cv

You can also download a PDF version using the button above.

General Information

Full Name Sheikh Hamza Elahi Sodana
Email sodana@arizona.edu
Location Tucson, Arizona, USA
Languages English, Urdu

Education

  • Aug. 2026
    PhD in Computer Science
    University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
  • 2022–2025
    BS in Computer Science
    Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan
    • CGPA: 3.80 / 4.00
    • Graduated with High Distinction

Research Experience

  • Jun.–Aug. 2025
    Research Assistant
    Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
    • Advisor: Dr. Zafar Ayyub Qazi
    • Performed literature reviews, data preprocessing, and experimental result analysis.
  • May 2024
    BGP Data Analysis and Internet Shutdowns
    LUMS
    • Advisors: Dr. Zafar Ayyub Qazi, Dr. Zartash Afzal Uzmi, Dr. Qasim Lone, Dr. James Cowie
    • Investigated BGP-level route changes to understand the impact of political events on country-wide network connectivity.
    • Analyzed BGP announcements, withdrawals, path inflation, routing anomalies, and AS Graphs.
    • Explored the role of physical and logical centralization and state-owned ASes on disconnection.
    • Plan to submit findings to IMC '26.
  • Oct. 2023
    Efficacy of Large Language Models on PDF Data Extraction
    LUMS
    • Advisors: Dr. Zafar Ayyub Qazi, Dr. Ihsan Ayyub Qazi
    • Evaluated GPT-4 and other LLMs for extracting structured data from PTA QoS unstructured datasets.
    • Designed a JSON-based data extraction pipeline, enhancing accuracy to 96.8%.
    • Developed automation tools using Selenium for PDF processing and QGIS for geo-referencing telecom data.
    • Conducted ablation studies on prompting strategies with few-shot and chain-of-thought approaches.
  • Aug. 2025
    Mutation Localization in Proteins Using Learned Representations
    University of Arizona
    • Advisor: Dr. Claire McWhite
    • Designed a machine learning framework to localize unseen point mutations in protein sequences.
    • Utilized transformer-based Protein Language Models (PLMs) to extract sequence representations.
    • Adopted a two-stage training strategy for mutation localization under realistic experimental constraints.
    • Evaluated localization accuracy using distance-based metrics derived from known protein structures.
  • Dec. 2024
    Investigating Donation Scams on Twitter
    LUMS
    • Advisors: Dr. Fareed Zaffar, Dr. Afsah Anwar, Dr. Bhupendra Acharya
    • Analyzed cases where scammers impersonate authentic Twitter users to divert donations to fraudulent PayPal addresses.
    • Scraped archive.ph for snapshots of reported scam profiles.
    • Developing a honeypot experiment to understand scammer targeting behavior.

Teaching Experience

  • Jan.–Dec. 2024
    Teaching Assistant — CS-200: Introduction to Advanced Programming
    Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
    • Created and graded quizzes and assignments for over 250 students.
    • Invigilated exams, organized labs, held tutorials, and office hours.
  • Aug. 2024
    FutureTech Program Instructor
    Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
    • Guided high school students through interactive modules on Internet fundamentals including routing, data reliability, congestion control, and Internet security.
  • Jul.–Aug. 2019
    Teaching Internship
    Lahore Literati Montessori and High School
    • Assisted in teaching various subjects to elementary students.

Honors and Awards

  • 2025
    • Dean's Honor List 2024–2025
    • Graduated with High Distinction
  • 2024
    • Dean's Honor List 2023–2024
  • 2023
    • Dean's Honor List 2022–2023
  • 2022
    • Dean's Honor List 2021–2022

Skills

  • Programming Languages
    • Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, C, C++, Go, Haskell
  • Machine Learning & Data Analysis
    • Scikit-Learn, Hugging Face, LangChain, NumPy, Matplotlib, Pandas, MySQL, MATLAB
  • Network Tools
    • RIPE Atlas, RIPE NCC, BGPlay, Wireshark, BGPstream
  • Tools
    • Git, LaTeX, Selenium, QGIS, Qiskit, MS Office Suite

Academic Interests

  • Mobile Computing & Usable Security
    • Security and privacy risks in sensor-rich mobile systems
    • Acoustic side-channel attacks and keystroke inference
  • Applied Machine Learning
    • Data-driven methods for security analysis
    • Protein language models and bioinformatics
  • Internet Measurement & Networked Systems
    • BGP analysis and Internet shutdown detection
    • Network infrastructure and centralization