Faculty News

A collaborative paper led by researchers at UMass Amherst, with contributions from Assistant Professor Longfei Shangguan and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, recently received a Distinguished Paper Award at UbiComp 2026. 

Dr. Xulong Tang, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, is participating in a five-year $5 million NSF ExpandQISE Track 2 Grant. The project, titled “ExpandQISE: URI-PQI Collaboration - Application of Quantum Fundamentals to Advance Research and Workforce Development,” is led by the University of Rhode Island in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Ryan Shi, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems Program, recently received a Google Academic Research Award to address these issues and better reach farmers, particularly smallholder farmers in the global south.

SCI faculty are internationally recognized for their groundbreaking work and innovation. Case in point: Panos K. Chrysanthis, professor in the Department of Computer Science, was recently elected as a Fellow of the European Alliance for Innovation (EAI). 

Dr. Xiaowei Jia (assistant professor) received an Early Career Investigator Grant from NASA's Earth Science Division for his project “Towards Generalizable, Fair, and Knowledge Guided Machine Learning for Monitoring Earth Systems.” 

Dr. Longfei Shangguan (assistant professor) received an NSF CAREER award for his project “Ubiquitous Earable Sensing Using Low-Cost Earphones.”

For Biehl, an associate professor with a dual appointment in the Department of Information Culture and Data Stewardship and the Department of Computer Science, technical rigor and the usability needs of the people operating a system are not separate considerations.