Brown CS News

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.

Brown CS PhD student Tongyu Zhou was recently selected for the annual Rising Stars workshop, a program hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that recognizes underrepresented PhD students and postdocs, especially those who could potentially become faculty members in the coming years. 

Brown CS faculty member Ernesto Zaldivar was recently selected to join the Army Cyber Institute (ACI) at West Point as a Cyber Law, Policy, and Strategy Non-Resident Fellow. The ACI bridges the public and private sectors to explore challenges through multiple disciplines, engaging military, government, academic, and industrial cyber communities through partnerships to enable effective Army operations throughout cyberspace. Some topics that the ACI researches include cyberspace operations, electromagnetic warfare, and cyber law and policy.

As large language models play an increasing role in public discourse, a new study led by Brown researchers raises important ethical questions about the potential ways AI tools can be adapted by users.

The Paragon Policy Fellowship, co-led by Brown senior Jenn Wang and advised by CNTR Director Suresh Venkatasubramanian, connects students to local governments to work on tech policy issues and plans to develop a playbook for building lasting talent pipelines.

When used responsibly, AI can serve the public good: robotic assistants for people with disabilities; tools to help people express their creative visions; systems that help people improve their wellbeing; and more. Brown CS is partnering with Google Research to offer exploreCSR: Socially-Responsible Artificial Intelligence, a semester-long immersive research experience program for undergraduate students.

Brown CS faculty member Philip Klein was selected as an Amazon Scholar in the Spring semester of this year. The Amazon Scholar Program invites academics to collaborate with Amazon’s teams on technical challenges, offering them the chance to apply their research in a real-world context while maintaining ties to their academic institutions. Klein joins a group of scholars helping to solve complex problems using Amazon’s vast information and physical infrastructure.

Brown CS Master’s student Yumeng Ma (advised by Brown CS faculty member Jeff Huang) has just received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her work in human-computer interaction, specifically at the intersection of human-AI interaction and accessibility. The award is the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, and aims to recognize and support outstanding graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Annually, the Mozilla free software community recognizes 25 people who are leading the next wave of the internet with the Rise25 Awards, which were awarded in Dublin, Ireland, on August 13. Aaron Gokaslan, who received both his undergraduate and Master’s degrees in computer science with Brown CS and is currently a PhD student at Cornell University, was nominated and chosen as a Rise25 honoree for the 2024 cohort.

On May 11, Brown CS faculty member Ritambhara Singh gave a keynote address at the 1st International Caparica Conference on Prescriptomics and Precision Medicine, a biomedical conference on safety for precision medicine, which in its first iteration, focused on how researchers can develop models that leverage the properties of different biological or clinical data types that should be integrated to make accurate diagnostic predictions. Prescriptomics is an emerging field focusing on the complex interplay within genetics and their impact on the effectiveness, safety, and response to precision medicine.