Recent News & Accomplishments
2018
For his contributions to theoretical computer science, discrete probability, network science and applications and for service to the profession, Professor Aravind Srinivasan has been named to the 2019 Class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). He is one of sixty-five mathematical scientists from around the world who have been named to this prestigious group. "This year's class of AMS Fellows has been selected from a large and deep pool of superb candidates. It is my pleasure and honor as AMS President to congratulate the new Fellows for their diverse contributions to the... read more
Vazou part of first class of Basili Postdoctoral Fellows
Assistant Professor David Van Horn and Dr. Niki Vazou , a Basili Postdoctoral fellowship alumna, have won a distinguished paper award at OOPSLA 2018. Their paper, entitled “ Gradual Liquid Type Inference ” included Professor Éric Tanter of University of Chile and Inria Paris. The groups' ultimate goal has been to build the next generation of verification-integrated programming languages that empower programmers to make strong correctness claims and have them automatically validated by the language. Thanks to efforts by Vazou, and her collaborators, these expressive verification-integrated... read more
She will serve as president of the organization in 2020
Affiliate Professor of Computer Science Leila De Floriani has been elected the 2019 IEEE-CS President-Elect. De Floriani will be the president of the organization for one year starting in January in 2020. De Floriani is a celebrated computer scientist known for her work in data visualization, geospatial data representation and processing, computer graphics, geometric modeling, and shape analysis and understanding. She is an IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), and she is a Pioneer of the Solid Modeling Association. Since 2017, she has been a... read more
Associate Professor Jordan Boyd-Graber will be appearing on Jeopardy as a contestant on September 26th 2018. Earlier this month, he was kind enough to be a guest on the Department's podcast to discuss his appearance on the show as well as his research on QANTA , a project that focuses on using question answering as a platform for research in machine learning and natural language processing. In this podcast, he is interviewed with Eric Wallace, a senior Computer Engineering Major from the A. James Clark School of Engineering. On December 15, Boyd-Graber will be hosting a competition here at... read more
The recipients of the Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2018 are Garrett Katz and Xiao Wang. The awards recognize the two best dissertations in the department each year. Garrett Katz' dissertation is titled, "A Cognitive Robotic Imitation Learning System Based on Cause-Effect Reasoning." Professor Jim Reggia served as his advisor. After completing postdoctoral research with Reggia, Katz has begun his first year as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Syracuse University. Xiao Wang's dissertation is titled " A New Paradigm For Practical Maliciously Secure Multi-party... read more
The Perception and Robotics Group Lab’s (PRG) work on drones able to pass through small gaps in walls—thanks to vision inspired by insects—was featured as a project on IEEE Spectrum media on September 11th 2018. Gapflyt is led by Professor Yiannis Aloinmonos and Dr. Cornelia Fermüller along with their graduate students Nitin J. Sanket, Chahat Deep Singh, and Kanishka Ganguly. Soon after being highlighted on IEEE, the group’s work has become the subject of over twenty-five web publications from around the world. Here is a video of their work: read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to welcome two new Basili Fellows for Fall 2018: Robert Rand and Leonidas Lampropoulos. Leonidas Lapropoulous Robert Rand Robert Rand is finishing his Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania with Professor Steve Zdancewic. Rand's thesis explores the intersection of programming languages, formal verification and quantum computing. Together with Jennifer Paykin, he was a lead developer of QWIRE , a Programming language and verification tool for quantum programs. Prior to joining UPenn, he received his undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University... read more
The inaugural Victor Basili Postdoctoral Fellows for the past two years, Niki Vazou and Thomas Gilray, have finished their time in the department and will be starting academic careers. Vazou has been named an assistant research professor at IMDEA Software in Madrid, Spain. She received a Ph.D in computer science from the University of California San Diego under the direction of Professor Ranjit Jhala in 2016. Gilray has been named an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama, Birmingham . Before starting his fellowship at the University of Maryland... read more
Srijan Kumar (Ph.D ’17) has been recognized as one of two runners-up for the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) dissertation award. This dissertation award recognizes “outstanding work done by graduate students in the areas of data science, machine learning and data mining.” Kumar was nominated by his advisor, Professor V.S. Subrahmanian (now of Dartmouth College). Kumar is currently completing post-doctoral research at Stanford University with Prof. Jure Leskovec. His research revolves around machine learning, data mining, and computational social... read more
Ph.D. student Elissa Redmiles has been named one of two graduate student awardees of the John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award during the Fourteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2018). Named in honor of John Karat, the award celebrates Redmiles’ research in usable privacy and security, their efforts to mentor others, and their community service to the field. Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek, who is Redmiles’ advisor, nominated her for the award. When asked about her plans for the next year, Redmiles said that she will be going on the academic job... read more