Brown CS News

By using a phone camera and a new set of Instagram augmented reality filters, anyone can dive into the depths of space, encountering nebulae, pulsars and even remnants of exploded stars.

The Randy F. Pausch '82 Computer Science Undergraduate Summer Research Award, given this year to Jay Lin to support his work with Brown CS faculty member Amy Greenwald, recognizes strong achievement from undergraduate researchers and offers them the opportunity to continue their work over the summer.

Brown CS faculty member Robert Y. Lewis has just co-founded the Annals of Formalized Mathematics, a new diamond open-access journal that will publish original articles about formalized mathematics and mathematical applications of proof assistants. Also known as interactive theorem provers, these tools are used to produce formally correct mathematics: users write definitions, theorems, and proofs in a specialized language and receive instant feedback from the computer about each line. Rob will serve as Managing Editor alongside Filippo A. E. Nuccio Mortarino Majno di Capriglio of the Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne in France.

Now in its seventh year, the Brown Venture Prize, given by Brown University’s Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, awards a total of $50,000 to empower the most advanced entrepreneurial ventures by Brown students. It’s intended to help them accelerate and scale their innovations through funding, critical mentorship, and access to leaders in the Brown entrepreneurial community and beyond. This year, four of the eight honorees, including the first place and second place winners, were teams that included Brown CS students, faculty, or alums.

Held in Orlando, Florida, this week, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Virtual Reality conference (IEEE VR) is widely considered the premier international venue for the presentation of research results in the broad area of virtual reality (VR). The event’s Best Paper Awards are given to approximately the top 1% of total submissions, and new work, “Evaluating Text Reading Speed in VR Scenes and 3D Particle Visualizations”, from Brown CS alum Johannes Novotny and faculty member David Laidlaw, his doctoral advisor, is one of just six winners.

A member of the current Brown CS graduating class, Sabrina Chwalek participated in the Brown in Washington program last semester, which welcomes talented Brown undergraduate students who want to apply theory to practice in their concentration area to the District of Columbia. She interned at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity.

The Fulbright Program’s 2023-2024 year saw Brown University students and alums earn 36 Fulbright scholarships, the second-highest number in the nation. One of them, Bill Marino, is a recent recipient of Brown’s Master of Science in Cybersecurity, a fully online degree program that can be completed from anywhere in the world.

Ji Won Chung, a third-year PhD student advised by Jeff Huang, Brown CS faculty member and researcher in human-computer interaction, has been collaborating with the developers of Sleep as Android, a popular sleep tracking app that supports vibration on alarms, anti-snoring measures, and lucid dreaming cues. Ji Won’s research focused on writing code to implement a scientifically-evaluated sleep regularity index (SRI), which is now being incorporated into the app itself, and is expected to impact the sleep patterns of millions of people worldwide.

 

Brown Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Nora Ayanian will present at the 2024 SXSW Conference, held March 8-12. SXSW provides an opportunity for the global community of digital creatives to encounter cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and network with other professionals who share a similar appetite for forward-focused experiences, and the 2050 track where Ayanian’s presentation falls showcases long-range, big-picture thinking, with topics that range from nanotech breakthroughs and interplanetary expeditions to life-extension research and novel applications of scientific discoveries.

Advancing a commitment to accessible robotics education, the Brown CS PhD student is researching how to simultaneously control multiple drones and teaching others how to build and operate them.