Ph.D. Candidate Reyhaneh Jabbarvand Selected as “Rising Star”

November 15, 2019

Informatics Ph.D. candidate Reyhaneh Jabbarvand recently attended the 2019 Rising Stars in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Workshop at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Since the workshop was first launched at MIT in 2012, women graduate students and postdocs interested in pursuing academic careers in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering have been invited to attend the intensive workshop, held at various institutions annually. This year, Jabbarvand was one of 90 women invited to the event, making her part of the largest class of participants to date.

“I am honored to be one of the 90 Rising Star participants,” says Jabbarvand. “I see it as an opportunity to be a role model for female students.” In fact, using her knowledge to help others has always been one of her goals. “As an undergrad, I was looking for a major in which I could leverage my knowledge and skills to positively impact the lives of other people,” she says, explaining why she was initially drawn to computer science. “I chose software engineering as my Ph.D. major, since I believe the software is the most important component in computer systems, and there is no place better than UCI to earn a Ph.D. in software engineering.”

At the workshop, Jabbarvand attended research presentations, panel discussions, and sessions on interviewing and promotion. Each participant also presented a poster and gave a talk. “I received very positive and valuable feedback from mentors and other participants in the workshop,” she says. “I was also able to hear about very promising and interesting research from the other participants.”

Reyhaneh Jabbarvand presenting a poster on her research at the 2019 Rising Stars Workshop.

Her research focuses on developing new techniques to produce energy-efficient software. She leverages program analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning and integer programming to address energy-efficiency problems in the area of mobile apps.

Jabbarvand, who will be on the academic job market later this year, says the advice received and connections made at the workshop will help her achieve her career goals. “I’m passionate about learning new concepts, sharing my knowledge with others and mentoring others to do the same.”

Shani Murray