- The ACM recently announced the winners of five prestigious
awards honoring innovations in computing technology that benefit
society through their profound impact on the way we live and
work. One of the awardees is URCS alumna Corinna Cortes.
Corinna Cortes (Ph.D. '94) and Vladimir Vapnik, have won the Paris Kanellakis Theory and
Practice Award, for their revolutionary development of a highly
effective algorithm known as Support Vector Machines (SVM), a set of
related supervised learning methods used for data classification and
regression common in the field of artificial intelligence.
- Henry Kautz joined the faculty of the
Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester this
fall, after a career as a professor at the University of Washington
and a research scientist and department head at AT&T Bell
Laboratories.
(UR Press Release.)
His contributions to artificial intelligence include:
- Fundamental results on the complexity of temporal and nonmonotonic
reasoning;
- Fast stochastic search algorithms for solving constraint satisfaction problems;
- Methods for speeding up inference by knowledge compilation;
- Developing the planning as satisfiability framework, the best known method
for optimal deterministic planning, as shown in the 2004 and 2006
International Planning Competitions;
- Statistical-relational methods for learning pattern of human
behavior;
- The Assisted Cognition Project, which is combining work in AI,
human-computer interaction, sensing, and ubiquitous computing to
create assistive technology for persons with cognitive disabilities.
Dr. Kautz is a recipient of the Computers and Thought Award from the
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and a Fellow
of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. His academic
degrees include an A.B. in mathematics from Cornell University, an
M.A. in creative writing from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.Sc.
in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in
computer science from the University of Rochester.
-
Here is the current issue of our yearly departmental
newsletter, which contains all sorts of news and
information about the department:
2008-2009 Departmental
Newsletter.
Back issues:
- Professor Michael L. Scott
and URCS alumnus
John Mellor-Crummey '90,
now associate professor of computer science
at Rice University, were awarded the 2006
Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in
Distributed Computing for their 1991 paper, "Algorithms for Scalable
Synchronization on Shared-Memory Multiprocessors."
(UR Press Release.)
Previously knows as
the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) Influential Paper
Award, the Dijkstra Prize is awarded to an outstanding paper that has
had a proven impact on the theory and practice of distributed
computing for at least a decade. Scott and Mellor-Crummey will
receive the Dijkstra Prize of $1000 at the 25th Annual Association
for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Principles of Distributed
Computing, held July 23-26 in Denver. The Dijkstra Prize is the
highest recognition given by the distributed systems theory
community.
- Senior David Eisenstat has been selected as a
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow by the Army
Research Office. He will pursue a Ph.D. at Princeton University this
, consisted of 5 returning members of last yearfall.
- UR Undergrads Victorious at CS Games
Competition, March 3-5, 2006 in Montreal, Quebec
, consisted of 5 returning members of last year
U of R
Team "Leeroy Jenkins" Front Row: Dan
Mullowney, David Lu (holding CS CUP), David Sloan; Back Row: Harry
Glaser, Tom O'Neill, Mike Rotondo and Will
deBeaumont | A team of seven URCS undergraduate students attended the
CS Games Competition March 3-5 at the Ecole de Technologie Superieure
in Montreal, Quebec. As one of 33 teams participating in the international
competition, we had representatives in each of 14 events. Our team
excelled in Xtreme Programming, Algorithms, Debugging and several other
categories, but it was our consistent placing in the top ten on
almost all events that eventually gave the team the first place trophy.
The U of R team, self-named "Leeroy Jenkins" after a video game, included seniors David
Sloan and Will deBeaumont, and juniors David Lu, Dan
Mullowney, Harry Glaser, Tom O'Neill and Mike Rotondo. Each student
competed in a variety of events and contributed
significantly to the win. The trophy CS Cup, much like the Stanley Cup
in hockey, will stay with the winning team till next year's
competition at which point our team hopes to keep it in Rochester for
another year. Kudos to all of you for such a fine job! |
- Seniors David Ganzhorn, Michael Rotondo (both CSC) and Allison
Rosenberg (LIN) have been chosen to be KEY Scholars. KEY (Kauffman
Entrepreneurial Year) students are funded by a grant from the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation to study and practice entrepreneurship.
