Faculty Recruiting Support CICS

News & Events

November 25, 2020
A startup artificial intelligence company with roots at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a coveted two-year, $750,000 Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program – also... more
Mahmood Jasim, Pooya Khaloo
November 20, 2020
A team of researchers led by UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral students Mahmood Jasim and Pooya Khaloo, and master’s student Somin Wadhwa received a best paper award at the ACM Conference on Computer-... more
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November 03, 2020
The UMass Amherst provost, in coordination with the chancellor and deans of the university’s colleges and schools, launched a new initiative to support interdisciplinary research in Spring 2020, with the goal of empowering creative collaborations,... more
October 29, 2020
Michelle Trim, senior lecturer II and associate director of the informatics program at CICS, has been selected to receive a 2020 Google exploreCSR award to fund the development of a student engagement workshop program, Energizing Mentoring and... more
October 15, 2020
Assistant Professor Jie Xiong of the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), along with CICS doctoral students Minhao Cui and Yuda Feng, have been recognized with a Best Paper Honorable Mention award for “Sniffing Visible... more
Emma Tosch
October 07, 2020
A paper by UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) recent doctoral graduate Emma Tosch, co-authored by Eytan Bakshy of Facebook and CICS Professors Emery Berger, David Jensen, and Eliot Moss, was recently selected by the... more
Hava T. Siegelmann
September 18, 2020
Artificial intelligence (AI) experts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Baylor College of Medicine report that they have successfully addressed what they call a "major, long-standing obstacle to increasing AI capabilities" by drawing... more
September 01, 2020
CICS alumna Amy McGovern MS’98, PhD’02 was selected to lead the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate, and Coastal Oceanography, part of a $100 million initiative by the NSF to establish... more
August 27, 2020
A University of Massachusetts Amherst health informatician is developing a mobile health (mHealth) system, leveraging a wearable sensor that slips on a finger like a ring, to monitor and encourage movement and activity in the weak upper limb of... more
August 26, 2020
Prashant Shenoy, associate dean of CICS, and director of the Laboratory for Advanced Systems Software and Center for Smart and Connected Society, was appointed Distinguished Professor following approval by the UMass Board of Trustees at its July 20... more
August 21, 2020
From the team that invented physiology-sensing pajamas at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, now comes a new, lightweight eye mask that can unobtrusively capture pulse, eye movement and sleep signals, for example, when worn in an everyday... more
August 21, 2020
Five longtime UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) staff members will be retiring in 2020 as part of UMass Amherst's Voluntary Separation Incentive Program. 
Illustration: a patient using a smartphone, smartphone apps, icons representing medical technology
August 13, 2020
AMHERST, Mass. – An international task force, including two University of Massachusetts Amherst computer scientists, concludes in new research that mobile health (mHealth) technologies are a viable option to monitor COVID-19 patients at home and... more
August 05, 2020
Researchers at the Center for Smart and Connected Society at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently released a new digital contact-tracing technique, WiFiTrace, that is based on widely-deployed WiFi technology. They intend the open-source... more
August 04, 2020
The National Science Foundation this week announced a five-year, $26 million initial grant to a consortium led by the University of Arizona to form a new Engineering Research Center, the Center for Quantum Networks (CQN), with partners at Harvard,... more
Tauhidur Rahman
July 23, 2020
As high temperatures become more frequent and intense due to climate change, UMass Amherst scientists are developing interdisciplinary research aimed at helping communities increase resilience to extreme heat by monitoring physiological, mental and... more
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July 22, 2020
Updated August 11, 2020  Four CICS faculty members have recently been promoted or granted tenure.  They are: 
Laura Haas
July 21, 2020
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Dean Laura Haas was recently interviewed by IEEE Computer Society as a part of their Diversity and Inclusion Task Force's Women in STEM series.  Haas spoke with IEEE regarding her... more
July 10, 2020
