Archived Faculty/Research News
Congratulations to Professor Diane Litman who received an NSF Award in the Robust Intelligence and the Human-Centered Computing Programs. An Affect-Adaptive Spoken Dialogue System that Responds Based on User Model and Multiple Affective States is a three year project with the goal to improve the state of the art in affective spoken dialogue systems along three dimensions, by drawing on the results of prior research in a wider spoken dialogue and affective system communities.
Assistant Professor Adam Lee receives an NSF Award in the Trustworthy Computing Program which supports research exploring novel frameworks, theories, and approaches towards secure and privacy-preserving systems. Towards a Dynamic and Composable Model of Trust is a three year project working on those goals. Congratulations Adam!!
Congratulations to Liz Marai, Assistant Professor, for receiving the 2009 Provost’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) innovation in education award. Her proposal, Immersive Software Engineering, is one of only eleven to receive an ACIE award this year.
Congratulations to Rebecca Hwa for her promotion to Associate Professor with tenure (effective September 1st, 2009). Rebecca became the 4th Associate Professor in our department.
Assistant Professor Liz Marai and other colleagues in the Center for Simulation and Modeling have been awarded the 2009 University Research Council (URC) Multidisciplinary Small Grant to establish a Program on Geriatric Research in Ambulatory and Cognitive Excellence (GRACE). Caterina Rosano, Bob Boudreau (Epidemiology), and Bill Layton (Mathematics) will contribute to this multidisciplinary research, scholarship, and creative endeavor.
Professor Alexandros Labrinidis was elected Secretary/Treasurer of ACM SIGMOD,to serve a four-year term (July 2009 - June 2013). ACM SIGMOD, is the premier professional organization for database researchers and practitioners. Congratulations, Alex!
Congratulations to our faculty members for their work earning them a 2008 NSF Career Award. Assistant Professor Rebecca Hwa's work, "CAREER: Robust Parsing for New Domains and Languages.", and Associate Professor Alexandros Labrinidis' work, "CAREER: User-Centric Data Management."
Congratulations to Kirk Pruhs, a Professor in our Department. Kirk is the recipient of a 2008 IBM Faculty Award for his work, "Algorithms for Integrated Scheduling and Power Management."
Congratulations to Sangyeun Cho, an Assistant Professor in our Department. Sangyeun was recently awarded a 2008 A. Richard Newton scholarship.
Prof. Janyce Wiebe has been named the Program Co-Chair for ACL-IJCNLP 2009, the premier conference in Computational Linguistics which is being held in Singapore in August.
Prof. Chrysanthis and Prof. Labrinidis to participate in Large Synoptic Survey Telescope effort (Press Release / University Times / Pitt News)
New recognition for Prof. Panos K. Chrysanthis: Panos is among the new 98 ACM Senior Members of 2007. In 2006, he was elected IEEE Senior member. Congratulations Panos! (University Times article)
After years of networking research, Professor Taieb Znati, has become the NSF Director of the CNS (Division of Computer and Network Systems). Congratulations Taieb!
Congratulations to the Faculty and Graduate Students who received awards at the Annual Welcome Back reception! Click here for a complete list of recipients.
Ahmed Amer discussed his thoughts on the future of CD's in a recent issue of the Pitt Chronicle. View the full interview here.
Professor Daniel Mossé was also featured in a recent article that ran in the Pitt Chronicle. The article can be found here.
Professor Daniel Mossé was recently featured in an article from the Spring 2007 issue of the Pitt Magazine.
Prof. Kirk Pruhs has been invited to join the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Algorithms. Congratulations Kirk!
Xin Li's work on Face Alive Icons has been mentioned in the Technology Review (full article here). It has also found mention in NewsFromPitt. Congrats Xin!
Archived Student/Staff/Alumni News
Kathleen O'Connor, CS staff member, has served four years on the Provost Advisory Committee on Women's Concerns (PACWC). PACWC received the 2009 Chancellor's Affirmative Action Award in honor of making a significant contribution in affirmative action. See the PACWC article.
Instructor and Graduate Student Jonathan Misurda was recognized by the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education (CIDDE) for "Outstanding Contributions [...] Guiding, Instruction, and Nurturing Teaching Assistants" during the New Teaching Assistant Orientation (NTAO) sessions for the Academic Years 2004-2010. Congratulations Jonathan!!
The Pitt CS Technology Leadership Initiative, TLI , is the recipient of a 2009 award from the Google RISE Program .
Undergraduate Heather Friedberg (WiCS undergrad coordinator) was awarded a Grace Hopper Celebration 2009 scholarship to attend the 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, co-presented by ACM and ABI. Thank you, Heather, for all your hard work at WiCS!
Congratulations to Kelli Ireland, a 2009 Anita Borg Scholarship finalist. Kelli is a graduate student in the CoE graduate program, which is joint between CS and ECE.
CS Day was a great success!! CS graduate and undergraduate students participated in several competitions and the 2009 CS Day Awards are those judged as the best entries.
Ihsan Ayyub Qazi and Swapna Somasundaran, CS graduate students, received the Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship for the 2009-2010 academic year. Congratulations to both of you!
Sri Mandayam (a WiCS coordinator), Kelli Ireland (CoE), and Tonya Groover (CS), all graduate students, have been selected to attend CRA-W 2009 Grad Cohort Workshop in March. Congratulations to all of you!
Colleges try to increase numbers of women, minorities in science and engineering and Tonya Groover, a graduate student in our Department, helps stimulate STEM interest.
Brian Wongchaowart, an undergradute student in our Department and a member of the ADMT Lab, has received an Honorable Mention at the 2009 CRA Undergraduate Student Award Competition. Congratulations Brian!
Alex Connor, an undergraduate student and staff member of the ADMT Lab, won the best poster award at the ACM SIGMOD 2008 Undergraduate Poster Competition. His poster entry was entitled "Nearest Neighbor Queries over Graph Data". Congratulations Alex!
Congratulations to Michal Valko, Qinglan Li and Weijia Li, our three graduate students who were awarded Mellon Fellowships for the 2008-2009 academic year!
Graduate Student Tonya Groover named Entrepreneur of the year by NFTE. Read the article about Tonya and the TLI here. Congratulations Tonya!
Congratulations Raja! The Chair of the CS Industry Board was selected as a Carnegie Science 'Entrepreneur Award' winner. Raja was also featured in the Pittsburgh Magazine recently.
Staff Appreciation: Bob Hoffman, Nancy Kreuzer, Kathy O'Connor, and Terry Wood are being recognized by the University of Pittsburgh for their 30, 25, 25 and 20 years of service respectively. A big Thank You from the entire Department and congratulations!
Starting salary offers for Computer Science majors continue to be among highest [NACE Salary Survey]
Java Lab Upgrade: Our Java Lab classroom was recently upgraded from Sun SPARC machines running Solaris to Intel-based Apple Mac Minis running OS X Tiger. Through the use of the Parallels virtual machine software, these computers will also be able to run Microsoft Windows, allowing us to utilize this classroom for more courses than just those requiring Java.
Congratulations to the Technology Leadership Initiative (TLI) for another successful summer!
Pittsburgh rated most livable city in the US according to the 25th Anniversary Edition of the Places Rated Almanac