News

Professor Scott Aaronson Named as ACM Fellow

12/10/2019 - Texas Computer Science professor Scott Aaronson has been named as a 2019 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow. ACM is the world’s largest computing society and is dedicated to advancing the field. Each year, the organization honors members that have made a significant contribution to the field of computing and information technology. Read More

Building Industry Bridges: Computer Scientist Tackles New Role for Sony, While Leading at UT

Peter Stone has been tapped by Sony Corp. to head up the U.S. branch of its new global artificial intelligence research division, called Sony AI. Photo credit: University of Texas at Austin.

11/22/2019 - In a sign of the highly competitive environment for top talent in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the Sony Corporation this week tapped Peter Stone, a faculty member in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, to lead the newly established Sony AI in the United States. Read More

Dr. Hovav Shacham Awarded ACM CCS Test-of-Time Award 2019

11/20/2019 - The 26th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) took place in London last week. Over the years, CCS has established itself as a high standard research conference in the field of information security, and is one of the "big four" security conferences in the world. Each year since 2012, CCS has recognized one or two papers from the conference a decade earlier with a test-of-time award. Read More

Student Mindful of What We Owe to Education

11/18/2019 - Education is powerful — it’s a means to inciting progress in the world, empowering individuals and transforming lives. Education’s role in facilitating positive change is a major theme in Texas Computer Science student Dora Gurfinkel’s life. She’s so aware of it, in fact, that she is using her education to elicit real change within the university while paying homage to her family’s unique history. Read More

UT Programming Team Wins ICPC Regional Competition for Fourth Consecutive Year

UT Programming Team won the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) South Central USA Regional Competition at Baylor University in Waco, Texas

UT Programming Team won the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) South Central USA Regional Competition at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

11/11/2019 - On Sat, 9 Nov 2019, the UT Programming Team won the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) South Central USA Regional Competition at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The winning team, consisting of Aditya Durvasula ('19), Aaron Lamoreaux ('23), and Viraj Maddur ('23), will compete in the ICPC World Finals this coming June in Moscow, Russia. Read More

UT Austin Launches Institute to Harness the Data Revolution

Research from UT professors and TRIPODS members Alex Dimakis and Eric Price shows that it is possible to learn a deep generative model that dreams images of human faces (right panel), trained by observing only occluded images (left panel). The middle panel shows a previous approach for solving this problem, that fails. [Figure from: AmbientGAN: Generative models from lossy measurements, by A. Bora, E. Price and A.G. Dimakis, ICLR 2018.]

11/01/2019 - $1.5M award from National Science Foundation to support cross-disciplinary machine learning and data science research Read More

Computer Scientist Weighs in on Quantum Supremacy

Google’s quantum computer. Credit: Google

10/28/2019 - College of Natural Sciences News by Grace Dickens Read More

Artificial Intelligence System Gives Fashion Advice

Minimal outfit edits suggest minor changes to an existing outfit in order to improve its fashionability.

Minimal outfit edits suggest minor changes to an existing outfit in order to improve its fashionability. For example, changes might entail (left) removing an accessory; (middle) changing to a blouse with higher neckline; (right) tucking in a shirt.

10/28/2019 - People turn to many different sources for clothing style advice, from magazines to best friends to Instagram. Soon, though, you may be able to ask your smartphone. A University of Texas at Austin computer science team, in partnership with researchers from Cornell Tech, Georgia Tech and Facebook AI Research, has developed an artificial intelligence system that can look at a photo of an outfit and suggest helpful tips to make it more fashionable. Suggestions may include tweaks such as selecting a sleeveless top or a longer jacket. Read More

Forest Baskett Earns Hall of Honor Distinguished Alumni Award

10/21/2019 - We are proud to announce that Texas Computer Science alum Dr. Forest Baskett was selected for induction into the College of Natural Sciences' Hall of Honor. He earned the Hall of Honor Distinguished Alumni Award for demonstrating pride and involvement in the university while also providing indispensable contributions to his profession. Read More

Dr. Scott Niekum Receives Young Investigator Award

10/15/2019 - Dr. Scott Niekum, Texas Computer Science professor and director of the Personal Autonomous Robotics Lab (PeARL), has received a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Read More

A UT Austin Spin-Out Beats the Odds, Turning Data into Knowledge

Juan Sequeda and Daniel Miranker launched Capsenta, a start-up based on their research at the University of Texas at Austin which was recently acquired by data.world. Photo credit - Vivian Abagiu.

Juan Sequeda and Daniel Miranker launched Capsenta, a start-up based on their research at the University of Texas at Austin which was recently acquired by data.world. Photo credit - Vivian Abagiu.

