Computer science PhD graduate Shihab Chowdhury wins 2021 Alumni Gold Medal

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Shihab Chowdhury and Raouf Boutaba
Shihabur R. Chowdhury has received the 2021 Alumni Gold Medal for outstanding academic performance in a doctoral program. Conferred by Alumni Relations, the prestigious institutional award has honoured top graduating students at convocation since 1970.

Chowdhury is now a senior data engineer at Apple. He completed his PhD at the Cheriton School of Computer Science, and his BSc in computer science and engineering from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. During his graduate studies, Chowdhury interned at Google and IBM Research. His PhD research spanned several areas of systems and networking, focusing specifically on network function virtualization, network virtualization, software-defined networking and cloud computing.

Chowdhury began his doctoral studies in the Systems and Networking group at the Cheriton School of Computer Science in September 2013. His PhD thesis, titled Resource Management in Softwarized Networks, was defended successfully in February 2021

“Shihab began his graduate studies as my master’s student in May 2012,” said Raouf Boutaba, director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “His research potential was abundantly clear early on, so he was fast-tracked from the master’s to the PhD program, during which he completed all eight required courses with an overall average of 93 percent."

Read more on Chowdhury's research and contributions in the feature article on the computer science website.