Department of Computer Science
Duke CS PhD Kangning Wang received an Honorable Mention for his dissertation, “Approximations for Economic Efficiency and Fairness,” by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group for Economics and Computation (SIGecom) Doctoral Dissertation Award competition. The SIGecom recognizes an outstanding dissertation in the field of economics and computation. The award is conferred annually at the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. “Kangning's thesis cleverly applies the… read more about Duke CS PhD Kangning Wang receives an Honorable Mention for SIGecom Dissertation Award »
Duke Computer Science researchers (L-R in photo) Entropy Xu (3rd year CS PhD), Mason Ma (2nd year CS PhD), and Assistant Professor Lisa Wills have won the Best Paper Award at ISPASS-2023, the 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software, which took place April 23-25, 2023 in Raleigh, NC. The paper, entitled “PyTFHE: An End-to-End Compilation and Execution Framework for Fully Homomorphic Encryption,” presents PyTFHE, an ingenious,… read more about Duke CS Wins Best Paper Award at ISPASS 2023 »
Alex Vasilos Memorial Award Awarded to a graduating senior who completes an outstanding research project whose results should be published or of publishable quality with the intent to publish. In addition, this senior should have done excellent work in all computer science courses with a recognized joy of and appreciation for computer science as a discipline of study. Three students received this award. William Ruixian He For superior research problem solving… read more about Undergraduate Awards 2023 »
Congratulations to all recipients of 2023 undergraduate student awards.Alex Vasilos Memorial Award Awarded to a graduating senior who completes an outstanding research project whose results should be published or of publishable quality with the intent to publish. In addition, this senior should have done excellent work in all computer science courses with a recognized joy of and appreciation for computer science as a discipline of study. Three students received this award… read more about 2023 Undergraduate Awards »
Assistant Professor Kartik Nayak received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for "CAREER: Scalable Consensus Protocol Design with Accountability and Privacy under Practical Failure Models." His project makes novel scientific advances by bridging the gap between theoretical foundations and the practical aspects of blockchain consensus. Earlier this year, Assistant Professor Danyang Zhuo also received an NSF CAREER Award for "CAREER: OS-Managed Remote Procedure Call for Datacenter… read more about Kartik Nayak and Danyang Zhuo receive NSF CAREER Awards »
Duke Computer Science is now ranked in the top 20 best computer science graduate schools and programs in the country by US News & World Report! Our investments in academic programs, diversity, faculty, research, innovation, and more contributed to our increase in computer science rankings to #20 today from #23 in 2022, and #25 in 2018. In addition, we are #21 in both AI and Theory. Join us! read more about Duke Computer Science is ranked #20 by US News & World Report »
Carlo Tomasi, Iris Einheuser Distinguished Professor of computer science at Duke University, has won an Amazon Research Award, and will receive gift funding and Amazon Web Services (AWS) promotional credits to support his project on “Deep neural network classifiers with margins in input space.” Tomasi said, “I am grateful to Amazon for their generous support. Their forward-looking bet on our new idea provides a crucial seed towards sustaining my students’ research on this… read more about Carlo Tomasi Receives Amazon Research Award »
Dr. Susan Rodger, Duke Computer Science Professor of the Practice and Director of Undergraduate Studies, received ACM's SIGCSE (Special Interest Group CS Education) 2023 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education. This award recognizes Dr. Rodger for creating JFLAP software, changing how the automata course is taught, and for helping to bring computing to pre-college students with the Alice programming environment. She also gave a keynote talk at SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2023. Congratulations, Dr.… read more about Susan Rodger Receives the SIGCSE 2023 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education »
Duke Computer Science Professor Ronald Parr was recently elected as a new Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for significant contributions to reinforcement learning, including the development of foundational hierarchical, least-squares, factored, and feature selection methods. Founded in 1990, AAAI's Fellows Program highlights individuals who achieve unusual distinction in AI. New Fellows were honored at a special awards ceremony during the recent AAAI 2023… read more about Ronald Parr Named 2023 AAAI Fellow »
Dr. Susan Athey, PhD, a Duke Economics/Mathematics/Computer Science alumna and professor of economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, was elected president of the American Economic Association. Athey previously served as Microsoft's chief economist, and also previously taught economics at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Professor Athey received her PhD at Stanford, and also holds an honorary doctorate from Duke. read more about Duke CS-Econ-Math Alumna Named 2023 American Economic Assn. President »
