diochnos/research/students
Current Students
Current PhD Students (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
- Zak Kastl (Apr 2025 – now): PhD student in Computer Science working under a SMART scholarship. Zak's work focuses on distillation methods and tiny machine learning for embedded systems. Zak is co-advised by Dr. Mike Banad and myself.
- Pantia-Marina Alchirch (Aug 2022 – now): PhD student in Computer Science. Marina was also an undergraduate student of mine. Please read below under Past Undergraduate Students to learn more about her work in the past. Marina's work for her PhD focuses on streaming data and interpretable machine learning methods.
Current Master's Students (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
Current Master's Students Pursuing a Thesis
- Tiffany Le (Thesis track, Aug 2025 – now): Tiffany is investigating ideas for long-tailed distributions in open-world learning scenarios regarding her Master's thesis. Tiffany was also a member of my group as an undergraduate and has done work on the effectiveness of co-training methods for a few-shot learning problem that we investigated.
Current Collaborating Students
Current Collaborating PhD Students
- Patrick Kage: PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Advised by Dr. Pavlos Andreadis. With Patrick and Pavlos and Jay we are working together on problems related to pseudo-labeling with applications in computer vision.
- Steven Lin: Steven successfully defended his PhD thesis in the summer of 2025. He was a PhD student in Mathematics at the University of Oklahoma advised by Dr. Roi Docampo. Steven is also interested in computational learning theory after taking a course with me in the fall of 2023. We are currently working on a problem on label noise together with Ting-Hung Yu.
- Ting-Hung Yu: PhD student in Statistics at the University of Iowa. Advised by Dr. Kung-Sik Chan. Ting-Hung is also interested in computational learning theory. We are currently working on a problem on label noise together with Steven Lin.
Past Students
Past PhD Students at the University of Oklahoma (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
- Jay Rothenberger (Aug 2021 – May 2026): PhD student in Computer Science.
Jay was a research assistant in the AI2ES project during the period 2021-2025
and in the TREE-CARE project during the period 2025-2026.
Jay's PhD work focused on interpretable and semi-supervised machine learning.
The thesis received the Gallogly College of Engineering Dissertation Excellence Award.
Thesis title: Novel Algorithms for Interpretable and Semi-Supervised Machine Learning.
Thesis pdf: Please see here.
- William Keely (Aug 2021 – Aug 2025): PhD student in Data Science and Analytics.
Will is co-advised by Dr. Sean Crowell and myself.
Will was initially working in the GeoCarb project.
He was then a research affiliate with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Will's PhD work focused on machine learning methods for bias correction on the estimation of gases in the atmosphere through satellite retrievals.
Thesis title: Machine Learning Applications for Atmospheric Retrieval from Earth Observing Spectroscopy with Robust Uncertainty Quantification.
Thesis pdf: Please see here.
Past Master's Students at the University of Oklahoma (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
Past Master's Students Who Pursued a Thesis
- Luis Vazquez (Aug 2023 – Aug 2025):
Graduate student in Computer Science.
Thesis title: Hierarchical Shrinkage in Tree-Based Models Applied to Image, High-Dimensional, and Noisy Data.
Thesis pdf: Please see here.
Past Master's Students Who Pursued a Project
- Teddy Diallo (Project track, Jan 2025 – Dec 2025): Teddy started working with me and Dr. Kyprioti as an undergradute student investigating topics in computer vision algorithms. She was funded through an ICAST grant on treefall detection as a research assistant. During the fall semester of 2025 she pursued a project-based path for completing her Master's degree in Computer Science.
- Tommy Pham (Aug 2025 – Dec 2025): Tommy focused on a topic in semi-supervised learning (views for co-training).
- Kevin Tran (Aug 2024 – Dec 2024): Kevin focused on transformer architectures.
- Alberto Liu (Aug 2024 – Dec 2024): Alberto focused on low-dimensional network embeddings using LINE.
- Gabriela N. Fisher (Jan 2023 – May 2023): Gabriela focused on interpretable machine learning methods.
- Arjun Ganesan (Jan 2023 – May 2023): Arjun focused on adversarial examples in machine learning.
Past Undergraduate Students at OU (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
- Ignacio Yockers (Aug 2025 – May 2026): Ignacio was working on interpretability issues that arise in distillation of tree ensembles as part of his involvement in the AI2ES project as an undergraduate research assistant.
