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

Ph.D. Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
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. Yugendra R Guvvala
  • Ph.D., 2013,
  • RAID Inc.→Penguin Computing
  • Travel grant from Cluster'11
Dr. John Leidel
  • Ph.D., 2013-2017
  • 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., 2011-2015
  • 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., 2011-2015
  • 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

Masters Alumni

Name Contact Degree and Employment Research
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
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)
Mr. Junjie Chen
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2014
  • CitiBank
  • Publications: P2S2'14, BigData'13 (short paper)
  • AT&T Chancellor's Fellowship
Mr. Yuan Cui
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2017
  • A Fast and Evenly Distributed Consistent Hashing-Based Algorithm for Data Replication
Mr. Quan Gan
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2012
  • Amazon
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
Ms. Priyanka Kumari
  • Website:
  • M.S., 2017
  • TransUnion
  • Thesis: Validation of Redfish – The Scalable Platform Management Standard
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. Ali Nosrati
  • M.S., 2017
  • Dell
  • Thesis: On Simulating Data Centers with Redfish-enabled Equipment
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
M.S. Kalaranjani Vijayakumar
  • M.S., 2015
  • Informatica
  • Thesis: Exploring In-memory HDF5 and Early Evaluations
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

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. 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
  • 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
Mr. Noris G Rogers
  • B.S., 2015
  • Texas Tech University
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
Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
Dr. Meng Li
Dr. Guangzhong Sun
Dr. Yang Zhang
Dr. Qinwen Zuo
Mr. Wei Hao Liang

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