Prathyush Sambaturu is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia (UVA). He is also a Graduate Research Assistant in the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative at UVA. He received his Master of Science in Computer Science from International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad. His research areas of interest are combinatorial optimization, approximation algorithms, and network science. His primary focus is on designing efficient approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems, particularly those arising in fields such as epidemiology.