CS News Briefs

Professor Anil Vullikanti and Alan Batson Career Enhancement Assistant Professor Haifeng Xu, both with appointments in the UVA Engineering Department of Computer Science, have been awarded an Inequity in Infections Diseases program grant by the UVA Global Infectious Diseases Institute. Vullikanti is also a researcher with UVA's Biocomplexity Institute.UVA Global Infectious Diseases Institute brings UVA researchers together who are invested in combating infectious diseases worldwide.

William Wulf Career Enhancement Assistant Professor of computer science Ashish Venkat and his two collaborators have been honored as a 2020 Top Pick in Hardware and Embedded Security for their paper “Context-Sensitive Fencing: Securing Speculative Execution via Microcode Customization.”Featured at the 2020 International Conference on Computer Aided Design, the paper was selected among hardware security conference papers that have appeared in the last five years in leading architecture, security, and very large-scale integration design conferences.

Computer science Ph.D. student Sihang Liu has been awarded a 2020 Google Ph.D. Fellowship in Systems and Networking, based on his research on “Holistic Support for Persistent Memory Systems.” Liu is advised by assistant professor of computer science Samira Kahn.Google created the PhD Fellowship Program in 2009 to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who seek to influence the future of technology by pursuing exceptional research in computer science and related fields.

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 Alex:

About Nate:
I'm a graduating BS CS student. I've greatly enjoyed being a part of the Meals on Wheels Capstone team this year, which gave us the ability to gain real-world experience and give back to the Charlottesville community. I've TA'd for CS 2150 for two years, and I'll be joining Amazon as a Software Development Engineer this fall. Some fun facts about me are that I've learned to scuba dive while at UVA, and I've been to Utah three times with the Outdoors Club!
What has kept Nate motivated:

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: