Graduation with Distinction (GWD) is an honor bestowed upon graduating seniors who complete a substantial project that consists of at least one year’s work, including an independent study under the guidance of a faculty member. The project represents a significant intellectual endeavor and requires a presentation made to a committee of three faculty members.
CS Alumni Who Graduated with Distinction
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Ziyao Cui | How Is Uncertainty Propagated in Knowledge Distillation? (Advisor: Jian Pei) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2026 | Matthew Xiaoyang Rui | Rapid Mixing of Tempered Phylogenetic Tree MCMC (Advisor: Scott Schmidler) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2026 | Eleanor Purnell Taylor | Bridging Access and Innovation in Augmented Reality: Curriculum Design and Experimental Applications for Spatial Computing and Wearable Technology (Advisor: Brandon Fain) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2026 | Raymond Michael Xiong | Exploring False Assumptions and Incorrect Reasoning in Patient Information Search (Advisor: Monica Agrawal) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2026 | Michelle Betty Brown | From UDL Design to Lived Experience: Neurodivergent Learning in Undergraduate Computer Science (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2026 | Arnav Jindal | Minimizing the Builder TEE Trusted Computing Base in Decentralized Proposer-as-Service (Advisor: Matthew Lentz) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2026 | Abigail Renee Melton | Open-Ended, Autogradeable Programming Assignment for CS1 (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2026 | Anushka Srinivasan | Algorithmic Nature: How AI-Generated Media Reshapes Environmental Perception (Advisor: Brandon Fain) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2026 | Haiyan Wang | Interpretable Representation Learning for Time Series (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2026 | Vivienne Anna Holsman | Taxonomy of Risks of Using AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI in the Financial Sector (Advisor: Brandon Fain) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2026 | Palak Jolly | Model-Aware Integration: A Robust Computational Pipeline for Diagnosing and Correcting Longitudinal scRNA-seq Failure Modes (Advisor: Alex Hartemink) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2026 | Skylar H. Knight | Object-Wise Decomposition of 3D Gaussian Splatting for Physics-Enabled VR Interaction (Advisor: Maria Gorlatova) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2026 | Saanvi Pawa | Sex Dependent Differences in Differential Gene Expression Across Dementias and Populations (Advisor: Ornit Chiba-Falek) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2026 | Yash Dutt | Developing Durable Economic Advantage via Data Infrastructure and Specialized Transformer Models: A Risk-Adjusted Framework for Adoption, Data Exposure, and Regulation for Economic Growth in the Artificial Intelligence Evolution (Advisor: Kenneth Rogerson) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2026 | Gabriel Alexander Mendoza | Behind-the-Meter Battery Storage as an Interconnection Accelerator for Hyperscale AI Data Centers (Advisor: Jackson Ewing) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2026 | Raymond Michael Xiong | A Mixed-Effects Analysis of Addressee Honorifics in Japanese Voice Actor Events (Advisor: Yunchuan Chen) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2026 | Felix Yipeng Zhu | Living Metal (Advisor: Raquel Salvatella de Prada) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2025 | Kaicheng Yu | Sharded TEE Networks for Efficient and Secure Cross-Chain Operations (Advisor: Kartik Nayak) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| Fall 2025 | Kulsoom Rizavi | Our AI Overlords: How accurately can LLM-driven agents simulate political decision-making in the U.S. Senate? (Advisor: David Siegel) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2025 | Harry Chen | Simpler Models Emerge in the Presence of Noise (Co-Advisors: Cynthia Rudin, Ronald Parr) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | Janet C. Jiang | Peer Instruction in Hybrid Computing Courses: The Relationships Between Student Modality, Discussion, and Learning (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | Reagan Lenora Razon | Broadening Participation in Computer Science: The Impact of Early Exposure and Mentorship on Elementary/Middle School Students (Advisor: Shaundra B. Daily) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | Eric Enxing Seng | Optimizing Flow Battery Manifolds with Generative Machine Learning (Advisor: Brandon Fain) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | Zirui Yin | Machine Learning for Music (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | YiFan Zhu | A Lorentz-Equivariant Diffusion Model for High-Energy Physics (Co-Advisors: Cynthia Rudin, Simon Mak) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2025 | Maria Izzi | Expanding Risk Score Methods Using Two-Layer Neural Networks (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2025 | Danica Bajaj | AI & Empathy: The Juncture of Neuroscience, Computer Science, Philosophy and Psychology (Advisor: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2025 | David James Regan | 5-Hydroxymethyl-2-furfural (HMF): A Potential Diabetogen in the American Diet? (Advisor: Charlie Cox) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2025 | Nathan Yang | Statistical Analysis of District Characteristics and Learning Loss in US Schools Since the COVID-19 Pandemic (Advisor: Maria Tackett) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2025 | Zirui Yin | Marginal Likelihood-Based Tree Sampling in Bayesian Phylogenetics (Advisor: Alexander Fisher) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| 