Brains and brawn: Recruited from Ukraine as a student-athlete, she graduates this week with a Ph.D. in computer science

Maryna Veksler moved from Ukraine in 2015 to enroll at FIU after the school’s tennis coach relentlessly pursued her.

Several programs had eyes on the then-teenager, but “She was the most persistent,” Veksler says of the woman who heads the FIU team. “I was shocked,” she adds of the full-on press that Katarina Petrovic employed to entice the high schooler. Tactics included reaching out via social media to a relative of Veksler in a bid to get others to nudge her toward South Florida.

“I'm like, I don't even know English,” Veksler remembers thinking at the time, still not sure she wanted to accept a spot at any university in the United States.

A visit to the Miami Open and time spent with Petrovic, however, proved an effective volley and convinced her to study for both the SAT and an English-language proficiency exam so that she might be admitted as an undergraduate.

Arriving on campus, the transplant committed herself to one priority: Tennis was her life, and going pro remained the goal.

“There was no real worry about academics,” says the young woman who went on to earn Conference USA Freshman of the Year honors for her athleticism. Earning a bachelor’s would be a secondary concern.

Not sure what to major in, she remembered some basic computer coding she had learned in school. “Since I can do math, I can do computers,” she figured and chose to study computer engineering.

That new ball in the air, she took it to the net by distinguishing herself in class. One professor, in particular, recognized her leadership on a group project during her senior year and asked that she stay on for a master’s.

By then exhausted by the dual pressures inherent in the role of student-athlete, the Kyiv native put aside her dream of a tennis career and rebuffed the suggestion of more schooling. Instead, she used her newly minted undergraduate degree to land a job as a mobile app developer with General Motors in Detroit. The move provided both a needed refresh and an income that allowed her to send money home to her parents during what had become wartime.

More than a year later, however, she began rethinking the professor’s suggestion and a return to FIU – for both a master’s and a Ph.D. in computer science.

A digital forensics project sponsored by the Army Research Office got her started in the research lab. Her stint in industry meant that she brought with her ideas and practical experience that added much to the team, the principal investigator says. Another project under the same faculty member and funded by the National Science Foundation led to her sharing in a patent.

In the mean time, a second professor noticed her talents.

“She was one of the top students in my class, a star,” says Selcuk Uluagac, an eminent scholar chair professor within the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences.

He soon recruited her to his Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab to assist with government-funded drone research related to the security and privacy of communication techniques. She built testbeds and ran experiments, co-published articles and basically made herself indispensable through a sharp intellect, creativity and an enterprising nature that saw her complete projects without the need for direction or oversight.

“She's not like every other graduate student who does whatever they’re supposed to do and doesn’t fail. Maryna is at another level,” Uluagac continues. “Whatever we assign her, she's been excellent.” He went on to serve as Veksler’s co-advisor, along with former FIU Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Kemal Akkaya, and calls her one of the best he has ever worked with.

Veksler was also sought-after outside of the lab. Back on campus, she became “my right hand,” states Coach Petrovic, who scooped her up as an assistant.

“She's one of the brightest tennis minds because she doesn't win by playing aggressively,” she says of the former standout player. “She wins by playing smart.”

That approach made Veksler ideal to guide members of the tennis team as she ran practices and coached them from the sidelines during competitions.

Student-athlete Petja Drame saw her game improve under Veksler’s tutelage, especially in doubles. “She knows your weaknesses because she observes very well,” Drame says. “She really gives very good tactical advice.”

Veksler agrees that her own strength lies not in power plays but in strategy. Now at an exciting break point, she is days from collecting her doctorate on the commencement stage and taking up a post-doctoral position at Virginia Commonwealth University. There she expects to again juggle multiple projects as well as write research-grant proposals and mentor grad students much as she did tennis players.

A full decade after landing at FIU, where she has spent a total of eight years, she reflects on the game of life and some tough times that kept her thousands of miles from home.

“I learned how to manage, how to survive in this world, to live alone,” she says of what she began as a 17 year old. “There are a lot of good things that happened here, a lot of good people that I met, a lot of good experiences.”

Having come out on top at FIU, she now embraces a new match. Her record suggests that another string of aces will follow.