About
Neerja Mhaskar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing and Software at McMaster University's Faculty of Engineering. She is currently accepting graduate students and maintains an active research group. Her office is located in ITB 220, and she can be reached at pophlin@mcmaster.ca.
Her educational background includes a PhD in Computer Science from McMaster University (2016), a Master's degree in Engineering Science from Louisiana State University, and a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad, India.
Dr. Mhaskar's research focuses on the design and analysis of efficient algorithms and data structures, with particular emphasis on string processing for applications in bioinformatics, network security, and data compression. She develops algorithms for pattern matching, secure network design, and big data analysis. Her work bridges theoretical computer science with practical applications in privacy and security, as well as computational biology.
Her recent publications demonstrate a strong trend in string algorithms, especially in covering problems and indeterminate strings, with growing applications in network security and bioinformatics. Over the past decade, she has contributed to foundational stringology and expanded into network segmentation and protein sequence analysis.
Dr. Mhaskar has not been mentioned to have received any scientific awards in the provided text.
Dr. Mhaskar has successfully supervised multiple graduate students. Her current advisees include PhD candidates Shafigh Ashrafi, Hamed Hasibi, Nivetha Raj Pappuraj, and Amin Kashef, as well as Master's students Samkith Kishore Kumar Jain and Shutong Wu. Among her graduated students are Tieyun Zhang, Meng Wang, Chenge Liu, Zehong Wang, Hossein Dehghani, and Holly Koponen, who have gone on to work at companies such as Siemens Canada, Robinhood, and Robotic Assistance Devices, or pursued further studies.
