UMN Hosts NSF-Sponsored Workshop on AI-Enabled Scientific Revolution
Research Showcase Returns
Table of Contents
Strategic Plan
Page 4-5
Research Showcase
Page 6-7
CRISPR Story
Page 8-13
NSF AI Workshop
Page 14-15
AI for a Changing World Page 16-17
News Highlights Page 18-23
Alumni & Student Spotlights Page 24-27
2024-25 Events Page 28-29
Invest in Computing Page 30
CS&E Donor Recognition Page 31
Letter from Dept. Head Mats Heimdahl
Welcome back! It has been an eventful year for CS&E - our faculty are excelling, we hosted our bi-annual Research Showcase, we hired three new tenure-track faculty members and four instructional staff, and we developed a new strategic plan aiming to build on our strengths, enhance our research mission, and modernize and enhance the educational mission. In this issue you will find our new strategic plan, a spotlight on Professor Chad Myers who earned multiple University honors and continued his groundbreaking work in systematic human genome mapping, and an update on the successes of our students, alumni, staff, and faculty. We look forward to acting on our strategic plan and expanding our fastgrowing department into newly renovated space in Shepherd Labs. Thanks to the generous individuals and organizations investing in our future, we have continued to grow and thrive as the world around us changes.
New Faculty Hires
Aryan Deshwal
Assistant Professor
Data Science and Machine Learning
Mai Al-Khatib
Lecturer
Computing Education
Caiwen Ding
Associate Professor
Computing Systems
Zirui (Ray) Liu
Assistant Professor
Data Science and Machine Learning
John Bartucz
Teaching Specialist
Computing Education
Shonal Gangopadhyay
Teaching Specialist
Computing Education
Daniel Orban
Lecturer
Computing Education
VISION
We are creating a new interdisciplinary paradigm for advancing the foundations of computing and addressing the challenges of society.
MISSION
Our mission is to serve the community by delivering the benefits of computing through conducting innovative research and educating tomorrow’s leaders.
CORE VALUES
Academic Freedom
Supporting the right to freely pursue and share knowledge in research and teaching.
Research Excellence
Pursuing high-quality, impactful research that advances the frontiers of computing knowledge, practice, and applications.
Teaching Effectiveness
Providing a high-quality undergraduate and graduate education.
Collegiality, Inclusivity, and Diversity
Nurturing a welcoming environment, productive relationships, and a culture of mutual respect for diverse identities.
Good Governance
Embracing collective decision-making while building flexible and responsive administrative practices.
• Create efficient management structures for sustained program growth.
Research Showcase
The CS&E Research Showcase is a bi-annual event that features the collective works of students and faculty in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. In fall 2023, the department hosted its first Research Showcase since before the pandemic. The event featured over 60 posters, as well as keynote addresses from Eugene Spafford, the founder and executive director of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) at Purdue University, and Ed Chi, CS&E alumni award winner and Distinguished Scientist at Google. Additionally, department faculty, alumni, and donors celebrated the careers of long-time CS&E professors Daniel Boley, David Du, Maria Gini, and Anand Tripathi at a banquet the night before the showcase.
Chad Myers walks with PhD students Arshia Zernab Hassan and Xiang Zhang who work together on CRISPR research.
Myers Leverages CRISPR Technology in First-of-its-Kind
Systematic Mapping Project
With the rise of services like 23andme and Ancestry.com, individuals have more information about their genetics than ever before. As more people participate in these services, researchers can study genetic data and start putting together the puzzle that explains why people do and don’t get certain diseases. There is not a one-to-one relationship between a gene and a disease; it is a complex array of factors and relationships between genes that today’s scientists are just starting to untangle.
Department of Computer Science & Engineering Professor Chad Myers has been working on decoding this complex network of genomic data for over a decade. His lab focuses on understanding gene function and leverages computational biology to make inferences about biological networks.
“Surprisingly with all the information scientists have gathered, machine learning models still don’t perform anywhere near as well as they should to predict who will actually get a disease,” Myers said. “We can get the genes, we can build models, but we are still not able to explain why these diseases are inherited in most cases. That is the basic problem we are working on - can we build better models that use genetic data to predict and reach their full potential?”