Professor and Chair of the Faculty James Allan has recently been chosen to receive an Amazon Research Award, a grant program that funds outstanding, innovative research proposals. Allan was selected for his proposal, “Explanation of Product Facets... more
Dan Sheldon
July 09, 2020
Associate Professor Dan Sheldon, an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, along with colleagues Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician; Andrew Lover, an infectious disease epidemiologist; and biostatistics Ph.D. student Casey Gibson received a $300,... more
July 09, 2020
Award-winning facial recognition expert professor Erik Learned-Miller of the College of Information and Computer Sciences will offer a one-hour Zoom Q&A webinar at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, July 15, where he will explore face recognition research. He... more
June 17, 2020
CICS doctoral candidate Anna Fariha has recently been awarded a 2020 Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for her proposal, “Enhancing Usability and Explainability of Data Systems.” Fariha’s work focuses on reducing the usability gap between non-... more
Award icon
June 11, 2020
Throughout the year, the faculty of the College of Information and Computer Sciences fund the Staff Spot Bonus Awards that recognize the outstanding accomplishments of staff members who are important champions of the college. Award recipients are... more
Hava T. Siegelmann
June 10, 2020
Nearly 100 colleagues recently joined an online celebration to honor Professor Hava T. Siegelmann of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) as she received the rarely awarded Meritorious Public... more
Illustration of face w/ data nodes
June 08, 2020
A group of artificial intelligence experts including computer vision researcher and lead author Erik Learned-Miller of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences recently proposed a new model for managing... more
Black Lives Matter
June 05, 2020
CICS Community, I write today to add my voice to the tens of thousands of protesters who have filled the streets this week calling for an end to police violence, hatred, and racism. Silence is not an option. CICS joins Chancellor Subbaswamy in... more
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June 04, 2020
The College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) announces the appointment of twelve new tenure-track and teaching faculty in 2020 to create capacity for its growing academic and research programs, after hiring five new faculty in 2019.
May 19, 2020
In addition to the two doctoral graduates honored in April for their outstanding dissertations, four graduate students in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) were selected to receive Outstanding Graduate Awards for... more
award ribbon
May 19, 2020
Congratulations to UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) undergraduate students Chung Hin Lee '20, John Bachman '21, Lucy Cousins '21, and Cody Richter '21 who recently received 2020 University of Massachusetts Amherst... more
May 13, 2020
Rick Adrion, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was featured along with eight co-presenters in the 2020 STEM for All Video Showcase from May 5–12, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition to Adrion,... more
May 01, 2020
Dean Laura Haas invites graduating College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) students and their friends and families to virtual celebrations for the Class of 2020 on Friday, May 8 at 8 am. At that time, the college will be releasing two... more
Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Awards
April 30, 2020
Six graduating seniors have been chosen by CICS to receive the 2020 Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Awards, an annual honor that is the highest given by the college to undergraduates. This year’s recipients, recognized for outstanding... more
Ethan Zuckerman
April 28, 2020
Ethan Zuckerman, Internet pioneer, author and co-founder of the blogging community Global Voices, will be joining the UMass Amherst faculty this fall as an associate professor of public policy, communication and information.
April 22, 2020
Professor and Informatics Program Director Ramesh Sitaraman is one of four faculty recipients of the university’s 2019–2020 Distinguished Teaching Award. Sitaraman has previously been nominated eight times for this highly competitive and prestigious... more
April 21, 2020
Professor Gerome Miklau, Associate Professor Andrew McGregor, and alumni Chao Li ‘13PhD and Michael Hay ‘07MS, ‘10PhD are scheduled to receive the Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award at the 2020 Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on... more
April 17, 2020
CICS Professor Emeritus Rick Adrion is part of a team of authors who have recently released the book, Computing and the National Science Foundation, 1950-2016: Building a Foundation for Modern Computing.
