Masters 2026
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: State Complexity of Linear Relations and Linear Subsequences of Automatic Sequences

Dinis Vitorino

Masters 2026
Advisor: Therese Biedl and Richard Trefler
Thesis Title: Computing and Bounding the Scattering Number of Graphs

Masters 2025
Advisor: Gautam Kamath
Thesis Title: Demystifying Foreground-Background Memorization in Diffusion Models
Now: PhD
@ University of Wisconsin-Madison

Masters 2025
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Efficient Algorithms for RDV graphs

Junhao Lin

Masters 2025
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Efficient Algorithm with No-Regret Bound for Sleeping Expert Problem

Daniel Santana

Masters 2025
Advisor: Rafael Oliveira & Mohammad Hajiabadi
Thesis Title: Bridging Early and Modern Lattice Cryptosystems: A Theoretical Journey through SVP, LWE and Kyber

Omkar Baraskar

Masters 2025
Advisor: Rafael Oliveira & Eric Schost
Thesis Title: NP-hardness of testing equivalence to sparse polynomials and to constant-support polynomials

Sonja Shan

Masters 2024
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Proving Properties of Fibonacci Representations via Automata Theory

Masters 2024
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Compact Routing on Planar Graphs

Masters 2024
Advisor: Gautam Kamath

Zhiying Yu

Masters 2024
Advisor: Shalev Ben-David
Thesis Title: Quantum Query Complexity of Hypergraph Search Problems

Abhiroop Sanyal

Masters 2024
Advisor: Rafael Oliveira
Thesis Title: Waring rank, border rank, and support concentration of partials

Masters 2024
Advisor: Shalev Ben-David
Thesis Title: Query Complexity of Recursively Composed Functions

Masters 2024
Advisor: Gautam Kamath

Masters 2023
Advisor: Gautam Kamath
Thesis Title: A Bias-Variance-Privacy Trilemma for Statistical Estimation
Now: PhD
@ uwaterloo

Masters 2023
Advisor: Gautam Kamath & Shai Ben-David
Now: Research Scientist
@ Google Research

Yueheng Zhang

Masters 2023
Advisor: Lap Chi Lau
Thesis Title: Incorporating Linear Dependencies into Graph Gaussian Processes
Now: PhD
@ ETH Zurich

Masters 2023
Advisor: Therese Biedl & Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Graph Morphing via Orthogonal Box Drawings

Gautam Pathak

Masters 2023
Advisor: Trevor Brown
Thesis Title: CLPush: Proactive Cache Transfers in NUMA Applications

Daewoo Kim

Masters 2023
Advisor: Trevor Brown
Thesis Title: Understanding NUMA Effects on Memory Allocation and Reclamation
Now: PhD
@ uWaterloo

Masters 2023
Advisor: Gautam Kamath
Thesis Title: Efficient and Differentially Private Statistical Estimation via a Sum-of-Squares Exponential Mechanism
Now: PhD
@ MIT Applied Math

Amin Khodaee

Masters 2023
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: The Pair Cache Problem

Masters 2023
Advisor: Shalev Ben-David
Thesis Title: Variants of Pseudo-deterministic Algorithms and Duality in TFNP
Now: PhD
@ uWaterloo

Masters 2022
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Computing Realistic Terrains from Imprecise Elevations

Sam Barr

Masters 2022
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: List Coloring Some Classes of 1-Planar Graphs

Karthik Murali

Masters 2022
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Testing Vertex Connectivity of Bowtie 1-plane Graphs

Rory Soiffer

Masters 2022
Advisor: Shalev Ben-David
Thesis Title: A Generalized Adversary Method for Quantum Query Complexity
Now: CEO
@ Loco Motion Devs

Joseph Meleshko

Masters 2022
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Automata and Ratio Sets

Masters 2022
Advisor: Gautam Kamath & Xi He
Thesis Title: Unbiased Statistical Estimation and Valid Confidence Intervals Under Differential Privacy
Now: PhD
@ Harvard Biostatistics

Reza Bigdeli

Masters 2022
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Connectivity Properties of the Flip Graph After Forbidding Triangulation Edges

Ben Baral

Masters 2022
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: A Las Vegas Algorithm for the Ordered Majority Problem

Abhishek Anand

Masters 2022
Advisor: Shalev Ben-David
Thesis Title: On the power of interleaved low-depth quantum and classical circuits
Now: PhD
@ CalTech

Lingyi Zhang

Masters 2021
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Selectable Heaps and Their Application to Lazy Search Trees

Trevor Clokie

Masters 2021
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Counting Flimsy Numbers via Formal Language Theory

Anubhav Srivastava

Masters 2021
Advisor: Trevor Brown
Thesis Title: Extremely fast (a,b)-trees at all contention levels

