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 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 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.
Over the weekend of October 5, three Brown CS undergraduates, Noah Kim, Sean Kim, and Eric Yoon, won first place in the Healthcare Track at Yale University’s annual hackathon, dubbed YHack, with their personal project fueled by artificial intelligence.
Brown CS PhD student Tongyu Zhou was recently selected for the annual Rising Stars workshop, a program hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that recognizes underrepresented PhD students and postdocs, especially those who could potentially become faculty members in the coming years.
When used responsibly, AI can serve the public good: robotic assistants for people with disabilities; tools to help people express their creative visions; systems that help people improve their wellbeing; and more. Brown CS is partnering with Google Research to offer exploreCSR: Socially-Responsible Artificial Intelligence, a semester-long immersive research experience program for undergraduate students.
Brown CS faculty member Philip Klein was selected as an Amazon Scholar in the Spring semester of this year. The Amazon Scholar Program invites academics to collaborate with Amazon’s teams on technical challenges, offering them the chance to apply their research in a real-world context while maintaining ties to their academic institutions. Klein joins a group of scholars helping to solve complex problems using Amazon’s vast information and physical infrastructure.
Brown CS Master’s student Yumeng Ma (advised by Brown CS faculty member Jeff Huang) has just received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her work in human-computer interaction, specifically at the intersection of human-AI interaction and accessibility. The award is the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, and aims to recognize and support outstanding graduate students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
On May 11, Brown CS faculty member Ritambhara Singh gave a keynote address at the 1st International Caparica Conference on Prescriptomics and Precision Medicine, a biomedical conference on safety for precision medicine, which in its first iteration, focused on how researchers can develop models that leverage the properties of different biological or clinical data types that should be integrated to make accurate diagnostic predictions. Prescriptomics is an emerging field focusing on the complex interplay within genetics and their impact on the effectiveness, safety, and response to precision medicine.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT’s) iQuHACK (Interdisciplinary Quantum Hackathon) is MIT’s annual quantum hackathon that aims to bring students from a diverse set of backgrounds and from high school through early-career professionals to explore improvements and applications of near-term quantum devices. The 2024 iteration of the hackathon was held in early February and offered both an in-person hackathon where participants developed and tested their code on real quantum hardware as well as a virtual hackathon for a larger outreach to further students.
