I2S Masters/ Doctoral Theses


All students and faculty are welcome to attend the final defense of I2S graduate students completing their M.S. or Ph.D. degrees. Defense notices for M.S./Ph.D. presentations for this year and several previous years are listed below in reverse chronological order.

Students who are nearing the completion of their M.S./Ph.D. research should schedule their final defenses through the EECS graduate office at least THREE WEEKS PRIOR to their presentation date so that there is time to complete the degree requirements check, and post the presentation announcement online.

Upcoming Defense Notices

Vinay Kumar Reddy Budideti

NutriBot: An AI-Powered Personalized Nutrition Recommendation Chatbot Using Rasa

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Victor Frost
Prasad Kulkarni


Abstract

In recent years, the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and healthcare has paved the way for intelligent dietary assistance. NutriBot is an AI-powered chatbot developed using the Rasa framework to deliver personalized nutrition recommendations based on user preferences, diet types, and nutritional goals. This full-stack system integrates Rasa NLU, a Flask backend, the Nutritionix API for real-time food data, and a React.js + Tailwind CSS frontend for seamless interaction. The system is containerized using Docker and deployable on cloud platforms like GCP. 

The chatbot supports multi-turn conversations, slot-filling, and remembers user preferences such as dietary restrictions or nutrient focus (e.g., high protein). Evaluation of the system showed perfect intent and entity recognition accuracy, fast API response times, and user-friendly fallback handling. While NutriBot currently lacks persistent user profiles and multilingual support, it offers a highly accurate, scalable framework for future extensions such as fitness tracker integration, multilingual capabilities, and smart assistant deployment.


Arun Kumar Punjala

Deep Learning-Based MRI Brain Tumor Classification: Evaluating Sequential Architectures for Diagnostic Accuracy

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Prasad Kulkarni
Dongjie Wang


Abstract

Accurate classification of brain tumors from MRI scans plays a vital role in assisting clinical diagnosis and treatment planning. This project investigates and compares three deep learning-based classification approaches designed to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating recurrent layers into conventional convolutional architectures. Specifically, a CNN-LSTM model, a CNN-RNN model with GRU units, and a baseline CNN classifier using EfficientNetB0 are developed and assessed on a curated MRI dataset.

The CNN-LSTM model uses ResNet50 as a feature extractor, with spatial features reshaped and passed through stacked LSTM layers to explore sequential learning on static medical images. The CNN-RNN model implements TimeDistributed convolutional layers followed by GRUs, examining the potential benefits of GRU-based modeling. The EfficientNetB0-based CNN model, trained end-to-end without recurrent components, serves as the performance baseline.

All three models are evaluated using training accuracy, validation loss, confusion matrices, and class-wise performance metrics. Results show that the CNN-LSTM architecture provides the most balanced performance across tumor types, while the CNN-RNN model suffers from mild overfitting. The EfficientNetB0 baseline offers stable and efficient classification for general benchmarking.


Ganesh Nurukurti

Customer Behavior Analytics and Recommendation System for E-Commerce

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Prasad Kulkarni
Han Wang


Abstract

In the era of digital commerce, personalized recommendations are pivotal for enhancing user experience and boosting engagement. This project presents a comprehensive recommendation system integrated into an e-commerce web application, designed using Flask and powered by collaborative filtering via Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). The system intelligently predicts and personalizes product suggestions for users based on implicit feedback such as purchases, cart additions, and search behavior.

 

The foundation of the recommendation engine is built on user-item interaction data, derived from the Brazilian e-commerce Olist dataset. Ratings are simulated using weighted scores for purchases and cart additions, reflecting varying degrees of user intent. These interactions are transformed into a user-product matrix and decomposed using SVD, yielding latent user and product features. The model leverages these latent factors to predict user interest in unseen products, enabling precise and scalable recommendation generation.