- Teddy Diallo (Oct 2024 – Dec 2024): Undergraduate research assistant in a seed-funded project that I am working on. Teddy is working on computer vision algorithms with an eye towards applications for treefall detection. Teddy is co-supervised by me and Dr. Kyprioti.
- Luke Terry (Aug 2024 – May 2025): Undergraduate research assistant in the AI2ES project that I am working on. Luke worked on semi-supervised learning methods (co-training) with a focus on improving the performance of existing methods when working with imbalanced datasets. First job on the market as a software engineer in Rockwell Automation.
- Tiffany Le (Aug 2023 – May 2024): Undergraduate research assistant in the AI2ES project that I am working on. Tiffany worked on semi-supervised learning (co-training methods) with applications to winter-weather data. First job on the market as a software engineer in the Air Force.
- Erin Sullivan (Jan 2023 – May 2023): Honor's thesis in trustworthy issues of machine learning models. The title of the thesis was The Need for Ethical Algorithms: Exploring Algorithmic Fairness in Society. First job on the market at Bank of America.
- Tyson Harris (Aug 2022 – Dec 2023): Honor's thesis in trustworthy issues of machine learning models. The title of the thesis was Exploration of Bias in Machine Learning Models Using 1994 MEPS Data. First job on the market at Boeing.
- Alberto Liu (Aug 2022 – May 2023): Undergraduate research assistant in the AI2ES project that I am working on. Alberto worked on semi-supervised learning with applications to winter-weather data.
- Vincent Ferrera (May 2022 – Jul 2022): Undergraduate research assistant who participated in the REU of the AI2ES project that I am working on. He is currently (academic year 2022 – 2023) a senior at the University of Delaware majoring in Meteorology and Climate Sciences. Vincent presented his REU work on semi-supervised learning, in the 2nd annual NYS Mesonet Symposium that took place at the University of Albany in September of 2022.
- Jose E. Aguilar Escamilla (Jun 2021 – May 2022): Jose graduated from OU with an accelerated Bachelor's/Master's degree in 2023 from OU. Meanwhile, we wrote a short paper together that appeared in LOD 2023 based on work that Jose did when he was an undergraduate McNair scholar in Computer Science. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Oregon State University.
- Caleb Lagge (Oct 2021 – May 2022): Undergraduate student in Computer Engineering and Mathematics; research assistant and honors thesis as part of a DISC seed-fund on predictive modeling for blocking events using clustering methods. Currently (academic year 2022 – 2023) pursuing a Master's degree at Duke.
- Pantia-Marina Alchirch (Jan 2021 – Sep 2021): Undergraduate student in Computer Science (Athens University of Economics and Business, Hellas) advised by Dr. Katia Papakonstantinopoulou. I collaborated closely with her regarding her undergraduate thesis in evolvability and we had a paper at EuroGP 2022. Marina did her Master's degree in Computer Science at the Athens University of Economics and Business during 2021 – 2022. She is currently pursuing a PhD with me.
- Conner Flansburg (Apr 2020 – Aug 2021): Undergraduate research assistant in AI2ES. Also participated in the REU of 2021 within AI2ES and we had a paper together at AAAI 2022 (student abstract stream). First job on the market at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Past Undergraduate Students at University of Virginia (reverse chronological order; ties alphabetical)
- Nicholas Georgiou (Aug 2017 – May 2018): Capstone project on Recommender Systems and a Case Study on the MovieLens Dataset.
- Alyson Irizarry (Aug 2017 – May 2018): Capstone project on On Genetic Algorithms with Noisy Fitness Functions.
- Andrew Lee (Aug 2017 – May 2018): Capstone project on A Comparative Study of Some Feature Selection Algorithms.
- Ceyer Wakilpoor (Aug 2017 – May 2018): Capstone project on Deep Reinforcement Learning on Tic-Tac-Toe.
Past Collaborating Students
Past Collaborating Undergraduate Students
- Erencem Özbey (Sep 2024 – Summer 2025): Undergraduate student working on clustering methods in an open-world setting. Erencem was a visiting student at OU during the fall of 2024. He is studying Computer Engineering and Physics at Boğaziçi University in Türkiye. Together we had a paper on a clustering method in an open-world setting that appeared in the Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AJCAI) 2025.
A Remark for Prospective Students
Due to a large volume of emails that I receive I am not able to respond to all the emails by prospective students. However, if you do want to come to the University of Oklahoma and work as a graduate student in the School of Computer Science, first and foremost you need to apply to become a student here!
