Class of 2024: Andreea Sistrunk graduates with a Ph.D., a life lesson, and a motto to live by

Andreea Sistrunk’s motto, “A best solution to everything is up to us to uncover,” evolved on her path to earning a Ph.D. in computer science at Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia campus.

“In the beginning, I found myself overwhelmed and at times discouraged by how fast technology is advancing,” she said. “As hard as I was trying, I could not get the data I needed for my work.”

Sistrunk’s research for her dissertation is at the intersection of computer science, education policy, and geographical information systems and related to Redistrict, an online software platform built by a team of researchers at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics to help school districts with their rezoning efforts. The team included Nathan Self, research associate, and Subhodip Biswas, who earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 2022.

The platform includes geospatial optimization algorithms and uses data analytics to help parents and other stakeholders experiment with redrawing school boundaries toward better understanding of the school rezoning plans and their potential effect on the community; share their comments and concerns about proposed plans; propose changes to boundaries; and even create their own plans.

Specifically, Sistrunk worked on the human-computer interaction aspect of Redistrict.

“As a mother, former teacher, and active community member, I knew that rezoning is a very emotional topic,” Sistrunk said, “but I was not at all prepared for the extremely long and very heated public meetings I attended to gather information for my research. For the most part, people were just shouting at one another and no one was really listening. It was very unproductive.”

Sistrunk’s goal was to use technology to decrease contentious debates and raise awareness among stakeholders about the difficulty of producing a rezoning proposal that offers an optimal solution.

But she had to find out how.

She frequently complained to her advisor, Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering, director of the Sanghani Center, and artificial intelligence and machine learning lead at the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus, hoping he could provide an answer. Ramakrishnan told her he did not have it, but encouraged her not to give up, assuring her that she “would get there.”

“He was so right,” Sistrunk said. “I came to realize that professors are there to guide us to discover more, to advance the state of the art. But pursuing a Ph.D. is an individual endeavor, not something you undertake just to satisfy a professor’s rigor, to graduate, or to publish research.

You have to persevere and you can only reach your goal when you understand how to advance the state-of-the-art by conquering and overcoming obstacles on your own.”

Working cooperatively with Loudoun County Public Schools through a number of nondisclosure agreements, Sistrunk was finally able to collect and use the data she needed to help community members explore and experiment with the possible consequences of various zoning scenarios. For example, they could access data showing them that a school building space was insufficient for the number of students present in certain areas, and that what they might think is a perfect rezoning plan may be impossible with regard to student distribution and demographics.

With this gained knowledge, participants also had the opportunity to read other users’ comments within the platform, gauge how others were feeling, and reflect on their own perspectives before offering their own viable suggestions and proposals.

The result was a far cry from the numerous meetings she had previously attended, Sistrunk said, and Loudoun County Public Schools was pleased with the number of proposals received and the ideas presented. Ultimately, Redistrict was used by Loudoun County Public Schools in two school re-zonings.

Sistrunk’s work illustrates the problem-based learning concept - emphasized at the Innovation Campus – of embedding within the problem context and solving a relevant problem with impact on the community.

Sistrunk has published her Redistrict research in venues such as the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, and proceedings on human computer interaction.

“Our hope is that school districts around the country will recognize the value of Redistrict in helping them rezone their schools to provide an equitable education to all communities,” Sistrunk said.

The road to Virginia Tech

Sistrunk’s interest in technology began at an early age in her native Romania. After graduating from a  No. 1-ranked specialized computer science high school, she went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering – with a minor in childhood education - from the Polytechnic Institute Bucharest, Romania. While attending college, she was invited through the Board of European Students of Technology to attend classes at universities including the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland, the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and Sorbonne University in France. Unable to attend the latter with visa constraints, she was later invited to a course at Paris-Saclay University.

Fast forward to 2014: Sistrunk had lived in Canada where she held positions at Sprint Canada and TD Bank. She was married, a mother to two children, and living in Northern Virginia. She had been teaching mathematics, computer science, and engineering at the middle and high school levels in Arlington and Fairfax counties for five years when she decided to take a break from being a full-time teacher to devote more time to her two young daughters.

The transition included a mom’s night out.  Sistrunk’s choice on how to spend those nights was not typical. She took the opportunity to enroll in a graduate course at Virginia Tech because, she said, “I really missed learning new things.”

From that first course, she eventually applied to the computer science program and in fall 2019, she earned a master’s degree with a concentration in data analytics and started her next journey as a Ph.D. student. Her dissertation committee, chaired by Ramakrishnan, included Kurt Luther, Nervo Dias Verdetto, Jim Egenrieder, and Patrick Butler.

While completing her doctoral degree she taught courses in Prince William County public schools, worked under Egenrieder’s guidance as a teaching assistant at the Thinkabit Lab at the Virginia Tech Falls Church campus, and currently holds a full-time position as a research scientist in a laboratory outside of the university that focuses on geospatial research. 

“Raising children, working, and pursuing my degree was a testament of grit and endurance, and I am so very grateful to all my professors -  and especially my committee – for a top notch education and giving me strength to go the extra mile in my resolve to find solutions to real world problems,” Sistrunk said. “I will carry this wherever the future takes me.”

Read more about Andreea Sistrunk here: https://news.vt.edu/college-of-engineering/articles/cs-Andreea-Sistrunk-class-of-2024.html.