Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

IEEE Quantum Week  2026  in Toronto From September 13-18, I attended the IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), also known as IEEE Quantum Week, in Toronto, Canada. The main reason for the trip was to present our paper, " Distributed Quantum-Enhanced Optimization: A Topographical Preconditioning Approach for High-Dimensional Search ". QCE was especially interesting for me because essentially everyone there was working somewhere in the quantum computing ecosystem. There were people with backgrounds in physics, computer science, electrical engineering, AI/ML, and pretty much everything in between.  Throughout the week, I attended keynotes and technical sessions, spent too much time walking around the exhibit hall, and had the chance to meet people working across quantum hardware, software, algorithms, HPC, and AI.  My parents and brother also tagged along for the trip, so outside the conference we had some time to explore Toronto tog...

  I am pleased to share that I have been awarded an Internal Research and Development Grant from the Office of Enterprise Research and Innovation at Old Dominion University in the amount of $50,000, beginning July 1, 2026. The project, titled “Trust-Centered AI Avatars for Accessible Telehealth Support Among Unhoused Populations,” is co-led with Drs. Ginger Watson and Tina Gustin. This project proposes to improve healthcare access for vulnerable and underserved populations by leveraging, enhancing, and evaluating an NSF-funded telehealth kiosk, TeleHSupport, to improve usability through an audio interface and AI-powered interactive avatar. TeleHSupport is a secure, self-service kiosk enabling individuals with limited access to traditional healthcare to receive reliable AI-generated health information and guidance. It delivers safe, evidence-based guidance on chronic disease through text-based conversational AI, with clinically validated content curated by advanced practice nursi...

This year the ACM Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC 2026) was held from March 27–28 as an in-person event. The conference took place in Alexandria, Virginia, and the event was hosted by the Virginia Tech's Institute for Advanced Computing (IAC) . CAPWIC is all about bringing together women in computing and their peers to support each other and grow in the field. The conference connects students, faculty, and industry professionals from across the Capital Region – Pennsylvania to Virginia to share ideas, discuss research, and build a strong, supportive community. The conference featured workshops, technical talks, flash talks, research shorts, poster presentations, as well as panel,  birds-of-a-feather and keynote sessions. I was the only participant from Old Dominion University's Web Science and Digital Libraries (WS-DL) research group this year, where I presented a research short. The event included parallel sessions across various categories and topi...