The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a coalition of more than 200 organizations with the mission of enhancing innovation by joining with industry, government, and academia to strengthen research and advance education in computing. Every year, they recognize North American students who show phenomenal research potential with their Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, and in 2022, Brown CS student Rachel Ma was one of only thirty-two students to receive an Honorable Mention.
Last month, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) named Brown CS alum Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (now Professor of Computer Science, Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. '56 Faculty Fellow, and CACI Faculty Fellow at Virginia Tech) an IEEE Fellow, recognizing her “for contributions to enterprise data security and high-precision vulnerability screening”.
The latest cover story from Conduit, the Brown CS annual magazine, is our deepest dive yet into the inner workings of our courses and how they advance our mission of serving an increasing diversity of students who have a broader set of career and life goals. It documents a new introductory course pathway, CSCI 0111-0112, as well as a new course, CSCI 0200, where all four introductory courses come together.
In the pages below, we situate the new sequence by giving brief histories of earlier ones, examine the phenomenon of introductory course tribalism, explain the motivation for this latest …
"Computer systems are the backbone of modern applications," says Brown CS Professor Malte Schwarzkopf, "and the science of building efficient, easy-to-use, and trustworthy computer systems is about discovering key ideas that help make people get more out of their computers. Great ideas in systems have had stunning practical impact on the industry. But systems research, like much of CS research in general, suffers from a lack of diversity: only a handful of papers in the top systems conferences have non-male lead authors."
Brown CS is hiring multiple tenure-track faculty members at the level of Assistant Professor and a faculty position at the rank of lecturer, senior lecturer, or distinguished senior lecturer. We also have two postdoctoral opportunities available.
Brown Engineering and Computer Science Professor Sherief Reda has been elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for class of 2023. Reda was recognized for contributions to energy-efficient and approximate computing.
The European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA) recently announced that Julie Nguyen Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences and Professor of Computer Science Sorin Istrail, along with collaborators, won the ESA 2021 Test-of-Time Award for their 2001 paper “SNPs Problems, Complexity, and Algorithms.” The award recognizes “excellent papers in algorithm research that were published ... 19-21 years ago and which are still influential and stimulating for the field today,” according to the ESA. Giuseppe Lancia of the University of Udine, Vineet Bafna of UC San Diego, Ross A. Lippert of DE Shaw Research, and Russell Schwartz of Carnegie Mellon University …
“TikTok is just a way to get people excited about this sometimes very daunting field, especially at Brown,” says Allison Masthay, a CSCI 0150 Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and Computer Science UTA. In a new article, The Brown Daily Herald's Grace Holleb describes how Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science Andy van Dam's long-running course has helped make challenging material less intimidating by sharing its trademark humor on social media, earning as many as two million views.
Brown CS has been mourning the loss of our colleague and friend, Katrina Avery, known to many of our alums through her service of more than twenty-five years as Department Manager. She passed away late last year and her husband, Brown CS Professor Tom Doeppner, shares the memorial below.
Brown CS Professor Suresh Venkatasubramanian has just ended a 15-month appointment as advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and The Brown Daily Herald's Jakobi Haskellhas just interviewed him about his work on the country's first blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which was released by the White House earlier this month.
