Brown CS News

Ellis is the most recent hire in the multi-year CS With Impact campaign, the largest expansion in Brown CS history. He recently earned his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University, and after he completes postdoctoral work at ETH Zürich, he’ll return to the department in the autumn of 2023 as assistant professor. 

Brown University’s Department of Computer Science (Brown CS) is pleased to announce that four of its faculty members — Ugur Çetintemel, Michael Littman, Carsten Eickhoff, and James Tompkin — received named chairs at the May, 2022 meeting of the Corporation of Brown University. James is the John E. Savage Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Michael is the University Professor of Computer Science, and Ugur is the Khosrowshahi University Professor of Computer Science. Carsten, who has a courtesy appointment with Brown CS, was appointed the Manning Assistant Professor of Medical Science.

Last month, MongoDB announced a new feature called “Queryable Encryption” that it says is a major step forward in the realm of data security. This feature will make MongoDB, which was co-founded by Brown CS alum Eliot Horowitz, the first company to enable users to search a database while the data itself remains encrypted, preventing malicious parties from accessing it.

After working hard to make computer science part of his high school courseload, a young Nick DeMarinis was thrilled to end up in an advanced placement CS course in his senior year with a “really kind of eccentric” teacher at the helm. Nick is the most recent hire in the multi-year CS With Impact campaign, the largest expansion in Brown CS history. Having successfully defended his doctoral thesis last September, he’s returning to the department this July as lecturer. 

At last month's Commencement ceremony, Brown CS presented diplomas to 366 undergraduate students, 21.8% of all the undergraduates who graduated from Brown this May. It's the highest number of graduations ever from a single department or school at Brown, and just as it’s been for the last six years, Computer Science is the most popular concentration on campus.

This week, Brown University hosts the Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM), bringing over 500 of the field’s thought leaders to Providence and demonstrating Brown’s continued status as one of the world’s leading centers for reinforcement learning (RL) research and study. Attendees will include the field's founders, Andy Barto and Rich Sutton, and many others who have made seminal contributions, including Peter Dayan, who in 2017 received a Brain Prize for identifying how RL principles explain the workings of the dopamine system in the brain and its implications for human decision-making and its disorders.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced recently that Professor Michael Littman of Brown CS will join as their division director for information and intelligent systems for the next two years. While retaining his role at Brown, Michael will oversee AI-related research funding and coordinate AI efforts between government agencies in his new role.

CS With Impact, the largest expansion in Brown CS history, has added five new faculty members this spring: 

Five Brown CS students and alums, Jessica Dai, Arman Maesumi, Shane Parr, Seiji Shaw, and Benjamin Spiegel, received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships last month for their research in computer science. The fellowship program, which is the oldest of its kind, recognizes and supports graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and math who show significant potential for future contributions to their field.

Brown CS alums Shira Abramovich, Jessica Dai, and Hal Triedman are three of thirteen students chosen for the inaugural 2022 design and technology program of the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE).