Science Student Spotlight: Kelsey Horan

Kelsey Horan has accomplished very much in the year and a half she has been enrolled at the Computer Science in Ph.D. Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She came to the Graduate Center to work with Professor Delaram Kahrobaei after graduating with a Bachelors in Mathematics from Rutgers University in 2015.

Kelsey recently held a six months position as a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor in the biomedical informatics lab lead by P.I. Dr. Kayvan Najarian. Kelsey has a couple of publications arising from this collaboration, including data mining over encrypted medical data, neural networks and deep learning, as well as signal processing for heart attack prediction. These cutting edge areas of research are of interest to many communities such as Cryptography, Data Science, and Biomedical Informatics.

Due to Kelsey’s enthusiasm, coupled with her conference talk supported by “Women in Computability” at “Computability in Europe 2016” conference in Paris, she has been invited for an international research internship with the Quantum Information Group at the prestigious French Université Pierre et Marie Curie, to work on Quantum Cryptographic Schemes with Dr. Elham Kashefi and Dr. Ludovic Perret during Summer 2017.

Not only has Kelsey proven to be an outstanding researcher in such a short time, she has also worked to create opportunities for others and share information on these research areas to her fellow students and faculty. As a result, she is the student organizer of the Quantum and Post Quantum Computation Seminar, as well as a student co-organizer of the Mathematical Aspects of Cryptography Student Seminar, both held at the Graduate Center. Additionally, in an effort to combat the low representation of women in computer science, she is a student co-organizer of the New York Women in Mathematics and Computing Network workshop in the Spring of 2017 at NYU (a network founded by her Ph.D. advisor Professor Kahrobaei).

For more information about Ms. Horan and how enrollment at the Graduate Center has contributed her academic career, please see her website.