Zachary Karas - Curriculum Vitae

CV Download

Education –

2022- current: Vanderbilt University, School of Engineering
Ph.D. Student in Computer Science

GPA: 3.8

2013-2017: New York University, College of Arts & Sciences

Bachelor of Science, Major in Neural Science, joint minor in Math and Computer Science Research Experience

Research Experience –

2022- current:
Vanderbilt University, Computer Science
PhD Student, Advisor: Dr. Yu Huang

Leading studies involving eye-tracking, neuroimaging, and usability testing, resulting in two accepted peer-reviewed publications, and two submissions under review.

  • Eye-tracking for Code Summarization, Collected 35 hours of gaze data on 156 Java methods to analyze fine-grained semantics of code reading
  • Work Environment Mentoring one undergraduate student in the design and execution of a human study (30 participants) testing effects of aroma in work environment, with a forthcoming paper submission
  • Neuroimaging for Software Engineering, Designing experiments for naturalistic coding in MRI machine, eye-tracking usability, and fMRI resting-state analysis
  •  
2019- 2022:

University of Michigan, Computer Science & Engineering
Research Assistant, Advisor: Dr. Westley Weimer
Analyzed neuroimaging data for software engineering tasks. My three projects with this group resulted in three accepted peer-reviewed publications in top venues.

  • Functional Connectivity Analysis, Submission to top venue used my analyses of neural activity of code and prose writing
  • Eye Tracking for Formalism Comprehension, Collected and analyzed eye-tracking data (34 participants) to uncover strategies for error detection in formal proofs
  • Novice Neuroimaging, Wrote a mathematical analysis and alignment program that scaled to 2,700 data points in the final data analysis for 2020 publication.
  •  
2021- 2022:

University of Michigan, Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics
Research Assistant, Advisor: Dr. Lana Garmire
Uncovered subtypes in intermediate stages of Alzheimer’s Disease using computational techniques and machine learning for more targeted clinical interventions and research.

  • Metabolomics of Alzheimer’s Patients, Integrated gene expression and metabolomics data from over 700 patients to uncover novel patient subtypes
  • Alzheimer’s Gene Expression, Wrote original code and used open-source tools to apply advanced analyses (deconvolution, differential expression, gene set enrichment) to patient data
  • MRI of Alzheimer’s Patients’, Preprocessed and analyzed structural MRI images from over 800 patients.
  •  
2019- 2021:
University of Michigan, Literature, Science, and the Arts
Research Assistant, Advisor: Dr. Ioulia Kovelman

Organized and analyzed neuroimaging data from over 500 human participants. Ran statistical analyses on processed data to determine significance and correlations.

  • Bilingualism Dataset, Wrote a program restructuring 24,000 data points for open dataset submission
  • Online Longitudinal Study, Created four online tasks being used to test over 400 human participants to assess hypotheses about language processing
  • Language Development, Adapted legacy code to reanalyze neuroimaging data and uncover new findings which are the primary results in manuscript under revision
  •  

Publications –

ASE NIER – A Bansal, CY Su, Z Karas, Y Zhang, Y Huang, TJJ Li, C McMillan, Modeling Programmer Attention as Scanpath Prediction

IEEE TSE – A Bansal, Z Eberhart, Z Karas, Y Huang, C McMillan, Function Call Graph Context Encoding for Neural Source Code Summarization 

ICSE – 2023 27% acceptance – H Ahmad, Z Karas, K Diaz, A Kamil, JB Jeannin, W Weimer, How Do We Read Formal Claims? Eye-Tracking and the Cognition of Proofs about Algorithms

JSLHR – R Pasquinelli, AM Tessier, Z Karas, X Hu, I Kovelman, The Development of Left Hemisphere Lateralization for Sentence-Level Prosodic Processing

Data in Brief  – X Sun, K Zhang, R Marks, Z Karas, R Eggleston, N Nickerson, C Yu, N Wagley, X Hu, V Caruso, T Chou, T Satterfield, T Tardif, I Kovelman,
Morphological and phonological processing in English monolingual, Chinese- English bilingual, and Spanish-English bilingual children: An fNIRS neuroimaging dataset 
 
FSE 2021 19% acceptance –

ICSE 2020 20% acceptance
 

Under Review –
IEEE TOSEM – Z Karas, A Bansal, Y Zhang, T Li, C McMillan, Y Huang, A Tale of Two Comprehensions? Studying Human Attention During Code Summarization

Relevant Coursework –

Advanced Topics in Software Engineering, Advanced Topics in Computer Security, Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Advanced Topics in Deep Learning, Behavioral & Integrative Neuroscience, Development & Dysfunction of the Nervous System 

Work Experience –
2018-2022:
Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Pole Vault & Assistant Cross Country Coach 
  • Taught pole vault and distance running fundamentals to over 200 athletes 

  • 2021 Livonia City Champions, four individual state qualifiers
2017- 2018:
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Educator/Deckhand
  • Educated hundreds of schoolchildren and adults about environmental sciences and Hudson River history to cultivate an appreciation for local ecosystems
  • Collaboratively crewed the 108′ vessel and completed maintenance over the Winter
2013- 2017
New York University
Captain, Four-Year Varsity Athlete, Cross Country, Indoor/Outdoor Track
  • Qualified for 2016 NCAA Division lll Cross Country Championships
 
Awards & Honors –
Russell G. Hamilton Scholar, Dean’s Graduate Fellowship (Vanderbilt University), Engineering Graduate Fellowship (Vanderbilt University)
 

Skills –
Programming Languages: Python, Linux, Matlab, R, Java
Other Languages: Proficient in French, LaTeX
Software Expertise: Microsoft Suite, Qualtrics, RedCap

References

Westley Weimer, Ph.D.,
Full Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan.
weimerw@umich.edu 
Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D., 
Associate Professor Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
kovelman@umich.edu 
Yu Huang, Ph.D., 
Research Assistant Professor Computer Science Vanderbilt University.
yu.huang@vanderbilt.edu