2023 News

Masum Hasan in radio booth
December 11, 2023

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.

November 14, 2023

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!

Illustration of scaffolding around a brain
October 24, 2023

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
October 23, 2023

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.

September 13, 2023

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.

April 18, 2023

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.

headshots of 2 students
February 28, 2023

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.

2 students posing holding certificates
February 9, 2023

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.

headshot on left. students posed for picture on right
February 6, 2023

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.

students with laptops sitting around tables in a circle
February 6, 2023

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.