The Myers Lab has a wide range of projects looking at genes on a macro and micro scale. While his group continues to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning methods to analyze combinations of genes using data collected from the larger human population, he is also working to understand basic genetic relationships in a single cell line with the help of CRISPR technology. CRISPR (short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) is a technology that research scientists use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms.
“The CRISPR cell-line project is a systematic mapping project. CRISPR allows us to take a human cell line, introduce combinations of mutations into genes, and measure how much it affects their ability to grow in a dish. We are mapping a systematically surveyed network of these interactions in an exhaustive way so that we can start to generalize some rules around interactions between genes.”
The groundwork for this project began over a decade ago in a joint effort with his experimental collaborators at the University of Toronto. The project focused on genetic interactions in yeast cells. In 2016, Myers and Toronto’s Charlie Boone and Brenda Andrews published the first complete genetic interaction network for any species. The introduction of CRISPR technology opened the doors to expand this process to human cells.
“Very few people are doing systematic surveys of genetic interactions; that is what is unique about our project. In our yeast research, we mapped a social network of genes. So when we do these experiments, we are connecting genes that when deleted or mutated together, have a surprising effect on growth. Once you start analyzing that network, you can build a map of how everything is related. We are now applying that methodology to the human genome. Mapping these networks is a way to learn about how genes function, which can broadly push forward our knowledge of human biology and serve as the basis for other research endeavors.”
Using CRISPR technology, Myers’ experimental collaborators are able to conduct large-scale genetic screens in a controlled setting. In one set of dishes, CRISPR can test 18,000 combinations of mutations with a single gene over a two-week period. For each gene, multiple CRISPR guides cut the genome in three to four different places in different cells to average the observations in that gene. If all the cut areas have some mutations, they can be confident that the gene is important for growth.
“One surprising thing we learned in yeast is that out of 6,000 genes, only 1,000 or so are essential for growth. The same concept holds true in the human genome. Biological systems are extremely robust and can function
A global network of genetic interaction profile similarities for yeast genes.
and grow even with a number of mutations. There is a lot of interest in understanding how a system can be so robust in a pretty severe environment.”
The exploratory and systematic nature of this project requires a true team effort. After the success of the yeast project in 2016, Myers, Boone, and Andrews teamed up with Jason Moffat, an expert in human functional genomics at the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, to help transition from yeast to human cells. The team works together to design experiments and interpret the resulting data. The Toronto group carries out the large-scale CRISPR screens while the Myers Lab handles the interpretation of the huge amounts of sequencing data, which is used to understand the effects of the mutations introduced in each screen.
The Myers Lab is developing new machine learning-based methods to compute gene similarity networks from CRISPR screen data.
“My lab has developed new computational approaches to measure effects of gene mutations from CRISPR screen sequencing data and ensure we are measuring the right things. It is a complicated process. We have made a lot of progress in understanding the details of how CRISPR technology works in this setting, and the types of biases and experimental artifacts that show up as patterns in the resulting data. Data processing and statistical normalization approaches are critical to ensure we are capturing the correct information, measuring fitness and cell growth.”
The experimental and computational methods developed throughout the project will have lasting impacts on a broad range of genomic research efforts. The Myers Lab has published the methods they used to extract data from these CRISPR experiments, including how to score and normalize data, and understand patterns. Along the way, they have published many papers detailing the insights and learnings of applying machine learning and data mining to this unique type of data.
“That has been a key output of this work - understanding how to use CRISPR technology to get the measurements that we want and then interpreting them. This has been a long, iterative process to build a road map for this new technology in order for future researchers to generate tons of data that we can interpret reliably.”
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The Myers Lab is developing new computational tools for quantifying functional information captured by CRISPR screen data (this example from a recent software package, called FLEX).
In addition to the methods used in this multi-year project, the final dataset produced from the CRISPR findings will also serve as a launching pad for future genetic research. Similar to their previous work with yeast, this is a new type of network dataset that no one has ever published before, and can be integrated with a wealth of other human genomic data produced over the past two decades.
“Once we understand the principles for how genes interact using this cancer cell line in the lab, we and other researchers can use our dataset to do more research within real human populations. Each person has around one million mutations that uniquely distinguish them, which makes tracking down the effects of individual or combinations of mutations tricky. Starting with a cell line in which we can introduce two and only two mutations gives us a solid foundation to learn from. We are learning the principles of how and when genes interact with a hope to apply those learnings to other settings, like interpreting the variation that shows up in each of our genomes.”
