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New UTD Faculty This Year
Returning students at the University of Texas at Dallas may notice many new faces among the faculty. This coming 2022-2023 academic year, the Jindal School of Management welcomes dozens of professors to help conduct industry-leading research and teach classes to the next generation of professionals. One of these new faces on campus is Dr. Thomas Lavastida, a new assistant professor of information systems.
About Professor Lavastida’s Education
Professor Lavastida graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge with his bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering in 2016. In 2017, he continued his education at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA, where he obtained a master’s degree and his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization.
While pursuing his doctorate degree, professor Lavastida completed work on two important papers, “Faster Matchings via Learned Duals,” published in Neural Information Processing Systems and “Online Scheduling via Learned Weights,” published in Symposium on Discrete Algorithms. His graduation from Carnegie Mellon University with his Ph.D. was just this past Spring 2022.
Joining UTD Faculty
When interviewing for the position at Jindal, professor Lavastida felt that the Information Systems area was a fantastic fit for his academic career. Seeing Dallas as a city with a great deal to offer his professional and personal development, as well as bring him closer to family in the south, professor Lavastida elected to take the role at UTD and join the Jindal team.
Professor Lavastida’s New Role at UTD
Professor Lavastida’s official start date at UTD was August 1st and he will begin teaching classes on programming and machine learning for undergraduate and masters students in the spring semester. His research interests include machine learning and algorithm design.
Outside of his research work at UTD, professor Lavastida enjoys rock climbing and listening to podcasts like 99% Invisible. The staff and faculty of the Jindal School of Management look forward to having professor Lavastida on campus.
