A Look at Health and Technology Trends for 2021 and Beyond

The fields of computer science, informatics and statistics have been influencing healthcare for decades, and 2020 served as an important reminder of the critical role both healthcare and technology play in people’s daily lives. The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on healthcare, while stay-at-home orders significantly boosted technology use in general and telehealth practices in particular. Looking to the new year ahead, how might the connections between technology and health become further entwined, and how will this impact the future of healthcare? Here to address these questions are three professors from the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS):

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Professor Sharad Mehrotra Named IEEE Fellow

On Dec. 9, 2020, IEEE announced the select group of members it would recognize in 2021 as IEEE Fellows. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation, and part of this select group for 2021 was Sharad Mehrotra, a professor of computer science in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). He was recognized for “contributions to the fields of data management and multimedia information retrieval.”

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Computer Science and Software Engineering Professional Programs Showcase Student Success

On Dec. 17, 2020, the Master of Computer Science (MCS) and Master of Software Engineering (MSWE) programs held their first-ever virtual Capstone Showcase. The two professional programs, offered by the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), joined forces this year to highlight the 142 students graduating on Dec. 18, showcasing their innovative projects. Both the graduation and showcase were virtual because of the pandemic, but that didn’t stop the students from presenting live, 15-miniutes pitches and demos over Zoom for the showcase. They then answered questions from the more than 80 guests in attendance, including industry professionals and UCI colleagues.

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UCI News: “UCI researchers use deep learning to identify gene regulation at single-cell level” (Xiaohui Xie quoted)

Deep learning, a family of machine-learning methods based on artificial neural networks, has revolutionized applications such as image interpretation, natural language processing and autonomous driving. In a study published recently in Science Advances, UCI researchers describe how the technique can also be successfully used to observe gene regulation at the cellular level. Until now, that process had been limited to tissue-level analysis.

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Senior Spotlight: Daniel Afework Finds Opportunities to Learn Everywhere

Senior Daniel Afework took his last final on Dec. 17, 2020 in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). The fourth-year computer science major, a transfer student from College of the Canyons, is graduating two quarters early. In January, he’ll trade his part-time work as an instructor for K-12 students at Coding Minds for his full-time job as a software engineer at American Express. Here, he talks about what helped him get to where is he is today — and it wasn’t just his computer science courses. He looked to family, leveraged extracurricular actives and joined campus clubs, took on a leadership role and reached out to fellow students, finding opportunities to learn all around him and making the most of his two years at UCI.

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ICS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Detecting COVID-19 Misinformation

Sameer Singh

Earlier this year, as the global pandemic started shutting down much of the world, medical researchers quickly moved to better understand the virus and work on a vaccine. Researchers from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) took a different approach. As Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sameer Singh explains, “work started as an outlet for the students to positively contribute to the fight against COVID-19 the one way we know how — by throwing machine learning at it!”

coby

UCI Launches New Professional Program: Master of Data Science

“Data scientist” is third on Glassdoor’s list of the “50 Best Jobs in American for 2020,” which shouldn’t be too surprising given the rise of big data and growing demand for empirical-based decision making across many industries. To help meet this demand, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) is currently accepting applications for the new Master of Data Science (MDS) program it is launching in the fall of 2021. Anyone interested in joining the inaugural cohort of this 15-month professional graduate program can apply online. The early application deadline is December 15th, 2020. After that, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until April 15th, 2021.

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Faculty Spotlight: Professor Jing Zhang Works to Advance Genomics

One of the newest faculty members of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) is Assistant Professor Jing Zhang, who joined the Department of Computer Science in July 2020. Zhang received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and molecular and computational biology from the University of Southern California and completed her postdoc training in the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Program at Yale University. She spent years working on ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements), a project highlighted in the July 2020 issue of Nature. Zhang co-authored four of the issue’s articles, including “Expanded Encyclopaedias of DNA Elements in the Human and Mouse Genomes” and “An Integrative ENCODE Resource for Cancer Genomics.” The research for this work produced 5,992 new experimental datasets, all of which are available through the ENCODE data portal.

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