Duke CS PhD students Haiyang Huang and Yingfan Wang won the John M. Chambers Software Award from the Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics section of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for their Python package PaCMAP, based on a project with Duke Professor Cynthia Rudin and Assistant Professor Yaron Shaposhnik from University of Rochester's Simon School. The tool's code performs dimension reduction for data visualization, allowing us to see inside high-dimensional datasets by projecting… read more about Duke CS PhD Students Win ASA Chambers Software Award »
Three Duke Computer Science students received awards from the Computing Research Association (CRA) for Outstanding Undergraduate Research in 2023. Selected as a Finalist, Zeyu Shen works on the intersection of algorithms, machine learning, and social science with Kamesh Munagala and Brandon Fain. Also selected as a Finalist, Rui Xin works on interpretable machine learning with an emphasis on sparse models with Cynthia Rudin and Margo Seltzer. Awarded an Honorable Mention, William He works on circuit complexity with Ben… read more about Duke CS Students Win 2023 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awards »
By Brian Hayes How many passengers can the nation’s airlines carry between all the pairs of cities they connect? How many gigabits of data can pass through the optical fibers that make up the backbone of the Internet? How much electricity can the power grid transmit from generating stations to customers? From the point of view of theoretical computer science, these questions can all be seen as variations on a single problem known as all-pairs max-flow, or APMF. The computational challenge of APMF… read more about Go with the Flow: Panigrahi and Colleagues Break Through a 60-Year-Old Bottleneck in Max-Flow Problems »
Duke CS faculty (including Kartik Nayak, Xiaowei Yang, and Fan Zhang) and students had 5 research papers at the recent flagship ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) Nov. 7-11. Michael Reiter and collaborators won the 2012 Test-of-Time Paper Award, and Bruce Maggs and collaborators won the Best Paper Honorable Mention. Ashwin Machanavajjhala and Neil Gong served as Program Committee… read more about Duke CS at ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) »
Duke CS-Economics double major Qi Xuan Koo won a Rhodes Scholarship, based on high academic achievement, personal integrity, and leadership potential. A Karsh International Scholar from Malaysia, Khoo researched developing ML predictive models for COVID infection based on wearables data, assisted professors investigating US Medicare fraud, analyzed county COVID-19 policies, and built an NC data pipeline for domestic violence shelters while at Duke. He's also a Woodman Scholar at Duke Economic Analytics Lab and an Arete… read more about Duke CS-Economics Major Qi Xuan Koo Wins a Rhodes Scholarship »
By Glenn McDonald Duke Computer Science assistant professor Pardis Emami-Naeini has a straightforward mission in her professional life – straightforward but not easy. She’s dedicated her career to making meaningful improvements in privacy and security for everyday computer users. That is to say, for pretty much everyone on the planet. “My research area is at the intersection of human computer interaction and security and privacy,” Emami-Naeini says. “I want… read more about Pardis Emami-Naeini: Dedicated to the Human Aspect of Privacy and Security »
Bruce Donald, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and professor in biochemistry and colleagues developed RESISTOR, an algorithm that uses protein structure-based computational design to predict how mutations in enzymes will affect a drug’s efficacy, especially when treating cancer. Cancer tumors often develop resistance to treatment, but this algorithm can predict those resistance mutations in advance, which could lead to better drug development and treatment plans. read more about Bruce Donald: Fighting Cancer with Algorithms »
By Glenn McDonald Data is everywhere. In the modern digitized world, data powers virtually every endeavor and transaction — from car loans to medical diagnoses to interstellar imaging. Data science, as such, is necessarily a deep and interdisciplinary field of study. Dr. Jian Pei, Duke’s newly appointed Professor of Computer Science, has dedicated his professional life to advancing the science of data and leveraging its… read more about Jian Pei: Working to Bring Equity and Efficiency to the Practical Applications of Data Science »
Duke CS and Biochemistry Associate Professor Alberto Bartesaghi and a research team including partners from the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI) received a federal grant of >$27M over 5 years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Bartesaghi co-directs the Structural Biology Core at the newly formed Duke Center for HIV Structural Biology (DCHSB), leading the development of computational techniques to enable the visualization of dynamic HIV-antibody… read more about Alberto Bartesaghi and Research Team Awarded Federal Grant to Build Structural Models of HIV »
Merrell Patrick, who helped establish the Department of Computer Science at Duke, passed away recently. Duke University flags will be lowered today in his honor. read more about In Memoriam: Duke CS Founder, Merrell Patrick »
