CDS congratulates our first PhD graduates
Our PhD program was established almost four years ago in the Fall of 2017. During those four years two students have worked tirelessly in their studies and their research. This Spring, those students will be our first graduates from the Center for Data Science to be awarded a PhD. It is with the utmost excitement that we congratulate both Leslie Huang and Vlad Kobzar on their amazing achievement!
Leslie has been working on interdisciplinary research, advised by CDS faculty Arthur Spirling, that focuses on developing natural language processing methods to study political discourse. We spoke to Leslie about her time at CDS and her feelings about graduation. She remarked:
“At CDS, I have been very fortunate to work with top faculty at the intersection of my research interests in political science, NLP, and computer science. The supportive and collaborative community at CDS has been vital to my growth as a researcher. I am honored to have defended the very first dissertation at CDS, and I am thrilled to be the first woman to graduate with a data science PhD from CDS!”
After graduation Leslie is excited to begin working in industry research.
Likewise, Vlad expressed his gratitude to the CDS community for its support of his studies in mathematics and data science. He told us:
“During my studies, I was supported by my advisors, Robert Kohn and Carlos Fernandez-Granda, who generously devoted their time and the full force of their talent and experience to my development. The dynamism and collegiality that are hallmarks of this new PhD program, were fostered by the excellent leadership at the CDS. I am honored to belong to the first cohort of data science PhD students graduating from the CDS.”
This August, Vlad will join the Program in Applied Mathematics at Columbia University as an NSF research training grant postdoc focusing on the mathematics of data science.
We hope everyone gives a big congratulations to these two remarkable students and wishes them the best of luck as they venture onto their next endeavours!
