Lena Mashayekhy

a computer science doctoral student, is the winner of the 2013-14 Ralph H. Kummler Award for Distinguished Achievement in Graduate Student Research. Mashayekhy has performed outstanding research on "Resource Management in Large-Scale Distributed Computing Systems," under the tutelage of Daniel Grosu, associate professor of computer science. She has also made several important pioneering contributions in the area of resource allocation in cloud and grid computing and has designed a novel truthful PTAS (Polynomial-Time Approximation Scheme) mechanism for VM provisioning and allocation in clouds, the first such PTAS mechanism ever presented in the literature. Mashayekhy's work has been published in top ranked venues such as IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. In addition, Mashayekhy is also a recipient of the 2013-14 Olbrot Travel Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Research.