News In and Around CSD
Two School of Computer Science students received the prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship for 2021.
Arvind Mahankali and Jinhyung Park were among four Carnegie Mellon University students granted the scholarship, which is awarded to sophomores and juniors who show promise as leaders in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics.
Park, a junior, studies artificial intelligence and recently worked on computer vision projects related to autonomous vehicles. He has sought to create better models of the... Read More
The IEEE Computer Society has honored Guy Blelloch with the 2021 Charles Babbage Award for his contributions to parallel programming, parallel algorithms and the interface between them.
"The award committee was glad to recognize Guy Blelloch for his seminal contributions to the field," said Marc Snir, chair of the Babbage Award Committee and the Michael Faiman Emeritus Professor in the... Read More
To adjust to teaching virtually during the pandemic, David Woodruff let his students set the pace. That meant sticking around on Zoom for an extra 20 minutes at the end of lectures. It meant longer office hours — two hours instead of one. And it meant cutting one lecture from his courses to slow the pace.
"On almost every slide, I try to ask a question. I want the student to teach the material themselves," Woodruff said. "I went at the pace students were most comfortable with on Zoom. Dropping one lecture was worth it if... Read More
Down here on Earth, nearly 130 million miles from Mars, Adithya Balaji eagerly watched high-definition video of Perseverance and its successful descent onto the red planet. From his desk in Raleigh, North Carolina, Balaji took note of the rover's parachute and its peculiar orange and white pattern. He thought it was likely functional, perhaps for aligning cameras. Within the pattern, however, lay hidden a call for humanity to continue to push out toward the unknown.
After NASA released that video — four days following Perseverance's Feb. 18 touchdown — systems engineer Allen Chen... Read More
School of Computer Science faculty members Lujo Bauer and Matt Fredrikson are part of a research team that won a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Award. The team's project aims to address the challenge of human-bot cybersecurity teams (HBCTs), which are commonly deployed to combat cybersecurity threats and... Read More
Carnegie Mellon University lost a remarkable visionary this week with the death of Howard Wactlar, who pioneered computing on campus for nearly half a century while advancing the nation's research agenda through his work with the federal government.
Wactlar, Alumni Research Professor of Computer Science Emeritus, held appointments in multiple departments in the School of Computer Science, including the Computer Science Department and the Robotics Institute. He died March 1 at... Read More
Katharine "Kit" Needham has been named the School of Computer Science's inaugural assistant dean for entrepreneurship initiatives.
Needham, who also serves as the director of Project Olympus, joined Carnegie Mellon in 2008 to work on the then newly formed startup incubator with its founding director Lenore Blum.
"Even today, many people don't know what Project Olympus is," Needham said. "... Read More
Veronica Peet has been named the School of Computer Science's first assistant dean for undergraduate experience.
Peet joined SCS nearly two years ago as a senior academic advisor to first-year students, working with Tom Cortina, then the assistant dean for undergraduate education. Her new position emerged from departmental restructuring that saw Cortina elevated to associate dean for undergraduate programs.
"My role very much focuses on the transition from high school to full-fledged college student, and all of... Read More
Three Carnegie Mellon University research teams have received funding through the Program on Fairness in Artificial Intelligence, which the National Science Foundation sponsors in partnership with Amazon. The program supports computational research focused on fairness in AI, with the goal of building trustworthy AI systems that can be deployed to tackle grand challenges facing society.
"There have been increasing concerns over biases in AI systems, for example computer vision algorithms working... Read More
A two-day virtual workshop organized by the AI4K12 Initiative involving education leaders from across the country has helped spark new K-12 artificial intelligence efforts in several states, said David Touretzky, research professor in computer science.
AI4K12 is developing national guidelines for teaching AI in elementary and secondary schools as a joint project of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the Computer Science Teachers... Read More