Owen Merkel

Masters 2020
Advisor: Therese Biedl and Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Building a larger class of graphs for efficient reconfiguration of vertex colouring

William Sigouin

Masters 2020
Advisor: Trevor Brown
Thesis Title: Concurrent Data Structures Using Multiword Compare and Swap

Pavle Bulatovic

Masters 2020
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Area-efficient drawings of outer-1-planar graphs

Beracira Chen

Masters 2020
Advisor: Eric Blais
Thesis Title: Monotonicity Testing for Boolean Functions over Graph Products

Samin Riasat

Masters 2019
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Powers and anti-powers in binary words

John Wittnebel

Masters 2019
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Bounds on Maximum Matchings in 1-Planar Graphs

Azin Nazari

Masters 2019
Advisor: Ian Munro and Semih Salihoglu
Thesis Title: Majority in the Three-Way Comparison Model

Kaleb Alway

Masters 2019
Advisor: Eric Blais and Semih Salihoglu
Thesis Title: Domain Ordering and Box Cover Problems for Beyond Worst-Case Join Processing

Corwin Sinnamon

Masters 2018
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Efficient Representation and Encoding of Distributive Lattices

Masters 2018
Advisor: John Watrous
Thesis Title: Concentration Bounds from Parallel Repetition Theorems

Pak Hay Chan

Masters 2018
Advisor: Lap Chi Lau
Thesis Title: The Complexity of Network Design for s-t Effective Resistance

Kshitij Jain

Masters 2018
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Minimum Shared-Power Edge Cut

Aayush Rajasekaran

Masters 2018
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Using Automata Theory to Solve Problems in Additive Number Theory

Masters 2018
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Counting, Adding, and Regular Languages

Masters 2017
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Properties of Two-Dimensional Words
Now: Assistant Professor
@ St. Francis Xavier University

Shikha Mahajan

Masters 2017
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: A Faster Algorithm for Recognizing Edge-Weighted Interval Graphs

Sajed Haque

Masters 2017
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Discriminators of Integer Sequences

Krishna Vaidyanathan

Masters 2017
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Reconfiguring Graph Colourings

Camila Perez Gavilan Torres

Masters 2017
Advisor: Alex Lopex-Ortiz, Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Performance of the Ultra-Wide Word Model

V. Abhinav Bommireddi

Masters 2017
Advisor: Eric Blais
Thesis Title: Testing submodularity

Masters 2017
Advisor: Eric Blais
Thesis Title: Halfway to halfspace testing

Zachary Frenette

Masters 2016
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Towards the Efficient Generation of Gray Codes in the Bitprobe Model

Oliver Grant

Masters 2016
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Approximately Optimum Search Trees in External Memory Models

Alexandre Daigle

Masters 2016
Advisor: Alex Lopez-Ortiz and Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Optimal Path-Decomposition of Tries

Masters 2016
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: A 2-Approximation for the Height of Maximal Outerplanar Graph Drawings

Masters 2016
Advisor: Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Three Approaches to Building Time-Windowed Geometric Data Structures

Seunghee Lee

Masters 2016
Advisor: Therese Biedl and Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Upward Octagonal Drawings of Ternary Trees

Vijay Subramanya

Masters 2016
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Graph Editing to a Given Neighbourhood Degree List is Fixed-Parameter Tractable

Alex Valtchev

Masters 2015
Advisor: John Watrous
Thesis Title: Optimal Success Bounds for Single Query Quantum Algorithms Computing the General SUM Problem

Youcef Tebbal

Masters 2015
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: On the Complexity of Reconfiguration of Clique, Cluster Vertex Deletion, and Dominating Set

Masters 2015
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Inverting Permutations In Place

Neeraj Kumar

Masters 2015
Advisor: Therese Biedl and Sebastian Fischmeister
Thesis Title: Graph-theoretic Properties of Control Flow Graphs and Applications

Stephen Kiazyk

Masters 2014
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: The Star Unfolding from a Geodesic Curve

Hicham El-Zein

Masters 2014
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: On the Succinct Representation of Equivalence Classes

Alex Leong

Masters 2012
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Variations on the Erdos Discrepancy Problem

Masters 2012
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Planar Open Rectangle-of-Influence Drawings

Terry Anderson

Masters 2011
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: The Vulcan game of Kal-toh

Masters 2011
Advisor: Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Streaming and Dynamic Algorithms for Minimum Enclosing Balls in High Dimensions
Now: Quantitative Developer
@ Scotiabank

Kamran Tirdad

Masters 2011
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Exploiting the Computational Power of Ternary Content Addressable Memory

Thomas Ang

Masters 2010
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Problems Related to Shortest Strings in Formal Languages

Taylor Gordon

Masters 2010
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Simultaneously Embedding Planar Graphs at Fixed Vertex Locations

Elena Lesvia Ruiz Velazquez

Masters 2010
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Drawing planar graphs with prescribed face areas