This systematic survey of gene networks will also help researchers better understand the functions of genes, specific disease variants, and combinations of mutations that might impact phenotypes in humans.
“We are mapping the edges of a gene network, which will help us better define relationships between genes and start discovering how everything is connected. We can take a gene that we know little about, identify that it is clustered with these other genes, and use the commonalities in that cluster to get a better understanding of the gene in question.”
The CRISPR project is a marquee example of the impact bioinformatics and computational biology (BICB) can have across the scientific community. Myers has served as the co-director of graduate studies for the BICB program at the University of Minnesota since 2017, and helps students with backgrounds in computer science or biological sciences blend their skill sets to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues.
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“Computing as a basis for biomedical science is not going away; it is only going to grow in its role. All of these fields can benefit from the developments in machine learning and AI. Programs like BICB include a community of students with
Myers was named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and received the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education.
research questions spanning a wide range of biological areas. They get to learn from each other in a unique way.
I’m excited to see what kind of impact that will have at the University of Minnesota and research beyond the university setting. I’m excited to continue to teach at this intersection and mentor younger faculty as this field grows.”
In spring 2024, Myers was named a Distinguished McKnight University Professor, and received the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education for his work with the BICB program and beyond.
“In the computational biology space, there is a huge need for teachers. At the University of Minnesota, there’s an amazing medical school and a variety of biology disciplines from plant science to developmental biology to drug discovery. There is a demand for people in all of these areas to have computational skills to enable their research. Through the BICB program, we have taught several hundred students and given them their first exposure to using computers to solve problems and answer questions about biological data. That’s a very rewarding step to see students take.”
Learn more about the Myers Lab and the CRISPR project on the lab website.
UMN Hosts NSF-Sponsored Workshop on AI-Enabled Scientific Revolution
This summer, the University of Minnesota hosted two workshops focused on the role of AI in future scientific research and discovery. CS&E’s Vipin Kumar organized both workshops at the McNamara Alumni Center. The U of M welcomed leading AI researchers from around the country for the Second NSF-Sponsored Workshop on AI-Enabled Scientific Revolution. U of M Vice President for Research Shashank Priya opened the NSF workshop by highlighting the widespread enthusiasm about AI’s potential to improve research productivity. This meeting was followed the next day with a related workshop titled, Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning (KGML): A Framework for Accelerating Scientific Discovery.
AI for a Changing World
Zhi-Li Zhang Awarded
$4.25 Million NSF Grant for Autonomous Vehicle Research
The project titled, “Integrated Networking, Edge System and AI Support for Resilient and Safety-Critical Tele-Operations of Autonomous Vehicles”, aims to facilitate safe and incremental adoption of teleoperated AVs to address societal challenges in transportation, while accelerating AV technology towards full autonomy.
Curbing Climate Change with Artificial Intelligence
The $20M AI-CLIMATE Institute will create and leverage novel AI methods to revolutionize the agriculture and forestry industries, prioritizing climatesmart practices in efforts to curb climate change by reducing emissions from and absorbing atmospheric carbon into land.
GroupLens: A HumanCentered Approach to AI
With the emergence of publicly-available AI tools like ChatGPT, the world is abuzz with the possibilities and risks that AI brings to the table. Embedding human values into AI systems is a necessary and complicated step that involves a variety of technical and societal factors.
The GroupLens Lab is taking a humancentered approach to computing that is grounded in current practices and experiment-based innovation.
George Karypis Part of $4.5 Million Grant to Apply Machine Learning to Material Sciences
The four-year project will establish foundational machine learning models that can be applied to material sciences. This new model called FERMat will use machine learning techniques to understand the underlying physics in materials sciences in order to build a model that is generalizable to a variety of applications. This joint effort includes collaborators Ellad Tadmor from the University of Minnesota, and researchers from New York University and the University of Florida, as well as industry support from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Yoga Varatharajah Combats Clinician Burnout with AI
Varatharajah aims to develop AI methods to help interpret tests, optimize treatment decisions, and improve patient outcomes. Specifically, he is working on several clinical applications in the neurological space, such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and psychiatric illnesses. For his work, Varatharajah earned a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Ju Sun Receives $4.5M in Funding for Medical AI Projects and Beyond
Sun’s Group of Learning, Optimization, Vision, healthcare, and X (GLOVEX) works at the intersection of machine and deep learning, numerical optimization, computer vision, and data science, with an aspiration to push the frontiers of AI in order to tackle major unsolved problems in science, engineering, and medicine.
