I currently work for Toast as a Senior Software Engineer on the Toast API Platforms team.

Prior to that, I worked on the Search Platforms team at Google

Until my graduation in 2019, I was a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I worked in Prof. Tandy Warnow's group, where I studied computational phylogenetics; that is, the construction of evolutionary trees from genetic sequences.

I graduated from MIT in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in physics.

You can find the latest copy of my resume here.

I put some of my personal and class projects on my github or on my projects page, although both these pages might be incomplete and out-of-date. You can also follow me on Twitter at @ProbablyPranjal.

You can email me at pr@nj.al

Publications

2019

11. S. Christensen, E. Molloy, P. Vachaspati and T. Warnow "Traction: Fast non-parametric improvement of estimated gene trees". 19th International Workshop on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI) 2019. (PDF)

2018

10. P. Vachaspati and T. Warnow "SVDquest: Improving SVDquartets species tree estimation using exact optimization within a constrained search space". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. (PDF)

2017

9. P. Vachaspati, and T. Warnow. "Enhancing Searches for Optimal Trees Using SIESTA". RECOMB International Workshop on Comparative Genomics, 2017. (HTML)

8. S. Christensen, E. Molloy, P. Vachaspati, and T. Warnow. "Optimal Completion of Incomplete Gene Trees in Polynomial Time". 17th International Workshop on Algorithms for Bioinformatics (WABI) 2017. (PDF)

7. B.M. Boyd, J.M. Allen, N.P. Nguyen, P. Vachaspati, Z.S. Quicksall, T. Warnow, L. Mugisha, K.P. Johnson, and D.L. Reed. "Primates, Lice, and Bacteria: Speciation and Genome Evoluition in the Symbionts of Hominid Lice". Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2017. (HTML) (PDF)

2016

6. J.M. Allen, B. Boyd, N.P. Nguyen, P. Vachaspati, T. Warnow,, D.I. Huang, P.G. Grady, K.C. Bell, Q.C. Cronk, L. Mugisha and B.R. Pittendrigh. "Phylogenomics from Whole Genome Sequences Using aTRAM". Systematic biology, 2017.

5. P. Vachaspati and T. Warnow. FastRFS: Fast and accurate Robinson-Foulds Supertrees using constrained exact optimization. RECOMB-CG 2016. (HTML) (PDF)

2015

4. P. Vachaspati and T. Warnow. "ASTRID: Accurate Species TRees from Internode Distances", RECOMB-Comparative Genomics and BMC Genomics, 2015. (PDF)

3. R. Davidson, P. Vachaspati, S. Mirarab, and T. Warnow. "Phylogenomic species tree estimation in the presence of incomplete lineage sorting and horizontal gene transfer", RECOMB-Comparative Genomics, and BMC Genomics, 2015. (PDF)

2014

2. P. Vachaspati and W. Detmold. "Fast Evaluation of Multi-Hadron Correlation Functions", PoS (LATTICE2014) 041 (PDF)

2011

1. S. Li, P. Vachaspati, D. Sheng, N. Dural, and M. V. Romalis. "Optical rotation in excess of 100 rad generated by Rb vapor in a multipass cell", Phys. Rev. A 84, 061403(R) (PDF)