March 2026 - Gradstudents - mailman.cs.vt.edu

FW: Graduate Student International Conference Travel Fellowship – Now Open
by Dr. Eli Tilevich 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

From: COE Research & Innovation <coeresearch(a)vt.edu> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 9:34 AM To: coefaculty-g(a)vt.edu Cc: Sanderlin, Nicole <npsander(a)vt.edu> Subject: FW: Graduate Student International Conference Travel Fellowship – Now Open Sending on behalf of Global Engineering, Engagement & Research (GEER). Please share with your students and contact Nicole Sanderlin with questions. Have a great day! The College of Engineering is pleased to announce the Graduate Student International Conference Travel Fellowship, designed to support graduate students presenting their research or creative scholarship at international conferences and professional meetings. This fellowship provides up to $1,200 in travel support per award, subject to the availability of funds, for eligible travel taking place between April 1 and June 30, 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and students must apply at least 30 days prior to their travel. Students may apply here: https://eng.vt.edu/international-programs/student-resources-for-internation… Eligibility Requirements: Applicants must: * Be a currently enrolled graduate student in the College of Engineering * Be the presenting author or presenter of the research or creative work * Have received official confirmation that their work has been accepted for presentation prior to applying Important Details: * Travel support will be provided in advance as a fellowship to help offset eligible expenses such as conference registration, transportation, and lodging (please note that food expenses are not eligible). * Only one student per accepted presentation may receive funding. * Students are eligible to receive this support once per academic year. Application Requirements: Applicants must submit documentation confirming acceptance of their work (e.g., acceptance email or official letter from the conference organizer listing the student as presenter or author). Applications without proof of acceptance will not be reviewed. Post-Travel Requirements: Within two weeks after the conference, recipients must provide documentation confirming their participation (such as a conference program, certificate of presentation/attendance, or similar proof). Recipients may also be asked to submit itemized receipts for approved travel expenses. Please note that receipts must be issued in the recipient’s name. Failure to provide required documentation may result in repayment of fellowship funds. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Nicole Sanderlin, Director of Global Engagement, at npsander(a)vt.edu <mailto:npsander@vt.edu> . We encourage graduate students to take advantage of this opportunity to share their work with an international audience. Best regards, Nicole Sanderlin, Ph.D. Director of Global Engagement Virginia Tech College of Engineering Phone: +1 (540) 231-1755 Web: <https://eng.vt.edu/international-programs.html> https://eng.vt.edu/international-programs.html Email: <mailto:npsander@vt.edu> npsander(a)vt.edu 3046 Torgersen Hall, 620 Drillfield Drive (0217) Blacksburg, VA, 24061-1050 USA Fulbright Scholar Liaison – Ask me about <https://fulbrightscholars.org/> Fulbright!

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Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series: Kevin Minnick: Wednesday, March. 25
by Kantarcioglu, Murat 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Dear All, As part of the CS/Root Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series, we are pleased to host a talk by Kevin Minnick, an alumnus of Virginia Tech CS. We invite you to attend if you are interested in startups or in learning how research can be effectively translated into practice. Please find the details below, along with the attached seminar announcement. Seminar Title: A fireside chat with Kevin Minnick on building technology companies Date and Time: Wednesday, March. 25, 2026, 2:00pm-3:00pm. Location: 1100 Torgersen Bio: Kevin Minnick is a product and engineering leader with over 25 years of experience building and scaling technology companies. His entrepreneurship story began right here at Virginia Tech. As a senior computer science student in the late 1990s, Kevin co-founded an email hosting company that he grew into a nationally recognized platform, ultimately leading to a successful acquisition by Rackspace Hosting in 2007. His career spans startups, high-growth companies, and enterprise product leadership. Kevin currently lives in Blacksburg and serves as a Technical Advisor to Active Capital, a venture fund based in San Antonio, TX. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and completed the Texas Executive Education program in General Management at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business. With two successful acquisitions, experience scaling from startup to enterprise, and deep roots in the Virginia Tech community, Kevin offers a unique perspective on the full lifecycle of building technology companies. Best Regards, Murat ==================================== Murat Kantarcioglu, Ph.D. Professor, and CCI Faculty Fellow Virginia Tech, Department of Computer Science www.kantarcioglu.net ====================================