The $4.5M grant will fund multiple projects, including using computer vision to analyze and detect tics in Tourette’s Syndrom patients.
News Highlights
Yao-Yi Chiang Named Chair of First DEI Committee for ACM SIGSPATIAL
Yao-Yi Chiang was appointed the chair for the first ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee for the ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information (SIGSPATIAL). The committee is dedicated to advancing the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. CS&E PhD students Jina Kim and Min Namgung co-organized the first networking event for female researchers at the 2022 ACM SIGSPATIAL conference and will also serve on the committee.
Two New Faculty Members Earn CAREER Awards
Caiwen Ding and Yogatheesan Varatharajah have each received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This prestigious award provides support to earlycareer faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Varatharajah’s work focused on machine learning in healthcare, while Ding’s covers computer architecture and systems engineering.
Shana Watters Earns the Women’s Center Charlotte Striebel Equity Award
Shana Watters has earned the Office for Equity and Diversity, Women’s Center’s 2023-2024 Charlotte Striebel Equity Award. The award recognizes a University of Minnesota faculty or staff member who goes above and beyond daily responsibilities to promote access for the common good, to undo bias and discrimination, or to build capacity for diverse and equitable campus communities. Watters also earned the University of Minnesota Provost’s Unit Service Award in 2023 for her countless service contributions to the department.
Vipin Kumar Leads $1.2M Grant on Deep Learning for Inverse Modeling & Collaborates on Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine
The inverse modeling project will develop a new methodology to tackle inverse problems in environmental sciences by leveraging the power of big data and the knowledge-guided machine learning framework pioneered by Vipin Kumar.
Kumar’s team will start building this new methodology for inverse modeling in the context of understanding the water cycle and contamination in the environment.
Kumar will also serve as a key partner with the team that is part of the NSF-funded Regional Innovation Engines award. The regional consortium Great Lakes ReNEW will receive up to $160 million over the next 10 years to develop and grow a water-focused innovation engine in the Great Lakes region.
Dan Knights Utilizes AI to Predict Emissions on Ships
Dan Knights is utilizing artificial intelligence to predict the carbon emissions of ships on the ocean. Shipping accounts for a significant fraction of the total global carbon emissions, and most ships in the ocean are not currently required to report their emissions or fuel efficiency. Knights’ work is intended to help paint a fuller picture of the actual shipping emissions for individual vessels.
Yao-Yi Chiang Receives $3.2M Grant to Leverage AI in Predicting Mineral Deposits
Yao-Yi Chiang won two contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Critical Mineral Assessments with AI Support (CriticalMAAS) program (with the Information Sciences Institute and InferLink Corporation). With a collective $3.2 million in funding, Chiang and team will work to develop AI methods for predicting critical mineral deposits in the United States.
Dongyeop Kang Developed AI-Based Text Editing System for High-Level Writing
Dongyeop Kang introduced a refined artificial intelligencebased text editing system to provide writing assistance. In collaboration with researchers at Grammarly, CoEdIT aims to assist in more complicated editing tasks by providing an interactive collaboration experience.
Enhancing Autonomous Underwater Robot Perception for Aquatic Species Management
Junaed Sattar is a co-Principal Investigator on the interdisciplinary team that earned a $200K grant from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment (IonE). The two-year project titled, “Technology & Education to Address Natural Resource Management Challenges: Phase 2”, will explore invasive species modeling using autonomous underwater robots. Sattar’s team has developed a set of affordable, open-source underwater robots that can collect data in an interactive manner. Moving forward, the team also wants to increase the robot’s use cases and the types of data they can collect.
