Connor Mowry - PhD Student

About

I am a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I am fortunate to be advised by Chandra Chekuri and Karthik Chandrasekaran. My research focuses on graph algorithms, network optimization, and connectivity problems—with particular interest in developing efficient algorithms for practical applications in network design and optimization.

I completed my BS in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2025, where I had the privilege of working with Jason Li on negative weight shortest path algorithms and Ryan O'Donnell on hypothesis testing. I'm currently seeking Summer 2026 internships in software engineering, quantitative research, or applied research roles.

Research Interests

Graph algorithms, network optimization, connectivity problems, combinatorial optimization

News

Dec 2025: Seeking Summer 2026 internships
Nov 2025: Paper accepted to QIP 2026
Oct 2025: Paper accepted to SODA 2026
Aug 2025: Started PhD at UIUC

Publications

Non-iid hypothesis testing: from classical to quantum
Giacomo De Palma, Marco Fanizza, Connor Mowry, and Ryan O'Donnell
To appear in QIP 2026
arXiv:2510.06147

Faster Negative-Weight Shortest Paths and Directed Low-Diameter Decompositions
Jason Li, Connor Mowry, and Satish Rao
To appear in SODA 2026
arXiv:2510.22721

Selected Projects

Parallelizing Dinic's Algorithm
Parallelized Dinic's max-flow algorithm using OpenMP and MPI, achieving significant speedups on large graphs through BFS optimizations and 1D/2D graph decomposition
Project Website

SAT Solver with DPLL and Heuristics
Implemented a SAT solver in C++ with DPLL and heuristics (DSIDS, DLIS, MOMS), evaluating performance across traceable and computationally intensive test cases
GitHub

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PhD in Computer Science, 2025–Present
Advisors: Chandra Chekuri, Karthik Chandrasekaran

Carnegie Mellon University
BS in Computer Science, 2025
Concentration in Algorithms and Complexity