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Tung Le's Final PhD Defense, 10:00 AM, Friday, March 20
by Thang Hoang 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Good morning, I am pleased to invite you to Tung Le’s final PhD defense. The details are as follows. *Date:* Friday, March 20, 2026 *Time:* 10:00 AM EDT *Location:* Gilbert Place 3001 *Zoom:* https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/thanghoang?pwd=OG5xUVFwb0tZSVByNXFjcEVFL1hx… *Committee:* Prof. Rouzbeh Behnia (USF), Prof. Lenwood Heath (VT), Prof. Thang Hoang (Chair), Prof. Wenjing Lou (VT), and Prof. Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (VT) *Title:* *Trustworthy, Privacy-Preserving and Functional Data Outsourcing Systems* *Abstract:* Data outsourcing systems, e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, etc., have become essential in our daily lives. They can reduce the storage burden on user devices, which have limited storage capacity. Also, they serve as backup places for user data to prevent data loss due to hardware failures. However, attacks on storage servers have exposed user data, threatening user privacy and the reputation of corporations. The goal of this dissertation is to develop and implement trustworthy, privacy-preserving, and functional data outsourcing systems. The contributions consist of two pieces. First, we designed and implemented a Proof of Retrievability scheme named Porla, an efficient technique allowing the user to audit their data to ensure its intactness. Our work features an optimal audit-proof size and low end-to-end audit latency in comparison with prior work. Second, we developed a series of new searchable encryption techniques achieving high security guarantees and performance in various threat and system models. In particular, we start by designing new schemes for multi-user searchable encryption, MAPLE and MUSES, using state-of-the-art cryptographic tools and emerging distributed computation algorithms. Our MAPLE and MUSES offer high security guarantees while optimizing search complexity in terms of computation and communication costs. However, they rely on distributed computation for secure search, which incur expensive deployment and maintenance cost. Therefore, we turn our direction to deal with the security and performance issues in public-key searchable encryption (PKSE) and hybrid searchable encryption (HSE), which can support multi-user settings in practice more naturally, such as email and messaging systems. To this end, we design Hermes, which simultaneous resolves many open problems in PKSE/HSE settings including: preventing keyword-guessing attacks, achieving user-efficient epoch-based forward privacy, and optimizing server computation cost for keyword search. Finally, we observe that mitigating pattern leakages in PKSE/HSE has remained an open and unexplored research problem. Applying differential privacy (DP) is potential as it achieves single-round search and small user-side storage, but the state-of-the-art work using DP still suffers from significant overhead to be applicable for practical applications. Our final work FROST devises a new approach for applying DP in encrypted search, showing a significant advance in terms of performance and communication cost. All the aspects addressed in this dissertation are essential for building practical encrypted data outsourcing systems that achieve both high performance and strong security guarantees. *Publications from the dissertation to be covered in the defense:* - Tung Le and Thang Hoang, *Hermes: Efficient and Secure Multi-Writer Encrypted Database*, in IEEE S&P 2025 - Tung Le, Rouzbeh Behnia, Jorge Guajardo, and Thang Hoang, *MUSES: Efficient Multi-User Searchable Encrypted Database*, in USENIX Security 2024 - Tung Le and Thang Hoang, *MAPLE: A Metadata-Hiding Policy-Controllable Encrypted Search Platform with Minimal Trust*, in PETS 2023 - Tung Le, Pengzhi Huang, Attila A. Yavuz, Elaine Shi, and Thang Hoang, *Efficient Dynamic Proof of Retrievability for Cold Storage*, in NDSS 2023 Best, Thang -- Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech https://thanghoang.github.io

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FW: Graduate Education Week is on the Horizon!
by Kinder, Sharon 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