 

To further enhance personalization, the system incorporates real-time user activity. Recent search history is stored in an SQLite database and used to prioritize recommendations that align with the user’s current interests. A diversity constraint is also applied to avoid redundancy, limiting the number of recommended products per category.

 

The web application supports robust user authentication, product exploration by category, cart management, and checkout simulations. It features a visually driven interface with dynamic visualizations for product insights and user interactions. The home page adapts to individual preferences, showing tailored product recommendations and enabling users to explore categories and details.

 

In summary, this project demonstrates the practical implementation of a hybrid recommendation strategy combining matrix factorization with contextual user behavior. It showcases the importance of latent factor modeling, data preprocessing, and user-centric design in delivering an intelligent retail experience.


Mahmudul Hasan

Assertion-Based Security Assessment of Hardware IP Protection Methods

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Tamzidul Hoque, Chair
Esam El-Araby
Sumaiya Shomaji


Abstract

Combinational and sequential locking methods are promising solutions for protecting hardware intellectual property (IP) from piracy, reverse engineering, and malicious modifications by locking the functionality of the IP based on a secret key. To improve their security, researchers are developing attack methods to extract the secret key.  

 

While the attacks on combinational locking are mostly inapplicable for sequential designs without access to the scan chain, the limited applicable attacks are generally evaluated against the basic random insertion of key gates. On the other hand, attacks on sequential locking techniques suffer from scalability issues and evaluation of improperly locked designs. Finally, while most attacks provide an approximately correct key, they do not indicate which specific key bits are undetermined. This thesis proposes an oracle-guided attack that applies to both combinational and sequential locking without scan chain access. The attack applies light-weight design modifications that represent the oracle using a finite state machine and applies an assertion-based query of the unlocking key. We have analyzed the effectiveness of our attack against 46 sequential designs locked with various classes of combinational locking including random, strong, logic cone-based, and anti-SAT based. We further evaluated against a sequential locking technique using 46 designs with various key sequence lengths and widths. Finally, we expand our framework to identify undetermined key bits, enabling complementary attacks on the smaller remaining key space.


Masoud Ghazikor

Distributed Optimization and Control Algorithms for UAV Networks in Unlicensed Spectrum Bands

When & Where:


Nichols Hall, Room 246 (Executive Conference Room)

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Morteza Hashemi, Chair
Victor Frost
Prasad Kulkarni


Abstract

UAVs have emerged as a transformative technology for various applications, including emergency services, delivery, and video streaming. Among these, video streaming services in areas with limited physical infrastructure, such as disaster-affected areas, play a crucial role in public safety. UAVs can be rapidly deployed in search and rescue operations to efficiently cover large areas and provide live video feeds, enabling quick decision-making and resource allocation strategies. However, ensuring reliable and robust UAV communication in such scenarios is challenging, particularly in unlicensed spectrum bands, where interference from other nodes is a significant concern. To address this issue, developing a distributed transmission control and video streaming is essential to maintaining a high quality of service, especially for UAV networks that rely on delay-sensitive data. 

In this MSc thesis, we study the problem of distributed transmission control and video streaming optimization for UAVs operating in unlicensed spectrum bands. We develop a cross-layer framework that jointly considers three inter-dependent factors: (i) in-band interference introduced by ground-aerial nodes at the physical layer, (ii) limited-size queues with delay-constrained packet arrival at the MAC layer, and (iii) video encoding rate at the application layer. This framework is designed to optimize the average throughput and PSNR by adjusting fading thresholds and video encoding rates for an integrated aerial-ground network in unlicensed spectrum bands. Using consensus-based distributed algorithm and coordinate descent optimization, we develop two algorithms: (i) Distributed Transmission Control (DTC) that dynamically adjusts fading thresholds to maximize the average throughput by mitigating trade-offs between low-SINR transmission errors and queue packet losses, and (ii) Joint Distributed Video Transmission and Encoder Control (JDVT-EC) that optimally balances packet loss probabilities and video distortions by jointly adjusting fading thresholds and video encoding rates. Through extensive numerical analysis, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithms under various scenarios.


