Brown CS News

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 …

Tassallah Amina Abdullahi, a second-year doctoral student in Computer Science, has won a highly competitive Computational and Data Science Fellowship from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (ACM SIGHPC). She is one of eleven fellowship winners for 2022 in the international competition, which is intended to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women and students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field.       

The Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communications announced earlier this summer that a paper by Brown CS Professor Theophilus A. Benson won their 2022 Test of Time Award. The paper, “Network traffic characteristics of data centers in the wild,” was written by Theophilus, Aditya Akella of UT Austin, and David A. Maltz of Microsoft Research. Bestowed annually, the award recognizes 10- to 12-year-old papers published in sponsored or co-sponsored conferences that remain relevant and valuable in the present.

Last year, Brown CS alums Steven Shi and Alyssa Cantu were awarded the NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate (CSGrad4US) Fellowship. This honor aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing careers in the fields of computer science, computer engineering, or information science. More specifically, CSGrad4US offers an opportunity for bachelor’s degree holders who are working in industry to return to academia and pursue research-based doctoral degrees. 

This Friday, Professor Michael Littman of Brown CS won the John McCarthy Award from the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI). The award, which is the top research honor in AI for mid-career scientists, recognizes researchers who have consistently made significant and influential contributions to the field.
In conferring the award, IJCAI cited Michael’s role in developing reinforcement learning and AI planning in partially observable systems, as well as his work in formalized state abstractions.
 

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.

Brown CS Professor George Konidaris has just received a Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award. This honor, given annually by Brown’s Office of the Vice-President for Research, was established to support excellence in scholarly work by providing funding for selected faculty research projects of exceptional merit with preference given to junior faculty who are in the process of building their research portfolio.

Brown University's Department of Computer Science has just announced that Zachary Espiritu, a Brown CS student, SPOC (Systems Programmer, Operator, and Consultant), and one of the four Meta-TAs who coordinate the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant program, has just won the Norman K. Meyrowitz '81 Award. Named for an alum known for his contributions to the department, the award recognizes exceptionally meritorious service to Brown CS and is accompanied by a cash prize of five hundred dollars.

Brown CS has just announced that it has recognized 25 graduating seniors for their academic accomplishments as well as their service to the department this year. Usha Bhalla, Ross Briden, Champ Chairattana-Apirom, Jack Ciabaton, Jason Crowley, Thomas Del Vecchio, Evan Dǒng, Shenandoah Duraideivamani, Zachary Espiritu, Aalia Habib, Chace Hayhurst, Alexander Ivanov, Isabel Lai, Xinru Li, Jing Wei Nicholas Lim, Jiaju Ma, Lily Mayo, Julia McClellan, Neev Parikh, Top Piriyakulkij, Adam Pikielny, Monica Roy, Kshitij Sachan, Seiji Shaw, and Caleb Trotz have each received the Senior Prize in Computer Science for their academic work as well as their service to Brown …