Mohsen Imani Receives DARPA Young Faculty Award

Each year, through the Young Faculty Award (YFA) program, DARPA identifies “rising stars” in research positions, supporting their work in the context of national security needs. This year, DARPA selected UC Irvine’s Assistant Professor of Computer Science Mohsen Imani as one of those rising stars.

“This accolade is bestowed upon only around 20 exceptional emerging talents,” says Tony Givargis, chair of the Department of Computer Science in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). “In particular, Mohsen has been granted $1 million to spearhead research on hyperdimensional computing as a neuro-symbolic AI technique, aiming to facilitate transparent and efficient learning and cognitive computation.”

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New Findings on CAPTCHAs Attract Worldwide Attention

Sample CAPTCHA

“Select all images with chimneys.” How many times were you inconveniently interrupted and asked to look through a group of photos to prove that you’re human? Although such CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) tasks have been used for two decades to boost online security against bots, they’re annoying and burdensome to users. So, when a recent study presented at the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium suggested that CAPTCHAs are no longer effective, it garnered widespread attention.

“I am happy that the results have fueled mainstream technology discussions,” says Andrew Searles, a Ph.D. student in UC Irvine Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) who led the study. “It has been exciting to watch the propagation of news outlets covering my work!”

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ICS Summer Academy 2023: An ‘Incredible’ College Experience for High School Students

If “beach days” and “learning loss” is all that comes to mind when you think of high school students on summer break in Southern California, then you haven’t met any of the students who attended UC Irvine’s ICS Summer Academy. Housed in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), the academy hosted 45 local high school students this summer on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., giving them the opportunity to learn about data science and machine learning, and apply their new knowledge and skills to a real-world problem. Plenty of social activities were included as well for the perfect blend of college academics and summer fun.

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Mandt Appointed Program Chair for AISTATS 2024

stephenMandt

Associate Professor of Computer Science and Statistics Stephan Mandt has been selected as the program chair for the 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS), scheduled to take place from May 2-4, 2024, in Spain. AISTATS stands as a premier conference at the intersection of artificial intelligence and statistics, drawing approximately 800 participants and garnering roughly 2,500 paper submissions. Mandt’s role overseeing the technical program activities underscores his exceptional capabilities and the trust the community places in his expertise. 

Tsudik Delivers Keynote at ICCCN 2023

Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Gene Tsudik gave a keynote talk Wednesday titled “Compromise/Malware Detection vs. Avoidance for Low-End Embedded/Smart/IoT Devices” at the 32nd International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2023). The conference, technically co-sponsored by IEEE and the IEEE Communication Society, was held in Honolulu from July 24-26, and serves one of the leading international conferences for presenting novel ideas and fundamental advances in the fields of computer communications and networks.

ICS Researchers Receive Best Paper Award at Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium

Ofek Gila
Michael Goodrich

A conversation between two scholars that started at a conference in Italy — and continued on a connecting flight to Newark, New Jersey — sparked an idea that led to an award-winning paper. As Michael Goodrich, a Distinguished Professor of computer science at UC Irvine, chatted with Turing-Award winner Robert Tarjan, they came up with some preliminary ideas regarding a new type of binary search tree. Goodrich later shared the ideas with Ofek Gila, his Ph.D. student in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS).

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Sang-Woo Jun’s Work Selected for ISCA’s 25-Year Retrospective

Five years ago, as a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sang-Woo Jun co-authored a paper suggesting a novel way to boost system efficiency without sacrificing performance. The paper, “GraFboost: Using Accelerated Flash Storage for External Graph Analytics,” discussed a way to design algorithms and physical systems using solid-state secondary storage (such as solid-state drives) instead of the main memory (dynamic RAM) for I/O intensive graph analytics.

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UC Irvine to Compete at World Finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest

UC Irvine, after earning a bronze medal at the North American Championship of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), now qualifies for the World Finals in Egypt this November. ICPC, the oldest and largest programming contest, describes the competition as follows: “Each year, an elite group of the brightest collegiate problem solvers on the planet comes together to compete [at] the ICPC World Finals.” This year, that elite group will include three students from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS):

  • computer science freshman Elijah Huang,
  • computer science junior Jerry Li, and 
  • computer science and math (double major) sophomore Thomas Neill.

Assistant Professor of Teaching Michael Shindler, who helps organize the various UCI teams competing in ICPC — including this award-winning UCI Map team — will join the students in Egypt.

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Cheng Zhang Receives Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

On June 11, 2023, ACM SIGGRAPH announced the recipient of the 2023 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, recognizing Cheng Zhang “for a dissertation presenting significant advances in physics-based rendering and providing both practical tools and theoretical foundations for future differentiable rendering algorithms.”

Zhang, advised by Professor Shuang Zhao, earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) in June 2022 and is now a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs.

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