Past Defense Notices

Dates

Srijanya Chetikaneni

Plant Disease Prediction Using Transfer Learning

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Prasad Kulkarni
Han Wang


Abstract

Timely detection of plant diseases is critical to safeguarding crop yields and ensuring global food security. This project presents a deep learning-based image classification system to identify plant diseases using the publicly available PlantVillage dataset. The core objective was to evaluate and compare the performance of a custom-built Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with two widely used transfer learning models—EfficientNetB0 and MobileNetV3Small. 

 

All models were trained on augmented image data resized to 224×224 pixels, with preprocessing tailored to each architecture. The custom CNN used simple normalization, whereas EfficientNetB0 and MobileNetV3Small utilized their respective pre-processing methods to standardize the pretrained ImageNet domain inputs. To improve robustness, the training pipeline included data augmentation, class weighting, and early stopping.

Training was conducted using the Adam optimizer and categorical cross-entropy loss over 30 epochs, with performance assessed using accuracy, loss, and training time metrics. The results revealed that transfer learning models significantly outperformed the custom CNN. EfficientNetB0 achieved the highest accuracy, making it ideal for high-precision applications, while MobileNetV3Small offered a favorable balance between speed and accuracy, making it suitable for lightweight, real-time inference on edge devices.

This study validates the effectiveness of transfer learning for plant disease detection tasks and emphasizes the importance of model-specific preprocessing and training strategies. It provides a foundation for deploying intelligent plant health monitoring systems in practical agricultural environments.

 


Rahul Purswani

Finetuning Llama on custom data for QA tasks

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Drew Davidson
Prasad Kulkarni


Abstract

Fine-tuning large language models (LLMs) for domain-specific use cases, such as question answering, offers valuable insights into how their performance can be tailored to specialized information needs. In this project, we focused on the University of Kansas (KU) as our target domain. We began by scraping structured and unstructured content from official KU webpages, covering a wide array of student-facing topics including campus resources, academic policies, and support services. From this content, we generated a diverse set of question-answer pairs to form a high-quality training dataset. LLaMA 3.2 was then fine-tuned on this dataset to improve its ability to answer KU-specific queries with greater relevance and accuracy. Our evaluation revealed mixed results—while the fine-tuned model outperformed the base model on most domain-specific questions, the original model still had an edge in handling ambiguous or out-of-scope prompts. These findings highlight the strengths and limitations of domain-specific fine-tuning, and provide practical takeaways for customizing LLMs for real-world QA applications.


Ahmet Soyyigit

Anytime Computing Techniques for LiDAR-based Perception In Cyber-Physical Systems

When & Where:


Nichols Hall, Room 250 (Gemini Room)

Degree Type:

PhD Dissertation Defense

Committee Members:

Heechul Yun, Chair
Michael Branicky
Prasad Kulkarni
Hongyang Sun
Shawn Keshmiri

Abstract

The pursuit of autonomy in cyber-physical systems (CPS) presents a challenging task of real-time interaction with the physical world, prompting extensive research in this domain. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly the introduction of deep neural networks (DNN), have significantly improved the autonomy of CPS, notably by boosting perception capabilities.

CPS perception aims to discern, classify, and track objects of interest in the operational environment, a task that is considerably challenging for computers in a three-dimensional (3D) space. For this task, the use of LiDAR sensors and processing their readings with DNNs has become popular because of their excellent performance. However, in CPS such as self-driving cars and drones, object detection must be not only accurate but also timely, posing a challenge due to the high computational demand of LiDAR object detection DNNs. Satisfying this demand is particularly challenging for on-board computational platforms due to size, weight, and power constraints. Therefore, a trade-off between accuracy and latency must be made to ensure that both requirements are satisfied. Importantly, the required trade-off is operational environment dependent and should be weighted more on accuracy or latency dynamically at runtime. However, LiDAR object detection DNNs cannot dynamically reduce their execution time by compromising accuracy (i.e. anytime computing). Prior research aimed at anytime computing for object detection DNNs using camera images is not applicable to LiDAR-based detection due to architectural differences. This thesis addresses these challenges by proposing three novel techniques: Anytime-LiDAR, which enables early termination with reasonable accuracy; VALO (Versatile Anytime LiDAR Object Detection), which implements deadline-aware input data scheduling; and MURAL (Multi-Resolution Anytime Framework for LiDAR Object Detection), which introduces dynamic resolution scaling. Together, these innovations enable LiDAR-based object detection DNNs to make effective trade-offs between latency and accuracy under varying operational conditions, advancing the practical deployment of LiDAR object detection DNNs.


