Mathematics Alumni
Sucharitha Dodamgodage
In April 2025, I had the opportunity to present my Capstone project at Clarkson University's Research and Project Showcase (RAPS), part of my Master’s in Applied Data Science.
My research focuses on classifying individuals as non-diabetic, pre-diabetic, or diabetic based on attributes such as age, sex, lifestyle habits, and family history. The project involved multiple stages, including data cleaning and preprocessing, statistical testing to identify significant features, and building classification models to evaluate predictive performance.
This work reflects my growing interest in applying data science to real-world healthcare challenges, and it has been an incredibly valuable learning experience in both research and model development.
I’m especially grateful to the team that supported me throughout this process, including my project advisor, Professor Sumona Mondal, and supporting professors Naveen Ramachandra Reddy, Thevasha Sathiyakumar, and Shantanu Sur.
Dr. Xiaojing (Ruby) Fu, assistant professor in Mechanical and Civil engineering at California Institute of Technology
Xiaojing (Ruby) Fu is currently an assistant professor in Mechanical and Civil engineering at California Institute of Technology, where she leads the group on Mechanics and Physics of Porous Media Flow. Her group combines mathematical theory, computation and laboratory experiments to advance our predicative capability of field-scale applications in a wide range of geoscience problems, including hydrology, gas hydrate systems and soil biogeochemistry, geologic carbon sequestration and geothermal systems.
Her research journey started at Clarkson, where she worked with Prof. Katie Fowler Kavanagh on groundwater hydrology problems for over three years through the Honors Program. Ruby received her BS summa cum laude in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from Clarkson University in 2011, and her MS in Computational Engineering (formerly known as Computation Design & Optimization) from MIT in 2014, and her PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from MIT in 2017. She is awarded the Miller Fellowship at UC Berkeley in 2018, where she spent two and half years learning about volcanology and earthquakes. Her background in applied mathematics has laid the foundation for her highly interdisciplinary work, where she currently works with a wide range of students and postdocs in the discipline of applied mathematics, physics, engineering and geology.
Dr. Freddie Amoah-Darko, Machine Learning Engineer at Unearthly Materials
Dr. Freddie Amoah-Darko worked with Prof. Diana White and currently is a machine-learning engineer at Unearthly Materials in Rochester, New York.
Dr. Veroni Jayawardana, Senior Scientist at Merck & Company
Dr. Veroni Jayawardana is a Senior Scientist at Merck & Company, located at West Point, Pennsylvania. She received her bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and M.S. in Mathematics from Clarkson University in 2012. She obtained her Ph.D. from Clarkson University in 2016, under the guidance of Prof. Sumona Mondal. Her research focused on cross-disciplinary methodologies involving general linear models, multivariate statistical analyses, data mining, and missing data interpretations. Dr. Jayawardana serves as a consultant and advocate of Chemical Manufacturing Controls statistics to technical specialists and managers in the company's pharmaceutical, biologic, and vaccine manufacturing. She is a key member of multiple teams developing, validating, and transferring bioassays and supporting stability analyses. In addition, she provides technical direction in tasks that include the design of experiments, dissection of data, statistical process control, design of sampling plans, and problem-solving.
Dr. Devin Kapper, Senior Data Analyst at IXIS Digital, LLC
Dr. Devin Kapper is a Senior Data Analyst at IXIS Digital, LLC., located in Burlington, Vermont. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY in 2011 and his Master of Science in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY in 2012. He obtained his Ph.D.from Clarkson University in 2018 working under the supervision of Drs. Sumona Mondal (Mathematics) and Shantanu Sur (Biology). His research focused on interdisciplinary methodologies that utilized classification, Bayesian inference, multivariate statistical analyses, and general linear models. Dr. Kapper serves as a consultant and analyst for Client Strategies within IXIS Digital, LLC., a company that contracts out to multiple clients to serve their business strategy needs. He is a key member in several client accounts responsible for the processing and analysis of digital data in order to make critical business decisions to inform areas of success, opportunities for growth, and assessment of current strategies to align with goals for future successes. In addition to providing insights into complex data sets, he is responsible for providing advice in the design of experiments, the collection of data, and a variety of problem-solving approaches in this field.
Dr. Vijay Kumar, Postdoctoral fellow, Columbia University
Email: vijay.kumar@columbia.edu
Academic website: https://vijaykumar18.github.io/
Vijay Kumar received his MS and Ph.D. in Mathematics, as well as an MS in Applied Data Science from Clarkson University in 2023. He was advised by Dr. Sumona Mondal, Dr. Suresh Dhaniyala, and Dr. Shantanu Sur. His areas of interest include Bayesian machine learning, spatiotemporal modeling, and causal inference, with applications to air pollution modeling and environmental epidemiology. He was named a Phalanx Fellow in 2023 and also received the Phalanx Leadership Award from Clarkson Phalanx, a top honorary society at Clarkson University. Additionally, he served as the founding president of the Pakistani Student Association at Clarkson University (PSACU). He is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.
Dr. Wen Li, Assistant Professor at Fordham University
Email: wli198@fordham.edu
Wen Li is currently an Assistant Professor at Fordham University. Prior to joining Fordham, she was an Assistant Adjunct Professor (postdoc 2019-2022) in Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Clarkson University in May 2019 under the guidance of Prof. Guangming Yao. Wen Li's research primarily revolves around the development of numerical methods for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) and their application to real-world problems, along with advancements in image processing techniques. Since 2015, she has collaborated with Prof. Yao on meshless methods for PDEs, data fitting, inverse problems, and environmental engineering applications, particularly in groundwater remediation, alongside Prof. Michelle Crimi.
