Current Students


Sashank Santhanam - Phd Student at UNCC CS Department. Sashank joined the CS department and Dr. Shaikh's team in Spring 2017. His interests are broadly in natural language processing and deep learning. Sashank has a Masters in Computer Science from UNC-Charlotte. He worked as business analyst for Walmart Corp prior to joining UNCC for his doctoral studies.

Achievements: Sashank has been a co-author on several publications since starting work with Dr. Shaikh.


Khyati Mahajan - PhD Student at UNCC in Computer Science Department. Khyati joined the CS department and Dr. Shaikh's team in Fall 2018. She is interested in computational sociolinguistics and NLP. She completed her undergraduate studies in 2017 before joining UNCC as a graduate student.


Zhuo Cheng - PhD student at UNCC Computer Science Department. Zhuo joined the PhD program in Fall 2018. He is interested in natural language processing, social network analysis and computational social science. He got his bachelor degree from Sichuan University and master degree from UNCC.


Erfan Al-Hossami - PhD Student at UNC Charlotte. Erfan joined Dr. Shaikh's team in Fall 2020. Erfan is interested in Natural Language Processing and Generation and its applications. Currently, Erfan is working on Code Generation from Natural Language. Erfan seeks to accelerate the human learning of programming using Language Generation.


Current Students (Co-Advising)


  • Nazmiye Bacaksizlar (PhD Candidate) - Proposed Topic: Computational Modeling of Digital Age Social Movements, Co-advising with Dr. Mirsad Hadzikadic

  • Elizabeth Von Briesen (PhD Student) - Proposed Topic: The Intersection of Complexity Theory and Computational Social Science, Co-advising with Dr. Mirsad Hadzikadic

  • Md Nazmus Sakib Miazi (PhD Student) - Proposed Topic: Users' privacy concerns towards distributed, and location-based advertising platforms, Co-advising with Dr. Mohammad Shehab

  • Ryan Wesslen (PhD Student) - Proposed Topic: Computer-Assisted Text Analysis for Social Science: Topic Models and Beyond, Co-advising with Dr. Wenwen Dou

  • Seyed Armin Seyeditabari (PhD Student)- Proposed Topic: TBD, Co-advising with Dr. Wlodek Zadrozny

  • Gabriel Fair (PhD Student)- Proposed Topic: TBD, Co-advising with Dr. Siddharth Krishnan


Prospective Students


I am always looking for motivated students to work with. If you are interested, please contact me via email. Research Assistantships are available to exceptional Ph.D. and Masters students. NOTE: Sometimes, it takes me a while to respond to email regarding assistantships. Your chances for funded research with me will dramatically improve if you take one of my classes and do well in the course.


Past Students


Vidhushini Srinivasan - MS in CS December 2018 - Software Engineer(Audience Platform) at Quantcast. She successfully defended her thesis advised by Dr.Shaikh titled "Emotional Natural Language Generation".

Prasanna Lalingkar - MS in CS December 2017 - currently at Microsoft Research

Naveen Dennis Barnabas - MS in CS December 2017, now at Duke Energy

Erik Butler - MS in CS: Thesis Topic: Immersive Visualization through Virtual and Augmented Reality, Co-advised with Dr. Aidong Lu

Ranjith Ravikumar - MS in CS: Thesis Topic: STUDY OF SOCIAL FACTORS IN ACTIVITY-BASED ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM, Co-advised with Dr. Mohsen Dorodchi

Abhishek Bhandwaldar - MS in CS: Thesis Topic: BIOMEDICAL QUESTION ANSWERING, Co-advised with Dr. Wlodek Zadrozny

Chetan Borse - MS in CS: Thesis Topic: INTERACTIVE DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL, Co-advised with Dr. Wlodek Zadrozny

Noushin Radnia - MS in Architecture/Design: Thesis Topic: Emotion and Art, Co-advised with Dr. Erik Sauda

Yasaman Kamyab Hessary (PhD Spring 2018) - Proposed Topic: ARTIFICIAL FINANCIAL MARKETS: AN AGENT BASED APPROACH TO STUDY HERDS, BUBBLES, AND CRASHES, Co-advised with Dr. Mirsad Hadzikadic, Post-doc at Northwestern University

Farah Tokmic (PhD Spring 2018) - Proposed Topic: Measuring Stigma towards Behavioral Health Disorders, Co-advised with Dr. Mirsad Hadzikadic, Post-doc at UNC Charlotte

Resources for Students


A note about writing.