Program Directors

Dr. Justin Zhan is the director of Big Data Hub. He is a professor in the Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research interests include Big Data, Information Assurance, Social Computing, and Health Science. He is a steering chair of ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust (PASSAT), and ASE/IEEE International Conference on BioMedical Computing (BioMedCom). He is currently an editor-in-chief of International Journal of Privacy, Security and Integrity, International Journal of Social Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems, and managing editor of SCIENCE Journal and HUMAN Journal. He has served as a conference general chair, a program chair, a publicity chair, a workshop chair, and a program committee member for 160 international conferences; and also as an editor-in-chief, an editor, an associate editor, a guest editor, an editorial advisory board member, and an editorial board member for 30 journals. He has published 180 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conferences and delivered more than 30 keynote speeches and invited talks. He has been involved in a number of projects as a Principal Investigator (PI) or a Co-PI, which were funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, National Institute of Health, etc.

Dr. Paul Oh is a Lincy Professor of Unmanned Aerial Systems at UNLV. He will co-lead the RET big data project for next generation systems. As a former NSF Program Director (CISE/Robotics), he is acutely aware of STEM challenges. At Drexel he co-lead a RET Site for the Philadelphia School District. This effort led to Drexel’s NSF GK-12 grant and “Let Freedom Reign” program. This bridged the digital-divide by bringing free wireless internet to 10,000s of students in Philadelphia’s economically challenged inner-cities. His experience with NSF, the RET program, and aggregating pedagogical stakeholders serves this RET well. He will work closely with PI Zhan on various project management tasks. He is currently lead of Team DRC-Hubo@UNLV for the 2012-2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Mentors

Carter Chiu is a graduate student currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in computer science at UNLV in 2016. He works under the guidance of Dr. Justin Zhan in the Big Data Lab at UNLV where his main research interests are big data analytics and deep learning. This is his second year serving as an instructor and mentor for the AEOP UNITE program, and he is excited to help make this year’s program an even greater success than its inaugural run last year.

Sing (Vince) Choi is currently finishing his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and is expected to graduate December 2017. He is looking to pursue a M.S. degree in Computer Science at UNLV afterwards and intends on developing his research on Big Data, machine learning, and security further. Prior to joining the Big Data Hub, Vince was a collegiate eSports organizer for three years at UNLV, since 2013. During his time as a collegiate organizer, he has helped UNLV become recognized as one of the top collegiate programs and in addition, helped facilitate a research on the psychological patterns in gamers. Starting in 2014, Vince tutored mathematics for the UNLV Math Sciences Department for three years. In August 2016, he joined UNLV’s Gaming Innovation Lab and became a finalist at the Innovation’s Competition. Now, Vince has recently been an addition to the Big Data Hub family at UNLV where he is adamantly conducting his research fingerprint analysis.

Michael Schwob is an undergraduate student majoring in Mathematics and Economics with a concentration in computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He is a sophomore in the UNLV Honors College planning to graduate in 2021. He conducts research under the guidance of Dr. Justin Zhan in the Big Data Hub at UNLV. His research interests are biostatistics, biomathematics, time-dependent hypergraph thoery, and game theory. This will be Michael’s first year as a mentor for the AEOP UNITE program, and he is eager to contribute to the success of the program.

Binay Dahal is a Ph.D. Student at the Department of Computer Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He completed his Masters in Computer Science from UNLV and currently works in the Big Data Lab as a Research Assistant under the supervision of Dr. Justin Zhan. His main research interests include Deep learning and it’s applications on Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. He is also interested in neuroevolution. Currently, he is involved in a research project of finding an appropriate convolutional neural model for image classification using evolutionary operators like mutation and recombination.

Hadi Salman was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1990. In 2014, Hadi received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt. He received the Masters of Science degree from The University of Arkansas in 2018. His work at UA Little Rock involved topics such as the Internet of Things (IoT), application of green IoT, Low-power sensor networks, Machine Learning, Clustering, and Optimization. In 2017, Mr. Salman was awarded Outstanding Teaching Assistant award by the Systems Engineering department at UA Little Rock. In 2018, He was awarded Best Masters Degree Graduate by the Engineering and Information Technology EIT. Currently, Mr. Salman is pursuing Ph. D.  In Computer Science at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His research interests include topics such as Pattern Recognition, Signal Processing, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Clustering, and Optimization.

Felix Zhan is the program manager for the AEOP/REAP/RET programs. He has 6 years of programming experience and is proficient in Java, C++, Python, C, HTML, CSS, and Javascript. His research interests include artificial intelligence, Big Data, security, and deep learning. He has published 8 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conferences. He has received more than 50 awards and honors, including the President’s Volunteer Award at the Gold Medal level, Level 10 (international highest) Piano of the Royal Conservatory Music Program, and the Congressional Recognition award.