Pranav Gangwar

Ph.D. in Computer Engineering

University of California, San Diego

About

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of California, San Diego. I am currently working with Prof. Yatish Turakhia on developing scalable phylogenetic-based algorithms for pathogen detection from mixed-genome samples, and machine learning models that can predict the Evolution of these pathogens. My current research interests lie at the intersection of bioinformatics, computer architecture, and machine learning.

Link to Resume

Recent News

Sep 2025: I passed my Qualification Exam and became a PhD Candidate.

Jun 2025: We released a preprint of WEPP on medRxiv.

Jun 2024: I passed my Prelims Exam and completed course requirements.

Apr 2024: Co-organized 1st BioSys workshop in conjunction with ASPLOS 2024.

Mar 2024: Served as Artifact Evaluator at ISCA 2024.

Jun 2023: Started summer internship at Intel.

Jan 2023: Joined Turakhia Lab as a PhD student.

Sep 2023: Presented TermiNETor at SRC 2022 Austin.

Aug 2023: TermiNETor accepted at ICCD 2022.

Jun 2022: Started summer internship at Intel.

Sep 2021: Joined SEELab as a PhD student.

Projects

Wastewater-based Epidemiology

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) involves analyzing sewage data to identify the genome sequences of disease-causing pathogens. A UCSD team demonstrated that WBE can even detect emerging variants up to two weeks earlier than traditional clinical genomic surveillance.

Today, WBE is being rapidly adopted worldwide to monitor a broad spectrum of pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, RSV, Monkeypox, influenza, and Polio. However, the vast amount of WBE data presents significant computational and algorithmic challenges.

I am building novel algorithms and software tools that aim to enhance the accuracy, resolution, and timeliness of current WBE tools.

Publications

Pranav Gangwar, Pratik Katte, Manu Bhat, and Yatish Turakhia, "WEPP: Phylogenetic Placement Achieves Near-Haplotype Resolution in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology", medrxiv, 2025.

Minxuan Zhou, Yujin Nam, Pranav Gangwar, Weihong Xu, Arpan Dutta, Kartikeyan Subramanyam, Chris Wilkerson, Rosario Cammarota, Saransh Gupta, and Tajana Rosing, "FHEmem: A Processing In-Memory Accelerator for Fully Homomorphic Encryption", IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 2025.

Uday Mallappa, Pranav Gangwar, Behnam Khaleghi, Haichao Yang, and Tajana Rosing, "TermiNETor: Early Convolution Termination for Efficient Deep Neural Networks", IEEE 40th International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), 2022.

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Pranav Gangwar, Satvik Maurya, Shubham Garg, Sakshi Goyal, Aditya S Kumar, Preyesh Dalmia, and Neeta Pandey, "Hardware/software co-design of a high-speed Othello solver", IEEE 62nd International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS), 2019.

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Pranav Gangwar, Neeta Pandey, and Rajeshwari Pandey, "Novel control unit design for a high-speed sha-3 architecture", IEEE 62nd International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS), 2019.

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