Ying Liu

Masters 2010
Advisor: Alex Lopez-Ortiz
Thesis Title: Geometric On-line Ray Searching Under Probability of Placement Scenarios

Patrick Nicholson

Masters 2009
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: The application of the in-tree knapsack problem to routing prefix caches

Adam Bains

Masters 2009
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Reconstructing hv-convex polyominoes with multiple colours

Albert Choi

Masters 2009
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Distributed Policing with Full Utilization and Rate Guarantees

Masters 2008
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Packing Unit Disks

Stephen Bahun

Masters 2008
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: Algorithms for Optimizing Search Schedules in a Polygon

Mina Razaghpour

Masters 2008
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: The Steiner ratio for the obstacle-avoiding Steiner tree problem

Aleh Veraskouski

Masters 2007
Advisor: Jeremy Barbay
Thesis Title: Adaptive Algorithms for Weighted Queries on Weighted Binary Relations and Labeled Trees

David Loker

Masters 2007
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura and Kate Larson
Thesis Title: Representations and Parameterizations of Combinatorial Auctions

Narges Simjour

Masters 2006
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: A New Optimality Measure for Distance Dominating Sets

Prashant Sasatte

Masters 2006
Advisor: Jonathan Buss
Thesis Title: Cache Considerations in Algorithm Design

Danny Sheng Zhang

Masters 2005
Advisor: Douglas Stinson
Thesis Title: Algorithms for Detecting Cheaters in Threshold Schemes

Luke Tanur

Masters 2005
Advisor: Anna Lubiw
Thesis Title: A Geometric Approach to Pattern Matching in Polyphonic Music

Philip Henderson

Masters 2005
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Planar Graphs and Partial k-Trees

Ian Harrower

Masters 2005
Advisor: Daniel Brown
Thesis Title: Haplotype inference using pure parsimony

Neeraj Dumir

Masters 2005
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Improved Searching in the Presence of Permanent Faults

Kar Yee (Henry) Au

Masters 2005
Advisor: Douglas Stinson
Thesis Title: Unconditionally Secure Authentication Codes and Digital Signatures

Abdullah Al-Mahmood

Masters 2005
Advisor: Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Approximation Algorithms for Rectangle Piercing Problem

Fengkai Zhang

Masters 2004
Advisor: Daniel Brown
Thesis Title: Incoporating Spaced Seeds into PSI-BLAST Search

Masters 2004
Advisor: Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Geometric Optimization Problems over Sliding Windows and Similarity Search in Metric Spaces

Mehdi Mirzazadeh

Masters 2004
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Adaptive Comparison-Based Algorithms for Evaluating Set Queries

Masters 2004
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Infinite Sequences and Pattern Avoidance
Now: Professor
@ University of Winnipeg

Peter Olsar

Masters 2004
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura and Prabhakar Ragde
Thesis Title: Updating the Vertex Separation of a Dynamically Changing Tree

Jiang Liu

Masters 2004
Advisor: Daniel Brown
Thesis Title: A Combinatorial Approach for Motif Discovery in Unaligned DNA Sequences

Arash Farzan

Masters 2004
Advisor: Ian Munro
Thesis Title: Cache-Oblivious Searching and Sorting In Multisets

Eric Chen

Masters 2004
Advisor: Timothy Chan
Thesis Title: Towards In-Place Algorithms in Computational Geometry

Bryan Krawetz

Masters 2004
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Monoids and the state complexity of root(L)

Alexander Hudek

Masters 2004
Advisor: Daniel Brown
Thesis Title: New anchoring techniques for global multiple alignment of genomic sequences
Now: Co-Founder
@ Zuva

Shabnam Aziza

Masters 2004
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Hexagonal Grid Drawings

Mustaq Ahmed

Masters 2004
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Ordered Interval Routing Schemes
Now: Research Software Engineer
@ Google

Hubert Chan

Masters 2003
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: A Parameterized Algorithm for Upward Planarity Testing of Biconnected Graphs

Dana Wilkinson

Masters 2002
Advisor: Therese Biedl
Thesis Title: Bounded-Degree Independent Sets in Planar Graphs

Andrew Martinez

Masters 2002
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Topics in Formal Languages

Lesley Macpherson

Masters 2002
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Grey Level Visual Cryptography for General Access Structures

Keith Ellul

Masters 2002
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Descriptional Complexity Measures of Regular Languages

Masters 2001
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Algorithms for Graphs of (Locally) Bounded Treewidth

Masters 2001
Advisor: Naomi Nishimura
Thesis Title: Multi-dimensional Interval Routing Schemes
Now: Professor
@ University of Toronto

Masters 2001
Advisor: Jeffrey Shallit
Thesis Title: Minimal covers of formal languages
Now: Associate Professor and Chair
@ Western University