News

The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Machine Learning in Computer Systems Research

04/06/2017 - In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote a famous essay titled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” in which he explored the question of why mathematics is so remarkably useful in the natural sciences. Read More

UTCS Alum Earns CNS Emerging Leader Award

04/05/2017 - Franziska (Franzi) Roesner is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where she co-directs the Security and Privacy Research Lab. Her research focuses on understanding and improving computer security and privacy for end users of existing and emerging technologies, including the web, smartphones, and emerging augmented reality and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. Read More

New Faculty Profile: Scott Niekum

Assistant Professor Scott Niekum with a robot in the PeARL Lab at UT Computer Science

04/05/2017 - UTCS Assistant Professor Scott Niekum has known he wanted to study artificial intelligence since he was 19 years old. As an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, he rode the bus an hour each way to get to his internship. To pass the time, he read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, a book that explores, among other topics, artificial intelligence and the emergence of consciousness. Read More

New Faculty Profile: Dana Moshkovitz

03/16/2017 - Dana Moshkovitz earned her bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Israel while most people her age were filling out their college applications—at the age of 17. She continued her education at Tel Aviv University, Weizmann Institute of Science, and Princeton, collecting computer science degrees at each and a postdoc at the latter. She has previously worked at MIT where she won a teaching award for her course on the design and analysis of algorithms. Read More

Computer science department grows Austin economy

03/03/2017 - From The Daily Texan— “The (computer science) department as a whole produces a lot of local talent in students, who are trained with a really good education, and that’s what’s powering the local tech economy,” Porter said. Read More

New Faculty Profile: Philipp Krähenbühl

02/16/2017 - Philipp Krähenbühl teaches computers how to see. Krähenbühl, an assistant professor who joined UTCS last fall, studies a subfield of machine learning called computer vision. By using machine learning techniques, such as deep networks, computers can learn how to differentiate between and manipulate images by running through a large data set of labeled images. "One of the biggest issues there is that the amount of data you need to teach the computer about even tiny little things is enormous," he said. Read More

Porter and UT Recognized for Key Role in Local Tech Economy

02/10/2017 - At its annual meeting today, the Austin Chamber of Commerce recognized the chair of the Department of Computer Science for his outstanding contributions toward improving the local technology sector. In naming Porter Economic Development Volunteer of the Year, organizers said he had been "very instrumental in helping grow our technology community" through many years' partnership. Read More

UT-Austin Program Giving Teachers Computer Science Certification Gets $5M Grant

02/01/2017 - "WeTeach CS" enables Texas teachers to teach computer science at a time when only 2 percent of high school grads complete such classes. Read More

Alison Norman Wins 2016-17 President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award

01/26/2017 - President Fenves recently announced UT Computer Science Lecturer Alison Norman as a recipient of the 2016-17 President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award. Alison’s many contributions include her inspired teaching of CS439 and her leadership in helping recruit and retain women in computer science. This award, established in the fall of 1980, recognizes the consistent level of excellence that Alison has achieved in teaching undergraduates within the Department of Computer Science. Read More

Lili Qiu Elected IEEE Fellow

01/02/2017 - Professor Lili Qiu has been named an IEEE Fellow. She is being recognized for “contributions to wireless network management.” The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one-percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. Read More

Risto Miikulainen Wins Gabor Award

12/15/2016 - Professor Risto Miikkulainen has won the 2017 Gabor Award from the International Neural Network Society (INNS), which recognizes the achievements of highly accomplished researchers in engineering applications of neural networks. Risto is on the forefront of neuroevolution—the evolution of neural networks using genetic algorithms. Risto and his team have shown that neuroevolution is a notab Read More

Center for Integrated Design Launches Design Microcredit Program and Monthly Seminar Series

12/15/2016 - The Center for Integrated Design (CID) in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin, founded earlier this year to bring design thinking into the core of the UT undergraduate curricula, is expanding its course offering to include three new microcredit courses that will count toward the Bridging Disciplines Program in Integrated Design. The CID is collaborating with the Design Division in the Department of Art and Art History, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the School of Information, the Department of Textiles and Apparel, the McCombs School of Business, the Department of Computer Science and the School of Architecture programs to create a multidisciplinary curriculum that allows UT students the opportunity to study design methodology and apply it in creative and entrepreneurial scenarios. Read More

