Featuring our Faculty: Dheryta Jaisinghani
Featuring our Faculty: Dheryta Jaisinghani
In her relatively short time at UNI, Dheryta Jaisinghani has already made a considerable impact on her students’ lives — finding unique, new ways to involve them in research, and teaching them to be better scientists along the way.
“In my opinion, the only way to ignite the creativity and enhance the research aptitude of the students is to design a conducive environment for learning — an environment where students can appreciate the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of the existence of things,” Dheryta said.” I believe that's the way to cultivate smart and independent engineers and researchers for the future.”
Dheryta joined UNI in August of 2020 as assistant professor of computer science. Her research lab – SyNthesIs (Systems for Next generation of Intelligent networkS at UNI) – aims to develop user-friendly and cost-effective systems for smart buildings (offices and classrooms), mobile applications to solve student health challenges at the university, and algorithms to improve the performance of operational WiFi networks.
Already, more than 10 students have been, and continue to be, involved in the SyNthesIs lab through honors thesis, SURP research, and undergraduate research credits for their graduation. They are part of research papers, demos, and poster presentations at reputed conferences and research events.
“As a teacher and a scientist, it is extremely satisfying to see that I am able to make a difference to students’ lives, experiences, and career choices by exposing them to state of the art research infrastructure and helping them learn the scientific process of solving problems that directly affect our daily lives,” she said.
Beyond her research lab, Dheryta applies her philosophy of 'learning by doing' across her teaching.
As a result, all of her courses (networking, operating systems, system administration) identify real-world problems and show students how the theoretical concepts learned in the classroom are helping them to solve these issues.
To help students prepare for the future, she launched a special topics course in mobile computing this semester, where students are learning about finding problems of social importance and strategies to develop smart devices-based solutions such as apps on smartphones and smartwatches.
“Dheryta has really reinvigorated our student engagement,” says Eugene Wallingford, head of the UNI Department of Computer Science. “The combination of her personal care as a mentor and a highly relevant research area has drawn students and faculty alike to work with her, creating a lot of energy and excitement. On top of that, students are doing top-notch science with her.”
We look forward to seeing what future projects Dheryta brings to the university, and to her students!