Jacquelyn Burt Earns 2024 John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising
Jacquelyn Burt joined CS&E student services team in 2019, where she quickly developed a reputation as a staunch ally and advocate for her students. In 2021, Jacquelyn received the Gopher Spirit Award, recognizing the U of M advisor who contributes to a positive office culture, is inclusive, and brings others up. Named in honor of John Tate, Professor of Physics and first Dean of University College (193041), the Tate Award serves to recognize and reward high-quality academic advising, calling attention to the contribution academic advising makes to helping students formulate and achieve intellectual, career, and personal goals. Burt is a lifelong Gopher, earning her BS in business marketing education in 2014 and her MEd in education policy and leadership in 2019.
Catherine Qi Zhao Earns 2024 George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Research
Catherine Qi Zhao earned the award for her contributions to research in the areas of artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, and AI for humans. Established in 1982, the Taylor Award for Distinguished Research recognizes younger faculty members who have shown outstanding ability in research. The award includes a $5,000 grant for professional development in teaching and research.
Phil Barry Earns UMN Provost’s Unit Service Award
Phil Barry earned the University of Minnesota Provost’s Unit Service Award for his countless service contributions to the department. In particular, this award honors Barry’s tireless efforts to make sure courses are scheduled and students are well served with the course offerings. For over 25 years, Barry has been intimately involved in the curriculum development, course scheduling, and teaching assignments in the department.
CS&E Earns Three Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Showcase Awards
Maria Gini earned a faculty award, and Nhi Dang and Lauren Hagen earned undergraduate student awards at the 2024 DEI Leadership Showcase at the University of Minnesota. Gini has spearheaded a number of DEI-related efforts within the department, as well as at the national and international level. Dang earned the award in large part for her work as a teaching assistant. Hagen is a recent CS&E graduate and served as the president of oSTEM.
Broadening Participation in ClimateSmart Agriculture and Forestry
As computer scientists in the $20M AI-CLIMATE Institute work to develop a platform that delivers individualized recommendations to farmers, the broadening participation team, led by Delaware State University’s Rose Ogutu and CS&E’s Maria Gini, will talk to farmers and foresters from diverse backgrounds in order to incorporate their knowledge into the final product. With the ultimate goal of mitigating the effects of climate change, buy-in from individual farmers and foresters is crucial to improving the carbon footprint across the nation. In addition to broadening participation within farming and forestry communities, this work will help develop and educate a diverse AI workforce.
Chang Ge, Yao-Yi Chiang Support
NSF Convergence Accelerator Phase
1 Project at UMN
Chang Ge and Yao-Yi Chiang are part of an interdisciplinary research team that is developing Aquasense, a low-cost, compact, easy-to-use, rapid water quality sensor platform enabled by artificial intelligence. Chiang’s work will focus on developing AI and machine learning models to predict the water quality in locations without sensors. With the help of Ge, all private data will be accessible for machine learning predictions without compromising its security and privacy requirements.
Alumni & Student Spotlights
Mashaal Musleh Wins Best Demo Award
at 2023 ACM-SIGMOD
PhD candidate Mashaal Musleh, advised by Mohamed Mokbel, specializes in spatial data management, which focuses on location-based data. Specifically, the system he created, named KAMEL, adapts artificial intelligence models to trajectory data in order to make predictions about locations. The demo showcases KAMEL’s ability to use AI to predict the unknown or missing locations within a trajectory of a moving object. This technology can be used to improve the accuracy of maps, routing, traffic prediction, and other spatial applications.
Alum Anuj Karpatne Featured at White House Event for AI Research
CS&E alumnus Anuj Karpatne (PhD, 2017) recently presented his work at a special White House event hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on “Opportunities at the AI Research Frontier”. Karpatne’s team is part of the first round of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resources (NAIRR) pilot program, which is enabling researchers to leverage the nation’s computing resources to advance the field of AI. Karpatne is an associate professor at Virginia Tech.
