Team

Principal Investigator



“Let’s examine materials at the small scale and not lose sight of the big picture.”

Prof. Nishant Garg
Associate Professor and David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar
(217) 300-9448
garg-group@illinois.edu
CV



Postdoctoral Researchers (2)

Dr. Yujia Min

Postdoc (2022 – Present)

PhD: Washington University in

St. Louis (2017)

Dr. Chirayu Kothari

Postdoc (2026 – Present)

PhD: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2026)

PhD Candidates (11)


Bayezid Baten

PhD Candidate (2021 – Present)

MS: Bangladesh Univ. of Eng. & Tech. (2019)

BS: Bangladesh Univ. of Eng. & Tech. (2017)


Hyeonseok Jee

PhD Candidate (2021 – Present)

BS+MS: Hanyang University (2020)


Brandy Diggs-McGee

PhD Candidate (2021 – Present)

BS+MS: North Carolina A&T State University (2017)


Farjad Iqbal

PhD Candidate (2022 – Present)

MS: Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2020)

BS: University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore (2016)


Tausif Elahi

PhD Candidate (2022 – Present)

BS+MS: Bangladesh Univ. of Eng. & Tech. (2021)


Aysan Farajnia

PhD Candidate (2023 – Present)

BS+MS: Shahid Beheshti University (2020)


Momina Rauf

PhD Candidate (2023 – Present)

MS: National University of Sciences and Technology (2019)


Gyeongryul Kim

PhD Candidate (2024 – Present)

BS+MS: Hanyang University (2023)


Omar F. Durrani

PhD Candidate (2025 – Present)

MS: University of Minnesota Duluth (2025)

BS: IIT Bhubaneshwar (2017)


Fazal Hussain

PhD Candidate (2025 – Present)

MS: Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (2025)

BS: NUST Pakistan (2023)


Ayyan Iqbal

PhD Candidate (2026 – Present)

MS: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2026)

BS: University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore (2022)



MS Candidates (6)


Nanzeeba Tabassum

MS Candidate (2023 – Present)

BS: Military Institute of Science and Technology (2018)


Achyuth Kumar

MS Candidate (2025 – Present)

BS: National Institute of Technology Warangal (2024)


Bilal Khan

MS Candidate (2025 – Present)

BS: Middle East Technical University (2024)


Syed Rafiuzzaman

MS Candidate (2025 – Present)

BS: Bangladesh University of Engineering & Tech. (BUET) (2024)


Ajaya Khatri

MS Candidate (2025 – Present)

BS: Tribhuvan University (2023)


Vania Moreno-Colin

MS Candidate (2025 – Present)

BS: University of Washington, Seattle (2025)



Undergraduate and Hourly Students (18)

Fall 2026: Aryan Aggarwal, Arham Jain, Putra Ganesha Karmayoga, Oorjit Mahajan, Zainub Rasool, Lujia Sun, Anthony Arroyo, William Kelley, Meer Wahid Ali, Esuigen Batsaikhan, Meera Bharati, Ivan Favila, Sidhant Jha, Moiz Shakir, Victor Tinoco, Dilan Yusgiantoro, Xinlin Zhang, Isha Gupta

Alumni

Graduate (17) & Postdoc (1):

2026: Dr. Vikram Kumar (PhD, MS (’21), in), Bhuvesh Jaiswal (MS, in)
 
2025: Dr. Hossein Kabir (PhD, in), Sunav Dahal (MS, in), Nischal Kanel (MS, in) Yaman Garg (MS, in) Dr. Faisal Qadri (PhD, in)
 
2024: Dr. Krishna C. Polavaram (PhD, in), Dr. Hamza Samouh (Postdoc, in), Sudharsan Rathnakumar (MS, in), Mohamed Abdelrahman (MS, in)
 
2023: Omar Abdelrahman (MS, in), Jacob Doehring (MS, in), Dhanush S. Bejjarapu (MS, in), Andrew Witte (MS, in)
 
2022: Pablo Romero (MS, in), Sonali Srivastava (MS, in), Ravi Sharma (MS, in)

Visiting Scholars (1):

2025: Sandra Mujombi

Undergraduate and Hourly Students (95):

2026: Esuigen Batsaikhan, Ivan Favila, Elvin Flores, Alexandre Gamboa, Venkata Krishna Teja Kolla, Shinuk Lee, Christopher Monzon, Benjamin Tran, Thai Vu Tran, Victor Tinoco, Mohammed Wasif Umair, Syafino Yunalfian

2025: Geovany Arias, Juhnyun Back, Hayden Bui, Manav Chopda, Yating Feng, Vishal Kavitha, Dongheon Lee, Jayden Naratadam, Fabian Padron, Saniya Wasti, HaoChen Xia, Zayd Khan, Madhav Agrawal, Ehyeok Choi, Laurel Decker, Xinyi Hu, Cam Nguyen Huynh, Sangmin Kim, Yangze Liu, Amy Choi, Shouri Dharanipragada, Riddhi Chauhan, Ji Won Park, Thomas Moreno, Jihyun Seo

2024: Xiaorui Gu, Emily Anak Victor Libau, Izzatul H S Izam, Mackenzie Kimble, Megan Otto, Andrea Nava, Jenny Hu, Jiewen Chen, Jocelyn Pytel, Rawda Abdeltawab, Vira Kasprova, Encheng Xie, Conor Blount, Karan Jain, Duc Nguyen, Corey Yin, Ayush Jayakannan, Manav Balasubramanian Sankaran, Macey DeMoss, Clare McDonough, Charles Knight

2023: Marla Portillo, Rydon Jalley, Jiwon Park, Han Sae Cho, Ben Manaugh, Kyle Langenstein, Jiarui Yu, Daniel Sawai, Jordan Westphal, Wan Tsz Yik, Halle-Mari Santiago, Chung-Yen Fann, Jessica Nguyen

2022: Grant E. Siegmund, Mary De Guzman, Jee Min Kim, Nurul Husna, Saranya Yegappan, Yize Chen, Evan Saebeler, Yunseok Lee, Boyang Zhang, Micah Rubel, Shiven Garg, Min Young Kim, Muskan Jain

2021: Ishaan Murarka, Nithiya Vivagandan, Ishita Purwar

2020: Jacob Doehring, Xinyu Teng, Ananya Mittal, Bhagya Devnani, Matthew Grendzinski

2019: Cyrus Wang, Dev Patel, Lewis Monaxios, Paul Segovich, Heather Gathman

Previous Group Photos

Last Updated: September 8th, 2026