Roxana Geambasu

I am an associate professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. My research spans broad areas of computer systems, including distributed systems, security and privacy, operating systems, databases, and applications of cryptography and machine learning to systems. Much of my current research aims to expose problems and invent solutions to threats to our data security and privacy in the context of new, emerging technologies, such as cloud computing, mobile devices, and big data. I design, build, and evaluate scalable distributed infrastructures that address these problems. Read about some of my research here.

Students

Current students:

• Pierre Tholoniat, Ph.D. student

Graduated students for whom I was primary advisor:

• Vaggelis Atlidakis, Ph.D. 2020, first employment: post-doc at Brown University
• Mathias Lecuyer, Ph.D. 2019, first employments: Microsoft Research post-doc, University of British Columbia tenure-track CS faculty
• Riley Spahn, Ph.D. 2019, first employment: Google

Past student co-authors:

• Jon Bell, Ph.D. 2015, first employment: George Mason University
• Sravan Bhamidipati, M.S. 2013, first employment: Knewton
• Yang Tang, Ph.D. 2019, first employment: LaiOffer
• Nicolas Viennot, Ph.D. 2017, first employment: TwoSigma

Short Bio

I joined Columbia in Fall 2011 after finishing my Ph.D. in Computer Science (CS) at the University of Washington. I did my undergraduate in my home country, Romania, at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, also majoring in CS. I am now part of the Columbia Software Systems Lab, an energetic group of professors and students working on highly relevant challenges in today’s cutting-edge technologies, such as mobile devices, cloud computing, and distributed systems.

For my research in cloud and mobile data privacy, I received an Alfred P. Sloan Faculty Fellowship, a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, an NSF CAREER award, a ‘‘Brilliant 10’’ Popular Science nomination, an Early Career Award in Cybersecurity from the University of Washington Center for Academic Excellence, the Honorable Mention for the 2013 inaugural Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award, a William Chan Dissertation Award, two best paper awards at top systems conferences, and the first Google Ph.D. Fellowship in Cloud Computing.

Recruiting

I am looking for new Ph.D. students, as well as Columbia project students. If you are a highly motivated person, you have solid coding experience (particularly systems building experience), and you are interested in doing distributed systems research, please email me your resume and tell me about your research interests.

I am not looking for interns or other short-term visitors. So please do not contact me about such opportunities, unless I have explicitly contacted you, your advisor, or your school.

MS Advising

Please see the MS advising section for office hours and appointments.