2019 winners

Undergraduate Awards Presented 2019

2019 winners

Congratulations to recipients of the 2019 undergraduate student awards presented at commencement ceremonies on May 12.

Alex Vasilos Memorial Award 

Friends and colleagues of the late Alex Vasilos donated the Alex Vasilos Memorial Award to the Department of Computer Science to recognize deserving students. This year's recipients:

Rohith Kuditipudi For first-rate research contributions in several areas, including generative adversarial networks, theoretical guarantees for learning neural networks, differential privacy and reinforcement learning; and for intellectual curiosity in the classroom.

Xingyu Chen For outstanding research contributions in developing a new model and algorithms for fairness in data clustering problems, for graduating with highest distinction, and for excellence in the classroom.

DeNardis Memorial Award 

Family, friends and colleagues of the late Rebecca DeNardis donated the Rebecca DeNardis Memorial Award to the Department of Computer Science to recognize deserving students for creating and instilling a sense of purpose and excellence. This year's recipients:

Natalie Cecile Huffman For her excellence in department leadership and as an exemplary undergraduate teaching assistant for multiple semesters, including leadership in the support of large courses, increasing the effectiveness of the undergraduate teaching assistant program, and fostering an inclusive environment for our students.

Yehan “Morton” Mo For his excellence as an undergraduate teaching assistant for multiple courses, including leadership in the support of auto-grading programming assignments for large courses, and the lead teaching assistant for a graduate course.

Undergraduate Senior Thesis Projects 

Graduation with Distinction is awarded to students who complete a substantial project that consists of at least one year's work, including an independent study under the guidance of a faculty member. The project represents a significant intellectual endeavor and requires a presentation made to a committee of three faculty members.

Graduation with Highest Distinction

Xingyu Chen Advisor: Kamesh Munagala – Proportionally Fair Clustering and Allocation

Aditya Sridhar Advisor: Krishnendu Chakrabarty – Efficient Algorithms for Design Automation of Flow-Based Microfluidic Biochips

Graduation with High Distinction

Luke Farrell Advisor: Greg Hershlag – Detecting Partisan Gerrymandering: Stratified Sampling the Space of Possible North Carolina Congressional Redistricting

Jacob Shulman Advisor: Greg Hershlag – Detecting Partisan Gerrymandering: Stratified Sampling the Space of Possible North Carolina Congressional Redistricting

Qusai Shabbir Hussain Advisor: Bruce Maggs – Blockchain Applications in Municipal Governments

Graduation with Distinction

Jiayi Tian Advisor: Rong Ge – Machine Learning in Stock Price Forecasting