Brown CS News

Archive – 2012

CS Faculty Co-Host Human-Robot Interaction Symposium

Members of the CS department, including Pedro Felzenszwalb , James Hays , Chad Jenkins , Michael Littman   and Eli Upfal , participated in the Initiative in Human-Robot Interaction’s inaugural symposium on Monday, December 10. The symposium was organized by Chad, Michael, and Bertram Malle (CLPS) and was sponsored by the Department of …

Roberto Tamassia Named ACM Fellow

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) , the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, recently elevated Roberto Tamassia to Fellow for “contributions to graph drawing, algorithms and data structures and to computer science education.”



Roberto, who joined the department in 1988, works on information security, design and analysis of algorithms, graph drawing, …

Department Hosts 12th Annual Paris C. Kanellakis Memorial Lecture


On December 6, 2012, Cynthia Dwork, Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research, delivered the 12th Annual Paris C. Kanellakis Memorial Lecture. This lecture series has been held annually by the department in honor of Paris on or around his birthday. In a standing-room only lecture, Dr. Dwork kindly devoted an introduction …

Anna Lysyanskaya Elected to the Board of Directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research


The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) , a non-profit scientific organization whose purpose is to further research in cryptology and related fields, elected Anna Lysyanskaya to its Board of Directors in a recent election .

Cryptology is the science and practice of designing computation and communication systems which are secure in …

Roberto Tamassia Named AAAS Fellow

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, "Triple A-S" (AAAS) , an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association, recently elected Roberto Tamassia to Fellow for “distinguished contributions to algorithms and data structures, particularly for pioneering …

Brown awarded $1.5M for new Big Data tools

Eli Upfal, Fabio Vandin, and Ben Raphael, from left, are developing Big Data analytical tools that make sense of large datasets and eliminate the noise of data errors. Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University By Kevin Stacey As datasets expand and new generations of faster computers arrive, users urgently require more powerful …

Computer program can identify rough sketches

Ears and whiskers are a hint...Computers can recognize photos and careful drawings of rabbits, but quick sketches by non-artists ... not so much. by Kevin Stacey Computers are good at speed, numbers, and massive amounts of data, but understanding the content of a simple drawing is more difficult. Researchers at …

Shriram Krishnamurthi Wins SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award

Shriram Krishnamurthi was recently awarded the first ever SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award. The award was given by SIGPLAN, ACM's Special Interest Group on programming languages, to recognize outstanding contributions by young investigators in this area. The official award announcement refers to Shriram as "a prolific researcher who brings …

Three Day Startup Successfully Launched at Brown

Undergrad Anne Kenyon founded Brown’s 3 Day Startup (3DS) weekend, which was held in early April with the support of the department, Google, 10Gen, and Teespring. The idea of 3 Day Startup is simple: start a technology company over the course of three days. Work space was available for an …

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