CICS Professor Prashant Shenoy Awarded 2020-2021 Samuel F. Conti Fellowship
Prashant Shenoy, professor of computer science and associate dean in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), has been awarded a 2020-2021 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship by the university.
Fellows are chosen based on their record of outstanding accomplishments in research and creative activity and on their potential for continued excellence. Recipients are given a one-year release from teaching and service duties and a $3,500 cash award.
Shenoy, a distributed systems researcher and the director of the CICS Center for Smart and Connected Society, will use the time afforded by the fellowship to work on projects that explore the development of dependable, secure, and fair Internet of Things (IoT) smart technologies. He will work on writing a textbook that demonstrates how computer science methods can be harnessed to develop smart technologies for the social good. Additionally, he will lead a large, multi-institution Army Research Lab grant that is exploring the dependability and security of IoT technologies, and work to move the team's initial research results to the field.
"My current research focuses on designing smart technologies for domains such as energy, health, and transportation while ensuring that these technologies are fair, dependable, and secure," says Shenoy. "I am grateful that the Conti Fellowship will allow me to pursue this line of work."
Shenoy was named an Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) Fellow in 2019, an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in 2018, an IEEE Fellow in 2017, and a Fulbright Specialist Scholar in 2017. His publications have won numerous best paper awards, including an ACM Sigmetrics Test of Time award. He holds a doctorate and a master's degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin.
The Conti Fellowship Program, which has been in place since 1981, is managed by the Office of Research and Engagement. In addition to Shenoy, this year's Conti Fellows are Professor Julian McClements, food science, and Professor Andrea Nahmod, mathematics and statistics.
Shenoy joins nine other computer science faculty members who have received the fellowship award in years past. Most recently, Distinguished Professor Andrew McCallum was named a Conti Fellow in 2014.