Research Mentors
Dr. Vangelis Metsis – Assistant Professor of CS – has worked with multiple undergraduate students on research projects involving machine learning, biosignal analysis, human activity monitoring, and human-computer interaction with the use of various sensors. As a Faculty Research Associate at UT Arlington, 2012- 2015, Metsis (co-)supervised more than 10 undergraduate students, the majority of whom, were funded by NSF REU funds. At Texas State, Dr. Metsis has mentored undergraduate students in previous REU sites as well as multiple high-school students, who participated at the TxState Mathworks math summer camp. Many of the projects resulted in publications where an undergraduate student was the leading author. Dr. Metsis has served as a mentor in previous REU sites and has supported multiple graduate and undergraduate students to participate at international conferences through federal travel awards. He has also served as a Doctoral Consortium mentor at ACM PETRA 2012-2015, IEEE HAVE 2014, and IEEE ICHI 2015 conferences.
Dr. Mina Guirguis – Professor of CS – has a track record in involving undergraduates in his research and ensures that they form an integral component of his research team. At TxState, he has involved more than 25 undergraduates directly in his research and has published 16 refereed articles, with 17 of them, in addition to 9 refereed posters, in reputable venues (e.g., IEEE, ACM and Elsevier). 9 of those 14 articles were led by an undergraduate student. He has supported the travel of 8 undergraduates to 13 different venues. In 2014, Guirguis has developed and delivered a 3-day robotics workshop for the training of 18 under-represented undergraduate students (14 females) as part of the NSF STEP award. Guirguis has been serving as an HSLAMP mentor for Hispanic undergraduate students. He has supervised undergraduate honor theses. He is the member of the LBJ Institute for STEM Education and Research at Texas State and an academic alliance member of NCWIT developing various education and research activities focused on engaging undergraduates in Computer Science and ensuring their retention. Finally, Guirguis holds demonstration sessions for visiting elementary, middle and high school students from nearby schools and on many occasions, his undergraduate students deliver the demo based on their research projects.
Dr. Xiao Chen – Associate Professor of CS – has directed multiple undergraduates in her research. In 2008, Dr. Chen involved Taylor Groves on a network communication protocol design project that was published in IEEE ICCCN. Taylor received an “Excellent Research Award” from the department and is currently a Ph.D. student at The University of New Mexico. In 2009, Dr. Chen supervised two undergraduate students on network research projects producing a paper in the PDCN 2010 Conference. Dr. Chen served as an REU mentor for our previous REU Site (MCPS REU) and involved 6 undergraduates in research. This has led to two publications, one in IEEE ICC and one in IEEE ICCCN. In 2012, Dr. Chen supervised two undergraduate students on a sensor networks project yielding a paper in IEEE Globecom. Chen has also involved 4 undergraduates in building driver drowsiness detection systems using wireless wearables and the research results are published in the REUNS workshop at IEEE MASS.
Dr. Jelena Tesic – Assistant Professor of CS – has mentored four undergraduate students from ETH and Klagenfurt University for their senior degree project over the past years. Also, she has mentored two undergraduate students from UCLA for their summer internships, all of them supported by Dr. Tesic’s research grants in the general area of machine learning, computer vision, and video search and indexing. The results of these research projects were published in conferences, and the latest work with an undergraduate intern is in the process of submission.
Dr. Dan Tamir – Associate Professor of CS – Dan E. Tamir (S’80–M’83) received the M.S. and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Florida State University, Tallahassee, in 1989. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Texas State University, San Marcos. From 1996 to 2005, he managed applied research and design in DSP Core technology in Motorola SPS. From 1989 to 1996, he served as an Assistant/Associate Professor in the CS Department at Florida Tech. Between 1983 and 1986, he worked in the Applied Research Division, Tadiran, Israel. He has published more than 50 refereed journal and conference papers in the areas of combinatorial optimization, computer vision, audio, image, and video compression, human-computer interaction, and pattern recognition. His Ph.D. minors include mathematics, philosophy, and digital music. He has a vast exposure to diverse cultures and experiences and a passion for studying, learning, openness, and understanding. Dr. Tamir has been a member of the Israeli delegation to the MPEG committee and a Summer Fellow at NASA Kennedy Space Center.