Faculty Recruiting Support CICS

CICS Adds Nine New Accomplished Faculty

The College of Information and Computer Sciences announces the appointment of nine new tenure-track and teaching faculty in 2018-2019 to keep pace with continued growth in the college.  These new hires will amplify the college's data science, security, and human-computer interaction research areas and add teaching capacity to address rapid increases in undergraduate and graduate enrollment. The college hired seven new faculty in 2017. 

In addition to the new faculty listed below, Mohit Iyyer and Marco Serafini, two new assistant professors who were hired in 2017, will be arriving on campus this fall. 

Madalina (Ina) Fiterau, Assistant Professor
(Starting 9/1/18)

Ina Fiterau’s research interest is in building intelligent systems that aid decision-making by extracting compact models and salient representations from heterogeneous data. She earned a Ph.D. in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015. Fiterau was awarded the MARR Prize for a best paper at the ICCV in 2015 and a Star Research Award at SCCM in 2016.  She comes to CICS from Stanford University where she was a senior postdoctoral scholar in the university’s Mobilize Center.

Parviz Kermani, Senior Teaching Faculty
(Starting 9/1/18) 

Parviz Kermani received his Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA in 1977. He was a research scientist at IBM from 1978 until his retirement in 2009, working on computer communications projects. A senior member of the IEEE, Kermani was a professor of computer science at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College of CUNY from 2013-2016.  In Fall 2018, he will be teaching COMPSCI 453: Computer Networks and COMPSCI 590: System Defense and Test.

Andrew S. Lan, Assistant Professor
(Starting 1/20/19)

Andrew Lan’s research focuses on the development of machine learning methods for personalized learning in education. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the EDGE Lab at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Digital Signal Processing and OpenStax groups at Rice University. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Rice University in 2016. Lan will join CICS in January 2019 as an Assistant Professor.

Narges Mahyar, Assistant Professor
(Starting 9/1/18)

Narges Mahyar’s research interests are in the areas of human-computer interaction, social computing, information visualization, visual analytics, public engagement, and digital civics. She comes to CICS from the University of California San Diego, where was a postdoctoral fellow in the Design Lab. Mahyar received her Ph.D. from the University of Victoria in 2014.  She received an Outstanding Paper Award in 2017 from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture and a Best Paper Award from IEEE VAST in 2014.

Marius Minea, Senior Teaching Faculty 
(Starting 9/1/18) 

Marius Minea conducts research in software analysis, modeling and verification of security protocols and services, and component-based modeling and verification. He joins CICS from Politehnica University of Timişoara in Romania where he was an associate professor in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. In Fall 2018, Minea will be teaching COMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computer Science and COMPSCI 311: Introduction to Algorithms.

Cameron Musco, Assistant Professor
(Starting 9/1/19) 

Cameron Musco’s research interests are in algorithmic foundations of data science and machine learning, focusing on simple randomized methods that adapt to modern computational environments.  He received his Ph.D. in computer science in 2018 from MIT, where he was affiliated with the Theory of Computation Group. He is the recipient of a 2014 NSF Graduate Fellowship. Musco will join CICS as an assistant professor in September 2019 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Microsoft Research New England.

Justin Obara, Teaching Faculty 
(Starting 9/1/18)

Justin Obara will be teaching the undergraduate writing course for computer science students in their junior year.  He joins CICS from the University of Nevada - Reno where he was a lecturer in the university’s English Department, teaching courses in english composition. He received his Ph.D. in english rhetoric and composition from Washington State University in 2015.  In Fall 2018, Obrara will be teaching COMPSCI 305: Social Issues in Computing.

Adam O’Neill, Assistant Professor 
(Starting 1/20/19)

Adam O’Neill served on the faculty at Georgetown University for five years as an assistant professor, where he was affiliated with the SecurityLab and the Georgetown Institute for Information Assurance. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University and the University of Texas Austin. His primary research interest is in cryptography. O’Neill received his Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010 and was named an ARCS Foundation Scholar (2008-2010). 

Swarna Reddy, Senior Teaching Faculty 
(Starting 1/20/19)

Swarna Reddy is the founder and CEO of SoftMath Analytics, a machine learning and data analytics consultancy. Previously, she held research analyst/scientist positions at the Montana Department of Revenue and Terra Echoes. She joined the University of Montana faculty in 2000 and served as a researcher and educator until 2012.  Reddy received her Ph.D. in discrete mathematics and operations research from Belarusian State University in 1996.