2020-2021 Graduate Student Award Recipients

Research Excellence Awards are given to a Ph.D. and M.Sc. student who have recently defended and have shown outstanding research performance at the Ph.D. and M.Sc. Level.  

The recipient of the Ph.D. Research Excellence Award is Katie Ovens. Katie completed her Ph.D. entitled "Utilizing Gene Co-Expression Networks for Comparative Transcriptomic Analyses" under supervision of Dr. Ian McQuillan and Dr. Brian Eames.

Her doctoral research has involved the bioinformatic analysis and visualization of transcriptomic datasets. She is interested in biological network analysis, with her thesis paying particular attention to gene co-expression networks and their comparison across various species to make evolutionary inferences.

Katie has also been an active member of the Computer Science Graduate Council (CSGS) for several years and a volunteer at many department events.

 

The recipient of the M.Sc. Research Excellence Award is Saikat Mondal. Saikat completed his M.Sc. entitled Investigating the Quality Aspects of Crowd-Sourced Developer Forum: A Case Study of Stack Overflow Contents in Crowd-Sourced Developer Forum under the supervision of Dr. Chanchal Roy.

Saikat is currently continuing his studies with Dr. Roy as a Ph.D. student. He was also a GSA representative on the Computer Science Graduate Council in the 2020-2021 academic year. 

The Citizenship Award is given to a current Ph.D. student who has actively participated/volunteered in activities and events on campus, or whose actions and contributions have added to the quality and reputation of our department.

This year's Citizenship Award recipient is Rifat Zahan. Rifat is working on her Ph.D. under Dr. Nathaniel D. Osgood. She is the current President of the Computer Science Graduate Council and is part of the Graduate Students' Association. She is also a frequent volunteer at department outreach events. 

The Geddes Awards are given to a Ph.D. and M.Sc. student currently in their graduate program. This award is based on high academic standing and research productivity.

 

This year's Ph.D. Geddes Award recipient is Martin Dechant. Martin is working on his Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Regan Mandryk. He completed his B.A. and M.Sc. at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria.

He placed second at the 2018 edition of Research Fest, which recognizes the best presentations of ongoing research of graduate students in the department.

This year's M.Sc. Geddes Award recipient is Tonghe Liu. Tonghe is currently working on his M.Sc. under the supervision of Dr. Ray Spiteri.