Somya Sharma Chatterjee Wins SDM24 Best Application Paper Award
CS&E PhD student Somaya Sharma Chatterjee was the first author of a paper that earned the Best Application Paper Award at the 2024 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) International Conference on Data Mining (SDM24) Conference. Sharma’s research, under advisor Vipin Kumar, focuses on predicting the possible spread of prescribed fires using machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Four CS&E Students Earn Honorable Mention for CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award
Undergraduate students Athreyi Badithela, Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman, Ryan Koo, and Alice Qian Zhang earned an honorable mention for the 2023-24 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award (URA) from the Computing Research Association (CRA). DeGuzman (pictured here) is researching cybersickness with advisor Evan Suma Rosenberg, specifically how to help users who get extreme motion sickness because of the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Alumni & New CS&E Lecturer Daniel Orban
Discusses His Work with CreateMPLS
Daniel Orban is a CS&E alum with a BS (2002), MS (2019), and PhD (2021) in computer science. He was a teacher at CreateMPLS, a non-profit program that teaches computer science programming to middle school and high school students across the Twin Cities. He was also named a semi-finalist of the 2023 Carlson School of Management’s MN Cup. Orban recently joined CS&E as a lecturer.
Alumni & Student Spotlights
2024-25 Scholarship Recipients
Anesa Bihi
Anthony Brogni
Leo Curtis
Nhi Dang
Skyler Dargis
Alexandra Delacruz
Ryan Diaz
Tripp Dow
Peter Du
Ryan Erickson
Keezhan Hamasoor
Aman Hassan
Asma Hassan
Henry Hoang
Abdirahman Ibrahim
Duncan Joly
Kanishk Kacholia
Janani Kannan
Devajya Khanna
Mohamed Khalil
Jinglin Li
Heaven Lindenstruth
Loren Liu
Alex Lovely
Akshara Molleti
Samarth Nand
Zoey Ponnie
Kavya Prasad
Hamza Raage
Benjamin Sebastian
Baanee Singh
Kateryna Slobozhan
Ava Smith
Amoligha Timma
Nishtha Verma
Christopher Wikstrom
Ahmed Yasser
CS&E Undergraduate Team Advances to ICPC National Competition
CS&E undergraduates Kien Pham, Khoi Duong, and Nont Suphap secured second place at the 2023 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) North Central North America Regional Contest. Their team, emplace_back, solved 9 of 12 problems, advancing to the national ICPC competition. Two other University of Minnesota teams finished in the top 10 of the competition. The ICPC is a competitive, team-based programming competition for college students worldwide.
Creating a Safe Space for Hispanics in STEM
Maria Paula Cadena Amortegui wants to make sure that we bring more Hispanics into computer science, especially Latina women. Only 2% of professionals in STEM are Latina, and she hopes that we can bring in more women, uplift more women, and have more resources for them. She also want to create a welcoming environment so they don’t feel alone.
Yixuan Wang Wins Best Student Paper at IEEE Conference
CS&E PhD student Yixuan Wang, advised by Abhishek Chandra and Jon Weissman, won the Best Student Paper award at the IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Communication (IEEE EDGE 2023) for her paper titled, “Social Quorum-Based Access Control for Open Internet of Things (IoT) Environmental (SQuBA)”. Wang’s research ensures that only the correct people - family, friends, or the owner - have access to these devices. By examining how people interact with privacy and the social relationships between users, she was able to see that these relationships that the owner has with their friends or family, and trust are important when giving access to devices.
Honoring Distinguished CS&E Alum Arvind
Arvind Mithal passed away on June 17, 2024. Arvind, who went by the mononym, was 77 years old. A dual alumni of the University of Minnesota, Arvind earned the Distinguished Alumni Award from CS&E in 2001, as well as the Outstanding Achievement Award from the U of M in 2008. Arvind was a prolific researcher, dedicated teacher at MIT, and academic leader in computer architectures, parallel computing, and digital design, enabling faster and more efficient computation.
Code Freeze 2025 | Back to the Future: Architecture and Design for the New Era
There is no doubt - as systems evolve, so does complexity. As software engineering advances, core engineering concepts grow increasingly indispensable. For Code Freeze 2025, we are reexamining the notion of “tried and true” in software design and architecture by developing anti-hype patterns. We will explore how the foundational principles that have guided engineering for decades are evolving to meet today’s demands. The goal is not merely to revisit the past, but to critically evaluate how classic methodologies stand up to modern challenges and assess how traditional principles are adapting to and fueling innovation.
