{"id":21,"date":"2022-07-14T10:13:01","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T14:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2026-03-12T14:19:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:19:36","slug":"people","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/people\/","title":{"rendered":"People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lab Director – Dr. Minhaj Nur Alam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Dr. Minhaj Nur Alam is a biomedical imaging and computer vision scientist with expertise in the field of biomedical imaging and medical artificial intelligence (AI). He has extensive research experience developing AI models for medical AI tasks, optical device instrumentation (optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT\/OCTA)), and quantitative imaging biomarkers. Dr. Alam trained as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford University Department of Biomedical Data Science with a research focus on developing self-supervised and cross-modal prediction models in ophthalmology and radiology applications. He was also part of a stealth mode AI startup that focused on sensorless biomarker detection for health analytics. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), with a focus on optical imaging and AI-based objective classification of different types of retinopathies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

Minhaj Nur Alam, Ph.D. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of North Carolina at Charlotte<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Office: EPIC 2168, LAB: EPIC 2372<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phone: 704-687-8408<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: minhaj.alam@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ph.D. students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Sina Gholami –<\/strong> sgholami@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sina
Sina’s Ph.D. research is focused on medical diagnosis and prognosis and federated learning. He earned a master’s degree in AI & Data Engineering from the University of Pisa (UniPi) and worked as a research and AI developer on image classification and segmentation tasks for five months. Sina holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Baha’i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rashadul Hasan Badhon<\/strong> – rbadhon@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rashadul
Badhon’s Ph.D. research is focused on ophthalmic imaging biomarkers and their AI applications for disease diagnosis. He has an MS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Illinois Tech, and a BS in EE from IUT, Bangladesh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ahammed Sakir Nabil<\/strong> – anabil@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ahammed
Ahammed’s Ph.D. research focus is at the intersection of Vision and Language Models, and data privacy through federated learning. At the QIAI lab, he is working actively to promote privacy, explainability, interpretability, and human interaction in AI-based systems for healthcare. He completed his Master’s degree courses in Computer Science from North South University, Bangladesh, and has his thesis dissertation pending only. During his Master’s, Ahammed worked extensively on developing Vision Language Models that can help in Language directed Image Segmentation. Moreover, Ahammed also has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from IUT, Bangladesh with research focused on Machine Learning for security in Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) based power systems.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tania Haghighi<\/strong> – thaghigh@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tania
Tania is pursuing her Ph.D., focusing on large language models and vision-language models for generating images and natural text in the medical domain. She holds a Bachelor\u2019s degree in Computer Science from the Baha\u2019i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sadia Siraz<\/strong> – ssiraz@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sadia
At the QIAI lab, Sadia’s PhD research focuses on Vision Models and Medical Image Processing, specifically AI-based ophthalmic disease diagnostics and biomarker extraction. Driven by her passion to create immediate positive impact on human lives, she transferred to UNC Charlotte in Spring 2025 from the University of Maryland, College Park, shifting her research from Photonics to Medical AI. She holds a Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Islamic University of Technology, where she also served as a lecturer from 2022-2023.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Master Students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

David Nichols<\/strong> – dnicho26@charlotte.edu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"David<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Undergraduate Students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Shashank Dodamani<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong> – sdodaman@charlotte.edu<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Shashank<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kaushik Appalanani<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kaushik<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adib Roohbakhsh<\/strong> – adib.rohbakhsh@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Adib\u00a0Roohbakhsh\"
Passionate about all things related to computers, with a strong interest in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Currently in the final year of a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the Baha\u2019i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Enaika Kishnani<\/strong><\/strong> – enaika2006@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Enaika
Enaika is a freshman pursuing her Bachelor\u2019s degree in Computer Science at Cornell University and is interested in the intersection of technology, medicine, and finance. At the QIAI lab, she has contributed to the development of EYE-Llama, an in-domain large language model (LLM) Q&A system for ophthalmic clinical decision-making. Outside of the QIAI lab, Enaika has also investigated the systemic effects of creatine metabolism deficiencies on cardiovascular health, applying quantitative survey methodologies and clinical data analysis to bridge the gap between neurometabolic disorders and cardiovascular complications.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ritik Varaganti<\/strong><\/strong> – varagantiritik@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ritik
Ritik Varaganti is a high school sophomore attending Dougherty Valley High School, CA. Ritik is broadly interested in the fields of Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and Human Behavior. At QIAI, he is excited to contribute to the lab’s mission of building Large Language Models. Outside of research, he loves to do competitive math and coding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aayush Biswas<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong> – biswasaayush81@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aayush
Aayush Biswas is a rising junior at Marvin Ridge High School in Waxhaw, NC. He has pursued programming for many years, even assisting with teaching local youth. He has a keen interest in the real world application of advanced mathematics and AI techniques.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pradhyun A<\/strong><\/strong>kkala<\/strong> – pradhyun27@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pradhyun
Pradhyun Akkala is a rising junior at Mountain House High School in California. He is broadly interested in artificial intelligence and computing and their real-world applications in science and engineering. At QIAI, he is excited to contribute to the lab’s applied AI research in medical imaging. Outside of research, he enjoys competing in science and coding competitions and building innovative projects integrating hardware and software.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alissa Monir<\/strong> – alissa.a.monir@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Alissa
Alissa is passionate about leveraging technology to solve problems and drive innovation. Her deep interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, software development, and digital transformation drives her pursuits. Her aspiration is to make meaningful contributions to both academia and industry\u2014bringing the power of AI to every project and initiative at UNC Charlotte.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lab Director – Dr. Minhaj Nur Alam Minhaj Nur Alam, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) University of North Carolina at Charlotte Office: EPIC 2168, LAB: EPIC 2372 Phone: 704-687-8408 Email: minhaj.alam@charlotte.edu Ph.D. students Sina Gholami – sgholami@charlotte.edu Rashadul Hasan Badhon – rbadhon@charlotte.edu Ahammed Sakir Nabil – anabil@charlotte.edu Tania Haghighi – thaghigh@charlotte.edu Sadia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21","page","type-page","status-publish","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coefs.charlotte.edu\/malam8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}