Introducing the Outstanding Undergraduates, IMPACT and Dean’s Dissertation Award recipients of Fall 2016

B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio
Graduated from Boulder Creek High School in Anthem, Arizona

James Boulton’s after-graduation aspirations are sky high — as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force.

A member of ASU’s Air Force ROTC, Boulton has a minor in military leadership and will be receiving his commission following graduation. And as one of 41 American pilots chosen from the ROTC, the Air Force Academy and Officer Training School, he will join students from 12 other countries for Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training, a 55-week program that trains combat pilots for NATO.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Boulton grew up in the North Valley, and chose ASU because of its social and academic atmosphere and chose industrial engineering “because it tied my passions of math and business together.”

Boulton initially planned to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy but says that looking back, attending ASU was the “best thing that has ever happened in my life. Not only did I get a great education here at Arizona State, I also learned so much about myself and others, as well.”

As might be expected, Boulton’s most memorable ASU moment has to do with flight. “I was at a physical training class on a cold morning in February and while we were doing our debrief, the commander called me up and told me I was going to be a pilot in the United States Air Force,” Boulton explained. “At that point, I realized I made a huge jump toward achieving my dream.”

Another proud moment for Boulton was being selected as wing commander of the Air Force Unit, leading more than 120 cadets.

“In the last seven years, I was the only engineering major selected to be wing commander,” he said. “I knew I was doing something right.”

Already a tutor in math, science and coding, he began mentoring cadets while serving as wing commander.

Boulton’s flight path also landed him an array of scholarships, including full tuition from Air Force ROTC and a Provost scholarship from ASU. He also has the distinction of receiving a National Football Foundation scholarship for being the first senior team scholar athlete in Arizona. “I’m pretty good at intramural football – two-time runner up,” he said when asked about a hidden talent. He captained five intramural teams while at ASU.

Boulton doesn’t report to flight school until April, so until then, he will be watching and making smaller objects fly — while working at a golf course. “I love golf and on top of being paid, I get to play for free and use all of the amenities that come along with a stellar course.”

As for the future, beyond flying fighter jets and deploying overseas as much as possible, Boulton aspires to become a pilot with the Thunderbirds, the U.S. Air Force’s demonstration squadron.

B.S.E. in Engineering (Robotics)
Originally from Tempe, Arizona
Graduated from Tempe Preparatory Academy in Tempe, Arizona

Matthew Dickens has always enjoyed creating things with his hands, so the hands-on Engineering program was a natural fit when he came to ASU.

The program hasn’t always been an easy road for the Regents’ High Honors Scholarship recipient, but the outcome has been satisfying.

“The most rewarding experiences have come in my junior and senior years as I began to create projects that finally work like they are supposed to,” Dickens says. “I felt like I was worth something as an engineer after I finished my first working prototype the first semester of my junior year.”

Getting to that point is still a time-consuming challenge, though, and if he had one engineering superpower it would be to write code that does exactly what he wants it to do on the first try.

Still, he appreciates the challenge and thanks his mentor, engineering Assistant Professor Shawn Jordan, whom Dickens met his senior year of high school at an engineering summer camp, for helping him grow throughout his engineering journey.

“Dr. Shawn Jordan has been my main mentor from the beginning in his ability to challenge me and his ability to find unique opportunities that have helped me to blend art and engineering,” says Dickens, who is also an honors student in Barrett, The Honors College.

Dickens participated in the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative, where he led research on how to improve museums by observing the roles parents take in the maker community.

Engineering accomplishments are only part of Dickens’ ASU experience.

One of his favorite moments came during his junior year when the ASU football team shut down Notre Dame’s Heisman-contender quarterback during the game.

“Afterwards, my friends and I started one of the chants at the end of the game, which helped me feel like I contributed to the win!” Dickens says.

He’s also a great country dancer and loves going dancing Wednesday and Thursday nights at  Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row bar and grill on Mill Ave.

After graduating, he plans to travel to Australia and New Zealand for two months before beginning work with Microchip Technologies.

Dickens is currently working on a project with Barrow Neurological Institute that he hopes will help a lot people who currently use canes and walkers, but in the future he also hopes to help others outside of engineering.

“My goal is to become financially independent by the time I am 35 so that I can quit working full time and begin pursuing interests such as becoming a missionary or a youth pastor,” Dickens says.

He also hopes to have a life full of adventure through traveling, meeting new people, sharing the joy of his faith, and deepening the close friendships he has made in high school and college.