Rithvij Pasupuleti

A Machine Learning Framework for Identifying Bioinformatics Tools and Database Names in Scientific Literature

When & Where:


LEEP2, Room 2133

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

Cuncong Zhong, Chair
Dongjie Wang
Han Wang
Zijun Yao

Abstract

The absence of a single, comprehensive database or repository cataloging all bioinformatics databases and software creates a significant barrier for researchers aiming to construct computational workflows. These workflows, which often integrate 10–15 specialized tools for tasks such as sequence alignment, variant calling, functional annotation, and data visualization, require researchers to explore diverse scientific literature to identify relevant resources. This process demands substantial expertise to evaluate the suitability of each tool for specific biological analyses, alongside considerable time to understand their applicability, compatibility, and implementation within a cohesive pipeline. The lack of a central, updated source leads to inefficiencies and the risk of using outdated tools, which can affect research quality and reproducibility. Consequently, there is a critical need for an automated, accurate tool to identify bioinformatics databases and software mentions directly from scientific texts, streamlining workflow development and enhancing research productivity. 

 

The bioNerDS system, a prior effort to address this challenge, uses a rule-based named entity recognition (NER) approach, achieving an F1 score of 63% on an evaluation set of 25 articles from BMC Bioinformatics and PLoS Computational Biology. By integrating the same set of features such as context patterns, word characteristics and dictionary matches into a machine learning model, we developed an approach using an XGBoost classifier. This model, carefully tuned to address the extreme class imbalance inherent in NER tasks through synthetic oversampling and refined via systematic hyperparameter optimization to balance precision and recall, excels at capturing complex linguistic patterns and non-linear relationships, ensuring robust generalization. It achieves an F1 score of 82% on the same evaluation set, significantly surpassing the baseline. By combining rule-based precision with machine learning adaptability, this approach enhances accuracy, reduces ambiguities, and provides a robust tool for large-scale bioinformatics resource identification, facilitating efficient workflow construction. Furthermore, this methodology holds potential for extension to other technological domains, enabling similar resource identification in fields like data science, artificial intelligence, or computational engineering.


Vishnu Chowdary Madhavarapu

Automated Weather Classification Using Transfer Learning

When & Where:


Nichols Hall, Room 250 (Gemini Room)

Degree Type:

MS Project Defense

Committee Members:

David Johnson, Chair
Prasad Kulkarni
Dongjie Wang


Abstract

This project presents an automated weather classification system utilizing transfer learning with pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) such as VGG19, InceptionV3, and ResNet50. Designed to classify weather conditions—sunny, cloudy, rainy, and sunrise—from images, the system addresses the challenge of limited labeled data by applying data augmentation techniques like zoom, shear, and flip, expanding the dataset images. By fine-tuning the final layers of pre-trained models, the solution achieves high accuracy while significantly reducing training time. VGG19 was selected as the baseline model for its simplicity, strong feature extraction capabilities, and widespread applicability in transfer learning scenarios. The system was trained using the Adam optimizer and evaluated on key performance metrics including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. To enhance user accessibility, a Flask-based web interface was developed, allowing real-time image uploads and instant weather classification. The results demonstrate that transfer learning, combined with robust data preprocessing and fine-tuning, can produce a lightweight and accurate weather classification tool. This project contributes toward scalable, real-time weather recognition systems that can integrate into IoT applications, smart agriculture, and environmental monitoring.


