Principal Investigator
Don Towsley
Professor Towsley is the Principal Investigator of the ACQuIRE Lab. He pioneered the area of network tomography and the use of fluid models for the analysis and control of large networks. More recently he pioneered the theoretical study of covert communications and is one of the leading researchers in the area of quantum networking. He is one of the highly cited computer scientists with over 250 articles in leading journals. Professor Towsley has been an Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, and a co-founding Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems. He has also served on numerous editorial boards and as program chair of numerous conferences. He is a five-time recipient of the Best Paper Award of the ACM Sigmetrics Conference and has received four Test of Time Awards for his work. Professor Towsley is also the recipient of one of the IEEE's most prestigious honors, the 2007 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award. He has also received Achievement Awards from ACM SIGCOMM and ACM SIGMETRICS. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the ACM. He also received a UMass Amherst Distinguished Faculty Lecturer award in 2002, a UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Faculty Research Award in 2003, a Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Award in 2008, and a UMass Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity, 2008, and is a corresponding member to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
Post-docs
Kenneth Goodenough
Kenneth Goodenough is a postdoctoral researcher interested in understanding the structures behind noisy quantum systems, such as to push what can be done in the near future with quantum communication technologies.
Nitish K. Panigrahy
Nitish K. Panigrahy is a postdoctoral researcher jointly working with Prof. Don Towsley (UMass) and Prof. Leandros Tassiulas (Yale). His research interests primarily lie in the performance evaluation and optimization of classical and quantum information networks.
Xuchuang Wang
Xuchuang is a postdoctoral researcher jointly working with Don Towsley and Mohammad Hajiesmaili. His research is dedicated to designing algorithms for sequential decision-making under uncertainty, with a particular focus on online learning algorithms incorporating multi-armed bandit feedback (including quantum ones) and distributed multi-agent cooperation.
PhD Students
Matheus Guedes de Andrade
Matheus is a CS PhD student at UMass Amherst, working with Don Towsley in Quantum Networks. His research interests are Distributed Quantum Computing, Quantum Network Tomography and Graph States. Matheus has a Bachelors and a Master degree in Systems and Computer Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Aparimit Chandra
Aparimit aka Ansh is a Computer Science Ph.D. student at Umass Amherst being advised by Prof. Don Towsley. His primary research area is quantum networking with a focus on performance evaluation of quantum applications and devices affected by noise. He is also interested in quantum complexity theory and quantum algorithms.
Yu-Zhen Janice Chen
Janice Chen's research interests include statistical machine learning, sequential decision making, performance analysis, modeling, and algorithm design for classical and quantum computing systems. Her current research focuses on multi-agent sequential decision making and distributed statistical inference under resource constraints. Janice Chen obtained her BS.c. degree in Computer Science from CUHK.
Prateek Mantri
Prateek is a MS/PhD student in Computer Science working with Prof. Don Towsley. Prateek holds a bachelors in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. His research interests are in quantum network architecture and hardware optimisation. Prateek is also involved with the Student Leader Council at the Centre for Quantum Network as the Vice Chair.
Mohammad Mobayenjarihani
Mohammad is a PhD student at UMass Amherst, working under the supervision of Don Towsley in Quantum Networks. His research interest is purification protocols. Mohammad has a Bachelors in computer science from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, and a M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineer From Bilkent University, Turkey.
Shahrooz Pouryousef
Shahrooz Pouryousef is a fifth year PhD student in College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at UMass Amherst honored to work with Prof. Don Towsley. He earned his M.Sc. degree in Information Technology(Information Security) under supervision of Mehdi Kharrazi from Sharif University of Technology and his BS.c in Information Technology from Shahid Madani University of Azarbayjan-Tabriz.
Amir Reza Ramtin
Amir Reza Ramtin is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is working with Don Towsley on the concept of covert DDoS attacks in network security. His research interests include statistical analysis, computer security, distributed computing, and optimization.
Albert Williams
Albert is a Computer Science PhD student at UMass Amherst advised by Don Towsley. He researches routing protocols for satellite-based quantum networks. He has BS degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from UMass Amherst.
Undergraduate Students
Sagnik Pal
Sagnik is a sophomore undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Physics. He is working with Matheus Guedes de Andrade on Quantum Walks and Networks
Aniruddha Sen
Aniruddha is a senior undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, double majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. He is working on his senior Honors thesis advised by Don Towsley in Quantum Network Algorithms and Multipartite Entanglement in Graph States.
Jocelyn Velazquez
Jocelyn is a junior undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, studying Computer Science and Mathematics. She is working with Matheus Guedes de Andrade and Janice Chen on Graph Matching and Quantum Walks.
Visiting Scholars
Leonardo Bacciottini
Leonardo is a visiting Ph.D. student from the University of Pisa, where he obtained his M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering. His research interests include protocols and architectures for entanglement distribution networks, simulation, and quantum information theory, with focus on entanglement purification.
Emily Van Milligen
Emily is a visiting Ph.D. student from Professor Saikat Guha’s quantum photonics group at Univeristy of Arizona. She holds a BS in Math and Physics from Tufts University (2018) and a Masters in Physics from University of Arizona (2020) and her research focuses entanglement distribution protocols over quantum networks for sensing applications
Previous Visitors
Mahdi Chehimi
Mahdi Chehimi, BSc from Kuwait University (2018) and MEng from American University of Beirut (2020), is a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, focusing on quantum communication networks and quantum machine learning (QML). He won the best paper award at QCE2023, and he has been a Quantum Formalism fellow in the UK since 2022. Mahdi is a quantum scientist at Ingenii Inc., working on QML for drug discovery and medical imaging.
Andre Nogueira Ribeiro
Andre is a visiting scholar at UMass Amherst, working with Don Towsley and Matheus Guedes. His research interests are Quantum Walks Applications in Quantum Networks and Quantum Error Correction. He is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.