Celebrating Excellence: Computer Science Professor and Graduate Students Receive GSA Awards
The GSA Awards celebrate distinguished graduate students as well as honour faculty that have generously supported graduate students in research, scholarly and artistic pursuits.
By Ellen RedlickDr. Banani Roy and PhD students Keyhan Najafian and Palash Ranjan Roy will be recognized by the USask Graduate Student Association at the upcoming 2025 Graduate Awards Gala.
The GSA Awards Committee commented on the recipients' impressive contributions to the university community, noting "it is truly commendable to see three members from the same department receiving well-deserved recognition."
Assistant Professor Dr. Banani Roy (PhD) has been awarded the 2025 Advising Excellence Award from the Graduate Students’ Association at USask. This award honours a graduate student advisor who has shown excellent supervisory and mentoring skills as well as exceptional support for their advisees’ ideas, scholarly work, and financial needs.
"Receiving this award fills me with joy and gratitude," Roy said. "It is not only a recognition of my efforts but also a reflection of the achievements of the incredible students I have had the privilege of advising and mentoring. It is a significant celebration of our shared journey."
Roy is the director of the Interactive Software Engineering and Analytics (iSE) Lab at USask. Established in 2019, the iSE Lab conducts cutting edge research in Data Analytics platforms, frameworks, and Software Analytics with a focus on human and interactive aspects.
For Roy, mentorship extends beyond guiding students toward research or academic output; it is about creating a supportive environment where they feel encouraged to grow. "It involves recognizing their challenges, celebrating their achievements, and helping them view setbacks as opportunities for learning and progress," she explained. "I believe that the supervisor-student relationship is a partnership, where both parties bring value to the table."
This ethos has shaped a spirited and collaborative lab, with students receiving numerous awards at conferences, workshops, and across USask. A notable achievement came in 2022 when a paper from the lab was accepted at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), a highly competitive and prestigious venue in software engineering. This work introduced a human-centric program comprehension technique for developers and was featured in the Young Innovators series in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Regarding the future of the iSE lab and her research, Roy’s goal is to create state-of-the-art, human-centric frameworks, tools, and techniques for software developers and data scientists to help them build quality software.
"In the future, I aim to integrate affective computing into Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), enabling us to recognize developers' emotions using sensors and provide effective feedback during programming tasks. One use case we plan to explore this summer involves developers using wearable IoT devices and eye trackers. The IDE will highlight complex code segments and dynamically generate helpful summaries."
Two computer science graduate students have received the Research Excellence in STEM Technology and Engineering Award: Keyhan Najafian and Palash Ranjan Roy. This award honours graduate students who have made significant impacts in the field of science, technology, engineering or math and who have produced outstanding research results throughout their course of study.
Keyhan Najafian is a PhD student in the Bioinformatics Lab. His academic journey has been motivated by the challenges of developing AI-based models using limited data for real-world applications and collaboration with knowledgeable research groups.
He credits his supervisors, Dr. Lingling Jin and Dr. Ian Stavness, and his mentor, Dr. Farhad Maleki from the University of Calgary, as being instrumental in his success in research, internships, mentorship, and teaching activities.
Keyhan received the 2023-2024 PhD Geddes Award, given to a PhD student in Computer Science with high academic standing and research productivity. He also received a 2022-2023 RBC Borealis Fellowship, a program that aims to advance world-leading research across Canada, guiding exceptional students and helping them achieve their research goals as they pursue graduate degrees in machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) at a Canadian university.
Palash Ranjan Roy is a PhD student in Interactive Software Engineering Lab (iSE Lab). He is dedicated to using advanced AI techniques to improve software development practices.
Under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Schneider and Dr. Banani Roy, Palash's research focuses on code clones and large language models for software engineering. His work explores innovative approaches to enhance code quality and streamline software maintenance processes.
After successfully defending his M.Sc. thesis in Fall 2024, Palash was nominated for the Best Thesis Award by his defence committee members, recognizing the exceptional quality of his research contributions. His research has garnered both international and national recognition. At the 17th IWSC 2023 in Bogotá, he received the People's Choice Best Paper Award and the Student Encouragement Award. His outstanding work has also earned him the SOAR Distinguished Research Award 2024, the SOAR Best Presentation Award 2023, and the 8th ICSAC Best Research Award 2024.
Palash envisions a future where automation and AI can make software engineering more efficient, accessible, and reliable for developers worldwide.
Award recipients will be honoured at the 13th annual GSA Awards Gala at Marquis Hall on Saturday, April 12.