Duke CS Associate Professor Sudeepa Roy has won the 2022 VLDB Early Career Research Contribution Award for her work on helping users to understand query results, and on generating explanations for the underlying computations. This award specifically recognizes a researcher who has demonstrated database research impact through a specific technical contribution of high significance since completing their PhD degree. The VLDB endowment awards ceremony and presentations will be held on Sept. 8, 2022 at the 48th… read more about Sudeepa Roy Wins 2022 Very Large Databases (VLDB) Early Career Award »
Duke CS undergrads Jenny Huang, Gaurav Parikh, and Albert Sun won the American Statistical Association (ASA) Data Challenge Expo this year! Coached by Cynthia Rudin and Lesia Semenova, the students' paper on Public Transit Policies to Promote Equitable Urban Mobility suggested that urban mobility and unequal commute data can guide policymakers to enact appropriate policies that enhance the accessibility of public transportation for everyone. Huang and Parikh presented their research at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)… read more about Duke CS Undergrad Team Wins ASA Data Challenge Expo 2022 »
Duke CS Assistant Professor Kartik Nayak and Yale CS Assistant Professor Fan Zhang received several grants from the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting the open-source blockchain technology that powers Ethereum. These grants will fund research to advance the Ethereum ecosystem: Disentangling Transaction Privacy and Consensus in Ethereum (Nayak and Zhang); Catching the ephemeral: Understanding blockchains through mempool data (Zhang and Nayak); and Improving Ethereum… read more about Duke CS Awarded Several Grants from the Ethereum Foundation »
CS+, our popular 10-week summer research program exclusively for Duke undergrads, recently concluded with an in-person symposium. CS+, Data+, Code+ and Climate+ Program participants also presented their creative and innovative research projects in a poster session. Over 100 students participated in the 2022 + programs, 49 posters were displayed and > 2/3 of students participating in + programs study CS. read more about 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research Programs Conclude with a Symposium and Poster Session »
NSF awarded Duke a $1.5 M grant to advance cybersecurity efforts as part of the $25.4 M Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) "Frontier" research program. With Indiana University as the lead institution, James B. Duke CS/ECE Distinguished Professor Mike Reiter is PI and Yale's Fan Zhang is Co-PI of the multi-institution and multi-disciplinary Center for Distributed Confidential Computing (CDCC) project at Duke. Researchers' goal is to provide solutions for protecting data-in-use, like… read more about NSF Awards $1.5M Grant to Duke for Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) Research »
NSF awarded a new STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship $1M+ grant over three years to The Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education. Duke Professor of the Practice of CS and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Dr. Nicki Washington is the PI, and co-PIs are Dr. Shani Daily, Professor of the Practice of ECE and CS and Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, James B. Duke Distinguished Sociology Professor. With three postdocs supporting Duke-related activities,… read more about NSF Awards STEM Education Postdoc Research Fellowship Grant »
Duke Computer Science Associate Professor Ashwin Machanavajjhala and PhD student Yuchao Tao, together with their collaborators at HKUST (including Duke CS PhD graduate Ke Yi), won the Best Paper Award in Data Management at SIGMOD 2022. Professor Pankaj Agarwal and collaborators won Test-of-Time PODS Paper Award for Mergeable Summaries. Duke Computer Science faculty and PhD students presented seven (7) research papers at the conference. SIGMOD PODS is a prestigious annual… read more about Duke Computer Science Wins Best Paper and Test-of-Time Awards at SIGMOD PODS 2022 »
Dr. Cynthia Rudin was nominated as a 2021-22 Chron15 Pioneer. Duke Chronicle readers identified leaders, pioneers and icons that make positive change in the community. Rudin, also the director of Duke's Interpretable ML Lab, was selected for her innovative research and design of interpretable forms of AI, and her approach to ML which has generated breakthrough results. Rudin's national recognition includes the 2021 AAAI Squirrel AI Award and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. read more about Rudin Selected as 2021-22 Chron15 Pioneer »
Congratulations to all recipients of the 2022 undergraduate student awards. Alex Vasilos Memorial Award Awarded to a graduating senior who completes an outstanding research project whose results should be published or of publishable quality with the intent to publish. In addition, this senior should have done excellent work in all computer science courses with a recognized joy of and appreciation for computer science as a discipline of study. Three students received this award.… read more about 2022 Undergraduate Awards »
Congratulations to all recipients of the 2022 undergraduate student awards. Alex Vasilos Memorial Award Awarded to a graduating senior who completes an outstanding research project whose results should be published or of publishable quality with the intent to publish. In addition, this senior should have done excellent work in all computer science courses with a recognized joy of and appreciation for computer science as a discipline of study. Three students received this award.… read more about Undergraduate Awards 2022 »