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News and Announcements

  • The ACM recently announced the winners of five prestigious awards honoring innovations in computing technology that benefit society through their profound impact on the way we live and work. One of the awardees is URCS alumna Corinna Cortes.

    Corinna Cortes (Ph.D. '94) and Vladimir Vapnik, have won the Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, for their revolutionary development of a highly effective algorithm known as Support Vector Machines (SVM), a set of related supervised learning methods used for data classification and regression common in the field of artificial intelligence.

  • Henry Kautz joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester this fall, after a career as a professor at the University of Washington and a research scientist and department head at AT&T Bell Laboratories. (UR Press Release.) His contributions to artificial intelligence include:
    • Fundamental results on the complexity of temporal and nonmonotonic reasoning;
    • Fast stochastic search algorithms for solving constraint satisfaction problems;
    • Methods for speeding up inference by knowledge compilation;
    • Developing the planning as satisfiability framework, the best known method for optimal deterministic planning, as shown in the 2004 and 2006 International Planning Competitions;
    • Statistical-relational methods for learning pattern of human behavior;
    • The Assisted Cognition Project, which is combining work in AI, human-computer interaction, sensing, and ubiquitous computing to create assistive technology for persons with cognitive disabilities.
    Dr. Kautz is a recipient of the Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. His academic degrees include an A.B. in mathematics from Cornell University, an M.A. in creative writing from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester.

  • Here is the current issue of our yearly departmental newsletter, which contains all sorts of news and information about the department: 2008-2009 Departmental Newsletter. Back issues:

  • Professor Michael L. Scott and URCS alumnus John Mellor-Crummey '90, now associate professor of computer science at Rice University, were awarded the 2006 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing for their 1991 paper, "Algorithms for Scalable Synchronization on Shared-Memory Multiprocessors." (UR Press Release.) Previously knows as the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) Influential Paper Award, the Dijkstra Prize is awarded to an outstanding paper that has had a proven impact on the theory and practice of distributed computing for at least a decade. Scott and Mellor-Crummey will receive the Dijkstra Prize of $1000 at the 25th Annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, held July 23-26 in Denver. The Dijkstra Prize is the highest recognition given by the distributed systems theory community.

  • Senior David Eisenstat has been selected as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow by the Army Research Office. He will pursue a Ph.D. at Princeton University this fall.

  • UR Undergrads Victorious at CS Games Competition, March 3-5, 2006 in Montreal, Quebec
    , consisted of 5 returning members of last year
    U of R Team

    U of R Team
    "Leeroy Jenkins"

    Front Row: Dan Mullowney, David Lu (holding CS CUP), David Sloan; Back Row: Harry Glaser, Tom O'Neill, Mike Rotondo and Will deBeaumont

    A team of seven URCS undergraduate students attended the CS Games Competition March 3-5 at the Ecole de Technologie Superieure in Montreal, Quebec. As one of 33 teams participating in the international competition, we had representatives in each of 14 events. Our team excelled in Xtreme Programming, Algorithms, Debugging and several other categories, but it was our consistent placing in the top ten on almost all events that eventually gave the team the first place trophy. The U of R team, self-named "Leeroy Jenkins" after a video game, included seniors David Sloan and Will deBeaumont, and juniors David Lu, Dan Mullowney, Harry Glaser, Tom O'Neill and Mike Rotondo. Each student competed in a variety of events and contributed significantly to the win. The trophy CS Cup, much like the Stanley Cup in hockey, will stay with the winning team till next year's competition at which point our team hopes to keep it in Rochester for another year. Kudos to all of you for such a fine job!

  • Seniors David Ganzhorn, Michael Rotondo (both CSC) and Allison Rosenberg (LIN) have been chosen to be KEY Scholars. KEY (Kauffman Entrepreneurial Year) students are funded by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to study and practice entrepreneurship. Students are allowed to devote one or two semesters, tuition-free, in their fifth year. The University of Rochester defines entrepreneurship as "transforming an idea into an enterprise that generates value", implying that the enterprise outlives the creator and that it positively affects others. The KEY Project that was proposed by David, Michael & Allison is "Creating a Video Game Softare Company: The Value of Fun." Both David and Michael took Ted Pawlicki's software engineering "gaming" course and have been continuing to research the many aspects of designing and marketing video games.

