Current Ph.D. Students

Advisor: Dr. Shoba Krishnan

Dana AbdulQader received her B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Jordan in 2013 and her M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2015. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Santa Clara University with a focus on new deep learning techniques as it relates to on the edge computing. From 2016 to 2018, she started her career as a Process Engineer at Stryker Endoscopy where she worked closely with the manufacturing of capital equipment and worked on improving processes for more efficient outcomes. She then transitioned into R&D where she is currently working as a Sr. Design Engineer designing Embedded Systems for Sports Medicine minimally invasive surgical equipment.

Advisor: Dr. Tokunbo Ogunfunmi

Anaam Ansari is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering department at Santa Clara University. Her work involves researching new and efficient hardware architectures for convolutional neural networks. She received her bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from the University of Mumbai. Immediately followed by her undergraduate career, Anaam enrolled at San Jose State University (SJSU) into a graduate program in Electrical Engineering. She spent her graduate career focusing on wireless communications theory. Anaam has participated in several projects ranging from robotics to wireless communication using software-defined radios. Before becoming a full-time Ph.D. student she also worked at LSI Corporation as a systems engineer in the SerDes Architecture team. She has also interned at Autonomous Driving companies such as Velodyne and Waymo. Currently, she is interested in new architecture paradigms for performing convolutional neural networks.

Advisor: Dr. Sally Wood

Robert Hans Christiansen received his BSEE from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, New Jersey in 1963 and his MSEE from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey,  in  1987. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University with a focus on Computer Vision for Mobile Robotic Applications.  Over his  47 years as a practicing engineer specializing in power management electronics, he appreciated his hands-on opportunities working for leading-edge companies like  Texas Instruments, Magnavox, Intersil, and Samsung Semiconductor, which provided him with a forum to publish numerous trade articles and conference papers. When he retired in 2009, he enrolled in the Santa Clara University   “open university” graduate program to satisfy his long-standing educational interests in advanced mathematics and control theory. In this environment and motivated by the research opportunities he submitted his application to the Santa Clara University Ph.D. program.

Advisor: Dr. Sara Tehranipoor

Soroor Ghandali received her M.Sc. degree in mathematical statistics at the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Tehran in 2019. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Santa Clara University, with a research focus on Hardware Security based on machine learning algorithms. She has authored papers in Side-Channel Attacks, Logic Locking Obfuscation Techniques, and Flash-Based Security Primitives.
She has served as a reviewer in DATE2020, VDEC2020, and SVCC2020. Her research interests include hardware and embedded security, applied cryptography, side-channel analysis, IOT security, machine learning, applied statistics, and FPGA application.

Advisor: Dr. Ramesh Abhari

Nivedita Parthasarathy received her B.Eng. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Anna University in 2009 and her M.Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Texas, Dallas in 2012. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Santa Clara University, CA with a focus on antennas and biological material characterization in the treatment of Microwave Hyperthermia. In 2016, she started her career as an Application Engineer at Computer Simulation Technology (CST) where she worked on designing antennas for biomedical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants. She then transitioned to a Solution Consultant role at Dassault Systèmes Simulia focusing on electromagnetic simulation solutions for RF and PCB systems.  Her research interests include mm-wave antennas and Bio-electromagnetics.

Advisor: Dr. Kurt Schab

Roopan received her B.S in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Punjabi University, India, and M.S in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA, in 2018 and 2020, respectively. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, with a focus on electromagnetics. Her main research interest centers on the inverse design of optimal antennas and functional surfaces. She has authored and co-authored fifteen refereed journal and conference publications. Her other research interests include Energy landscape analysis of the human brain, designing and fabricating Microstrip patch antennas.

Advisor: Dr. Sally Wood

Allen Rush received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and M.S. in Computer Engineering at Santa Clara. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University with a focus on deep learning imaging technologies. Allen is currently retired, and most recently was a Senior Fellow at AMD where he leads the technology development for AI. Previously he founded several startup companies and had many engineering positions at Intel, ROLM, and others.