Fall Colloquium Speakers
Yiran Chen (Duke University) - CRAY
Rui Zhang (U of Minnesota)
9/23
Brad Holschuh (U of Minnesota)
Guoliang Xue (Arizona State)
Ruofei Du (Google)
Catherine Qi Zhao (U of Minnesota)
Alex Kamenev (U of Minnesota)
Kenneth Brown (Duke University) - CRAY
Ayse K. Coskun (Boston University) - CRAY
Mark Guzdial (U of Michigan) - CARLIS
Tabitha Peck (Davidson College)
Vlad Pribiag (U of Minnesota)
Noah Smith (U of Washington) - CRAY Jenette Wing (Colombia University) - CRAY
2024-25 Events
THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE
Tuesday, October 1, 2024 @ Urban Growler
Alumni discussion with featured faculty titled, “Thirst for Knowledge: Exploring VR, AR & Visualization”
CODE FREEZE
Thursday, January 16, 2025 @ McNamara Alumni Center
Back to the Future: Architecture and Design for the New Era
All events are subject to change.
The Cray Distinguished Speaker Series was established in 1981 by an endowment from Cray Research. It continues to bring distinguished visitors to the Department of Computer Science & Engineering every year.
The John V. Carlis Memorial Lecture Series is dedicated to the advancement of education and inclusion in the field of computing, and is named in honor of Professor John Carlis, who passed away in February 2018.
Invest in the Future of Computing
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Please consider a gift in support of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering today.
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We recognize the generosity of those in our community who have invested in the future of the department over the past year. Thank you so much for your support! Gifts listed are from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024.
Thank You Donors
Gifts of $1,000 or more
3M Company and 3M Foundation
Accenture LLP and Accenture Foundation
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Boston Scientific Employee Giving
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J. Andrew and Gary S. Whitford Holey
James M. & Lynne M. Plasek
Jeanne M. Blaskowski
Jessica F. Kennedy
Jody A. & Daniel R. Leth
John W. Kerr
Joseph M. Plasek
Judith P. & Vinay Khanna
Justin & Becky Grammens
Karen L. & Jared T. Sperry
Karen L. Chandler & Craig S. Schulz
Karl P. & Mary A. Keel
Kenneth A. Williams
Kenneth J. Lawrence
Kent B. Mein
Komal Kashiramka
Kurt M. Wilms
Poznanovic Family Fund at Fidelity Charitable
Quang Tran Inc
Ralph and Grace Strangis
Richard and Beverly Mast
Rynda N. Carlis
Sandra L. Johnson
Shyong K. Lam
Shyong’s Giving Account at Schwab Charitable
Signal Foundation for Wireless Innovation Inc
United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI)
VivaQuant LLC
Welch Charitable Fund-Renaissance Charitable
Foundation Inc
Yan Sang & Eunice Lee
Lori L. Dietrich and Steven J. Piazza
Mark W. & Linda K. Skogman
Marlys A. Kohnke
Medtronic and Medtronic Foundation
Miller Family Fund at Schwab Charitable
Patrick & Michelle Hillmeyer Family Fund-Fidelity
Charitable
Patrick A. & Michelle Hillmeyer
Peter D. Clark & Molly McBeath
Peter M. Sandvik & Fatemeh Shahedipour-Sandvik
Ravishanker V. Nandiwada
Raymond L. Slisz
Richard C. Booth
Richard J. and Nancy S. Hedger
Richard J. Roiger
Richard J. Schultz
Robbi T. & Carmen M. Thompson
Robert D. & Carolyn Albright
Robin S. & Pamela M. Ehrlich
Ronald J. Vetter
Russell C Heinselman
Sally L. Palm
Sean M. McNee
Shana K. Watters
SIFT, LLC
Simon S. Shim
Steven R. & Roxanne M. Englund
Teofilo F. Gonzalez
Thomas M Niccum & Nancy A Dowling
Charity Fund
Thomas M. Niccum and Nancy A. Dowling
Thomas W. & Jenny W. Wilson
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans Fdn
Tianshi Xu
Timothy L. Dirr
Tina & Christopher Lund
Verlyn M. Johnson
Vicraj T. & Jill A. Thomas
Wallace E. & Virginia Flatgaard
Wayne A. & Anne M. Schmieg
Wayne A. Michaelson
Workday Foundation
Yiming Shi
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
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Photo credits: Bruce Silcox Photography, Craig Bares Photography, Malyssa Mavetz
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