B.S. in Aeronautical Management Technology (Professional Flight)
Originally from Aurora, Illinois
Graduated from Marmion Academy in Aurora, Illinois

Joshua Grzywa’s experience with flight changed from jumping out of military planes to sitting in the pilot’s seat.

It all started when he talked to an ASU Professional Flight program student at an aviation fair.

He was excited to learn to fly from that first exposure to the program, and the transition to ASU was easy for the former Reserve Officer Training Corps instructor with ASU’s Army ROTC program.

“Once I was notified that I was going to be medically retired from the U.S. Army, my boss insisted that I start taking classes,” Grzywa says. “Overnight I became both an instructor and a student.”

Grzywa, who will be graduating summa cum laude, attended school under the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Chapter 31 Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program.

He credits aviation Senior Lecturer and Chief Ground Instructor Marc O’Brien for getting him off the ground as a flight student.

“Aviation is not always intuitive, and without a true understanding it can be difficult to progress,” Grzywa says. “He always found ways to ensure the students understood so much ‘foreign’ material.”

Grzywa’s experience in the Professional Flight program has been challenging, but ultimately rewarding.

“Balancing heavy course loads with flight training on a regular basis is taxing to every student within the program,” Grzywa says. “Committing upwards of 12 to 15 hours per week to flight training in addition to normal class loads is not out of the norm — however, I can’t imagine anyone would trade the hours spent flying around the southwestern United States for labs or lectures.”

It was this experience with flight training that told Grzywa he was on the right path.

“I was flying my first solo cross-country flight and I was just getting to cruise altitude between Marana Airport and Gila Bend. There isn’t much between those two airports other than a mine and a lot of open desert. I remember thinking that I was doing this on my own — I felt like an actual pilot and was filled with more excitement than I could remember,” Grzywa says.

While he’s not in the air, he’s helping fellow veterans on the ground — and in the water.

After a slew of suicides by members of his former unit, Grzywa was compelled to find a way to assist the veteran community face the varied challenges of returning home.

“With the help of my wife and a couple friends, I founded a veterans’ non-profit called Deep Sea Valkyries,” Grzywa says. “Our mission is to enhance the lives of veterans through the treatment of PTSD while introducing them to healthy, recreational marine-based activities.”

In July 2016, Deep Sea Valkyries launched their week-long maiden voyage to the Bahamas with 20 veterans from across the country. They went scuba diving and snorkeling, explored the islands and participated in group healing sessions.

“This is perhaps my biggest hidden talent — seeing a social problem and being able to find a solution that, while out of the norm, is effective and long lasting,” Grzywa says.

After graduation he plans to continue his work with Deep Sea Valkyries with additional retreats as well as further his aviation training through flight instruction and a master’s in safety and human factors at ASU. Long term he plans to pursue a career in the airline industry.

“This is an exciting time to enter into the aviation industry,” Grzywa says. “The demand for pilots has never been higher, and as someone who would never do well in an office, I am excited that my career will take me around the country and the world.”

B.S. in Computer Science
B.S.E in Computer Systems Engineering
Originally from Arcadia, Arizona

Ryan Hermens’ interest in computers was sparked at an early age when his father gave him the opportunity to dissect old computers alongside his twin brother.

He described what he found inside the computer as “a beautiful city of silicon.”

He went on to study the computers components and even build his own computer before developing his passion in software development.

A student in Barrett, the Honors College, Hermens is a New American National Merit Scholar and a recipient of the Science, Math and Engineering Competition Award — known as SMECA.

Participation in student organizations is a hallmark of Hermens’ undergraduate years. He is a founding member of Sun Devil Robotics, and served as treasurer of the ASU Radio Club and president of the ASU Linux Users Group.

Hermens is proud to have worked in the computer industry during the entirety of his academic years — including full-time employment during his last three semesters. Currently, he works as a cybersecurity analyst and big-data engineer at Charles Schwab Corporation, which he plans to continue after graduation.

His work paired with scholarships enabled Hermens to graduate debt-free, and he cites the affordability of a world-class education as a selling point in his decision to attend Arizona State University.

“As I look to move forward with my career and life goals, having financial independence means I have more open doors,” he says.

Hermens plans to continue working in the big-data realm of computing, but he is also fascinated with issues surrounding computer security. This interest is buoyed by his participation in ASU’s Cybersecurity Competition, in which he and his partner earned first place for the last two years.

As he continues to advance our “silicon cities” and as a result, the tools and technology available to all of us, Hermens would one day like to experience working for a primarily software-driven company such as Amazon or Google.

