2023 News

Professor Zhen Bai awarded Asaro Biggar Family Fellow in Data Science
Professor Zhen Bai has been awarded a three year appointment as the Asaro Biggar Family Fellow in Data Science.

Masum Hasan HCI Research Featured on WXXI
Masum Hasan was invited to give a talk at the Flower City AI, a local conference on artificial intelligence innovation, education, healthcare, art, business, and research. He spoke about his work developing the SAPIEN Coach, an interactive, multilingual, emotionally-responsive, virtual-human-based coaching platform for learning academic or soft skills.
Amanda Rigolo Receives Arts, Science, & Engineering ACE Award

CS Student is a 2023 Recipient of Suzanne J. O'Brien Book Award
Computer science sophomore Aryan Dhawan is amongst the 2023 Suzanne J. O’Brien Book Award recipients. This award is given annually to a select group from the previous year’s first-year class as a way to recognize excellence at the beginning of a student’s college experience. Students are selected based on their academic achievements, their leadership, and their contributions to the community. Congratulations Aryan!

Army veteran follows a winding path to success at Rochester
CS Students Advance to North America Championship in Programming Contest
Our computer science students had a strong showing at the North American East Division’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). Rochester fielded four of the 177 teams from the Northeast and East Central regions that competed on October 29.


Human brain’s ‘temporal scaffolding’ inspires new AI approaches
Associate Professor Christopher Kanan is part of a transdisciplinary team using a recent hypothesis about how the human brain uses sleep and awake periods to learn over time to try to overcome artificial intelligence’s limitations with lifelong learning. Christopher and his collaborators received $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use the “temporal scaffolding” hypothesis to produce AI that rapidly learns, adapts, and operates in uncertain conditions.

Md. Saiful Earns Google PhD Fellowship
Congratulations to Md. Saiful Islam, a computer science PhD student who received a prestigious Google PhD Fellowship in health. The fellowship 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.
Hoque et al. receives 10-year-impact award at ACM UbiComp


Dr. Raiyan Abdul Baten wins the AAAC Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award
Congratulations to Dr. Raiyan Abdul Baten for winning the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award.
US Department of Energy Provides Almost $3M to use AI to Improve Inertial Fusion Energy Generation
Nuclear fusion has the potential to revolutionize power generation throughout the world as a source of Green energy. In inertial confinement fusion, a target filled with fuel (hydrogen isotopes) is compressed and heated to initiate nuclear fusion reactions. However, experiments at laser facilities such as OMEGA at Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) generate less energy than simulations predict. Moreover, existing simulators are limited to predicting the outcome of the experiment, but do not have a way to generate a laser or target configuration that leads to the optimal amount of energy produced.

Online AI-based test for Parkinson’s disease severity shows promising results
The test for Parkinson’s disease severity relies on 10 taps of the finger, and results are available in minutes.
Alumnus Caleb Wohn Receives CSGrad4US Graduate Fellowship
Caleb Wohn ‘22 receives 2023 CSGrad4US Graduate Fellowship.
Study of Headlines Shows Media Bias is Growing
Professor Zhen Bai Receives NSF CAREER Award
Alumnus Bill Bolosky Receives USENIX Test of Time Award
The 2023 USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST) has conferred its Test of Time award to Dutch Meyer and Bill Bolosky for their paper “A Study of Practical Deduplication,” originally published at FAST in 2011 and updated for ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS) in 2012.

CS Student Places 2nd in 2023 Rochester Carillon Competition
Sponsored by the Arthur Satz Music Department, the Rochester Carillon Competition Award was created to foster new arrangements or compositions for playing on the Hopeman Carillon. The 2023 award recipients are
CSUG Recipient of Award for Excellence in Creative Co-Sponsorship
Established in 2004, the award recognizes a program that was co-sponsored by a minimum of two organizations or groups. The co-sponsored program should have been a new effort, one that brought together different facets of campus, and which served to build and strengthen the campus community.
Adira Blumenthal’s mission is to create assistive technologies
In addition to learning about assistive technologies, Adira Blumenthal has enjoyed the opportunity to be a lighting designer, set designer, and stage manager, and to serve on the executive board of ROC Players.

2023 Susan B. Anthony Legacy Awards
The Susan B. Anthony Legacy Awards are a 75 year plus tradition honoring exceptional women from the University of Rochester community and their achievements. The Susan B. Anthony Center presents the awards annually to professional women leaders and University of Rochester undergraduate women. This year, two computer science students were amongst the recipients.

Lab Experience During Your First Year in College? Yes.

Leadership Appreciation
Leadership Appreciation is a time to honor and recognize student leaders and student organizations that have enriched the University of Rochester's community through their self-development, programs, publications, activities, and community service.

Gift Supports NSBE
A special thanks to chemical engineering alumnus Shawn D. Rochester ’97 for a generous gift to establish the Shawn D. Rochester Endowment Fund to support our National Society of Black Engineers (UR NSBE) student chapter. UR NSBE is an invaluable partner in helping us attract and retain black students in engineering and computer science. For example, each year, it sends members to the national NSBE conference to learn networking skills and connect with companies for internships and job interviews for fulltime positions. Additionally, it allows our students to meet and network with other NSBE members from across the country and be inspired by black professional engineers in leadership positions in various industries and disciplines.

A Student Club on the Go
The Google Developer Student Club had a fantastic fall semester. Club president Samia Afrin ’25 reports a record 137 new members joined, bringing total membership to more than 360. The Core Team is more than 60 percent women.

CS Students Amongst Outstanding Hajim Student Athletes
Several of our Hajim School student athletes were recognized for excellence on the field and in the classroom during the fall semester.

Jiebo Luo selected as fellow of the National Academy of Inventors
Jiebo Luo, a leading expert in artificial intelligence, has been selected as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). The academy is recognizing Luo and the other inductees for “a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development, and welfare of society.”



