Data-Intensive Scalable Computing Laboratory (DISCL)

Table of Contents

Alumni

Faculty and Staff Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
Dr. Dong Dai
  • Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) from 2018
  • Research Assistant Professor and Associate Director, 2016-2018, Postdoctoral Researcher of TTU/ANL Collaboration, 2013-2016
  • Parallel file systems
  • Cloud computing
  • Metadata management
  • Graph system
  • IO scheduling and optimization
Dr. Jiang Zhou
  • Associate Professor at Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Postdoctoral Researcher at TTU, 2014-2018
  • Big data
  • Distributed file system
  • High-performance computing
  • Parallel and distributed computing
  • Computer architectures
  • Systems software design

Ph.D. Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
Dr. Wei Zhang
  • Ph.D., May 2021
  • Oracle, Inc.
  • Conference Publications: SC'21, HiPC'19, SC'19, PACT'18, CCGrid'18, HPDC'17, Cluster'16
  • Journal Publications: JAG, TPDS, TGRS, ISPRS
  • Posters: SC'20, SC'18, CCGrid'18, PPoPP'17
  • Distributed Metadata Indexing for Scientific Data Management
  • Graph-based Data Management System for High Performance Computing
  • Geospatial Analytics on Social Network Data
  • Internship: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • SC '20 Selected Participant for ACM Student Research Competition
  • ACM travel award for PACT '18
  • SC'18 student volunteer, SC'18 travel award
  • NSF travel award for HPDC'17
  • TCHPC and NSF travel award for CCGrid'18
Dr. Xi Wang
  • Ph.D., Dec. 2020
  • Research Scientist at RISC-V International Open Source Laboratory (RIOS) and Postdoc at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School
  • Publications: IPDPS'21, HPDC'20, DAC'20, ICPP'19, MEMSYS'19, HPEC'18, MCHPC'18, ICPP'18, IA3'17, P2S2'17, WP3'17, MemSys'16
  • Posters: PACT'19, ICPP'19, ICPP'18, DAC'17
  • IPDPS'21 Best Paper Award
  • SC'15 Emerging Technologies forum and demo (GoblinCore-64 project)
  • Internship: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Micron Technology, Inc.
  • SC'16 student volunteer, SC'16 travel award
  • SC'16 Emerging Technologies forum and demo (OpenSoC project)
  • SC'18 student volunteer, SC'18 travel award
  • NSF travel award for ICPP'18
  • Helen DeVitt Jones Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award
  • P2S2'20 Publicity Chair
Dr. Daniel Dunning
  • Ph.D., 2020
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
  • Journal of Computational Physics (2020)
  • Research interests: Parallel and Scientific Computing
Dr. Wei Xie
  • Ph.D., 2018
  • VMware, Inc.
  • DISCL server and website administrator, REU-site project mentor
  • Publications: ParCo'17, IPDPS'17, CCGrid'17, NAS'16, ISPA'16, NAS'16, DISCS'15, BigData'15
  • Posters: IPDPS'17, NAS'16, Cluster'15, CCGrid'14
  • Instructor for CS2413 Data Structures (Fall'14)
  • Internship: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • SC'15 student volunteer, NSF travel award for IPDPS'17, NAS'16, Cluster'15, CCGrid'14
  • Third Place in the IPDPS’17 Best Poster Session
  • Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Dr. John Leidel
  • Ph.D., 2017
  • Founder and Chief Scientist of Tactical Computing Laboratories, Adjunct Research Scientist at Texas Tech.
  • Publications: ParCo'17, P2S2'17, WP3'17, J. of Parallel Processing, LSPP'14, P2S2'15, AsHES'16, MemSys'16
  • Invited Talks/Posters: SC'15 Emerging Technologies forum and demo (GoblinCore-64 project), 2nd RISC-V Workhop, ModSim-2015, IPDPS PhD Forum-2016
  • Committee Member/Journal Review Board: Cloud 2014, PLC 2014-2015, DISCS 2013-2015, IA^3 2013-2015, HPC-15, IEEE Computer, AsHES
  • Travel award from NSF-TCPP, ICPP-15, IPDPS-16, Talkington Graduate Fellowship
  • Chair of PGAS-X Workshop
Dr. Jialin Liu
  • Ph.D., 2015
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
  • DISCFarm cluster administrator
  • Publications: IEEE Trans. on Cloud Computing, J. of Big Data Research, P2S2'15, IJHPCA, BigData'14 (short paper), P2S2'14, HPDIC'14, BigData'13 (regular paper), BigData'13 (short paper), Cluster'13, CCGrid'13, HPCDB'12
  • Internship: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
  • Travel grant from NSF for BigData'14, travel grant from NSF-TCPP, travel grant from BigData'13
  • Ph.D. dissertation: Fast Data Analysis Framework for Scientific Big Data Applications, defended in March 2015
Dr. Yin Lu
  • Ph.D., 2015
  • Research faculty at Texas Tech University National Wind Institute.
  • 2015 Summer Dissertation/Thesis Research Award
  • DISCL server administrator, REU-site project mentor
  • Publications: IJHPCA, J. of Supercomputing, BigData'14 (short paper), ICS'14, BigData'13 (regular paper), ROSS'13, FutureTech'12 (Best Paper Award)
  • Internship: Argonne National Lab
  • Travel grant from IPDPS'14, travel grant from SC'13 and SC'13 student volunteer, travel grant from ICS'13, travel grant from HPDC'11
  • Ph.D. dissertation: Towards Efficient Data Movement at Extreme Scale, defended in March 2015
Dr. Yugendra R Guvvala
  • Ph.D., 2013
  • RAID Inc.→Penguin Computing
  • Travel grant from Cluster'11