B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering
Originally from Phoenix, Arizona
Graduated from Desert Vista High School in Ahwatukee, Arizona

Growing up, Ian McFate always gravitated toward math and science, with a keen interest in building things. Add in the fact that he grew up around airplanes with a pilot for a father, when he enrolled in Arizona State University, he chose to study aerospace engineering.

Though his interest in aircraft and spacecraft initially led him to that field of study, it was the myriad ways it can be applied that really piqued his interest.

“Over the course of all my internships, I was able to see how diverse the fields of aerospace and mechanical engineering were,” says McFate. “I loved the fact that I could apply my degree to a wide variety of careers.”

Throughout his undergraduate years, McFate focused on gaining real-world, hands on experience in a variety of internships. He worked for a year as a manufacturing engineering intern at UTC Aerospace Systems, followed by a summer at Orbital ATK, an aerospace and defense company, working on “designing test fixtures, conducting mechanical analyses and supporting environmental testing.”

He then left ASU for a semester to intern with the U.S. federal government, learning more about design and gaining hands-on manufacturing skills.

McFate has returned to Orbital ATK as an aerospace engineering intern to work in the Aerodynamics Group, where he runs and processes computational fluid dynamics, and performs other aerodynamic analyses.

Despite his commitment to internships, McFate remained invested in his studies and made the Dean’s List every semester.

“The most rewarding part of my undergraduate years at ASU was probably being able to apply the specific knowledge I learned in my coursework to real-world problems that I faced in my internships,” he says. “For example, I am able to use my knowledge of stability and control that I learned in an Aircraft Dynamics & Control course on a regular basis at my current internship in the Aerodynamics Group at Orbital ATK.”

McFate plans to continue working at Orbital ATK while he pursues his master’s degree in the Fulton Schools’ 4+1 program, and has yet to decide where engineering will take him.

“I want to either continue working in the space-launch industry as an aerospace or mechanical engineer, or to branch out into the renewable energy industry and try to apply my knowledge and experience towards greener forms of energy,” he says.

B.S.E. in Construction Engineering

Robert Richards has been a consistently standout performer in the Fulton Schools, both academically and extracurricularly. His efforts have earned him the recognition of Outstanding Undergraduate for his program.

Each semester, one Outstanding Undergraduate is chosen to represent each of the Fulton Schools’ 24 undergraduate programs. These students are selected based on their academic achievements and 3.40 or higher grade point average as well as evidence of participation in one or more Fulton Schools, major-specific student engagement and community activities.

At convocation, one student for each of the six Fulton Schools has the honor of carrying their school’s gonfalon, a banner proclaiming the school name behind which the school’s faculty march in to the ceremony.

B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering
Originally from Gilbert, Arizona
Graduated from Highland High School in Gilbert, Arizona

An individual’s hobbies can say a lot about them. An adventurous soul might take up rock climbing or mountain biking, while someone with a quiet, introspective nature might find themselves drawn to the solitude of reading or painting.

For Cassandra Steeno, her chosen hobby of swing dancing reveals her kinetic, active, everywhere-at-once nature, which is also evidenced in her academic career. In her undergraduate years, Steeno has participated in the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative, as well Engineering Projects in Community Service, worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant and served as the president for ASU’s chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ honors society, Eta Kappa Nu.

Despite throwing herself into each pursuit with gusto, she’s managed to graduate with her bachelor of science early while earning a spot on the Dean’s List each semester and maintaining a 4.0 grade point average.

While participating in FURI, Steeno worked with electrical engineering Professor Trevor Thornton, helping take measurements on his metal–semiconductor field-effect transistor model.

In support of Steeno’s nomination for Outstanding Undergraduate, Thornton noted that she “is the most accomplished [undergraduate] student I have worked with at ASU for as long as I can remember.”

Prior to working in Thornton’s lab, Steeno took the professor’s circuits classes, which she attributes to cementing her love for electrical engineering and confirming she was on the right path.

“We finally learn the fundamental building blocks of electronics, transistors, and you begin to look at technology so differently,” she says. “You begin to realize how technology is made and that you yourself can build things. Afterwards, I soon began to realize that I can innovate and make things with a meaningful impact on society.”

In EPICS, Steeno worked with visually impaired students at the Scottsdale Training And Rehabilitation Services Center.

“As team leader I led our team to create an electronic navigation device to aid the visually impaired individuals to navigate independent of human assistance,” she says.

The navigation device uses speakers placed around the STARS campus and a hand-held remote. Students can use trigger the speakers using the remote to indicate where they are on campus and more easily find their way.

