معرفی
Sharma V. Thankachan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University since 2022, previously serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida (2017-2022). His academic journey includes postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo with Ian Munro and Georgia Institute of Technology with Srinivas Aluru.
His educational credentials feature:
- Ph.D. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University (2014)
- B.Tech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from National Institute of Technology Calicut, India (2006)
Dr. Thankachan's research centers on string algorithms and compressed data structures with critical applications in computational biology, particularly addressing pan-genomic data modeling and gapped pattern matching challenges. His theoretical work bridges algorithmic design with practical genomic analysis, focusing on space-efficient representations for repetitive biological sequences.
Analysis of his 2022-2025 publications reveals dominant themes in BWT-based indexing, non-overlapping pattern constraints, and external memory optimization. These contributions advance core areas of data compression, bioinformatics algorithms, and scalable text processing systems, demonstrating consistent innovation in handling genomic-scale data.
His distinguished recognition includes the NSF CAREER award:
- National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Development Award (2022)
Dr. Thankachan mentors multiple doctoral students including Mano Prakash Parthasarathi, Paul Macnichol, and Oliver Chubet (co-advised with Donald Sheehy), with alumni Paniz Abedin, Daniel Gibney, and Sahar Hooshmand now holding faculty positions. His research is supported by two major NSF grants:
- CAREER: Algorithmic Aspects of Pan-genomic Data Modeling, Indexing and Querying (2023-2027, $513,686)
- AF: Small: Theoretical Aspects of Repetition-Aware Text Compression and Indexing (2023-2026, $414,034)