2025 | Aidan Timothy Livingston Young | Development of an Autonomous, Fault-Tolerant Multi-Agent System for Surveying Alligator Populations in North Carolina (Advisor: David Johnson) | Graduation with Distinction Outside the Major |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Angikar Ghosal | Inductive and Abductive Reasoning Abilities of GPT-4 in Hypothesis Extrapolation and Evaluation for Arithmetic Tasks (Advisor: Bhuwan Dhingra) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Yuxi Long | Interpretable Binding Affinity Prediction with Persistent Homology (Advisor: Bruce Donald) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Divya Nataraj | Exploring How Diversity and Other Factors Relate to Student Performance and Persistence in CS (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Muhang Tian | Interpretability, Fairness, and Data Scarcity in Machine Learning (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Shiyou Wu | Understanding The Training Dynamics of Neural Network "Grokking'" via Matrix Sensing (Advisor: Rong Ge) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Chloe Qinyu Zhu | Towards Accountable Machine Learning from Model Fairness, Interpretability, and Reliability (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2024 | Tiffany Sijia Ma | AR-Assisted Neurosurgical Training: Integration of Optical and Sensor-Based Tracking for Enhanced AR Guidance (Advisor: Maria Gorlatova) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2024 | Kartik Pejavara | Large Language Models for Patient Portal Message Classification (Advisor: Jian Pei) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Nianli Peng | Algorithms for Optimizing Fair Welfare Functions in Multi-objective Reinforcement Learning with Provable Guarantees (Advisor: Brandon Fain) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2023 | Dev Seth | Characterizing the Legibility of Visual Text Perturbations for Adversarial Attacks in Natural Language Processing (Advisor: Bhuwan Dhingra) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2023 | Zeyu Shen | Classification with Partially Private Features (Advisor: Kamesh Munagala) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2023 | Rui Xin | The Whole Rashomon Set of Sparse Decision Trees (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2023 | Xingyu Zhu | Understanding Edge-of-Stability Training Dynamics with a Minimalist Example (Advisor: Rong Ge) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2023 | Anni Chen | Understanding the Role of Context in Propaganda Method Detection (Advisor: Bhuwan Dhingra) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2023 | Caleb Watson | Incorporation of Non-proteinogenic Amino Acids (ncAAs) into Existing OSPREY Protein Redesign Framework (Advisor: Bruce Donald) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2023 | Sara Mehta | Factors that Influence Attitudes Toward Group Work in CS Classrooms (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2023 | Rhea Tejwani | Understanding the Efficacy of Office Hours in CS1 (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2023 | Hao Xu | Understanding the Association between Student Behavior on Formative Assessments and Performance on Summative Assessments (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2023 | Ruixin Zhang | Implications of Input Neurons’ Spike Timing Synchrony for Neural Coding (Advisor: Stephen Lisberger) | Graduation with Distinction |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Xinyu "Norah" Tan | Power Spectra of Constrained Codes With Level-Based Signaling (Advisor: Robert Calderbank) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2022 | Anni Chen | Understanding the Role of Context in Propaganda Method Detection (Advisor: Bhuwan Dhingra) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2022 | Hojung Kwon | AR-Based Labeling for DNN Fine-Tuning (Advisor: Maria Gorlatova) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2022 | Abbey Grace List | Employing Neural Language Models and A Bayesian Hierarchical Framework for Classification and Engagement Analysis of Misinformation on Social Media (Advisor: Sam Wiseman) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2022 | Bianca Emilia Saputra | What CS1 Formative Assessments Tell Us: Characterizing Performance on Multiple-choice, Code-tracing Questions (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | |
| 2022 | Sadhana Suryadevara | Analyzing Office Hours Through the Lens of Gender and the Problem-Solving Process (Advisor: Kristin Stephens-Martinez) | |
| 2021 | Lavonne Hoang | Adaptive Risk-Aware Multi-Armed Bandits for High-Dimensional Portfolio Optimization (Advisor: Rebecca Steorts) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2021 | Barbara Xiong | Heuristics-Inspired Machine Learning for Leukemia Cell Classification (Advisor: Sandeep Dave) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Joseph DeChicchis | Semantic Understanding for Augmented Reality and Its Applications (Advisor: Maria Gorlatova) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2020 | Sachit Menon | PULSE: Self-Supervised Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration of Generative Models (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2020 | Caroline Wang | In Pursuit of Interpretable, Fair and Accurate Machine Learning for Criminal Recidivism Prediction (Advisor: Cynthia Rudin) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2020 | Felicia Chen | Understanding the Landscape of Vaccine Misinformation (Advisor: Jun Yang) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2020 | Belanie Nagiel | Applications of Triangular Anycast Forwarding (Advisor: Bruce Maggs) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2020 | Jacob Chasan | Market-based Computing Systems (Advisor: Benjamin Lee) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2020 | Calvin