She was recognized for her leadership with the Outstanding Team Leader Award and her team won the Innovation Award at the EPICS Generator Awards in Spring 2013 and 2014, respectively.

“I think knowing that I was able to make something that helped someone was such a rewarding experience and I don’t think it would have been as easy to have that opportunity at other schools,” she says.

Steeno’s experience in the Fulton Schools — both in and out of the classroom — has cultivated a desire in her to use her knowledge and skills for the betterment of others.

“Whether it is something in the medical field, like creating devices that save people or improve their living conditions, or something in the field of space, like engineering space exploration vehicles and expanding that frontier,” she says. “And, honestly, I’d love to be on a spaceship like in Star Trek as an engineer like Scotty.”

She may have to put her plans to join Starfleet on hold, as she’s determined to complete her master’s degree following graduation. She plans on either pursuing a doctoral degree or attending medical school and is currently interning with Intel, a position she’s held for more than a year.

B.S. in Technological Entrepreneurship and Management
Originally from Lakewood, California
Graduated from Lakewood High School in Lakewood, California

Brandon Zell will be graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Technological Entrepreneurship and Management that he earned online. Zell lives in Lakewood, California, but works as a flight attendant for a commercial airline so he was able to complete his degree wherever his work took him.

The online aspect of the program did occasionally come with its own unique challenges. “We had a group project that included four students, three of which were located in different time zones,” he says. “There was one in New Zealand, one in New York, and two of us in California. Communication at times was very difficult.”  

“I chose ASU, because I wanted a school that was completely online and worked with my extremely sporadic, unpredictable schedule,” says Zell.

Zell is thankful for all of the real-life lessons that he learned as part of the Fulton Schools. “It is not the typical online mundane school, you are actually given real-life examples from your professors which they have experienced,” he says.

“Technological Entrepreneurship and Management was a very interesting and unique major that covered a wide variety of topics that I was extremely interested in learning more about,” he says. “I found out that I was in the right program as my classes were continuing to get more and more interesting. There were not too many classes that I wondered why I was taking, besides math.”

Zell has a hobby that he loves and hopes to have one day evolve into a career working in the amusement park industry.

“I love to design and build pneumatically-operated and computer controlled Halloween props every year,” says Zell. “It has always been my dream to become a Disney Imagineer or to do something with special effects at amusement parks, Halloween attractions, et cetera.”  

Zell plans to continue on as a flight attendant until he has traveled to every country on his list, he is currently up to 23 so far. “Hopefully my future will be full of fun, health, adventure and happiness,” says Zell. “Whether that be owning my own business or working for another amazing company.”

There will probably also be plenty of mechanical ghosts, monsters and skeletons.

Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering
B.S. in Biotechnology
Originally from Hyderabad, India
Graduated from SRM University, Chennai, India

Patients with cancer are considered in remission when cancer cells are no longer detectable in radiological and diagnostic tests after treatment. But just because cells aren’t detected doesn’t mean they’re gone for good.

Cancer cells can lie dormant and not respond to treatment that targets active cells, and can then reactivate years later.

“When a patient relapses with the same disease either in the original location or in distant organs (called metastases), it is almost always fatal and the reason behind almost 90 percent of cancer-associated deaths,” says Sai Grandhi, biomedical engineering doctoral candidate, citing research from the Nature Reviews Cancer journal.

Grandhi’s doctoral studies focused on finding ways to eliminate dormant cancer cells to completely remove the disease and prevent relapse.

He developed a gel-like substance that induces tumor dormancy in high throughput, which allows for parallelizing drug screens and rapid discovery. Then he identified the adaptations that the cancer cells utilize to survive the dormant state. Utilizing this information, he targeted these adaptations to eradicate the resistant dormant cancer cell population.

Grandhi also developed conditions that can trigger reactivation and relapse of dormant cancer cells to identify drugs so that he could fight the cells. Furthermore, he developed chemical and mechanical bio-material-based approaches to separate heterogeneous entities within individual cancer population.

His work fighting cancer dormancy and relapse has earned him a Dean’s Dissertation Award, one of four awarded to Fulton Schools students this semester.

This semester, Grandhi completed work for his doctorate by conducting research on druggable applications behind tumor dormancy and reactivation in the Molecular and Nanoscale Bioengineering Lab under Professor Kaushal Rege.

Grandhi chose ASU for its research infrastructure, emphasis on interdisciplinary research and programs, its world-renowned faculty conducting top-notch scientific work and their focus on solving global challenges.

