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SINDHUJA MADABUSHI 
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I am a PhD student in the Computer Science department at Virginia Tech, advised by Dr. Jin-Hee Cho. My research focuses on the design and evaluation of trustworthy machine learning systems, with emphasis on privacy, federated and distributed learning, fairness, uncertainty, explainability, and responsible AI.
I study how machine learning systems navigate trade-offs among performance, privacy, fairness, and interpretability under practical constraints, and develop methods that support reliable and responsible deployment in real-world settings. More broadly, my goal is to build ML systems that are not only effective, but also transparent, fair, privacy-preserving, and aligned with human and societal expectations, bridging algorithmic design with empirical evaluation.
I hold a Master’s degree in Data and Knowledge Engineering from Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from GITAM University.
Feel free to reach out at msindhuja@vt.edu if you'd like to connect or explore potential collaborations.
PAPERS
PRIVEE: Privacy-Preserving Vertical Federated Learning Against Feature Inference Attacks
, Haider Ali, Ahmad Faraz Khan, Ananthram Swami, Rui Ning, Jin-Hee Cho. Submitted to ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology 2025
CODE
OPUS-VFL: Incentivizing Optimal Privacy-Utility Tradeoffs in Vertical Federated Learning
, Ahmad Faraz Khan, Haider Ali, Jin-Hee Cho. arXiv preprint, 2025
PDF
CODE
Empirical Analysis of Privacy-Fairness-Accuracy Trade-offs in Federated Learning: A Step Towards Responsible AI
Dawood Wasif, Dian Chen, , Nithin Alluru, Terrance Moore, Jin-Hee Cho. AIES 2025
PDF
CODE
Two-Cloud Private Read Alignment to a Public Reference Genome
, Parameswaran Ramanathan. PETS 2023
PDF
CODE
TALK
M.Sc Thesis: Graph Sketches and Embeddings: A Study of their Applications in Graph Databases
Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg
PDF
Bachelor's Thesis: Novel Network System with Miscellaneous Features
GITAM University
TALKS
P2VFL: Privacy-Preserving Incentive Mechanism in Vertical Federated Learning
2025 Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Student Researcher Showcase
Best Poster Award
EVENT
P2VFL: Privacy-Preserving Incentive Mechanism in Vertical Federated Learning
ACM The Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (CAPWIC) 2025
CONFERENCE
SLIDES
Privacy Preserving and Feature Importance Based Incentive Mechanism in Vertical Federated Learning
ACM The Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (CAPWIC) 2024
CONFERENCE
SLIDES
Exploring NoSQL Databases: Challenges and Opportunities
Guest Lecture for CS5614: Database Management Systems, Spring'24, Virginia Tech
Guest Lecture for CS4604: Introduction to Database Management Systems, Fall'23, Virginia Tech
SLIDES
AWARDS AND HONORS
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Elected Secretary: Computer Science Graduate Council, Virginia Tech, 2025–2026
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Best Poster Award: Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Southwest Virginia Student Researcher Showcase 2025
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Travel Award: ACM The Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing Conference 2025
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Travel Award: ACM The Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing Conference 2024
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Travel Award: Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) 2023
SERVICE
- Peer Reviews: IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (3 review), Transactions on Services Computing (2 reviews), IEEE Transactions on BigData (1 review)
- Volunteer: C-Tech² Program: Virginia Tech, Summer 2025
- Volunteer: STEM Santa Fe: Nonprofit organization that delivers STEM programs, mentoring, and resources, 2022
- Master’s Mentor: Otto-von-Guericke University, 2017–2018
- Organizer: Magdeburg Indians NGO, 2017–2018