Prashant Shenoy
April 16, 2020
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... more
April 15, 2020
CICS undergraduate Jack Merullo ‘20 is one of eight UMass Amherst undergraduates to be named 2019–2020 Rising Researchers in recognition of their unconventional and inspiring approaches to research, scholarship, and creative activity. Merullo, a... more
Gerome Miklau
April 10, 2020
In a new investigation into how applying common privacy algorithms can cause inequities for minority populations and other groups, a team led by Gerome Miklau at CICS explored such potential effects on results from data of the U.S. Census Bureau and... more
April 07, 2020
Stephen Lee ‘19PhD and Hamed Zamani ‘19PhD are the recipients of the 2020 CICS Outstanding Dissertation Award, which are given annually to graduating doctoral students in recognition of exceptional work and to encourage the highest levels of... more
April 07, 2020
Michelle Trim, Senior Lecturer II, a member of the CICS teaching faculty and the associate director of the informatics program, was selected to receive the college's 2020 College Outstanding Teaching Award. This award is granted annually to one... more
Face shield prototype
April 06, 2020
AMHERST, Mass. – In just under two weeks, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with engineers, nurses and other health care professionals, have developed a design informed by clinical feedback for protective plastic face shields... more
Marco Serafini & Arjun Guha
April 01, 2020
University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Assistant Professor Marco Serafini and Associate Professor Arjun Guha recently received Facebook's Systems for Machine Learning research award for their proposal... more
Illustration of a stroke in a human brain
March 26, 2020
A paper from UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences researchers led by Assistant Professor Sunghoon Ivan Lee and including doctoral student Brandon Oubre, postdoctoral researcher Hee-Tae Jung, and alumna Kallie Whritenour ‘19MS... more
March 25, 2020
Yuriy Brun, an associate professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at UMass Amherst, has been selected to receive the Most Influential Paper Award at the 15th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive... more
Tauhidur Rahman, left, and Forsad Al Hossain display the FluSense device they invented
March 19, 2020
UMass Amherst Computer Scientists Tested 'FluSense' in Campus Clinic Waiting Rooms University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have invented a portable surveillance device powered by machine learning - called FluSense - which can detect... more
March 06, 2020
Brian Lynn, a senior software engineer in CICS, was presented with the annual Outstanding Staff Award on February 26, 2020 for his work developing technologies to assist law enforcement agencies in combating the exploitation of children. 
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March 06, 2020
UPDATE: This event is canceled due to heightened concerns about the spread of coronavirus and the governor’s declaration of a state of emergency in Massachusetts.
February 20, 2020
In a recent opinion piece featured by MassLive, Roger W. Crandall, chairman, president and CEO of MassMutual, explains how his company’s collaborative relationship with CICS has helped to build a talented workforce and strengthen the economy in... more
A HackHer413 participant in conversation, with laptop
February 20, 2020
On February 8–9, 300 students gathered at UMass Amherst for HackHer413, an all-women (cis and trans) and non-binary student hackathon. The hackathon, now in its second year, aims to increase diversity and inclusion in the technology industry,... more
James Kurose
February 07, 2020
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) today announced that it has elected 87 new members and 18 international members including University of Massachusetts Amherst Distinguished Professor James Kurose of the College of Information and Computer... more
February 03, 2020
CICS welcomes two new faculty in spring 2020. In addition to the new faculty listed below, Ivon Arroyo was hired as an associate professor in 2019 and arrived on campus in January.
January 30, 2020
CICS Visiting Professor Robert Kozma has recently been appointed editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems.
January 22, 2020
Robert M. Graham, 90, emeritus professor of computer science, died Thursday, January 2, 2020. Graham came to UMass Amherst in 1975 as chair of the computer science department, serving in that role until 1981—during which time he oversaw the... more
January 15, 2020
The National Science Foundation recently awarded $500,000 to Professor Eliot Moss of the College of Information and Computer Sciences to build a platform that provides lasting data storage in devices that use non-volatile memory (NVM), such as the... more
Michael Zarozinski
December 17, 2019
Michael Zarozinski, a senior software engineer at the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, passed away unexpectedly on December 9, 2019. Michael joined the CIIR in 2013, supporting... more
Northern waterthrush
December 17, 2019
In what the authors believe is one of the first studies to examine climate change impact on the timing of bird migration on a continental scale, researchers report that spring migrants were likely to pass certain stops earlier now than they would... more
December 11, 2019
Professors Emery Berger, Prashant Shenoy and Ramesh Sitaraman have been named Fellows by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.
