Headshot_Varsha.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><\/td>\n<td><strong>Varsha Athreya (vathreya@bu.edu)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span>Varsha is an undergraduate student studying Computer Engineering with a Concentration in Machine Learning, graduating in 2026. She is working on using knowledge graphs to fix mappings in the National Vulnerability Database as well as using the New England Research Cloud for model training and deployment.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h2>Alumni (partial list)<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/linkedin.com\/in\/jonacham\">Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanchamberlain.phd\">https:\/\/jonathanchamberlain.phd<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/zpshi12\/\">Dr. Zhenpeng Shi<\/a> (Senior Research Engineer, <span class=\"t-14 t-normal\"><span aria-hidden=\"true\">Huawei<\/span><\/span>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sgvozdenovic\/\">Dr. Stefan Gvozdenovic<\/a> (Senior Application Software Engineer, Analog Devices)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/novak-boskov\/\">Dr. Novak Bo\u0161kov<\/a> (Research Scientist, <span>Nokia Bell Labs<\/span>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/johannes-k-becker\/\">Dr. Johannes Becker<\/a> (Customer Operations Manager, Dive CAE<span>\u00a0|<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/jkbecker.net\/\">https:\/\/jkbecker.net\/<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/maimtiaz\/\">Dr. Muhammad Anas Imtiaz<\/a> (Senior Software Engineer, Bloomberg LP | <a href=\"https:\/\/anasimtiaz.pk\/\">https:\/\/anasimtiaz.pk\/<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/xinlx\/\">Dr. Liangxiao Xin<\/a> (Senior Staff Engineer, ZEKU Technology)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/eran-simhon-7478353\/\">Dr.\u00a0Eran Simhon<\/a> (Director of Data Science, Spotlight.ai)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/weisi2016\/\">Dr.\u00a0Wei Si<\/a> (Software Engineer, Google)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/mortezahashemi\/\">Dr. Morteza Hashemi<\/a> (Assistant Professor, University of Kansas)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/emirkavurmacioglu\/\">Dr. Emir Kavurmacioglu<\/a> (Engineering Manager, <span class=\"t-14 t-normal\"><span aria-hidden=\"true\">Uber<\/span><\/span>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/moshe-laifenfeld-613409\/\">Dr. Moshe Laifenfeld<\/a> (Engineering Manager, Apple)<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Rajesh Krishnan (AI Engineer, Bee Aura Tech Corp.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/saikat-ray-1542912\/\">Dr. Saikat Ray<\/a>\u00a0(Software Engineer, Facebook)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/sachinkagarwal\/\">Dr. Sachin Agarwal<\/a> (<span>ML Infrastructure &amp; Security Engineering Lead <\/span>, Roboflow)<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Tao Wu\u00a0(Data Science Lead, Microsoft Azure)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/francesco-de-pellegrini-7664982\/\">Dr. Francesco De Pellegrini<\/a>\u00a0(Professor, Universit\u00e9 d&#8217;Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse)<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Reuven Cohen\u00a0(<span>Professor<\/span>, Bar-Ilan University)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/weiyao-xiao-5526044\/\">Dr. Weiyao Xiao<\/a> (<span>Engineering Manager,ByteDance<\/span>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/niloo-fazl\/\">Dr. Niloofar Fazlollahi<\/a> (Lead Software Engineer, Apple)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/hmutlu\/\">Dr. Arda Mutlu<\/a> (CTO, Chimeable)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Undergraduate Researcher Alumni<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/howell-xia-5a6005253\/\">Howell Xia<\/a> (Associate Engineer, MathWorks)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jonahgluck\/\">Jonah Gluck<\/a> (CEO at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/hi-j4ck\/\">HIJ4CK<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jilinzheng\/\">Jilin