When he joined ASU in 2010, he was deeply interested in nanoparticle-based drug delivery to cancer cells.

“I worked on drug delivery systems exclusively for approximately two years, and in the meantime stumbled upon the tumor dormancy-relapse area,” Grandhi says. “The tools and techniques I learned while exploring nanoparticle drug delivery were very helpful in developing a unique approach to accelerate dormant cancer cell death.”

Grandhi says he has been deeply enriched by all his experiences in six years at ASU, including hours spent experimenting, academic discussions with peers and principal investigators, and help from colleagues, academic staff and faculty members. The interdisciplinary work he’s done with chemists, physicists, engineers and biologists at the university has been particularly rewarding, he says.

He also completed a graduate certificate in statistics, which he says allowed him to “gain a novel perspective toward approaching problems and solving them better.”

Grandhi has already begun a postdoctoral fellowship at the Genomic Institute of Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in the La Jolla area of San Diego, California.

“I want to continue working in biomedical research that will allow me to solve the next set of challenges and unmet medical needs,” Grandhi says.

Ph.D. in Hydrosystems Engineering 
M.S. in Hydrosystems Engineering
B.S. in Civil and Coastal Engineering from Tongji University in Shanghai, China
Originally from Zhuhai, China

Growing up in Zhuhai, China, Jianchuan Yang watched his coastal hometown suffer from the ravages of typhoons. This inspired him to study methods to mitigate their effects, aiming to develop a strategic system of pipes and outlets to ease flood inundation when a typhoon strikes.

Upon arriving at Arizona State University, he discovered the desert Southwest faces its own environmental challenges — namely the urban heat island effect, in which metropolitan areas are much warmer than surrounding, undeveloped areas due to human activity.

“I found out that the urban heat island problems are more severe and harmful to the sustainability of cities, and the extreme summer heat in Phoenix gives me a first-hand experience,” says Yang.

In recent decades, cities have begun to face challenges associated with rapid urbanization and global climate change. As a result, temperatures in cities tend to increase continually and it is important to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies for heat-related urban environmental problems, explains Yang.

When Yang noticed cities in the U.S. beginning to incorporate green infrastructure in their master plans, he decided to devote his doctoral studies to these practices. His dissertation, titled “Urban Green Infrastructure: Modeling and Implications to Environmental Sustainability,” developed a model to investigate how green infrastructure policies can lesson urban stresses and secured Yang a Dean’s Dissertation Award. The award recognizes exceptional work by doctoral students that encourages the highest levels of scholarship, research and writing.

“The dissertation seeks to find novel and feasible solutions related to green infrastructure for the sustainable development of Phoenix,” says Yang. “Its results can provide useful guidance for metropolitan areas to advance sustainable urban land use, planning and water resource management.”

Yang’s dissertation brought him into close collaboration with researchers in the National Center for Atmospheric Research to develop his cutting-edge modeling technology. His model has subsequently been integrated into the NCAR’s Weather Research and Forecasting platform, which serves as the foundation of day-to-day weather services across the U.S.

Yang’s advisor, civil engineering Assistant Professor Zhihua Wang, nominated him for the award, calling him “the best kind of student that every professor wants.”

“He is an extraordinary young researcher with a stellar academic record and a bright future career path in academia,” Wang continues. “He’s full of innovative ideas, always seeking the best solutions to research questions and an excellent leader and contributor to team efforts.”

Though Yang initially came to ASU to improve the built environment of his hometown, he unexpectedly ending up studying a different type of urban infrastructure. It turned out that wasn’t the only unexpected change Yang encountered during his time at ASU; he ended up meeting his wife here in 2011.

The pair were married in October 2016 and are both graduating this semester. Following graduation, they plan to move to New Jersey for Yang to continue his research career at Princeton University.

“At ASU, I discovered my passion in the academic field, finished my Ph.D., and found the most important person in my life,” Yang says. “The joyful time at ASU is rooted deeply in my memory.”

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering
B.S. in Thermal Science and Energy Engineering from University of Science and Technology of China
Originally from Anhui, China

Yue Yang, a fall 2016 graduate with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, has earned a Dean’s Dissertation Award recognizing his excellent contributions in the field of radiative heat transfer.

Currently a postdoctoral scholar, Yang is originally from the Anhui province of China and received an undergraduate degree in thermal science and energy engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Since he began his program in 2012, Yang has been a student of and research assistant for Liping Wang, an assistant professor and expert in radiative heat transfer in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Yang came to Arizona State University because he says it is “a dream university” for his interest in engineering and solar radiation.