Linear Algebra - Foundations To Frontiers Kicks off Its Fifth Run

12/12/2016 - On January 25, 2017, UTCS faculty (and spouses) Robert van de Geijn and Maggie Myers will kick off the fifth run of their 16 week MOOCs (Massively Open Online Course) on linear algebra from a computer science perspective called Linear Algebra - Foundations to Frontiers (LAFF) Robert and Maggie have enhanced the course by working with MathWorks to enable participants to use Matlab freely during the course. Read More

New Faculty Profile: Qixing Huang

12/02/2016 - The University of Texas at Austin has committed resources to expanding faculty and research strength in the increasingly important field of machine perception. Machine perception, a broad concept that actually incorporates multiple disciplines such as natural language processing and computer vision and underlying machine learning technologies, is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on how computer systems intake information, particular in ways that emulate human behavior. Read More

Vijay Chidambaram Wins Award for Doctoral Dissertation

11/10/2016 - UTCS professor Vijay Chidambaram won this year’s Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award for his research in operating systems and file storage. The award is for a dissertation from the last two years that has had an impact in the field of software systems research. He won the award for his doctoral dissertation about decoupling ordering from durability in file systems from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2015. Read More

UT Programming Teams Sweep Regional Competition

UT Programming Club students at ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

11/02/2016 - Competitive programming teams from the UT Programming Club swept the first four places in the South Central USA regional competition of this year’s Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest on Saturday, Oct. 29. They competed against a total of 67 teams from 27 schools and 3 states. Read More

UT Austin Ranked #5 Best Research University for Computer Science Globally

10/26/2016 - U.S. News & World ranked the University of Texas at Austin the 5th best university in the world for computer science out of 210 research universities, one spot higher than UT’s 6th ranking last year. Overall, the university ranked 30th globally. Read More

New Faculty Profile: Chris Rossbach

UT Computer Science Assistant Professor, Faculty Fellowship #6 In Computer Sciences Chris Rossbach.

10/17/2016 - Rossbach joined UTCS this fall as an assistant professor. He currently studies operating systems and how to reorganize systems to work better. He solves problems with these systems by looking at how all of the parts fit together. Read More

Calvin Lin Receives Supplemental Grant to Promote CS Learning in High School

10/06/2016 - As a part of the Computer Science for All initiative, the National Science Foundation is supplementing UTCS professor Calvin Lin’s grant to expand his high school Computer Science Principles course. The goal of Lin’s project is to train teachers to offer the course, UTeach CS, to high school students and encourage interest in computer science learning. Read More

UTCS Turns 50 This Fall

09/29/2016 - This fall marks the 50-year anniversary of when the Department of Computer Science officially graduated its first students on the Forty Acres in 1966. Since then, UTCS has been the home of many award-winning faculty and the source of many groundbreaking technological advances in the world of computer science. To celebrate this milestone, on October 27-29, the department is hosting a weekend full of activities with something for everyone in the UTCS community to enjoy. Read More

Don Batory Wins Test of Time Award for Research on Software Product Lines

09/27/2016 - UTCS professor Don Batory won the Test of Time Award, a one-time award from the Software Product Lines Conference given to a paper that has had the most significant and long-lasting influence on software product line, or SPL, research during the past 20 years. He won the award for his paper on SPLs, “Feature Models, Grammars, and Propositional Formulas,” which was published in 2005. Read More

Peter Stone Interviewed About Future of Self-Driving Cars

09/22/2016 - By David Holley, Xconomy Read More

Report Finds Austin has a High Demand for Cybersecurity Professionals

09/22/2016 - By Kayla Meyertons, The Daily Texan Austin was ranked in the top 12 markets nationwide with the highest demand for cybersecurity talent, according to a new report from Randstad Technologies, a leading U.S. technology talent and solutions provider. Read More

New Faculty 2016-17

09/19/2016 - 2016-17 marks the beginning of another outstanding year for UT Computer Science, with the addition of six new faculty in the fields of quantum computing, computer vision, natural language processing, and theory. This builds upon the very successful 2015-16 academic year, when UT Computer Science recruited four new assistant professors in systems and robotics, ensuring a vibrant future for computer science education and research at The University of Texas at Austin. Read More

UTCS Gets Involved with White House Initiative #CSForAll Through Code-Teaching Program

09/13/2016 - This afternoon, the White House will hold its Computer Science for All Summit, part of an initiative announced earlier this year to promote computer science learning for American students. The initiative is intended to include more students in computer science, including underrepresented groups of students, especially since job opportunities in the CS field are growing, with 51 percent of all STEM jobs are projected to be in a CS-related field by 2018. Read More

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