10/01/2019 - NEWS From the College of Natural Sciences by Marc G Airhart Read More

Ruohan Gao Awarded Google PhD Fellowship

Ruohan Gao, Google Fellowship, Texas Computer Science, Graduate Student

09/18/2019 - UT Computer Science graduate student Ruohan Gao has been awarded a 2019 Google PhD Fellowship for his research in Machine Perception, Speech Technology and Computer Vision. He is one of over 50 recipients announced this year from North America, Asia, Africa, India, Europe and the Middle East. Read More

Alison Norman Earns 2019 Regents Outstanding Teaching Award

07/10/2019 - TXCS associate professor of instruction Alison Norman has been selected to receive the 2019 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. Given by the Board of Regents of The University of Texas System, this honor is one of the nation’s largest monetary teaching recognitions in higher education. Read More

Computer Security Expert Named Simons Foundation Investigator

06/19/2019 - Marc G Airhart | College of Natural Sciences Computer scientist Brent Waters of The University of Texas at Austin has been selected as a 2019 Simons Investigator in Theoretical Computer Science by the Simons Foundation, for his work in cryptography and computer security. Read More

UT Partners with SparkCognition to Host Data Mining and Analytics Competition

06/18/2019 - Two hundred and forty Texas Computer Science students recently participated in a data mining and analytics competition hosted by SparkCognition, an Austin-based enterprise artificial intelligence company with software solutions that help clients analyze complex data, reveal actionable insights, and identify and automate optimal responses. The company awarded scholarship prizes to the first, second, and third place winners of $10,000, $3,000, and $2,000 respectively. Read More

Computer Scientist Honored for Exceptional Undergraduate Teaching

06/17/2019 - Calvin Lin, a Texas Computer Science Distinguished Teaching Professor, won the 2019-20 William David Blunk Memorial Professorship. The professorship recognizes a member of the faculty who has demonstrated an exceptional record in undergraduate teaching, and who shows special interest in and on behalf of undergraduate students. Read More

Texas Computer Science Welcomes Three Class of 2023 Forty Acres Scholars

06/14/2019 - Texas Computer Science is welcoming three Forty Acres Scholars this fall. More than 4,000 students applied for the elite scholarship program, which inspires and nurtures visionary leaders and helps them use their talents to benefit society. Back in February, 54 impressive finalists visited UT campus for a full weekend of in-person interviews and a glimpse at what life on the Forty Acres could be. Read More

New AI Sees Like a Human, Filling in the Blanks

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment. Jenna Luecke/University of Texas at Austin.

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment. Jenna Luecke/University of Texas at Austin.

05/16/2019 - Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions. Read More

Programming for High Performance Launches First Online Course

05/10/2019 - Is my code fast? Can it be faster? Scientific computing, machine learning, and data science are about solving problems that are compute intensive. Choosing the right algorithm, extracting parallelism at various levels, and amortizing the cost of data movement are vital to achieving scalable speedup and high performance. Read More

Computer Scientist Honored for Teaching Excellence

05/06/2019 - Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the Minnie Stevens Piper Teaching Award, which celebrates outstanding postsecondary teaching. Since 1958, the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation, a non-profit, charitable corporation focused on postsecondary education in Texas, has selected excellent educators from four- and two-year institutions from across Texas to be named "Piper Professors" for their superior teaching at the college level. Read More

Exploring the Intersection of Computing, Law, and Ethics

TXCS wants students to consider the ways in which the laws are evolving to adapt to massive tech growth as well as examine the further ethical implications of their work.

TXCS wants students to consider the ways in which the laws are evolving to adapt to massive tech growth as well as examine the further ethical implications of their work.

04/30/2019 - There is a certain “grow fast or die slow” paradigm in the present-day computing industry. Software and technological innovations are in a period of massive growth and flux—change is so rapid that even today’s laws are lagging behind. Texas Computer Science and Texas Law professors argue that under current circumstances, it is also important to consider the ways in which the legal field is evolving to adapt to these technological changes as well as examine the further ethical implications of computing. Read More

UT Students Develop Software to Help Satellites Seek Objects

Illustration of the Seeker 1 satellite in space.

Photo Credit: Lauren Ibanez | Daily Texan Staff

04/19/2019 - Daily Texan | By: Rahi Dakwala A navigating software developed by UT students for a NASA satellite is launching today with a resupply mission to the International Space Station. Read More

Using Machine Learning to Revolutionize the Future of Food Production

Researchers in MIT’s Open Agriculture Initiative grow basil under controlled environmental conditions to study how taste and other features are affected.
Credit: Melanie Gonick

04/19/2019 - Water, sunlight, nutrients—these ingredients are essential for plant growth. However, these basic ingredients don’t always yield the ideal plant. In fact, optimizing these variables is complicated, causing some plants to fall flat on flavor. Machine learning can help. Read More

Liu, Krähenbühl, and Rossbach Receive NSF CAREER Award

Professors Philipp Krähenbühl (Left), Qiang Liu (middle), and Chris Rossbach (Right)

Professors Philipp Krähenbühl (Left), Qiang Liu (middle), and Chris Rossbach (Right)

04/16/2019 - Texas Computer Science assistant professors Qiang Liu, Philipp Krähenbühl, and Christopher Rossbach were selected for the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award. This is the most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. Read More

Working Toward a More Accessible Future: Teaching Computers to Imitate Human Perception

Alex Huth (left), assistant professor of Neuroscience and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. Shailee Jain (right), a Computer Science PhD student at the Huth Lab.

Alex Huth (left), assistant professor of Neuroscience and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. Shailee Jain (right), a Computer Science PhD student at the Huth Lab.

04/11/2019 - Imagine a world where accessing and interacting with technology doesn’t require keyboard or voice input—just a quick mental command. Imagine “speech prosthesis” technology that would allow people who are unable to communicate verbally to speak without expensive and highly customized interfaces. Imagine a device that could read a users’ mind, and automatically send a message, open a door, or buy a birthday present for a family member. Read More

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