Masters Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
  • M.S., 2021
  • ATS Applied Tech Systems LLC
  • Big Data Analytics
  • Cloud Computing
  • High Performance Computing
Ms. Aditi Misra
  • Email: nathan.stoddard@ttu.edu
  • M.S., 2021
  • Computer Architecture
  • Memory Systems
  • High Performance Computing
Mr. Nathan Stoddard
  • M.S., 2021
  • Copart
  • Lustre File System
  • Provenance Data
  • Graph Databases
Ms. Harichandana Byna
  • Email: yuanxu.xu@ttu.edu
  • M.S., 2021
  • Paycom
  • Compiler architecture
  • LLVM compiler
Mr. Yuanxu Xu
  • Email: yxueyuan.ji@ttu.edu
  • M.S., 2020
  • JD. Inc.
  • Graph storage system
  • Graph computing
Mr. Xueyuan Ji
  • M.S., 2020
  • General Motors LLC.
  • Research: Cloud Computing and Machine learning
Mr. Shevekhman Yevgeniy
Mr. Abhishek Kumar
  • Website: Link
  • LinkedIn: Link
  • Phone:806-730-8229
  • Email:akumar.ttu@gmail.com
  • M.S., 2019
  • Paycom
  • Research: Extending Swift and Robust Prompted Navigation for Redfish Services through OpenAPI Schema
Ms. Vidya Eswarappa
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2018
  • High Performance Computing Center of Texas Tech University
  • Masters’ Project: Fault Tolerance in Lustre File System
Mrs. Yan Mu
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2018
  • Masters’ Project: Lustre File System
Mr. Yuan Cui
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2017
  • A Fast and Evenly Distributed Consistent Hashing-Based Algorithm for Data Replication
Mr. Ali Nosrati
  • M.S., 2017
  • Dell
  • Thesis: On Simulating Data Centers with Redfish-enabled Equipment
Ms. Priyanka Kumari
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2017
  • TransUnion
  • Thesis: Validation of Redfish – The Scalable Platform Management Standard
Mr. Qiang Gu
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2016
  • Hierarchical Consistent Hashing Algorithm for Heterogeneous Object-based Storage
  • Publications: ISPA'16
Mr. Mahesh Gurram
  • M.S., 2016
  • Technology Analyst Programmer at Bank Of America
  • Masters' Project: Functional Comparison of Cloud Standard based API with Native API in IaaS
Mr. Misha Ahmadian
  • M.S., 2015
  • Texas Tech University
  • Thesis: Computation Reduction through Data Re-use for Scientific Applications
  • Attendee of Computational Thinking Workshop from XCEDE/Shodor institution including travel grant
M.S. Kalaranjani Vijayakumar
  • M.S., 2015
  • Informatica
  • Thesis: Exploring In-memory HDF5 and Early Evaluations
Mr. Soheil Mazaheri
  • Hadoop cluster administrator, REU-site project mentor
  • The 2014 NSF CAC (Cloud and Autonomic Computing) IAB conference attendee
  • Thesis: Cloud Benchmarking in Bare-Metal, Virtualized, and Containerized Execution Environments
Mr. Junjie Chen
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2014
  • CitiBank
  • Publications: P2S2'14, BigData'13 (short paper)
  • AT&T Chancellor's Fellowship
Mr. Navaneeth Thiagarajan
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2013
  • Texas Tech University → comScore
  • Master's Project: Fast Retrieval with Bloom Filters in RCFile for MapReduce Analytic Frameworks
  • Departmental U-Reason research seminar co-chair
Mr. Quan Gan
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2012
  • Amazon
Mr. Prathamesh Amritkar
  • M.S., 2012
  • Sk Hynix
  • Thesis: HyDrive: Enhancing Performance and Reliability of Storage Systems
  • Publications: J. of Supercomputing, FutureTech'12 (acceptance rate: 92/266=34.6%, Best Paper Award)