From: Allison, Summer <summerskye(a)vt.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2026 11:54 AM To: Kinder, Sharon <skpotter(a)vt.edu>; Escobar Villatoro, Klaudia <kescobar10(a)vt.edu> Cc: Office of Sexual Violence Prevention and Education <svpe(a)vt.edu> Subject: Graduate Education Week is on the Horizon! Hello, Everyone here at the Sexual Violence Prevention & Education Office (SVPE) hopes you're well and staying warm in this weather! My name is Summer Allison, and I'm reaching out as a current Master of Public Health student and a graduate assistant with SVPE. Since you are both coordinators in the Computer Science & Applications department, we believe your help would be invaluable to our current mission. Our goal for this semester is to garner additional graduate student engagement at campus events and workshops to spread awareness that our resources are here to help all Hokies connect and learn in a safe environment. To demonstrate this, we would like to highlight events we are hosting for graduate and professional students in hopes that you will spread the word to grad students in your department: * Grad Listening Session On March 26 from 5:30-7pm, SVPE wants to hear from grad students in GLC Room B! We will be hosting an interactive listening session to help shape the future of sexual violence prevention programming at VT. Meals will be provided, but RSVP must be completed by March 18. Please RSVP using this form.<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qC7f2iIkxb4OkgD_RCSkCL9i-JOIRhhcP27R3P9cA0…> * Workshop Requests Workshops held for undergrad and/or grad students can be requested using this form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fFPXPUhQzMLlCoRfX7XYn07414jNrUy6ziymDCSWU7…>. For any questions regarding requesting a workshop please don't hesitate to reach out! If you're willing to help promote our events in your department we would all greatly appreciate it. As always, please reach out with any questions, comments, or concerns for us and we will reach out as soon as possible. Thank you for helping us keep our Hokie community safe. Summer Allison Contact: svpe(a)vt.edu<mailto:svpe@vt.edu>

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CS Faculty Candidate Seminar, Tuesday, March 17
by Zier, Debbie 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

CS Faculty Candidate Seminar, Tuesday, March 17 9:30 - 10:30am, 1100 Torgersen Alicia DeVrio (Carnegie Mellon) Seminar: Responsible AI by & for the People: Supporting bottom-up remediation of AI harm<https://website.cs.vt.edu/research/Seminars/Alicia_DeVrio.html> ________________________ Debbie Zier Administrative Assistant and Office Manager Department of Computer Science (0106) 3160E Torgersen Hall 620 Drillfield Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061 541-231-1369

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FW: Could you please share this announcement?
by Kinder, Sharon 16 Mar '26

16 Mar '26

From: Graduate and Professional Student Senate <gpss-resc(a)vt.edu> Sent: Monday, March 16, 2026 8:55 AM Subject: Could you please share this announcement? Hello Graduate Program Administrator, Hope you had a wonderful spring break! Could you please share this upcoming event with the graduate students in your department? "Know Your Rights and Responsibilities with an Immigration Lawyer" Immigration 101 for International Students When: March 20, 5 - 7:30 PM Where: Goodall Room - Newman Library and Zoom RSVP by March 18 https://forms.office.com/r/D1GcDm60LJ [cid:image001.jpg@01DCB528.DCA36F90] Thank you for your support and we truly appreciate your help in making our events reach broader audience! Regards, Pooja GPSS Executive Board [cid:image002.png@01DCB528.DCA36F90] President | Pooja Bhagawat Vice President | Gyang Chung Director of Communications | Taylor Peele Director of Advocacy | Mohammed El Kihal Director of Events | Brian Chan Director of Programs | Megan Grey Director of Finance | Kelsey Jennings Advisor | Lauren Surface www.gpss.vt.edu<http://www.gpss.vt.edu/> | gpss(a)vt.edu<mailto:gpss@vt.edu> | Instagram: @VTGPSS<https://www.instagram.com/vtgpss/> | Give to GPSS<https://giving.adv.vt.edu/gift?fund=821092&desc=Grad%20Prof%20Student%20Sen…>

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Immigration 101 for International Students
by Eli Tilevich 16 Mar '26

