Warnow Lab Students (current and former)

Current PhD students

The-Anh Vu-Le. PhD student, started Fall 2022. PhD expected Spring 2027. LinkedIn Github.

Eleanor Wedell, PhD student, started Fall 2022. MS thesis awarded April 2022 available at IDEALS. Webpage. PhD expected Spring 2027.

James Willson CS PhD student, started Fall 2020. PhD expected Spring or Summer 2026.

Current undergraduate research assistants at UIUC

Former postdoctoral researchers (13)

• Kevin Atteson, now Chief Quant at Summer Road (computational finance)
• Francois Barbancon, now consultant
• Ruth Davidson
• Dannie Durand, Associate Professor of Biology and of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
• Daniel Huson, Professor of Bioinformatics in Tuebingen, Germany
• Libby Levison
• Nam-phuong Nguyen, Associate Director, Computational Biology at 858 Therapeutics
• Ken Rice, retired
• Katherine St John, Full Professor of Computer Science at Hunter College
• Ann Taylor, Emeritus Professor at York University, UK
• Elizabeth Sweedyk, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College
• Shel Swenson, Distinguished Lecturer, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Mathematics Department
• Paul Zaharias, Institute of Systematics, Evolution, Biodiversity at the National Museum of Natural History (Paris, France), working with Olivier Gascuel

Former PhD students (20)

• Md Shamsuzzoha Bayzid (PhD 2016, student at UT-Austin) - Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)
• Ganesh Ganapathy (PhD 2006, student at UT-Austin), Sr Machine Learning Engineer at Apple Research, Austin
• Sarah A Christensen, PhD 2020 (co-supervised with Mohammed El-Kebir), now at D.E. Shaw (NYC)
• Baqiao Liu (PhD August 2024, student at UIUC), Machine Learning Engineer, Rust
• Kevin Liu (PhD 2011, student at UT-Austin) - Associate Professor of Computer Science at Michigan State University
• Siavash Mirarab (PhD 2014, student at UT-Austin) - Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD
• Erin Molloy (PhD 2020, student at UIUC) - Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Univ Maryland College Park
• Luay Nakhleh (PhD 2004, student at UT-Austin) - Dean of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University
• Serita Nelesen (PhD 2010, student at UT-Austin) - later, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Calvin College, now software developer for Neural Planet
• Nam-phuong Nguyen (PhD 2014, student at UT-Austin and then postdoc in the IGB at UIUC), subsequently at UCSD as a postdoc with CS Prof Vineet Bafna, and now Associate Director, Computational Biology at 858 Therapeutics. While a postdoc in the IGB at UIUC, he was co-mentored by Prof. Becky Stumpf
• Mike Nute - (PhD 2019, Statistics student at UIUC), Research Scientist at Rice University working with Todd Treangen (Hooding ceremony May 10, 2019 (PDF) (PPTX))
• Minhyuk Park, CS PhD student, started Fall 2021. MS thesis available at IDEALS. PhD Spring 2026.
• Yasamin Tabatabaee, CS PhD student, started Fall 2021. MS thesis awarded Dec 2023; contact Yasamin for this. PhD Fall 2025. Offered the Lane Postdoctoral Fellow position at CMU starting in January 2026.
• Usman Roshan (PhD 2004, student at UT-Austin) - Associate Professor in Computer Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
• Chengze Shen, machine learning software engineer at TikTok
• Vladimir Smirnov (PhD 2021), postdoc of Richard Durbin at Cambridge University
• Michelle (Shel) Swenson (PhD 2009, student and postdoc at UT-Austin) - Distinguished Lecturer, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Mathematics Department
• Pranjal Vachaspati (PhD 2019, student at UIUC) - Platform @ Ramp
• Li-San Wang (PhD 2003, student at UT-Austin) - Peter C. Nowell, M.D. Professo of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Associate Dean for Computing, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine (JPEG)
• Shibu Yooseph (PhD 1997, student at the University of Pennsylvania) - now Kravis Professor of Integrated Sciences, Claremont McKenna College

Former MS students (3)

• Gillian Chu, MS PEEC program UIUC 2022, now PhD student at Princeton in CS
• Ashu Gupta, MS 2016, Computer Science, UIUC
• Xilin Yu, MS 2019, Computer Science, UIUC. Now at Google (Seattle).

Former undergraduate researchers (19)

• University of Texas at Austin (5):
  • K.T. Hughes,
  • Keerthana Kumar,
  • Young-suk Lee (undergraduate advisee at UT-Austin), received PhD from Princeton, working with Prof Olga Toyanskaya (CS), now Assistant Professor at KAIST
  • Christina Skelton (former undergraduate advisee) - later, Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows; now University Affiliate, UT-Austin
  • Jerry Sun
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (14)
  • Nikhil Agarwal (spring and summer 2019, UIUC)
  • Yirong Cai (now PhD student at McGill in CS)
  • Nicholas Chen (spring 2019, UIUC)
  • Binghui Cheng (2019, UIUC)
  • Aditi Ghosalkar (summer and fall 2019, UIUC)
  • Maya Gupta (2020-2021, UIUC; now PhD student at Princeton University CS
  • Emma Hamel (2019, UIUC)
  • Dylan Irlbeck (Spring 2019, UIUC)
  • Akhil Jakatdar,, now CS PhD student at Princeton
  • Thien Le (undergraduate advisee at UIUC), now PhD student at MIT EECS
  • Kodi Taraszka (née Collins) (former undergrad RA, now PhD student in CS at UCLA)
  • Ananya Yammanuru (spring, summer, and fall 2019 - now PhD student in CS at UIUC)
  • Qikai Yang (spring 2019, did undergrad thesis with me)
  • Zitao Zhu (spring 2019, UIUC)

Photographs of a reunion with graduate students (PDF) (PPTX)