People LCDM@UIUC

About Professor Robert J. Brunner

Robert J. Brunner is a Professor of Astronomy with additional appointments in the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, Informatics, Physics, Statistics, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Beckman Institute, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Robert received his Ph.D., entitled the Statistical Approach to Galaxy Evolution, from the Johns Hopkins University. He spent five years as a post-doctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology before accepting his faculty appointment at the University of Illinois.

Professor Brunner is now focused on the nascent field of data science and is leading new educational opportunities in data science as well as working as the Data Science Expert in Residence at the University of Illinois Research Park.

Our Team

Current Team Members

Great People who are working in LCDM

Matias Carrasco Kind

Affiliated Researcher

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Volodymyr Kindratenko

Affiliated Researcher

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Matthew Turk

Affiliated Researcher

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

David Dalpiaz

Affiliated Researcher

Department of Statistics

Vincent Reverdy

Post-Doc

Department of Physics

Mandy Zhang

Post-Doc

Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering

William Biscarri

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Statistics

Kelechi Ikegwu

Ph.D. Candidate

Illinois Informatics Institute

Edward J. Kim

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of Physics

Maghav Kumar

Grad Student

CS@ILLINOIS

Kimi Zhang

Visiting Scholar, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Illinois Informatics Institute

Daniel Zou

Undergraduate

CS@ILLINOIS

Taeyoung Kim

Undergraduate

CS@ILLINOIS

Sushma Adari

Undergraduate

CS@ILLINOIS

Bin Xu

Undergraduate

Statistics@ILLINOIS

Hao Xi

Graduate

ACCY@ILLINOIS

Xuefei Li

Visiting Undergraduate, Fudan University

Department of Physics

Cooper Lorsung

Undergraduate

Physics Department

Benjamin Congdon

Undergraduate

CS@ILLINOIS

Nishil Shah

Undergraduate

CS@ILLINOIS

Hao Sun

Visiting Undergraduate, Peking University

Department of Physics

Michael Hao

MCS@ILLINOIS

Department of Computer Science

Alumni

Great People who used to work in LCDM

Mazin Bokhari

Now at Stanford

Quinn Jarrell

Now at Facebook

Sudarshan Govindaprasad

Now at Facebook

Anchal Agrawal

Now at VMWare

Harshil Kamdar

Now at Harvard

Neeraj Asthana

Now at IBM Watson Research

Sean McLaughlin

Now at Stanford

More

Previous Students Who Worked in LCDM

  • Ph.D. Students

    2003–2009 N. Strand Ph.D. Degree in Physics, July 2009

    2004–2009 A. Ross Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, July 2009

    2004–2009 B. Lundgren Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, August 2009

    2006–2012 B. Hayes Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, August 2012

    2007–2014 Y. Wang Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, August 2014

    2008–2011 T. Hacker Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, August 2011

    2010–2014 M. Carrasco-Kind Ph.D. Degree in Astronomy, August 2014

    2013–present J. Edward Kim (Physics)

    2015–present William Biscarri (Statistics)

    2015–2017 Samantha Thrush (Astronomy)

    2015–2017 Xinyang Lu (Astronomy)

    2016–present Kelechi Ikegwu (Informatics)

    Served on Thesis Committee for two students in Physics: Charmaine Armitage (2009) and William Fendt (2009), and three in Astronomy: Ian O’Dwyer (2005), Amy Lien (2011), and Gary Foremen (2015).

  • External Advisor

    2014 Zhangyang Wang Hyperspectral Image Processing in Astronomy

    2014–2015 Zhaowen Wang Hyperspectral Image Processing in Astronomy

    2014 Kai-Hsiang Lin Mining Strong Lenses in Astronomy Images

    2014–2015 Honghui Shi Image-Based Source Classification in Astronomy

    2014–2015 Xianming Liu Supervised Classification with Lossy Information

    These students were all from the ECE department with Professor Tom Huang as their advisor.

  • Master's Students

    2005–2006 W. Dukes M.S. Degree in Physics, Spring 2007

    2007–2008 S. Alberts M.S. Degree in Astronomy, Spring 2008

    2011–2012 A. Stewart M.S. Degree in Astronomy, Spring 2012

  • Summer Independent Study

    2005 Themis Athanassiadou (Physics)

    2007 Josh Dolence (Astronomy)

    2007 Scott Bai (ECE)

    2009 Scott Kruger (Astronomy)

  • Independent Study

    2012 Fei Sun (Physics)

    2012–2013 Chun Yin Chue

    2013 Yufei Liu (Statistics)

    2013 Matt Ulm (Statistics)

    2014–2015 Bryan Lunt (CS)

    2015 Sanjana Chandrashekar (CS)

    2015–2016 Divya Balakrishna (CS)

    2015 Avinash Balakrishnan (Statistics)

    2015–2016 Andrew Mehrmann (Statistics)

    2016–present Kimi Zhang (CSC visiting scholar) (Statistics)

  • Undergraduate Research

    Developed rigorous undergraduate research program that has employed numerous undergraduate students from the Astronomy, Physics, ECE, and Computer Science departments, including five Wyatt award winners (top graduating undergraduate student in Astronomy).

