Brown CS News

Joseph was recognized as a leader in his field whose significant contributions meet or exceed the criteria of existing VGTC awards by being inducted into the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy at the annual IEEE VR conference.

Last month, SIGPLAN chose the 2023 work by forthcoming Brown CS faculty member Will Crichton, doctoral student Gavin Gray (formerly at ETH Zürich), and faculty member Shriram Krishnamurthi as one of four Research Highlights papers from the 2021-2023 period.
 

The Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) is an annual event focused on research into new techniques for data management. Last month, CIDR 2025 presented two Test of Time awards for papers published in conference years 2003, 2025, and 2007 that had great impact over the last 20 years. One of them (“The Design of the Borealis Stream Processing Engine”) was the work of two Brown CS faculty members and six alums.

Brown CS faculty member Don Stanford has just delivered his last lecture for the department after more than two decades in the classroom. Some members of our community have known him for a half-century (he earned an MS in Computer Science, Computational and Applied Mathematics from Brown in 1977 after a BA in International Relations in 1972), and few of them will be surprised that Don’s energy and ability to engage with his audience are as strong as ever. 

CAREER Awards are given in support of outstanding junior faculty teacher-scholars who excel at research, education, and integration of the two within the context of an organizational mission.

Last year, Brown announced the founding of the Center for Technological Responsibility, Reimagination and Redesign (CNTR), whose mission is to redefine computer science education, research, and technology to center the needs, problems, and aspirations of all, especially those that technology has left behind.

The Paris C. Kanellakis Memorial Lecture honors a distinguished computer scientist who was an esteemed and beloved member of the Brown CS community. Paris came to Brown in 1981 and became a full professor in 1990. Last week, Virginia Vassilevska Williams of MIT delivered the twenty-fourth annual Paris C. Kanellakis Memorial Lecture: “A Fine-Grained Approach to Algorithms and Complexity”.

Michael Littman, University Professor of Computer Science, has been appointed as Brown University’s first Associate Provost for Artificial Intelligence (APAI), a newly established leadership position with a campus-wide charge to advance, in a responsible manner, Brown’s engagement with AI across its academic missions.

Second year PhD student Rui-Jie Yew was recently recognized as a runner-up for Best Student Paper at the Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society (AIES) Conference in San Jose at the end of October.

Serena Booth earned a doctorate in CS at MIT in 2023 and currently works in the U.S. Senate as an AAAS AI Policy Fellow. In the fall of 2025, she’ll join Brown CS as assistant professor. Serena is one of the four latest hires in the multi-year CS With Impact campaign, our largest expansion to date.