Rokunuz Jahan Rudro

Using Machine Learning to Classify Driver Behavior from Psychological Features: An Exploratory Study

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 1A

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Sumaiya Shomaji, Chair
David Johnson
Zijun Yao
Alexandra Kondyli

Abstract

Driver inattention and human error are the primary causes of traffic crashes. However, little is known about the relationship between driver aggressiveness and safety. Although several studies that group drivers into different classes based on their driving performance have been conducted, little has been done to explore how behavioral traits are linked to driver behavior. The study aims to link different driver profiles, assessed through psychological evaluations, with their likelihood of engaging in risky driving behaviors, as measured in a driving simulation experiment. By incorporating psychological factors into machine learning algorithms, our models were able to successfully relate self-reported decision-making and personality characteristics with actual driving actions. Our results hold promise toward refining existing models of driver behavior by understanding the psychological and behavioral characteristics that influence the risk of crashes.


Md Mashfiq Rizvee

Energy Optimization in Multitask Neural Networks through Layer Sharing

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Sumaiya Shomaji, Chair
Tamzidul Hoque
Han Wang


Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being widely used in diverse domains such as industrial automation, traffic control, precision agriculture, and smart cities for major heavy lifting in terms of data analysis and decision making. However, the AI life- cycle is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission leading to devastating environmental impact. This is due to expensive neural architecture searches, training of countless number of models per day across the world, in-field AI processing of data in billions of edge devices, and advanced security measures across the AI life cycle. Modern applications often involve multitasking, which involves performing a variety of analyzes on the same dataset. These tasks are usually executed on resource-limited edge devices, necessitating AI models that exhibit efficiency across various measures such as power consumption, frame rate, and model size. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel neural network architecture model that incorporates a layer sharing principle to optimize the power usage. We propose a novel neural architecture, Layer Shared Neural Networks that merges multiple similar AI/NN tasks together (with shared layers) towards creating a single AI/NN model with reduced energy requirements and carbon footprint. The experimental findings reveal competitive accuracy and reduced power consumption. The layer shared model significantly reduces power consumption by 50% during training and 59.10% during inference causing as much as an 84.64% and 87.10% decrease in CO2 emissions respectively. 

  


Fairuz Shadmani Shishir

Parameter-Efficient Computational Drug Discovery using Deep Learning

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Sumaiya Shomaji, Chair
Tamzidul Hoque
Hongyang Sun


Abstract

The accurate prediction of small molecule binding affinity and toxicity remains a central challenge in drug discovery, with significant implications for reducing development costs, improving candidate prioritization, and enhancing safety profiles. Traditional computational approaches, such as molecular docking and quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models, often rely on handcrafted features and require extensive domain knowledge, which can limit scalability and generalization to novel chemical scaffolds. Recent advances in language models (LMs), particularly those adapted to chemical representations such as SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System), have opened new ways for learning data-driven molecular representations that capture complex structural and functional properties. However, achieving both high binding affinity and low toxicity through a resource-efficient computational pipeline is inherently difficult due to the multi-objective nature of the task. This study presents a novel dual-paradigm approach to critical challenges in drug discovery: predicting small molecules with high binding affinity and low cardiotoxicity profiles. For binding affinity prediction, we implement a specialized graph neural network (GNN) architecture that operates directly on molecular structures represented as graphs, where atoms serve as nodes and bonds as edges. This topology-aware approach enables the model to capture complex spatial arrangements and electronic interactions critical for protein-ligand binding. For toxicity prediction, we leverage chemical language models (CLMs) fine-tuned with Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), allowing efficient adaptation of large pre-trained models to specialized toxicological endpoints while maintaining the generalized chemical knowledge embedded in the base model. Our hybrid methodology demonstrates significant improvements over existing computational approaches, with the GNN component achieving an average area under the ROC curve (AUROC) of 0.92 on three protein targets and the LoRA-adapted CLM reaching (AUROC) of 0.90 with 60% reduction in parameter usage in predicting cardiotoxicity. This work establishes a powerful computational framework that accelerates drug discovery by enabling both higher binding affinity and low toxicity compounds with optimized efficacy and safety profiles. 


