Join us in welcoming these new faces. IDSC is pleased to introduce six new team members.

Jerry Bonnell, PhD is a UM graduate who received his BS in Computer Science in 2018 and went on to get a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (graduating just last semester). Congratulations Jerry! He is currently a Post Doctoral Associate and recently co-authored a book with IDSC Education Director Dr. Mitsunori Ogihara entitled “Exploring Data Science with R and the Tidyverse: A Concise Introduction.” The book is now available online (eBook) or in print (hardback or paperback) through Taylor Francis/Routledge.

Justin Gammage, PhD, PEng comes to Miami from Canada. As IDSC’s new Director of Partnerships, Justin leads the development of innovation partnerships with local and international stakeholders from business, industry, and the broader community. Justin formerly served as the Senior Executive Advisor on Strategic Research Priorities to the Vice President of Research and Innovation at Ontario Tech University. He is an AI expert and co-founder of Illuminex AI, a company specializing in operational AI for the advanced manufacturing and aerospace sectors (Read more about Justin).

Dmitry Kolesov Standing in for Dmitry is IDSC’s mascot “LeBrain Jones.” Dmitry is a Linux Systems Administrator in the IDSC Advancing Computing group. He has more than 10 years of Linux, VMWare ,and Networking experience in a large production environments. Dmitry holds a Bachelor Science degree in Geological and Earth Sciences/Geosciences from Moscow State University.

Alex Pissinou Makki, MS A graduate of Ransom Everglades School (‘17). Alex finished second in the Miami Herald’s Business Plan Challenge for high school students, topping all but one in a field of 104 entrants with his plan for a Smart-BagPack that sends out electronic alerts when students forget items. Alex attended the University of California Berkeley College of Engineering where he received a BS (‘21) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Alex received a Master of Computer Science degree in May from the University of Illinois. He is currently working as a Data Scientist with the IDSC AI + Machine Learning group.

Elvis Maradzike, PhD At IDSC, Elvis is an Assistant Scientist with a strong background in computational science. Before coming to UM in March 2023, Elvis was a postdoctoral research associate in the Advanced Computing for Chemistry and Materials group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where his primary research involved developing models and computer code for the numerical solution of the quantum many-electron problem on HPC platforms. Elvis holds a B.A (Physics, French) from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. (Chemistry) from Florida State.

Rajesh Pasupuleti, PhD is an Assistant Scientist on the Advanced Computing team. He did his Ph.D. in the area of Privacy Preserving Data mining analysis from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, and has three major backgrounds of knowledge with a Ph.D and M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering, Mathematics, and Statistics. He has 12 years of experience including University, Industry, Research Labs, and Administration. Dr. Pasupuleti worked as a Data Scientist for System Soft Technologies in California, under the Elysium project (Threat detection analysis using ELK Stack). He also worked on the “Network Forensics Investigation in Virtual Datacenters” project at Northern Illinois University, in Dekalb.

Dmitry, Elvis, and Rajesh are all working with our growing Advanced Computing group. Elvis and Rajesh are also part of the new Research Support Services team (Read More.) Justin has hit the ground running and can be seen around town at various events—the next one is Nucleate’s Florida Chapter Launch event (9/7) with a BioTech theme. We’re excited to kick off a new semester and look forward to the exciting, cutting-edge projects that will come out of our many interdisciplinary collaborations. We hope to see your face at an upcoming IDSC event.