University crests

A little bit about me...

I have been fortunate to have gained a number of excellent academic experiences before arriving at Purdue. This journey began at Brock University, where in 2003 I completed a BSc in computer science, with a concentration in intelligent systems. It was during this time as a sophomore that my research career really began, thanks to an opportunity provided by Beatrice Ombuki-Berman, who also co-supervised my MSc degree in computers and information science at the University of Guelph. These projects kick-started my interests in nature-inspired optimization, evolutionary robotics as well as automated design and inference.

I started my PhD in systems design engineering in 2005 at the University of Waterloo, working with Hamid Tizhoosh on opposition-based computing. After completing my PhD in 2009, I joined the The University of Cambridge as a research associate with Derek Smith focusing on various disease informatics projects. I then returned back to Canada in 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Medical Operations Research Laboratory at the University of Toronto directed by Dionne Aleman. My work focused primarily on optimization problems related to pandemic planning and disease mitigation. Since 2011 I have also been an Adjunct Professor of computer science at Brock University, supervising two MSc theses.

I joined the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue in January 2014.