16 Mar '26

"Know Your Rights and Responsibilities with an Immigration Lawyer" Immigration 101 for International Students When: March 20, 5 - 7:30 PM Where: Goodall Room - Newman Library and Zoom RSVP by March 18 https://forms.office.com/r/D1GcDm60LJ Thank you for your support and we truly appreciate your help in making our events reach broader audience! Regards, Pooja GPSS Executive Board President | Pooja Bhagawat Vice President | Gyang Chung Director of Communications | Taylor Peele Director of Advocacy | Mohammed El Kihal Director of Events | Brian Chan Director of Programs | Megan Grey Director of Finance | Kelsey Jennings Advisor | Lauren Surface <http://www.gpss.vt.edu/> www.gpss.vt.edu | <mailto:gpss@vt.edu> gpss(a)vt.edu | Instagram: <https://www.instagram.com/vtgpss/> @VTGPSS | Give to GPSS <https://giving.adv.vt.edu/gift?fund=821092&desc=Grad%20Prof%20Student%20Sen ate>

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Sumit Tarafder's Ph.D. preliminary proposal [March 16 at 4 PM]
by Bhattacharya, Debswapna 15 Mar '26

15 Mar '26

Hello everyone, You are cordially invited to the Ph.D. preliminary proposal presentation of Sumit Tarafder on Monday March 16, 2026 at 4 PM. Location: 1100C Torgersen Hall Zoom Link: https://virginiatech.zoom.us/my/dbhattacharya Title: Deep Learning for Modeling RNA Structures Committee: Dr. Debswapna Bhattacharya (advisor) Dr. T. M. Murali Dr. Anuj Karpatne Dr. Wei Sun Dr. Shi-Jie Chen (from the University of Missouri) Abstract: Computational modeling, prediction, and quality assessment of RNA structures are essential for understanding RNA function, molecular recognition, and the expanding role of RNA in therapeutic discovery. Despite recent progress, existing methods remain limited by RNA’s intrinsic conformational flexibility, the relative scarcity of experimentally determined RNA structures, incomplete exploitation of RNA-specific priors such as base-pairing information, and the lack of robust superposition-free methods for evaluating predicted models. My research addresses these challenges through three interconnected objectives: (1) a systematic comparative analysis of current deep-learning-based RNA structure prediction methods to identify their strengths, limitations, and key architectural tradeoffs; (2) the development of a locality-aware invariant point attention framework for RNA 3D structure quality assessment that estimates both nucleotide-level and global model accuracy in a superposition-free manner; and (3) the development of a sequence- and base-pair-conditioned SE(3)-equivariant generative framework for RNA 3D structure prediction capable of sampling plausible all-atom RNA conformations without reliance on evolutionary information. Achieving these objectives will provide the broader scientific community with improved methods for evaluating, ranking, and generating RNA structures, while also advancing our understanding of RNA structure-function relationships and enabling downstream applications in RNA biology, biomedical research, and therapeutic design. Thank you! Debswapna Bhattacharya Associate Professor Computer Science, Virginia Tech https://people.cs.vt.edu/dbhattacharya/

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Fw: GRADS-4C Weekly Communications - FREE Virtual Seminar/Symposium Registration & More
by csgradinfo 13 Mar '26