Philip Thomas
November 21, 2019
Seventy years ago, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined a world where robots would serve humans in countless ways, and he equipped them with built-in safeguards ­now known as Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, to prevent them, among other... more
November 21, 2019
A campus team led by research professor Beverly Woolf of the College of Information and Computer Science (CICS) recently received a one-year, $838,722 grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Convergence Accelerator program to support... more
Erik Learned-Miller
November 18, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Professor Erik Learned-Miller, along with CICS alumnus Gary Huang, and Facebook research scientist Tamara Berg, have received the Mark Everingham Award from the International Conference on Computer... more
November 13, 2019
Professors Michael Zink, electrical and computer engineering, and Ramesh Sitaraman of CICS, invite you to imagine watching a Super Bowl game from the comfort of your own living room, but experiencing the game as if you were on the field with the... more
November 13, 2019
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a collaborative team led by Andrew McGregor, computer science, a three-year, $1.5 million grant to further develop the foundations of data science in a project that will create NSF's national ... more
November 01, 2019
The U.S. Department of Education has recently funded an efficacy study of MathSpring, a research-­based, game-like intelligent math tutor developed by Beverly Woolf, a research professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass... more
November 01, 2019
Yuriy Brun and Charles C. Weems Jr., both associate professors in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, have been selected as 2019 Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
October 24, 2019
CICS Associate Professor Arjun Guha received a Most Influential Paper Award at the ACM OOPSLA conference today in Athens, Greece for his 2009 paper, “Flapjax: A Programming Language for Ajax Applications.” The award is presented annually to the... more
October 23, 2019
CICS doctoral students Abhinav Jangda and Donald Pinckney, along with professors Arjun Guha and Yuriy Brun, have received an ACM SIGPLAN 2019 Distinguished Paper Award for their paper, “Formal Foundations of Serverless Computing,” presented today at... more
Sunghoon Ivan Lee, left, and Jie Xiong discuss how they will design a smaller device based on the larger prototype apparatus pictured.
October 16, 2019
Two UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences researchers have received a $1.15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a wireless device, worn like a necklace, that aims to transform the understanding... more
October 11, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Dean Laura Haas spoke at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration, the world's largest gathering of women technologists. The conference is hosted annually by AnitaB.org, a digital community for women... more
October 04, 2019
The National Science Foundation announced recently that computer scientist Arun Venkataramani and computer engineer Lixin Gao at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have received a three-year, $1.2 million grant to develop and test a method to... more
October 04, 2019
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Dean Laura Haas will participate in the leadership team for the newly formed Research, Educator and Business Leaders’ network (REBL), a statewide research-practice partnership program... more
October 03, 2019
Voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home reliably answer questions within seconds for millions of users daily—especially when they have simple fact-based answers, such as “What is the diameter of the Earth?” But they don’t do as well with... more
Graphic: Massachusetts Cybersecurity Week
October 02, 2019
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the Cybersecurity Institute at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst (CICS) will host four guest speakers this October from government, industry, and higher education... more
September 19, 2019
Applications like web browsers or smartphone apps often use a lot of memory. To address this, a research group co-led by Emery Berger, a professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has developed a system they call Mesh ... more
September 19, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral student Ryan McKenna recently won first place and a $25,000 prize in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) 2019 Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge.
Physiological-sensing textiles that can be woven or stitched into sleep garments dubbed “phyjamas.”  Image courtesy of UMass Amherst/Andrew lab.
September 11, 2019
UMass Amherst materials chemists, computer scientists design smart sleepwear Scientists expect that in the future, electronically active garments containing unobtrusive, portable devices for monitoring heart rate and respiratory rhythm during sleep... more
September 06, 2019
Fourteen CICS faculty were promoted, reappointed, or granted tenure over the summer of 2019:
Cumulative bird migration map
August 28, 2019
On many evenings during spring and fall migration, tens of millions of birds take flight at sunset and pass over our heads, unseen in the night sky. Though these flights have been recorded for decades by the National Weather Services' network of... more
Mohammad Hajiesmaili
August 27, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Research Assistant Professor Mohammad Hajiesmaili has received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project to optimize data center energy procurement using machine... more
August 12, 2019
This July, CICS hosted three summer programs promoting youth STEM participation: the UMass Turing Summer Program, the Massenberg STEM Institute, and a UMass Summer Programs course on robotics.