    2002–2004 Amy Bender Astronomy/Physics undergraduate student

    2002–2004 Matt Dillman CS undergraduate student

    2002–2004 Tom Spinka Astronomy/Physics undergraduate student 2005 Wyatt Award winner

    2002–2003 Emily Beal Astronomy undergraduate student

    2003–2004 Dan Sledz CS undergraduate student

    2003–2005 Nicholas Waggoner CS undergraduate student

    2003–2005 Nikita Prokopev CS undergraduate student

    2003–2006 Andrey Gusev CS undergraduate student

    2006–2007 Kate Grier Astronomy undergraduate student 2007 Wyatt Award winner

    2006 Emily Sieracki Astronomy undergraduate student 2008 Ryan Award winner

    2006–2007 Stacey Alberts Astronomy undergraduate student

    2008 Jenny Ginter Astronomy undergraduate student 2009 Ryan Award winner McNair Scholar

    2009–2011 Ben Montet Astronomy/Physics undergraduate student 2011 Wyatt Award winner

    2010 Coralie Jackman Aerospace Engineering undergraduate student 2010 Ryan Award winner

    2011 Jhoele Mora Astronomy undergraduate student

    2011 Pengqing Zhang Physics undergraduate student

    2011 Jason Dove Physics undergraduate student Lorella M. Jones Undergrad. Research Fellowship

    2012–2013 Mallory Conlon Astronomy undergraduate student 2013 Wyatt Award winner

    2012–2014 Robert Santucci Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2012–2014 Britton Jeter LAS Specialized Physics undergraduate student Lorella M. Jones Undergrad. Research Fellowship

    2012 Danya Murali Mathematics undergraduate student (SROP) Meyerhoff Scholar NSA Scholar

    2012–2015 Sean McLaughlin Engineering Physics undergraduate student Goldwater Scholar

    2012–2014 Fanshi Liu LAS Specialized Physics undergraduate student

    2013–2014 Michael Schubert Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2013 Dominik Notz Computer Science undergraduate student Exchange student from Germany

    2013–2015 Ching Chang Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2013 Melanie Waidenz Astronomy undergraduate student

    2013 Fabian Michler Computer Science graduate student

    2013 Fabian Michler Computer Science graduate student

    2013–2014 Shangjie Guo Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2013 Zenan Chen Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2013–2016 Anchal Agrawal Computer Engineering undergraduate student

    2013–2016 Harshil Kamdar Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2013–2016 Harshil Kamdar Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2014 Garrett Ducharme Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2014 Doris Lee Physics and CS undergraduate student University of California, Berkeley 2014 Google Summer of Code

    2014 Krishna Chavati Electrical Engineering undergraduate student Indian Institute of Technology, Madras 2014 Google Summer of Code

    2014 Alankar Kotwal Electrical Engineering undergraduate student Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay2014 Google Summer of Code

    2014 Abhisaar Sharma Computer Science undergraduate student Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar2014 Google Summer of Code

    2014 Sanchit Aggarwal Computer Science graduate student Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad 2014 Google Summer of Code

    2014–2015 Dingcheng Yue CS and Engineering Physics undergraduate student

    2014–2015 Richard Lee Computer Science undergraduate student NCSA SPIN Fellow

    2014–2015 Jonathan Pan-Doh ECE undergraduate student NCSA SPIN Fellow

    2014–2015 Chengyuan Zeng CS+Statistics undergraduate student

    2014–2016 Chris Chan ECE undergraduate student

    2014–2016 Rishabh Jain CS undergraduate student

    2014–2015 Evan Phibbs ECE undergraduate student

    2014 Phil Harris ECE undergraduate student

    2014 Tom Chen CS undergraduate student

    2014–present Sushma Adari CS+Astro undergraduate student

    2015 Jason Kras Physics undergraduate student

    2015 Honshu Shi ECE undergraduate student

    2015 Zongyuan Wang Physics undergraduate student

    2015–2016 Brian Griffin CS+Stat undergraduate student

    2015–2016 Neeraj Asthana CS and Stat undergraduate student

    2016–present Mazin Bokhari ECE undergraduate student

    2016–present Maghav Kumar CS undergraduate studentt

    2016 Kefu Zhu CS+Stat undergraduate student

    2016 Ivy Lei CS+Stat undergraduate student

    2016 Preska Sharma CS+Stat undergraduate student

    2016 S. Govindaprasad CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Taeyoung Kim CS undergraduate student

    2016–2016 Anshuman Saxena CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Drake Eidukas CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Joshua Chang CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Quinn Jarrell CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Ryan Wolfe CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Bhuvan Venkatesh CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Nishil Shah CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Sameet Sapra CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Benjamin Congdon CS undergraduate student

    2016–present Cooper Lorsung Physics undergraduate student

  • College of LAS James Scholar Honors Students

    2005 Fraser Kinnear III

    2007 Brian Fisher

    2007 Mita Shewakramani

    2010 Katie Amber

    2010 David Mainzinger

    2010 Javier Soto

    2010 Adam Theis

    2010 Andrew Riddle

    2012 Britt Jeteri

    2013 Eric Eiler

    2013 James Buckland

    2014 Zachary Berman

  • Senior Thesis Projects

    2009 John Dust (CS)

    2013 Britt Jeter (Physics)

    2014 Sean McLaughlin (Physics)

    2015 Weixiang Yu (Physics)

    2015–2016 Chris Chan (ECE)

    2015–2016 Neeraj Asthana (CS/Statistics)

    2015–2016 Anchal Agrawal (CS)

    2015–2016 Rishabh Jain (CS)

    2015–2016 Vaishali Khandelwal (CS)

    2015–2016 Harshil Kamdar (Physics)

    Robert E. Hetrick Outstanding Senior Thesis Award, 2016

    2016–present Mike Hao (ECE)

    2016–present Magev Kumar (ECE)

    2016–present Mazin Bokhari (ECE)

    2016–2016 S. Govindaprasad (CS)

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