Zheng\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/anish2sinha\">Anish Sinha<\/a> (Software Engineer at Red Hat)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/nathan-strahs-337519294\/\">Nathan Strahs<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/tpoimenidis\/\">Thomas Poimenidis<\/a> (Computer Science undergraduate, Stanford University)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/pranet-sharma\/\">Pranet Sharma<\/a> (Software Engineer, Viasat)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/shubham-arora\">Shubham Arora<\/a>, (Founder, Dhwani AI)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seanbrandenburg.com\/\">Sean Brandenburg<\/a>, (Software Engineer, Cape)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/jkulskis\">John Mikulskis<\/a>, (Software Engineer, Google)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/natasatrkulja\/\">Nata\u0161a Trkulja<\/a>, (Research Assistant, University of Ulm)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/trishita-tiwari-5a9092160\/\">Trishita Tiwari<\/a> B.S. (Systems <span>Research Engineer, Google <\/span>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/songbowen\/\">Bowen Song<\/a>, M.S. (PhD Student, USC CS)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/steven-so-8a9188133\/\">Steven So<\/a>, M.S. (Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft)<\/li>\n<li>Max Timchenko (Site Reliability Engineer)<\/li>\n<li>Sinem Kockan (kockan@bu.edu) (Dell)<\/li>\n<li>Aylin Turhan (turhan@bu.edu) (Bloomberg)<\/li>\n<li>Cankut Orakcal (orakcal@BU.EDU) (Bloomberg)<\/li>\n<li>Jiaxi Jin (jin@bu.edu) (HP Labs)<\/li>\n<li>Lokesh Ravindranathan (rlokesh@bu.edu) (Mathworks)<\/li>\n<li>Stephen Chao (schao@bu.edu) (Bloomberg)<\/li>\n<li>Meijun Wang (maggiew@bu.edu)<\/li>\n<li>Angad Singh (angad@bu.edu) (Capital IQ)<\/li>\n<li>Tunde Agboola (tmoney2k@bu.edu) (Wellington Management)<\/li>\n<li>Vikas Chauhan\u00a0(Senior Software Architect, Tradestone Software)<\/li>\n<li>Andrew Hagedorn (achag@alum.bu.edu) (Capital IQ)<\/li>\n<li>Ido Hochman (IT Business Manager at D.B. Zwirn)<\/li>\n<li>Emily Hostage (Harvard Law)<\/li>\n<li>Yuqing Ke (Akamai Technologies, Inc.)<\/li>\n<li>Chris Malladi (Systems Engineer, General Dynamics)<\/li>\n<li>Jie Meng (jiemeng@bu.edu)<\/li>\n<li>Ethan Robbins (Senior Engineer, Cavium Networks)<\/li>\n<li>Geoff Rowland (rowland@bu.edu) (Microsoft Corporation)<\/li>\n<li>Matt Schoen (schoen@bu.edu) (Co-Founder, Defective Studios)<\/li>\n<li>Daniel Sumorok (dsumorok@alum.bu.edu) (BBN)<\/li>\n<li>William Stucker (wstucker@bu.edu) (Hardware Engineer, Cavium Networks)<\/li>\n<li>Joseph Varghese (josephv@bu.edu)<\/li>\n<li>Vyas Venkataraman (vyas@bu.edu) (Nvidia Inc)<\/li>\n<li>Rachanee Ungrangsi (PhD student, Shinawatra University)<\/li>\n<li>Christopher Vermilion (chrisv@bu.edu) (CTO\/Co-founder at Roobiq)<\/li>\n<li>Lulu Curiel (nee Wang) (iMac Business Manager, Apple)<\/li>\n<li>Abraham Yaar (ayaar@andrew.cmu.edu) (Google)<\/li>\n<li>Sunny Ngan (nsunnyn@BU.EDU)<\/li>\n<li>Matthew Boyle (mboy@bu.edu) (DebtX)<\/li>\n<li>Idan Warsawski (idan@bu.edu) (AppCard)<\/li>\n<li>Avi Klausner (aviclaws@bu.edu) (GE Aviation)<\/li>\n<li>Andres Guedez (andresg@bu.edu) (Akamai Technologies)<\/li>\n<li>Danny Morris (cleave@bu.edu) (IBM)<\/li>\n<li>Edy Tan (edytan@bu.edu) (TWIN FOCUS CAPITAL PARTNERS)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faculty Prof. David Starobinski\u00a0(staro@bu.edu) Prof. Ari Trachtenberg\u00a0(trachten@bu.edu) Current\u00a0Students Ph.D. Sevval Simsek (sevvals@bu.edu) Sevval has a background in Computer Sciences and Engineering, and completed her BSc and MSc studies in Sabanci University (Turkey), where she also completed a Mathematics minor program. She completed her Master&#8217;s with a thesis focused on secure and privacy preserving identification in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13841,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13841"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/nislab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}