Duke CS won second place in the Bell Labs Prize 2023 competition, which recognizes game-changing innovations. The Duke CS team — Cynthia Rudin, Margo Seltzer (Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia), plus Duke PhD students Chudi Zhong and Jiachang Liu — received the award for their entry "A New Frontier for Trustworthy AI: Interpretable ML Algorithms that Produce All Good Models.” This is breakthrough research in interpretable ML, which includes powerful… read more about Duke CS Wins Second Place in Bell Labs 2023 Prize Competition »
Duke CS undergrads Harry Chen, Allan Guo, Eric Song, and Gaurav Parikh (now PhD student) won the American Statistical Association (ASA) Data Challenge Expo this year! Coached by Cynthia Rudin and Lesia Semenova, the students' paper on Cannabis and Crime provided a Causal Analysis of the Impact of Legalization on Crime. They presented their work at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in August. Congratulations! read more about Duke CS Team Wins ASA Data Challenge Expo 2023 »
In recognition of her teaching excellence and dedication to pedagogical equity, Earl D. McLean, Jr. Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Cynthia Rudin received the prestigious 2022-2023 David and Janet Vaughan Brooks Teaching Award from Duke University's Trinity College. Professor and Chair of Duke Computer Science Jian Pei stated that "Professor Rudin's devotion to education, expertise, and innovative approach stand as a true inspiration. This remarkable achievement is a testament to her… read more about Cynthia Rudin Receives Brooks Teaching Award »
Danfeng Zhang is a new associate research professor of Computer Science. Joining Duke from Penn State, Zhang’s research focuses on programming languages and on techniques that identify and correct potentially damaging software vulnerabilities. Can you tell us about your current research projects and expertise? My first research project is on data privacy. With cloud computing and big data, personal data is at risk of exposure and abuse by third parties. When you use an app, you have to… read more about How Studying Programming Languages Can Make Software Error-Free and Secure »
Lisa Mogensen, Duke CS-Econ Alumna and Fuqua MBA, was named CFO of RiskOptics (formerly Reciprocity), a company that develops and manages information security risk and compliance. In this role, Mogensen directs all financial matters with the goal of continuing to grow RiskOptics’ customer base and revenue. Mogensen has extensive financial and operating management experience with tech companies like TheStreet, Return Path, Valiant, 4C Insights, and more in SaaS, data analytics, AI, and Crypto. read more about RiskOptics Names Duke CS-Econ Alumna Lisa Mogensen as CFO »
Professor Jian Pei has been named chair of Duke Computer Science, effective July 1, 2023. Dr. Pei is Arthur S. Pearse Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Duke, and also Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Pei assumes the CS department chair role from outgoing chair Jun Yang, who said "With his exceptional qualifications, vision, and collegiality, I am confident that Jian will excel as the next leader of our department." Yang was commended… read more about Jian Pei Named Chair of Duke Computer Science »
Congratulations to Sydney Hunt, Duke CS-ECE '23 on being selected from more than 7,000 applicants to become a 2023 Knight-Hennessy scholar! Hunt will pursue a PhD in EE at Stanford University. read more about Duke CS-ECE grad Sydney Hunt Receives Knight-Hennessy Scholarship »
Duke CS '94 alumnus Clay Goldwein is Senior Vice President of National Security and Justice at CGI Federal. During his long-time role as a defense and national security consultant at CGI Federal, he has helped various government agencies and federal customers realize their IT, cloud, cybersecurity, and digital capabilities. The recipient of two US patents during, Goldwein is a highly accomplished digital transformation executive who oversees a wide range of technical domains and modernization projects for federal, state,… read more about Duke CS Major Clay Goldwein is Sr. VP of National Security and Justice at CGI Federal »
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… 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… 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… 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… 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, Professor and now chair of Duke's department of Computer Science in 2023, has dedicated his professional life to advancing the science of data… 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 »