New Members Announcement

Garg Group warmly welcomes new members who started in Fall 2023. These are MS candidates: Nanzeeba Tabassum, Nischal Kanel, and Yaman Garg; and PhD candidates: Aysan Farajnia and Momina Rauf.

Additionally, MS candidates Omar Abdelrahman, Jacob Doehring, and Dhanush S. Bejjarapu successfully completed their MS thesis in Summer 2023. Omar started working at WJE, Chicago, Jacob started working at Sublime, Boston, and Dhanush started his PhD at EPFL, Switzerland. We wish them all best of luck in their future endeavors.

Group photo in the North Quad of the UIUC campus on an early Fall 2023 morning, (From left to right; Top row: AW, HJ, CK, YM, FQ, FI, AF, NK, SD, NT, BD, VK; Bottom row: BB, SR, KCP, YG, MR, NG, MO, MA, TE, HS, HK)

Several students from the group are set to graduate in Summer 2024. Hence, multiple openings for graduate students (both at MS and PhD level) are available for Fall 2024. Please apply and join us! 

A postdoc opening maybe announced by the end of 2023.

Moments from 2022

A few moments from the year 2022:

New Members & Hiring Announcement

Garg Group warmly welcomes new members who started in Summer and Fall 2022. These are MS candidates: Mohamed Abdelrahman, Sudharsan Rathnakumar; PhD candidates: Farjad Iqbal, Tausif Elahi; and Postdoc: Dr. Yujia Min.

Additionally, MS candidates Pablo Romero and Sonali Srivastava successfully completed their MS thesis in Summer 2022. Pablo returned back to Chile to continue working in the industry. Sonali enrolled in the PhD program at Virginia Tech. We wish both of them best of luck in their future endeavors.

Group photo in the North Quad of the UIUC campus on an early Fall 2022 morning, (From left to right; Top row: HSC, HK, RS, CK, DSB, AW, HJ, VK, YM, JD, MA; Bottom row: BM, FQ, SR, TE, BB, NG, BDM, FI, OA, KCP, HS)

Several students from the group are set to graduate in Summer 2022. Hence, multiple openings for graduate students (both at MS and PhD level) are available for Fall 2023. Please apply and join us! 

A postdoc opening maybe announced by the end of 2022.

Garg Group Annual Picnic (GG-AP) 2022

Following the success of the 2021 picnic, the 2nd GG-AP was held in June 2022. The group spent a day eating, relaxing, and playing team games at Allerton Park. An ad-hoc Picnic Planning Committee was appointed to plan the day and they came up with a fine agenda.

As usual, we started with some group photos.

And then played some games. The Tug of War was especially fun which was held between MS and PhD students of the group. The PhD students won the first game. However, in the second game, the MS students pulled their way to victory (see video below). The final score after 2 games was 1-1 and we decided to leave it at that.

Other games included eating Oreos off your head without using your hands.

Finally, we had an international potluck style food brought by all participants. We finished the day with some aerial shots.

The next annual picnic will be held in 2023 summer. We’ll be looking for motivated individuals from the group to serve on next year’s Picnic Planning Committee. Interested personnel may self-nominate or nominate others.

New Members & Postdoc Hiring Announcement

Garg Group warmly welcomes new members who started in Summer and Fall 2021. These are MS candidates: Jacob Doehring, Dhanush Sahasra, Andrew Witte; PhD candidates: Bayezid Baten, Chirayu Kothari, Hyeonseok Jee, Brandy Diggs-McGee; and Postdoc: Dr. Hamza Samouh. Additionally, MS candidate Vikram Kumar successfully completed his MS thesis in Summer 2021 and continues in the group as a new PhD candidate, starting Fall 2021.


Group photo in the North Quad of the UIUC campus on an early Fall morning, before heading to the group meeting. (From left to right; Top row: PR, GS, CK, RS, AW, HS, OA, BDM, VK, HK; Bottom row: FQ, DS, BB, KCP, NG, HJ, SS, MG, NH, JD)

Mulitple openings for graduate students (both at MS and PhD level) are available for Fall 2022. Please apply and join us!

Additionally, a postdoc position has also just opened in our group. Please apply before Feb 21, 2022. Job details and application info is in the file below:.

Garg Group Annual Picnic (GG-AP) 2021

The first version of GG-AP ’21 was launched in July 2021 where the group spent a day eating and relaxing outdoors. Participation was free for all group members, however, everyone was required to bring a dish for the potluck in lieu of their registration fee. This resulted in a rather extensive buffet-style feast which lifted everyone’s spirits as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Illustration of happy faces of picnic attendees upon consumption of a highly diverse and international cuisine. (Initials, L to R – Top Row: NG, BB, OA, PK, HK, PC, JD; Bottom Row: SS, FQ, KP, RS, VK)

Once the attendees were motivated, they were assembled to execute the real purpose of this picnic: creating some fun memories! The group tried making several creative shots but most of them turned out to be not publishable. One of them, where the group attempts to create an “I” on the ground (reported here as Video 1), survived the editorial cut.

Video 1

Nevertheless, the group will continue to try to generate new content in the meanwhile and will be back next year, in summer 2022. Thanks for reading and watching.

New Graduate Students – Spring 2021

Garg Group warmly welcomes new set of graduate students who started recently as research assistants in the Spring 2021 semester. They are Ravi Sharma (MS candidate) and Omar Abdelrahman (MS candidate) who joined us in January, 2021.

Group photo in the North Quad of the UIUC campus on a nice afternoon, before heading to the group meeting. (From left to right; Top row: Vikram Kumar, Ravi Sharma, Prof. Garg, Omar Abdelrahman, Pablo R. Contreras; Bottom row: Sonali Srivastava, Krishna C. Polavaram, Hossein Kabir, Faisal Qadri; Missing: Pratyush Kumar)

We’re looking forward to welcome the next set of students arriving this Fall 2021. We expect several openings in the Spring 2022 and/or Fall 2022 semesters, hence applications for the next year are welcome.

Postdoc Hiring Announcement

Our group is actively looking to hire a Postdoctoral Research Associate to start working from early 2021. If you’re interested, please refer to the job advertisement.

The deadline to apply is Nov. 30, 2020. Early applications are highly encouraged.

Update: The position has been filled as of June 2021.

New Graduate Students – Fall 2020

Garg Group warmly welcomes new set of graduate students joining in the Fall 2020 semester. They are Sonali (MS candidate), Faisal (PhD candidate), and Hossein (PhD candidate) who joined us in August.

We’re looking to expand our group further. Hence, multiple positions for grad students are open for next year. If you want to join us, consider applying.

Group photo on a nice evening on the Main Quad of UIUC. Standard operating procedures for the year 2020 i.e., face masks and social distancing were carefully followed.

New Group Member

We typically hire new students during the Fall and the Spring semester. However, we have made an exception this year, and hired a new student during the Summer term. The student is quite young but appears to be highly motivated – which is the key criteria for successful entry in our group.

The student will be initially mentored by a senior member of the group (who was also a summer recruit, a few years ago). An agreement has been made between the two for collaboration, and all concerned parties have kindly agreed.

The (tentative) thesis title for this new student is,

Novel Mechanisms for Disrupting Parents’ Sleep during Nightime.”

Publications are on their way.