Dr. Kalani Rubasinghe Kattadige, Lecturer, Department of Mathematics at SUNY Canton
Email: rubasinghek@canton.edu
Kalani received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from Clarkson University in 2023 under the supervision of Prof. Guangming Yao. Her research focused on developing and applying mesh-free methods based on radial basis functions for scattered data interpolation and solving various types of partial differential equations, including financial mathematical models. Additionally, her research explored neural network approaches for solving PDEs. Kalani is currently a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at SUNY Canton, NY. Before this role, she worked as an adjunct assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton from 2022 to 2023.
Dr. Dinushani Senarathna, Assistant professor of statistics at SUNY Oswego in Oswego, NY
Email: dinushani.senarathna@oswego.edu
Dinushani worked alongside Dr. Sumona Mondal. Dr. Shantanu Sur and Dr. Suresh Dhaniyala from 2018 to 2023. The title of her dissertation was "Application of Constrained Inference in Modeling and Analysis of Air Quality and Bio-Aerosol Data".Her primary research area is the development of order-restricted inference to find data trends across numerous fields. In addition, she collaborated with a few other departments at Clarkson University, all under the guidance of Dr. Sumona Mondal. Currently, she works as an assistant professor of statistics at SUNY Oswego in Oswego, NY.
Dr. William Annan, Postdoctoral fellow, Texas Christian University
Email: annanwe@clarkson.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/clarkson.edu/williamannan/about?authuser=0
Completion date: August 2025.
William’s Ph.D. dissertation was focused on developing mathematical models to study the progression of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) and its effects on the dynamics of rod outer segment renewal. His work was centered around predicting the optimal time frame for treating retinal detachment to help prevent blindness. He also worked on an NSF/NIH-funded project to develop a vertex modeling to investigate pattern formation in fruit flies. His dissertation work was conducted under the joint supervision of Prof. Diana White and Prof. Emmanuel Asante-Asamani. William is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Texas Christian University.
Dr. Emmanuel Atindama
Email: atindaea@clarkson.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/emmanuelatindama-exploremath
Emmanuel worked with Prof. Prashant Athavale on mathematical image processing problems. In particular, he is working on reconstructing electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) maps using weighted total variation (TV) flow and machine learning algorithms. His interests are mathematical and statistical image processing and data science. His research on the EBSD restoration was partly supported by NIST grant 70NANB21H047.
He currently works for Sokol GxP services https://www.sokolservices.com/.
Dr. S. H. Dinuka Sewwandi De Silva, Senior Lecturer, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
Email: dinuka@kln.ac.lk
Completion date: August 2024
Dinuka worked with Prof. Emmanuel Asante-Asamani on Modeling bleb-based chemotaxis in confined eukaryotic cells. She also worked on an NSF/NIH funded project to model the formation of bristle cell patterns in fruit flies. She currently works as a Senior Lecturer, in the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka
Dr. Mackenzie Dalton, Principle Scientist, QSP Sanofi Pharmaceuticals
Email: daltonma@clarkson.edu
Completion date: May 2025.
Mackenzie worked with Professors Emmanuel Asante-Asamani and James Greene on understanding the progression of type 1 diabetes using a mechanistic modeling approach. She currently works as a Principal Scientist at Sanofi Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.
Dr. Sathara Dias
Email: diassl@clarkson.edu
Advisors: Prof. Marko Budišić, Prof. Brian Helenbrook, Prof. Pat Piperni
My research during my Ph.D. focused on data-driven methods for model- and data-order reduction, including Koopman/Dynamic Mode Decomposition and Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, applied to dynamical systems. My expertise extends into data science, where I employ deep learning, machine learning, and statistical techniques to derive insights from complex data sets.
Satsara currently works as a Senior Lecturer at Senior Lecturer at Uva Wellassa University, Passara Road, Badulla, Sri Lanka.
Paul Dougall
Paul worked with Prof. Joe Skufca and Prof. Shantanu Sur on machine-learning applications within bioinformatics. More specifically, improving interpretable models and feature space-informed model selection for the prediction of antimicrobial resistance using whole genome sequencing.
He currently works as a Program Research Specialist at Health Research Inc.
Daniel T. Fuller
Email: fullerdt@clarkson.edu
Daniel worked with Prof. Sumona Mondal and Prof. Shantanu Sur on statistical applications in bioinformatics.
He currently works as a Statistical Consultant at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
Dr. Thevasha Sathiyakumar
Email: sathiyt@clarkson.edu
Linked in: www.linkedin.com/in/thevasha-sathiyakumar-812658100
Thevasha worked with Prof. Marko Budišić, Prof. Sumona Mondal and Prof. Shantanu Sur on merging statistics and applied topology with applications to cancer cell dynamics. Her doctoral dissertation employed a functional hypothesis test of the time-varying persistence homology in order to capture coherence in movement of cancer cells as they respond to environmental stimuli. Apart from the main thesis work, she was also involved in biostatistics projects with a focus of using data mining and statistical methods for analyzing microbiome data and public health data. Thevasha currently works as an Assistant Professor at …