Students are allowed to devote one or two semesters, tuition-free, in
their fifth year. The University of Rochester defines
entrepreneurship as "transforming an idea into an enterprise that
generates value", implying that the enterprise outlives the creator and
that it positively affects others. The KEY Project that was proposed
by David, Michael & Allison is "Creating a Video Game Softare Company:
The Value of Fun." Both David and Michael took Ted Pawlicki's
software engineering "gaming" course and have been continuing to
research the many aspects of designing and marketing video games.
- URCS Assistant Professor Daniel Gildea has
received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career
s winning team. Veterans David Lu Development (CAREER)
grant for his work in Semantics for Statistical Machine Translation. NSF's most prestigious award for junior
faculty, the CAREER grant provides five years of funding for
s winning team. Veterans David Lu “those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the
academic leaders of the 21st century.”
Congratulations, Dan!
- Senior David Eisenstat has been named the Winner of the
Computing
Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005-2006.
David was selected from a very competitive field of computer science
undergraduates. David received exceptional letters of recommendation
regarding his research and academic performance from professors at UR,
Yale and Lafayette College. He has also had two papers accepted at
upcoming conferences. This prestigious honor is a first for an
undergraduate from our department. Gautam Altekar '04 was a finalist
for the 2003-2004 award. David will attend CRA's Conference at
Snowbird, Utah, on June 25, 2006 to receive his award.
-
The second edition of Programming Language Pragmatics
by Michael L. Scott
(Morgan Kaufmann, 900pp)
was released Nov. 7, 2005.
The first edition was also recently released
in Simplified Chinese.
- Daniel Stefankovic joins URCS Faculty
We are delighted to announce that Dr. Daniel Stefankovic has
joined our department as an assistant professor.
Daniel's Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago. His interests are
in theoretical computer science, in particular: algorithmic problems
on curves on surfaces, Markov chain sampling, algorithmic game theory,
graph drawing, and applications of discrete and continuous Fourier
transforms. Daniel, together with Marcus Schaefer, solved a 30 year
07, Dan Mullowney old problem of Sinden, Graham, and Kratochvil, showing that "string
graphs" (i.e., intersection graphs of Jordan curves in the plane) can
be algorithmically recognized. In joint work with Marcus Schaefer and
07, Dan Mullowney Eric Sedgwick he developed polynomial-time algorithms for classic
algorithmic problems on simple curves in surfaces, which led to
a complete resolution of the complexity of the string graph problem.
- URCS Wins 2004 Goergen
Award for Curricular Achievement in Undergraduate Education
 |
The Undergraduate Curriculum of the Computer Science Department was the
co-winner of the 2004 Goergen Award for Curricular Achievement, an
annual award established by trustee Robert Goergen and his wife Pamela
in 1995. The award was presented to chairman Mitsu Ogihara by Dean
William Green on Sept. 10th at Convocation.
The proposal focused on our curriculum, where we seek to build
well-rounded, liberally-educated computer scientists along lines that
are broadly accepted in the computer science community. Further,
through our course content, our laboratory facilities, our
research-intensive class assignments and our group-project
orientation, our curriculum seeks to instill in students the skills of
a researcher. |
| Mitsu Ogihara accepting the Goergen Award at 2004 Convocation Ceremony |
Some of the strongest components of the document were the supporting letters from our
alumni and current students. Many thanks to all who contributed to
the final proposal! |
- A gift from Sun
Microsystems Laboratories, valued at over $400,000, has
provided
the department with a 16-processor SunFire
6800 multiprocessor. This machine complements a smaller
07, Mike Rotondo 8-processor machine provided by Sun a year ago. Both are used
primarily for research in synchronization and concurrent data
structures, in collaboration with the Scalable Synchronization
Research Group at Sun Labs, Boston. The machines are
available
not only to members of the local synchronization
group, headed by Prof. Michael Scott,
but to partners of Sun at other schools as well.
-
The textbook Theory of Semi-Feasible
Algorithms
07, Tom O (Springer-Verlag, 2003), by URCS faculty member Lane A. Hemaspaandra and
07, Tom O University of Amsterdam faculty member Leen Torenvliet, is now
released and available. This book presents a consolidated survey
of the vibrant field of research known as the theory of
semi-feasible algorithms. (Click on the thumbnail for a close-up
of the pretty cover.)
|