  • URCS Assistant Professor Daniel Gildea has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career s winning team. Veterans David Lu Development (CAREER) grant for his work in Semantics for Statistical Machine Translation. NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty, the CAREER grant provides five years of funding for s winning team. Veterans David Lu “those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.” Congratulations, Dan!

  • Senior David Eisenstat has been named the Winner of the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award for 2005-2006. David was selected from a very competitive field of computer science undergraduates. David received exceptional letters of recommendation regarding his research and academic performance from professors at UR, Yale and Lafayette College. He has also had two papers accepted at upcoming conferences. This prestigious honor is a first for an undergraduate from our department. Gautam Altekar '04 was a finalist for the 2003-2004 award. David will attend CRA's Conference at Snowbird, Utah, on June 25, 2006 to receive his award.

  • Programming Language Pragmatics The second edition of Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael L. Scott (Morgan Kaufmann, 900pp) was released Nov. 7, 2005. The first edition was also recently released in Simplified Chinese. 

  • Daniel Stefankovic joins URCS Faculty
    We are delighted to announce that Dr. Daniel Stefankovic has joined our department as an assistant professor. Daniel's Ph.D. is from the University of Chicago. His interests are in theoretical computer science, in particular: algorithmic problems on curves on surfaces, Markov chain sampling, algorithmic game theory, graph drawing, and applications of discrete and continuous Fourier transforms. Daniel, together with Marcus Schaefer, solved a 30 year 07, Dan Mullowney old problem of Sinden, Graham, and Kratochvil, showing that "string graphs" (i.e., intersection graphs of Jordan curves in the plane) can be algorithmically recognized. In joint work with Marcus Schaefer and 07, Dan Mullowney Eric Sedgwick he developed polynomial-time algorithms for classic algorithmic problems on simple curves in surfaces, which led to a complete resolution of the complexity of the string graph problem.

  • URCS Wins 2004 Goergen Award for Curricular Achievement in Undergraduate Education
    Mitsu Ogihara accepts the Goergen Award The Undergraduate Curriculum of the Computer Science Department was the co-winner of the 2004 Goergen Award for Curricular Achievement, an annual award established by trustee Robert Goergen and his wife Pamela in 1995. The award was presented to chairman Mitsu Ogihara by Dean William Green on Sept. 10th at Convocation.

    The proposal focused on our curriculum, where we seek to build well-rounded, liberally-educated computer scientists along lines that are broadly accepted in the computer science community. Further, through our course content, our laboratory facilities, our research-intensive class assignments and our group-project orientation, our curriculum seeks to instill in students the skills of a researcher.

    Mitsu Ogihara accepting the Goergen Award at 2004 Convocation Ceremony
    Some of the strongest components of the document were the supporting letters from our alumni and current students. Many thanks to all who contributed to the final proposal!
  • A gift from Sun Microsystems Laboratories, valued at over $400,000, has provided the department with a 16-processor SunFire 6800 multiprocessor. This machine complements a smaller 07, Mike Rotondo 8-processor machine provided by Sun a year ago. Both are used primarily for research in synchronization and concurrent data structures, in collaboration with the Scalable Synchronization Research Group at Sun Labs, Boston. The machines are available not only to members of the local synchronization group, headed by Prof. Michael Scott, but to partners of Sun at other schools as well.

  • Theory of Semi-Feasible Algorithms The textbook Theory of Semi-Feasible Algorithms 07, Tom O (Springer-Verlag, 2003), by URCS faculty member Lane A. Hemaspaandra and 07, Tom O University of Amsterdam faculty member Leen Torenvliet, is now released and available. This book presents a consolidated survey of the vibrant field of research known as the theory of semi-feasible algorithms. (Click on the thumbnail for a close-up of the pretty cover.)



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