Computer Science Graduate Students Association (CSGSA)
CSGSA_group_photo
CSGSA group volunteer for Guatemala
Who we are?
  • The Computer Science Graduate Students Association (CSGSA) is the official student governance organization for graduate students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and a registered Campus Life Program.
  • Every student in the department is automatically a member of CSGSA.
  • Officers are elected annually, and are in charge of fulfilling CSGSA’s goals in the most fun way possible!
  • Find information about current officers @ people.
  • If you're interested in becoming an officer go to get-involved page.
  • For complete details, check out the CSGSA constitution.
Our goals
  • Facilitate meaningful social connections between CS graduate students.
  • Advocate for the interests of CS graduate students, especially at the departmental level.
  • World domination :).
  • Provide opportunities for CS graduate students to get involved outside of academics and the department.
What we do
  • Organize weekly coffee hours, game nights, and other social events throughout the year (before COVID-19).
  • Hold bi-weekly seminar on student work (GRaDS).
  • Coordinate service opportunities.
  • Seize the means of production.
  • Manage the UMN CS Grad Students Slack workspace and run fun Slacktivities.
GRaDS

What is it?

  • The Graduate Research and Discussion Seminars (GRaDS) are student-organized lunch talks open to CS graduate students in any area.
  • Students speak at GRaDS to practice for conference or job talks, inform their fellow students on their research, or simply build their presentation skills.
  • As a more informal venue than most, GRaDS is a great resource for students to practice important talks and get feedback from their peers.
  • It also allows the graduate student body to remain informed about the research going on in other labs at UMN.
  • GRaDS is held biweekly on Fridays, announced on the [email protected] email list.
  • Students gather in KH 2-225 for a catered lunch and an hour of presentation during Spring 2022.

Want to participate?

  • Fill out this form to indicate what you wish to present and if there is space we will schedule you.

List of GRaDS talks

Get Involved

Roles

Currently there are 5 types of roles in CSGSA. The overview of these roles can be found here.

The detailed role descriptions can be found by clicking on them.

There is a service honorarium for CSGSA officers, details of which can be found here.

Feedback
  • We want to help make sure you have a great experience during graduate school here.
  • If something's not going so well, or if you have any concerns or questions, the best way to get started on a solution is to speak up!
  • You can either send your concerns to CSGSA leadership or to the Department directly using the forms below.
  • If you have questions, feedback or suggestions for CSGSA, we'd love to hear from you!
  • You can reach out anonymously at any time using this form.
  • If you want to receive a response, however, you can include your email in the form.
  • If you have feedback for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, please use this form.
FAQ

Nothing yet

Current officers

Anna Yue

Anna Yue

President

[email protected]

Anna is a third year PhD student advised by Pen-Chung Yew. Her research interests include high-performance computing, power management, computer architecture, and performance analysis. She hopes to join the community together through fun and engaging events. Her interests include traveling, video games, volleyball, and exploring what Minnesota has to offer (especially coming from Louisiana/Georgia!). 

Marlin Lee head shot

Marlin Lee

Treasurer

[email protected]

Marlin is a third-year Ph.D. student advised by Dan Boley. His research focuses on understanding deep learning models using techniques from mechanistic interpretability. His goal within the department is to foster a community around shared interests and make connections outside of academics. Outside of his research, he enjoys diving into complex board games like Arc's: The Blighted Reach and the original 1979 Dune, as well as reading books.

Faaliq Bilal head shot

Faaiq Bilal

Communications

[email protected]

Faaiq is a third-year PhD student at Dr. Zhi-Li Zhang’s Networking Lab. His research focuses on wireless communication for connected robots. Faaiq enjoys most sports and would be happy to get into anything new. He has a penchant for board games, partying on a weekend and the great outdoors. 

Goldy gopher head shot

Dhyan Thakkar

GRaDS Coordinator

[email protected]

Dhyan Thakkar is a master’s student in the Robotics program. 

Goldy gopher head shot

Nathan Guermond

GRaDS Coordinator

[email protected]

Nathan is a fourth-year PhD student advised by Gopalan Nadathur and works primarily in programming languages. 
 

Maryam Kameli head shot

Maryam Kameli

Event Coordinator

[email protected]

Maryam is a third-year PhD student advised by Victoria Interrante. Her research focuses on cybersickness mitigation and non-photorealistic rendering for navigation in immersive virtual environments, including recent work on teleportation design and spatial cognition. Maryam enjoys playing tennis, karate, board games, camping and exploring the Twin Cities.
 

Mete Kremer head shot

Mete Kremers

Event Coordinator

[email protected]

Mete is a MN native and a second year Masters student in computer science. He received his BS in data science and computer science. His collaborative research to date is focused on use of deep learning models to analyze large medical datasets to address clinically important problems to improve patient care. His goals within the department is to help support the  community members around common interests and events. He enjoys hiking, cross country skiing, biking, video games, and boardgames.
 

Zeph Johnson head shot

Zephaniah Johnson

Event Coordinator

[email protected] 

Zeph is a first-year Ph.D. student advised by Antonia Zhai. In his current research project he is developing an Agent to translate machine code between languages to improve performance. When not doing research, he likes to play board games with friends, watch various philosophical YouTube videos, and pet his cat Ike.
 

Goldy gopher head shot

Jigyasa Gaurav

Event Coordinator

[email protected]

Jigyasa is a first-year PhD student advised by Aryan Deshwal.