The Team

Damian Dechev
Professor

Dr. Damian Dechev is a Professor at the CS Department at the University of Central Florida and the founder of AREA 67. Damian completed his Ph.D. in 2009 from Texas A&M University under the supervision of Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup. Prior to joining UCF, Dr. Dechev worked for Sandia National Laboratories and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. AREA 67’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Sandia National Laboratories, and the Department of Energy. Dr. Dechev is currently serving the nation as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

Kenneth Lamar
Post Doctoral Scholar

Kenneth Lamar received his Bachelor of Science (2017), Master of Science (2023), and his Doctor of Philosophy (2024) from the University of Central Florida. He is currently working as a post doctoral scholar at UCF. His research interests include concurrent data structures and distributed computing, with a current focus on HPC scheduling, transactional data structures, and persistent memory.

Alexander Goponenko
Ph.D. Student

Alexander Goponenko received his PhD in Chemistry from Karpov Institute of Physical Chemistry in 2000 and PhD in Computer Science from UCF in 2024. His research interests include performance optimization and distributed computing.

Ryan Dozier
Ph.D. Student

Ryan Dozier attended the University of Central Florida for his undergraduate degree. He is pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at UCF with a research focus on distributed data structures for high-performance computers. The current focus is on a family of data structures with relaxed semantics to fit the application.

Roy Romero
Master's Student

Roy Romero is currently pursuing his MS in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. His current research interests are HPC architecture and Machine Learning.

Wikender Alcius
Ph.D. Student

Wikender Alcius earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2018. He showcased exceptional academic performance while balancing full-time employment. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Engineering at UCF.

Zahra Mahdavi
Ph.D. Student

Zahra Mahdavi, a graduate student at the University of Central Florida, is working on her PhD in Computer Science. Her academic pursuits are focused on exploring high-performance computing (HPC), memory systems, and machine-learning technologies.