Undergraduates Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2016
  • General Motors(GM)
Ms. Claire Ancajas
Mr. Jonathan Bastnagel
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2013
  • Tyler Technologies
  • Publications: ROSS'13, REU participant
Mr. Kyle Blauer
  • B.S., 2016
  • IBM
  • DISCL website administrator
  • The 2014 NSF CAC (Cloud and Autonomic Computing) IAB conference attendee
Mr. Bradly Crysler
  • B.S., 2013
  • Balfour
  • Publications: BigData'13 (regular paper)
  • REU participant, SC'12 Student Cluster Competition Exemplary Spirit Special Recognition
Mr. Tristan Currens
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2014
  • AT&T
  • Project: Parallelization of NetCDF Operators to Improve Performance on High Performance Computing Systems
Mr. Taylor Denison
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2013
  • National Instruments
  • REU participant, SC'12 Student Cluster Competition Exemplary Spirit Special Recognition
  • Internship: National Instruments
Mr. Teegan Duong
  • B.S., 2018
  • HMC PIM Optimizations for Stencil Algorithms
Mr. Kace Echo
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2016
  • General Motors
  • Publications: NAS'16
Mr. Chaz George
  • REU site participant
  • Ellucian
Ms. Nika Mansouri Ghiasi
  • Website:
  • Visiting student
Mr. Mose Gumble
  • REU site participant
Mr. Yi Guo
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2014
  • Graduate study in Columbia
  • Project: PerfExpert and MACPO: Code Performance Diagnosis and Optimization from an I/O Perspective
Mr. Zachary Hansen
  • Email: zachary.hansen@ttu.edu
  • Phone: 806.742.1828
  • B.S., 2020
Mr. Zachary Hansen
Mr. Jayse Hulett
  • B.S., 2014
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Project: An Overview of Data Deduplication Techniques on File Systems Through Lessfs
Mr. Rex Keen
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2015
  • National Instruments
Mr. Dalton Koehl
  • B.S., 2019
  • Employment: Department of Defense.
  • Research: “Graph Algorithms for Recommendation Systems”
  • B.S., 2017
Mr. Nick Muirhead
Mr. Mitchell C. Powell
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2013
  • Network Elites
Mr. Omar Rodriguez
  • B.S., 2015
  • WCOE summer intern
  • Graduate study at Texas Tech University
  • ACM SRC research poster at The 2014 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing
  • B.S., 2019
  • Graduate study at UT-Dallas
  • Honors Thesis: Improving Erasure-Coded Distributed Storage System Scalability Using Consistent Hashing
Mr. Felix Perez
Mr. Noris G Rogers
  • B.S., 2015
  • Texas Tech University
Mr. Robin Ronson
  • Email: robin.ronson@ttu.edu
  • B.S., 2020
  • Redfish API
  • Conformance Testing
  • Cloud computing
Mr. Robin Ronson
Mr. Casey Root
  • Email: casey.root@ttu.edu
  • Phone: 512.992.9189
  • Website: caseyroot.com
  • B.S., 2021
  • Monitoring Status of HPCC System
Mr. Casey Root
Mr. Alejandro Sanjuan
  • Website:
  • Return to Spain home institution
  • Project: Improving MPI-IO Performance through Transparent Compression in Blocks
Mr. Shane Tarleton
  • B.S., 2013
  • USAA
  • Graduate Study at Texas Tech University
  • REU participant, SC'12 Student Cluster Competition Exemplary Spirit Special Recognition
  • Internship: USAA (Data Analysis and Visualization Research Laboratory)
Mr. Gregory Thorsness
  • REU site participant
  • B.S., 2015
  • IBM
  • SC'13 ACM SRC (Student Research Competition) Poster
  • CALUE Travel Award
Mr. Eric Valenzuela
  • REU site participant
  • The 2014 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing (SC'14) BE program awardee and conference attendee
  • ACM SRC research poster at The 2014 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing
Mr. Alexander Weaver
  • B.S., 2017
  • National Instruments (NI)
Mr. John T. Weaver
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2013
Mr. Yong Wu
  • B.S., 2018
  • DISCL website administrator
Ms. Danielle Zaragoza
  • Website:
  • B.S., 2016
  • The English editor in the DISCL

High-School Students Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
Mr. Zachary Hansen
  • Email: zachary.hansen@ttu.edu
  • Phone: 806.742.1828
  • Undergraduate Study at Texas Tech University
Mr. Zachary Hansen

Visiting Scholars Alumni

Name Employment
Visiting PhD student
Mr. Yusheng Hua
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Dr. Meng Li
Visiting Scholar
Mr. Yan Li
Visiting Ph.D. Student
Mr. Weihao Liang
University of Science and Technology of China
Dr. Guangzhong Sun
Dr. Yang Zhang
Dr. Qinwen Zuo

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