Ma | Time Series Analysis for Straggler Prediction (Advisor: Benjamin Lee) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2019 | Xingyu Chen | Proportionally Fair Clustering and Allocation (Advisor: Kamesh Munagala) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2019 | Aditya Sridhar | Efficient Algorithms for Design Automation of Flow-Based Microfluidic Biochips (Advisor: Krishnendu Chakrabarty) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2019 | Luke Farrell | Detecting Partisan Gerrymandering: Stratified Sampling the Space of Possible North Carolina Congressional Redistricting (Advisor: Greg Hershlag) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2019 | Jacob Shulman | Detecting Partisan Gerrymandering: Stratified Sampling the Space of Possible North Carolina Congressional Redistricting (Advisor: Greg Hershlag) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2019 | Qusai Shabbir Hussain | Blockchain Applications in Municipal Governments (Advisor: Bruce Maggs) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2019 | Jiayi Tian | Machine Learning in Stock Price Forecasting (Advisor: Rong Ge) | Graduation with Distinction |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Erin Taylor | Subtrajectory Clustering (Advisor: Pankaj K. Agarwal) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2018 | Weiyao Wang | SVRG Escapes Saddle Points (Advisor: Rong Ge) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2018 | Jie "Amy" Yang | A Scalable Cryptocurrency Based on A Byzantine-Safe Key-Value Store (Advisor: Jeffrey Chase) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2018 | Haofeng "Fred" Zhang | Primal-dual Analysis of Competitive Page Algorithms (Advisor: Debmalya Panigrahi) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2018 | Wuming Zhang | Single-Image Footstep Prediction for Versatile Legged Locomotion (Advisor: Kris Hauser) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2018 | Robert Frank Martorano II | Semantic Term “Blurring” and Stochastic “Barcoding” for Improved Text Classification (Advisor: Xiaobai Sun) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2018 | Timothy Mu | Recovery in Casba, a Leaderless Replicated Key-value Store (Advisor: Jeffrey Chase) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2018 | Ashwin Ramachandran | An Improved Decentralized Autonomous Organization Venture and Governance Model (Advisor: Bruce Maggs) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2018 | David Yan | Exploiting Semantic Word Relationships for Improved Unsupervised Academic Document Classification (Advisor: Xiaobai Sun) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2018 | Jihane Bettahi | Ontology-Based Curriculum Sequencing for Learning Path Generation (Advisor: Robert Duvall) | Graduation with Distinction |
| Year | Name | Project Title | Honor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Arun Ganesh | Online Service with Delay (Advisor: Debmalya Panigrahi) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2017 | Aditya Mukund | Partition Function Estimation in Computational Protein Design with Markov Random Fields (Advisor: Bruce R. Donald) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2017 | Zheqing Zhu | Jump Diffusion Markov Design Model and Its Financial Applications (Advisor: Ronald Parr) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2017 | Rachel Freedman | Adapting a Kidney Exchange Algorithm to Incorporate Human Values (Advisor: Vincent Conitzer) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2017 | David Zhou | Computational Design of RNA (Advisor: Bruce R. Donald) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2017 | Sidharth Gopinath | Exploration and Application of Dimensionality Reduc-tion and Clustering Techniques to Diabetes Patient Health Records (Advisor: Robert Calderbank) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2017 | Ellen Yuan | Assessing Computational Thinking Using ALICE (Advisor: Susan Rodger) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2016 | William Victor | Efficient Algorithms for Traffic Data Analysis (Advisor: Pankaj K. Agarwal) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2016 | Zhitao “Rex” Ying | Approximation Algorithms for Dynamic Time Warping and Edit Distance (Advisor: Pankaj K. Agarwal) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2016 | Roger Shu-Hong Zou | Deformable Graph Models for Tracking Epithelial Cell Sheets in Fluorescence Miscroscopy (Advisor: Carlo Tomasi) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2015 | Michael Gloudemans | Explicit Modeling and Correction of DNase Sequence Bias Clarifies Transcription Factor and Nucleosome Footprinting (Advisor: Alexander Hartemink) | Graduation with Highest Distinction |
| 2015 | Mollie Breen | Community Detection on Duke Undergraduate Course Selection Data: Louvain Method and Map Equation Applied to Weighted, Undirected and Directed Networks (Advisor: Robert Calderbank) | Graduation with High Distinction |
| 2015 | Katherine Cummings | Research and Analysis of the Technical, Legal, and Social Aspects of the Digital World, as Applied to Blown to Bits through Creative Commons (Advisor: Owen Astrachan) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2015 | Samantha Huerta | Mathematical Integration of ALICE Programming in Middle School Curriculum (Advisor: Susan Rodger) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2015 | Kyle Moran | Investigating New Directions in Cellular Image Annotation (Advisor: Alexander Hartemink) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2015 | Zanele Munyikwa | Compositional Approaches for Document Level Sentiment Analysis (Advisor: Jeffrey Forbes) | Graduation with Distinction |
| 2015 | Rui Xu | Full Stack Web Application Development: A Calendar Analytics Tool that Builds Your Productivity (Advisor: Richard Lucic) | Graduation with Distinction |