In October of 2022, Dr. Subhajit Chakrabarty, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at LSU Shreveport, encouraged three of his students to attend the 58th Annual Conference for the Southeastern Chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (SEINFORMS) and submit a research paper to the conference’s competition. While SEINFORMS offers a student-level track, the three students submitted their paper to the professional track to include Dr. Chakrabarty on the paper. This decision put them in competition against doctorate-level professionals and professors. Dr. Chakrabarty remarked on his students’ performance at the conference: “The level of presentation and confidence they had was really fabulous. I was so impressed. It was beyond my expectations.”
Graduate students Prabhat Dhungana and Shiv Kumar Sarada worked with Devesh Sarada, an undergraduate student, on a research paper titled “Stock Price Prediction of Major Pharmaceutical Companies using Transfer Learning.” These students spent over a year working on their research for this paper, which involved many late nights and in-depth data sets on stock market trends throughout the decades. Together, they won Best Paper in the Track (IT Management, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, and Statistics) and Best Paper of the Conference.
Prabhat and Shiv Kumar are graduate students working towards their Master of Science degrees in the area of Computer Science. Shiv Kumar comes from a financial background, and Prabhat’s expertise is in cyber law and cybersecurity. Though he is an undergraduate student, Devesh was welcomed to the team and quickly proved himself an asset. Prabhat and Shiv Kumar were already working together on the research but were struggling with the program they were using to calculate their data. Devesh, who is Shiv Kumar’s son, stepped in and suggested a different program and was soon contributing to the paper. “The fact that these grad students and a professor see me as a valuable addition to the team, that is an achievement,” said Devesh. “It’s great when other people who are masters in their field recognize your work.”
This was the first time the students attended the SEINFORMS conference, which is one of the largest computer science and management organizations. “This was a dream come true, representing our school and going with one of our best professors,” said Shiv Kumar. “We had fun representing our school.” The students received high praise from their fellow attendees, and even earned expedited approval for publication for their paper. “These are really motivated students who were excited to participate and have bright futures ahead of them. Thanks to [LSUS]. They did everything possible to make this work,” said Dr. Chakrabarty.
Since their victory, the three students have inspired other LSUS computer science students to begin working on research papers for upcoming conferences. Prabhat and Devesh have already expressed an interest in working on another paper for future conferences. Shiv Kumar graduated with his master’s degree in December 2022, and Prabhat plans on graduating with his M.S. in Spring 2023. “As a graduate student, this has been a learning experience for me,” said Prabhat. “I know I will have a great future after everything I have learned [at LSUS].”
At LSU Shreveport, computer science students — both undergraduate and graduate level — have opportunities to collaborate with each other and field experts on industry-changing research. Experiences like these make LSUS students more than prepared for their future careers.