August 07, 2019
Industry figures show the global rate of solar energy installations grew by 30 percent in one recent year, and the average cost of installing solar has fallen from $7 per watt to $2.8 per watt, making rooftop solar attractive to many more homeowners... more
July 30, 2019
Vani Gupta, a doctoral student in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), and her advisors, Professors Ramesh Sitaraman and Prashant Shenoy, won the Best Paper award at the ACM e-Energy 2019 conference in Phoenix, AZ... more
July 24, 2019
CICS has appointed five new tenure-track and teaching faculty in 2019. These new hires will amplify the college's research in educational systems and human-computer interaction. The college hired nine new faculty in 2018. In addition to the new... more
July 23, 2019
Algorithm and data management expert Barna Saha, assistant professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), was recently chosen by the White House to receive the highest U.S. award given to rising stars of science and technology... more
May 31, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral students Su Lin Blodgett and Hamed Zamani were recently selected to receive the Accomplishments in Search & Artificial Intelligence Award, sponsored by Microsoft. The awards were... more
May 31, 2019
Former UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences faculty Kevin Fu and alums Thomas Heydt-Benjamin (MS '07), Benjamin Ransford (MS '10, PhD '13), Shane Clark (BS '07, MS '11, PhD '13), and Benessa Defend (MS '08) have received the... more
May 23, 2019
Marc Liberatore, a member of the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) teaching faculty and the associate director of the Digital Forensics Lab was selected to receive the college's 2019 College Outstanding Teacher Award... more
May 22, 2019
Daniel Bernstein (Ph.D. ‘05), Professor Shlomo Zilberstein and Professor Neil Immerman were selected to receive the 2019 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award in Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems for their two papers, “The Complexity of... more
May 17, 2019
Associate Professor Charles (“Chip”) Weems of the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) has been awarded the 2018-2019 Distinguished Teaching Award by the University of Massachusetts Amherst for excellence in classroom teaching.
May 16, 2019
Seven graduate students in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) were selected to receive Outstanding Graduate Awards for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Major General Jody J. Daniels
April 29, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences alumna Major General Jody J. Daniels (M.S. '93, Ph.D. '97) will receive an honorary degree during the Undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 10 at McGuirk Alumni Stadium.
April 26, 2019
Computer science students increasingly need to learn JavaScript, one of the most widely-used programming languages in the world. Unfortunately, the language has a laundry list of bad features that get in the way of programming, leading to bugs in... more
Rico Angell
April 22, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral student Rico Angell has recently been selected to receive a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation.
Mohammad Hajiesmaili
April 22, 2019
Data centers are using increasingly massive amounts of power, consuming by some estimates up to 3% of the world’s power supply and doubling their appetite every four years. While companies such as Google and Amazon are offsetting the energy... more
Milad Nasr
April 18, 2019
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral student Milad Nasr has recently been granted a Google PhD Fellowship in recognition of his promising research on circumventing internet censorship.
Emery Berger
April 16, 2019
Professor Emery Berger, co-director of the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) PLASMA Research Lab, has won the Most Influential Paper Award at the 24th annual ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming... more
award ribbon
April 02, 2019
Four Computer of Information and Computer Sciences students are among the 2019 recipients of scholarships and awards presented by the Student Alumni Association. Anjali Devakumar ('19) received a Senior Leadership Award, which recognizes graduating... more
March 29, 2019
Advancements in microelectromechanical technology have shown tremendous potential for the biomedical field, promising a new class of miniaturized body-wearable sensors that will empower health providers to monitor and safeguard the health of aging... more
Professor Shlomo Zilberstein
March 22, 2019
Shlomo Zilberstein, CICS professor and associate dean of research and engagement, will give a UMass Amherst Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series talk on April 18 at 4 pm in the Old Chapel. Professor Zilberstein's lecture, "AI Will Change Everything... more
March 13, 2019
Dean Laura Haas of the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been chosen to receive the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award for 2019 "for significant contributions to early concepts... more

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