13 Mar '26

________________________________ From: 'Brittany R Sanders' via csgradinfo <csgradinfo(a)vt.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2026 7:34 PM Subject: GRADS-4C Weekly Communications - FREE Virtual Seminar/Symposium Registration & More Hello, The Genomic Research and Data Science Center for Cloud Computing (GRADS-4C) is a collaborative educational hub between North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, North Carolina Central University, Shaw University and Winston-Salem State University focused on expanding students/faculty and staff participation in scientific research through computation and data science, genomics and cloud computing. Here’s a quick look at the upcoming opportunities and events on our calendar, please save the dates and share with anyone who should be included! (ATTACHMENTS INCLUDED) Upcoming Opportunities & Events * GRADS-4C Seed Grant — Applications close on March 29, 2026, at11:59 PM EST. Link: https://ncat.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cx2ryfxYUZNQ1jE * GRADS-4C Training Fellowship — Applications close on March 29,2026, at 11:59 PM EST. Link: https://ncat.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Kj3naJQAFexyOW * Beyond Antibiotics Seminar Speaker Series — April 6, 2026, at 10:00 – 11:00 AM EST | Virtual Link: https://ncat.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0wI6myOafk2XQSG * GRADS-4C Research Symposium - June 8th-9th | Greensboro, NC | Koury Convention Center The 3rd Annual Cloud Computing Education in Data Science, Genomics and Health Symposia - AI and Digital Health: Potential, Promise and Peril * Registration Opens: March 1st – May 1st * Abstract/Rapid Talk Submission: March 1st – April 1st * Travel Awards are AVAILABLE (Limited Slots) * Registration is FREE FOR STUDENTS (Undergraduate & Graduate) * $25 Registration fee for PROFESSIONALS (Post-Doc/Early Career, Faculty/Staff & Industry) * STUDENT: https://ncat.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3lU8jtySfd4o4om * PROFESSIONAL: https://ncat2.gosignmeup.com/public/Course/browse?courseid=6650 * Complimentary breakfast & lunch at the Koury Convention Center at the symposium! Follow us for more events and news: * GRADS-4C LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/grads-4c-genomics-research-and-educational-hub-a…> * GRADS-4C Website<https://grads4c.ncat.edu/> Thank you, Dr. Brittany Sanders Genomics Research and Data Science Center for Computation and Cloud Computing GRADS-4C Genomics Research Associate Computational Data Science & Engineering (CDSE) College of Engineering North Carolina A & T State University 1601 E Market Street Greensboro, NC 27401 Email: brsander(a)ncat.edu<mailto:brsander@ncat.edu> ------- NOTICE: This e-mail correspondence is subject to Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties. --------

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Time Sensative! CS|Source Events, Announcements, and Opportunities
by Hodge, Julie 12 Mar '26

12 Mar '26

[cid:image001.png@01DCB12B.598CC4E0] GE VERNOVA - is looking to hire Spring 2026 graduates! * Embedded software engineer, with a C++/microcontroller * C#/.net Windows programming role This link can be used to apply for either role. (View postings here)<https://gevernova.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Vernova_ExternalSite/job/Roanoke-US…> Posting closes on Sunday, March 15. Planning to move quickly and hopefully have offers out in 2 - 3 weeks. ________________ CS/Root Entrepreneurship and Computing Seminar Series Guest: Kevin Minnick, an alumnus of Virginia Tech CS Topic: Startups or learning how research can be effectively translated into practice Seminar Title: A fireside chat with Kevin Minnick on building technology companies Date and Time: Wednesday, March. 25, 2026, 2:00 - 3:00pm. Location: 1100 Torgersen Bio: Kevin Minnick is a product and engineering leader with over 25 years of experience building and scaling technology companies. His entrepreneurship story began right here at Virginia Tech. As a senior computer science student in the late 1990s, Kevin co-founded an email hosting company that he grew into a nationally recognized platform, ultimately leading to a successful acquisition by Rackspace Hosting in 2007. His career spans startups, high-growth companies, and enterprise product leadership. Kevin currently lives in Blacksburg and serves as a Technical Advisor to Active Capital, a venture fund based in San Antonio, TX. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and completed the Texas Executive Education program in General Management at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business. With two successful acquisitions, experience scaling from startup to enterprise, and deep roots in the Virginia Tech community, Kevin offers a unique perspective on the full lifecycle of building technology companies. ____________ Julie Hodge | Strategic Relationships Manager Virginia Tech | Department of Computer Science (0106) 3160-S Torgersen Hall, 620 Drillfield Drive Blacksburg, VA 24061 540 231 1666 | jdhodge(a)vt.edu<mailto:jdhodge@vt.edu> [cid:image002.jpg@01DCB12B.598CC4E0]

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