CS News Briefs

Congratulations to Mary Lou Soffa, Owens R. Cheatham Professor of Sciences, on being awarded the School of Engineering and Applied Science Distinguished Faculty Award in recognition of excellence in teaching, research and service. She has published over 175 articles and has directed 32 Ph.D.

Dr. Hridesh Rajan, a UVA Engineering alumnus, has been appointed chair of the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University.Rajan, the Kingland Professor of Data Analytics, is Professor-in-Charge of Iowa State's Data Science program. He helped co-lead the effort to establish a new undergraduate data science degree, minor and certificate. In 2016, he founded the Midwest Big Data Summer School to deliver broadly accessible data science curricula to early career researchers from across the nation.

The Computer Science Department Graduate Student Group hosted the Summer Virtual Research Symposium 2020 on June 5 with six awardees for Best Presentations at the end of the event.Kevin Skadron, Harry Douglas Forsyth Professor and chair of computer science, opened the symposium by sharing that the objective of the forum was to learn more about what other researchers are doing and to identify opportunities for collaborating.

About Saeed:
I am a Ph.D. candidate at Computer Science Department of the University of Virginia. My research interest is in security and privacy of machine learning and their interplay with Cryptography. Before coming to UVA, I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. I also spent Summer of 2019 interning at Microsoft Research, Redmond.

About Jack:
My research interests include sequence representation learning, and in particular learning the language of DNA and proteins.
What has kept Jack motivated:
I enjoy reading and walking around UVA.

About Soukarya:
I am a rising fourth year Computer Science and Mathematics double major. Academically, I find theoretical aspects of the subjects I study very interesting. I always aspire to understand processes from the ground up and stay versatile in my field. Growing up, I have always been taught to give back to my community and work to help those who are not as fortunate. With all the experiences and knowledge I have gathered and continue to gather here at UVA, I believe I am more prepared to tackle this task than I have ever been.
What has Soukarya kept motivated:

About Mike:
I am a rising fourth year with a passion for exploring the frontiers of science. I created a student taught class, CS 1501: Artificial General Intelligence, completely by scratch and turned it into a highly successful and rewarding lecture series. The course looks at the intersection of cognitive science, AI, and philosophy, while covering concepts of minds, brains, superintelligence, and what it means to be human.

About Jason
I am a third year studying both Computer Science and Computer Engineering. If I had to choose a subject within those fields, I would say I am interested in cybersecurity and am working on projects exploring that to varying degrees in embedded devices.

About Alex:

About Jack:
I've been doing research on the robustness of NLP machine learning models with Prof. Yanjun Qi. I'm also a TA for algorithms, one of the best classes at UVA. In my spare time I like riding my bike, watching the NBA, and sometimes, coding for fun. Next year I'll be moving to Mountain View to participate in the Google AI Residency program!
What has kept Jack motivated: