Alum Connections - Summer 2011

Rahul Simha (Ph.D. ’90), Computer Science Associate Professor within the School of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University, was selected as the 2010 U.S. Professor of the Year for the District of Columbia. Sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the program recognizes the most outstanding undergraduate instructors in the country with four national winners and individual state winners.

Sharad Jaiswal (Ph.D. ‘05), a researcher at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in Bangalore, India, was named to the MIT Technology Review magazine’s first India TR35 list in 2010. The TR35 recognizes outstanding innovators under the age of 35 for their continuing work in India that has the highest impact locally and globally. Jaiswal was recognized for his work on projects on low-cost internet connectivity for villages (VillageNet), and scalable, low-cost distribution of rich content on mobile devices (mango).

Bo An (Ph.D. ’11) received the IFAAMAS-10 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award during the AAMAS Conference held in Taiwan in May. An is currently a Postdoctoral Associate, at the University of Southern California Department of Computer Science.

Siddharth Srivastava’s Ph.D. dissertation on the “Foundations and Applications of Generalized Planning” was selected for an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Conference on Automated Planning (ICAPS) Best Dissertation Award. He received the award at ICAPS-11, in Freiburg, Germany in June. Srivastava (Ph.D. ’10) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at UMass Amherst Computer Science.

In January, J. Antonio Medina (Ph.D. ‘97) was promoted to Vice President at Morgan Stanley, located in New York City.

Nilanjan Banerjee (Ph.D. ’09), received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his project “System Support for Renewable Energy-driven Devices.” Banerjee is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas Computer Science and Computer Engineering Department.

Venkata Duvvuri (M.S. ’99) recently graduated with an M.B.A. from UC Davis. He is a term analytics consultant in the areas of business intelligence & marketing analytics within the Global Customer Database Marketing team at Apple Computer.

Wei Zhao (Ph.D. ‘86) was recognized with an honorary doctorate degree jointly conferred by 12 Portuguese universities for his achievement in educational development at the University of Macau where he is the current rector and a chaired professor.

Co-founders Gaurav Mathur (M.S. ’07) and Tom Moss recently sold start-up company 3LM, Inc. to Motorola. The company focuses on Android services for business. Prior to 3LM, Mathur was an Android Program Technology Manager at Google.

As part of his sabbatical, Henning Schulzrinne (Ph.D. ‘92) has been working in Washington, D.C. as a Distinguished Engineering Fellow at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC does much more than policing the airwaves for inappropriate content. For example, the FCC manages all non-governmental spectrum (radio frequency) use in the U.S., and approves all devices that can emit radio frequencies. Schulzrinne has been helping with a number of FCC projects, ranging from next-generation 9-1-1 to open Internet issues, video relay services, and “bill shock.” Most recently, he is a member of a new advisory council that will help ensure that people with disabilities can make emergency calls even if they cannot hear or speak.

Jamieson Cobleigh (Ph.D. ‘07) and Rachel Smith Cobleigh (Ph.D. ‘08) are pleased to announce the birth of their daughter Eliya Marie, born on June 3, 2011.