Yang’s research focuses on controlling the light emitted from objects for use in different applications.

He describes his research goal as “finding an efficient, low-cost, easy-to-fabricate way to control light emission for various everyday applications.” This could include applications in harvesting and saving energy, and climate change.

In order to control light emission, Yang is looking at improving radiation-based heat transfer in his dissertation entitled “Dynamic Control of Radiative Heat Transfer with Tunable Materials for Thermal Management in Both Far and Near Fields.”

Having a dynamic control of radiative heat transfer is beneficial for the environment including managing climate change.

Providing an example of the benefits of his research, Yang says, “In summer, you want buildings to reflect the solar radiation to keep them as cool as possible, while in winter, you want just the opposite.”

In his efforts, Yang works with tunable materials, which he describes as “materials that can change their optical properties through thermal heating, chemical doping or applied voltage.”

Yang’s research could advance the creation of a device that employs tunable materials to dynamically change the reflectance of solar radiation to account for heat transfer during different times of the year and in different climates.

“This device could provide a better radiation-based thermal management and save much more energy,” says Yang.

In addition to working in the lab, Yang enjoys playing sports on campus. He says meeting other students through his participation in soccer, volleyball and basketball has been a memorable part of attending ASU.

He also volunteered for the Arizona Animal Welfare League during his time as a doctoral student.

After graduation, Yang plans to return to China to pursue a faculty position and continue his research in renewable energy and heat transfer.

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
B.S. in Electrical Engineering
Originally from Changchun, China
Graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing

Weina Wang, a 2016 graduate who will receive a doctoral degree in electrical engineering at the fall semester convocation, is a winner of an Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Dean’s Dissertation Award.

The award recognizes exceptional work by doctoral students that exemplifies an outstanding level of scholarship, research and writing.

Wang, who grew up in the city of Changchun in northeastern China, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing.

She started pursuit of a doctoral degree at Iowa State University, but later her faculty advisor, Lei Ying, joined Arizona State University’s faculty.

She enrolled in the doctoral program at ASU so she could continue to work with Ying, who co-advised her with Junshan Zhang. Both are professors of electrical and computer engineering in the Fulton Schools.

Wang’s doctoral research focused on data privacy, one of the major concerns in the area of big data analytics. Her dissertation is titled “Fundamental Limits in Data Privacy: From Privacy Measures to Economic Foundations.”

“Big data analytics is a double-edged sword,” she explains. “The emerging big data technology has proven its exceptional value in diverse areas, including scientific research, finance and much of what we do in our everyday lives. But the ever-improving capability of data analysis makes it possible to extract personal information that people want to remain private.”

Her goal is to provide research to help devise solutions that address the conflict between the capabilities of big data technology and the problem it presents to protecting privacy.

“We characterized the relationship between different notions of privacy and revealed their fundamental connections. We envisioned a novel market model for private data analytics and laid the economic foundations for it,” Wang says.

That market model has the potential to enable a paradigm shift from the traditional practice of informed consent for private data collection to a market-based approach in which data collectors have access only to a limited and imprecise version of data that would not reveal detailed personal information.

This reduces the potential damage from data breaches and gives people greater control over use of their private data, she says.

Wang got the idea for her research after hearing about the cancellation of the Netflix Prize competition, which sought to find ways to improve the accuracy of predictions about how much people are going to enjoy particular movies based on their past movie preferences.

The Netflix Prize competition was cancelled when it led to large amounts of personal data being exposed.

She found that some researchers were able to identify individual users by matching the anonymous data released by Netflix with movie ratings on the Internet Movie Database.

“This privacy breach accident made me realize that in the big data era privacy is something much more complicated than we used to think. Even releasing anonymous data can greatly harm an individual’s privacy,” she says.

Wang sees an urgent need to resolve the conflict between the reach of big data analytics and the need for privacy, “because I don’t think we should stop doing studies based on personal data. It would cause a huge loss for the sciences and for society.”

Wang now has a joint postdoctoral research position with ASU and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is continuing her work on data privacy and also focusing on scheduling and resource allocation in large-scale computing systems for big data analytics.

She likes both teaching and research, so she will pursue a career in academia.

Her fondest memory associated with her experience at ASU involves her wedding in China.

She and her fiancé had taken many scenic photos of the ASU campus, and the couple had the pictures projected onto a large screen to show to their wedding guests.

“ASU’s campus is very beautiful,” she says. “The pictures helped to make it a lovely day.”