News & Events

The department has had a busy fall semester. ICPC World finals, our 50th anniversary, and several new faculty awards were all to be had. Read about the highlights here.

• On the Friday of the Meliora Weekend, the department celebrated its 50th Anniversary of its founding. The three events were highly successful. The morning talks were thought-provoking and inspiring, and the afternoon and evening receptions were filled. The timeline banner is now installed on the third floor of the Wegmans Hall. See the reflection from Dean Heinzelman below. More coverage of the events will follow later.
• Professor Fatemeh Nargesian received the NSF CAREER award for her proposal titled "CAREER: Declarative AI Data Cleaning with Guarantees,” funding her research from 2024 (awarded late August) to 2030. She is running the Chicago Marathon next week.
• Professor Michael Scott is named a Life Fellow of the IEEE.
• Professor Ehsan Hoque is among the 18 leaders to participate in a bilateral policy project on climate change and human health by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy
• CS PhD student (formerly Data Science MS) Hanjia Lyu received a 2024 Google PhD Fellowship in Health & Bioscience, advised by Professor Jiebo Luo. See the news coverage below.
• CS undergrads competed in the WICPC World Finals

  

  ICPC World Finals

  CS Undergraduate students Zeyu Nie ’24 (computer science and applied math), computer science master’s student Xiaoou Zhao, and Yan Zou ’27 (computer science), advised by Professors Daniel Stafankovic and Adam Purtee, competed in the World Finals of the International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC) after finishing 17th in the North American Championship.

  See the news coverage by Bob Smith copied below. You can see the ranking at https://icpc.global/regionals/finder/North-America-Championship-2024/standings of the top 50 North American schools advanced to the championship. While most other schools have a vastly greater number of students, our students won their spot in the World Finals.

  The students earned a spot in the World Finals after finishing 17th in the North American Championship held at the University of Central Florida back in May. It sounds like an incredible global experiential learning opportunity and we’re proud to have these students represent us on a global stage. Special thanks to their coaches, Associate Professor Adam Purtee and Professor Daniel Stefankovic.

   

  HOW TO DESIGN AUTONOMOUS MACHINES THAT ARE MORE RELIABLE AND LESS COSTLY:
  A team of researchers led by Yuhao Zhu, an associate professor in Rochester’s Department of Computer Science, says the tradeoff between overhead and protecting machines against vulnerabilities is due to a “one-size-fits-all” approach to protection. In a paper published in Communications of the ACM, the authors propose a new approach that adapts to varying levels of vulnerabilities within an autonomous machine system to make them more reliable and control costs. This research is featured in the University News Center.

  
  50th Anniversary

  One of the most poignant moments of the weekend came during the Department of Computer Science’s 50th anniversary celebration, when Christopher Stewart ’09 (PhD), now a professor of computer science at Ohio State University, reflected on his time at Rochester.
  
  “Decades later, I can look back and realize that I learned a lot more than technical details and algorithms here,” he said. “I was more than just a student, more than just a person getting grades and giving tuition dollars. I think what made this a very special community was that here I was treated as a future scholar, a future colleague, a person that was expected to live up to the responsibility of coming up with consequential ideas and having impact.”

   

  

  HANJIA LYU EARNS GOOGLE PHD FELLOWSHIP
  Congratulations to computer science PhD student Hanjia Lyu, who received a 2024 Google PhD Fellowship in Health & Bioscience. Advised by Professor Jiebo Luo, Hanjia’s thesis is focused on understanding and predicting human behavior with social media.
  
  The Google PhD Fellowship Program was created to recognize outstanding graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. Fellowships support promising PhD candidates of all backgrounds who seek to influence the future of technology.