When I joined Brown CS as a communications and outreach specialist eight years ago, most of what I initially encountered was reassuringly as I’d expected. Coffee consumption was as high or higher than I’d seen in the tech sector. One of the legends of the field was lecturing in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. There was an entire mailing list devoted to a thriving board game culture.
But one of the first emails I received was more of a surprise. Written by a Brown CS alum, it was less of a lament for the past and more of a critique …
Brown CS alum Guillaume Marceau, Professor Kathi Fisler, and Professor Shriram Krishnamurthi have just received the Onward! 2011 Most Notable Paper Award. This honor is given annually to the authors of a paper that was presented at the Onward! conference, an international event focusing on everything to do with programming and software. The papers are judged based on the influence they have had and their impact over the last ten years.
Each year, Cadence, a computational software company focusing on tools for electronic design automation, awards its Women in Technology Scholarship to support and celebrate young women who are starting their careers. Recently, Brown CS student Sreshtaa Rajesh was declared one of the winners, earning a $5,000 stipend. "Your impressive academic achievements, professor recommendations, and drive to shape the future of technology set you apart from the many talented women we considered," writes Academic Network Program Manager Mallory Clemons of Cadence. "We are excited for what the future holds for you and the impact you will make in technology."
Making the most of opportunities for entrepreneurship support at Brown, four undergraduates combined their distinctive skills, talents and experiences to change how health care is provided to vulnerable patients.
In an email to the Brown CS community on December 10, Department Chair Ugur Çetintemel announced that AStaff member Lauren Clarke will become the new Brown CS Department Manager, effective as of January 1, 2022. Lauren has been on the Department of Computer Science staff since 2004 and served as Academic and Industry Partners Program (IPP) Manager since 2013. In her current role, she’s responsible for managing the Brown CS PhD program, coordinating course offerings, managing the IPP, and supervising some members of AStaff, among other tasks.
“This department changes pretty much every time you turn around,” remembers Jane McIlmail, who is retiring as Department Manager after fourteen years with Brown CS. “Partly it’s the field, but partly it’s the energy and vision of our faculty and our wonderful students. I’ll miss it all. I love the little things, like the Halloween party and seeing everyone’s kids in costume, and I love when our people get recognized. I’m a geek, so seeing things like a faculty member being named to a professional society is exciting to me.”
Brown CS alum Jina Yoon has had an accomplished career thus far and continues to succeed and grow in the tech industry. One of her recent honors is being awarded the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship 2021. This NSF CSGrad4US fellowship aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing careers in the fields of computer science, computer engineering, or information science. More specifically, CSGrad4US offers an opportunity for bachelor degree holders who are working in industry, like Jina, to return to academia and pursue research-based doctoral degrees. The fellowship is a two year-long preparation …
Today, Brown University's Department of Computer Science announced that thanks to a new initiative, its Master of Science in Computer Science program will be accessible to a number of students who otherwise might not have been able to participate. Beginning with the Fall, 2022 semester, Brown CS will make available a small number of merit-based, full-tuition scholarships to support the Department's diversity and inclusion goals. All admitted applicants will be automatically considered for them, with no additional application needed.
Just because someone graduates with a Computer Science degree doesn’t mean they’re destined for a life of programming, with little input on the government policies that might affect their work. TechCongress, a unique program that enables technologists to advise Members of Congress on technology policy, is just one example of the many unique opportunities there are for CS graduates. Brown CS alum Eleanor Tursman was a “CS graduate student that didn’t like to code”. TechCongress has given her the opportunity to apply her knowledge to something she feels could make a huge difference.
NeurIPS, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, is a multi-track interdisciplinary annual meeting that includes invited talks, demonstrations, symposia, and oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. This year, new research (“On the Expressivity of Markov Reward”) by Brown CS alums David Abel and Mark K. Ho (now at DeepMind and Princeton University, respectively), Professor Michael Littman, and their collaborators, Will Dabney, Anna Harutyunyan, Doina Precup, and Satinder Singh (all at DeepMind) has earned one of the event’s highest honors, the Outstanding Paper Award.