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Category – Awards

Brown CS Alum Layla Oesper Receives The CRA Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award

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Brown CS alum Layla Oesper has been honored with the 2025 Computing Research Association (CRA) Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award, which recognizes individual faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing. Currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carleton College, Layla specializes in developing algorithms for computational biology, with a particular emphasis on cancer research.

Maurice Herlihy Receives Honorary Doctorates From Technion And Università della Svizzera italiana

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In the space of a month, Brown CS faculty member Maurice Herlihy has been awarded honorary doctorates from two different institutions: Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), located in Haifa, Israel, and Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland. Technion conferred upon him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa on June 9, during its annual Board of Governors meeting, while USI presented him with the honorary doctorate on May 10, during its Dies Academicus ceremony.

Agvanian, Tiffany, Butaney, And Newman Receive CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Honors

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The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a coalition of more than 200 organizations with the mission of enhancing innovation by joining with industry, government, and academia to strengthen research and advance education in computing. Every year, they recognize North American students who show phenomenal research potential with their Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, and for 2024-2025, four Brown CS students received honors: Artem Agvanian and Corinn Tiffany (Finalists) alongside Byron Butaney and Kaleb Newman (Honorable Mentions).

Brown CS Alum Evgenios Kornaropoulos Receives An NSF CAREER Award To Explore Cryptographic Leakage

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Brown CS PhD alum Evgenios Kornaropoulos has just received an National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty in science and engineering. He is currently an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department at George Mason University and completed his graduate studies at Brown under the mentorship of Professor Roberto Tamassia.

Brown CS Alum Heidi Erwin Has Been Named To The Forbes 30 Under 30 For Her New York Times Game Designs

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Brown CS alum Heidi Erwin was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Games category, which recognizes early-career professionals making significant contributions in the gaming industry. Heidi is currently a senior game designer at The New York Times and was the sole designer from her hiring in May, 2021 until August, 2024. She led the design for several games, including Connections and Strands, which now have millions of daily players. 

Ugur Cetintemel, Stan Zdonik, And Brown CS Alums Receive A CIDR Test Of Time Award

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The Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) is an annual event focused on research into new techniques for data management. Last month, CIDR 2025 presented two Test of Time awards for papers published in conference years 2003, 2025, and 2007 that had great impact over the last 20 years. One of them (“The Design of the Borealis Stream Processing Engine”) was the work of two Brown CS faculty members and six alums.