Zachary Karas - Curriculum Vitae
Education
2022- current
Vanderbilt University, School of Engineering
PhD Student in Computer Science
GPA: 3.76
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
2022 – current
Vanderbilt University, Computer Science
PhD Student, Advisor: Dr. Yu Huang
Leading studies involving neuroimaging and eye-tracking, resulting in ten accepted peer-
reviewed publications; two submissions under review.
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Neuroimaging for Software Engineering
Running experiments for naturalistic coding in MRI machine, and analyzed fMRI resting-state data from 150 participants -
Eye-tracking for Code Summarization
Collected 80+ hours of gaze data on Java code to analyze fine-grained semantics of code reading and project-level comprehension patterns -
Mentorship
Have mentored five undergraduate students on projects on machine learning for eye-tracking, visual behavior on call graphs, and neuroimaging
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.
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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, resulting in one submission under review.
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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
McLoughlin, S., Karas, Z., Wallace, R., Bansal, A., McMillan, C., Huang, Y. (2025)
In 2025 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering.
ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper
International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering - New Ideas and Emerging Results.
Zhang, Y., Huang, C., Karas, Z., Nguyen, TD., Leach, K., Huang, Y. (2025) In 2025 IEEE/ACM
Karas, Z., Bansal, A., Zhang, Y., Li, T., McMillan, C., & Huang, Y. (2024).
ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology.
Bansal, A., Wallace, R., Karas, Z., Tang, N., Huang, Y., Li, T. J. J., & McMillan, C. (2024).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.18573.
Karas, Z., Gold, B., Zhou, V., Reardon, N., Polk, T., Chang, C., Huang, Y. (2025).
In 2025 IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE).
Li, J., Zhang, Y., Karas, Z., McMillan, C., Leach, K., & Huang, Y. (2024).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.14182
Zhang, Y., Li, J., Karas, Z., Bansal, A., Li, T. J. J., McMillan, C., … & Huang, Y. (2024).
arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.14096
Bansal A, Su CY, Karas Z, Zhang Y, Huang Y, Li TJ, McMillan C.
2023 Aug 26. arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.13920.
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Bansal A, Eberhart Z, Karas Z, Huang Y, McMillan C.
2023 May 24.
Ahmad H, Karas Z, Diaz K, Kamil A, Jeannin JB, Weimer W.
In2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). 2023 May 14 (pp. 208-220). IEEE.
Pasquinelli R, Tessier AM, Karas Z, Hu X, Kovelman I.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 2023 Apr 12;66(4):1365-77.
Sun X, Zhang K, Marks R, Karas Z, Eggleston R, Nickerson N, Yu CL, Wagley N, Hu X, Caruso V, Chou TL.
Data in Brief. 2022 Jun 1;42:108048.
Karas Z, Jahn A, Weimer W, Huang Y.
In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering 2021 Aug 20 (pp. 767-779).
Endres M, Karas Z, Hu X, Kovelman I, Weimer W.
In2021 IEEE/ACM 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) 2021 May 22 (pp. 600-612). IEEE.yu
Under Review
TOSEM
Z Karas, D Page, M Maciel-Seidman, Z Sharafi, Y Huang
The Influence of Environmental Odors on Student Programmers During Code
Comprehension and Code Writing
ICSE NIER
2026
S Mohamed, Z Karas, Y Zhang, A Bansal, C McMillan, Y Huang
Discerning Code Comprehension Quality from Programmer Visual Attention
Relevant Coursework
Advanced Topics in Software Engineering, Advanced Topics in Computer Security,
Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Advanced Topics in Deep Learning, Analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Behavioral & Integrative Neuroscience
Awards & Honors
- ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper (ASE 2025)
- Invited Tech Demonstration at Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Symposium
- Invited Talk at LIVE IGNITE Seminar (Vanderbilt University)
- LIVE Ignite Tech Development Grant (Vanderbilt University)
- Russell G. Hamilton Scholar, Dean's Graduate Fellowship (Vanderbilt University)
- Engineering Graduate Fellowship (Vanderbilt University)
Skills
- Programming Languages: Python, MATLAB, R, Java
- Other Languages: Linux, LaTeX
- Software Expertise: Microsoft Suite, Qualtrics, RedCap