Soma Pal

Truths about compiler optimization for state-of-the-art (SOTA) C/C++ compilers

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

PhD Comprehensive Defense

Committee Members:

Prasad Kulkami, Chair
Esam El-Araby
Drew Davidson
Tamzidul Hoque
Jian Yunfeng

Abstract

Compiler optimizations are critical for performance and have been extensively studied, especially for C/C++ language compilers. Our overall goal in this thesis is to investigate and compare the properties and behavior of optimization passes across multiple contemporary, state-of-the-art (SOTA)  C/C++ compilers to understand if they adopt similar optimization implementation and orchestration strategies. Given the maturity of pre-existing knowledge in the field, it seems conceivable that different compiler teams will adopt consistent optimization passes, pipeline and application techniques. However, our preliminary results indicate that such expectation may be misguided. If so, then we will attempt to understand the differences, and study and quantify their impact on the performance of generated code.

In our first work, we study and compare the behavior of profile-guided optimizations (PGO) in two popular SOTA C/C++ compilers, GCC and Clang. This study reveals many interesting, and several counter-intuitive, properties about PGOs in C/C++ compilers. The behavior and benefits of PGOs also vary significantly across our selected compilers. We present our observations, along with plans to further explore these inconsistencies in this report. Likewise, we have also measured noticeable differences in the performance delivered by optimizations across our compilers. We propose to explore and understand these differences in this work. We present further details regarding our proposed directions and planned experiments in this report. We hope that this work will show and suggest opportunities for compilers to learn from each other and motivate researchers to find mechanisms to combine the benefits of multiple compilers to deliver higher overall program performance.


Nyamtulla Shaik

AI Vision to Care: A QuadView of Deep Learning for Detecting Harmful Stimming in Autism

When & Where:


Eaton Hall, Room 2001B

Degree Type:

MS Thesis Defense

Committee Members:

Sumaiya Shomaji, Chair
Bo Luo
Dongjie Wang


Abstract

Stimming refers to repetitive actions or behaviors used to regulate sensory input or express feelings. Children with developmental disorders like autism (ASD) frequently perform stimming. This includes arm flapping, head banging, finger flicking, spinning, etc. This is exhibited by 80-90% of children with Autism, which is seen in 1 among 36 children in the US. Head banging is one of these self-stimulatory habits that can be harmful. If these behaviors are automatically identified and notified using live video monitoring, parents and other caregivers can better watch over and assist children with ASD.

Classifying these actions is important to recognize harmful stimming, so this study focuses on developing a deep learning-based approach for stimming action recognition. We implemented and evaluated four models leveraging three deep learning architectures based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Autoencoders, and Vision Transformers. For the first time in this area, we use skeletal joints extracted from video sequences. Previous works relied solely on raw RGB videos, vulnerable to lighting and environmental changes. This research explores Deep Learning based skeletal action recognition and data processing techniques for a small unstructured dataset that consists of 89 home recorded videos collected from publicly available sources like YouTube. Our robust data cleaning and pre-processing techniques helped the integration of skeletal data in stimming action recognition, which performed better than state-of-the-art with a classification accuracy of up to 87%.

In addition to using traditional deep learning models like CNNs for action recognition, this study is among the first to apply data-hungry models like Vision Transformers (ViTs) and Autoencoders for stimming action recognition on the dataset. The results prove that using skeletal data reduces the processing time and significantly improves action recognition, promising a real-time approach for video monitoring applications. This research advances the development of automated systems that can assist caregivers in more efficiently tracking stimming activities.