News & Events
September 24, 2021
In the U.S. News & World Report rankings published last week, the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) is ranked in the top 15 of the nation's public computer science undergraduate programs, maintaining its spot at #... more
September 22, 2021
Neena Thota, associate chair of teaching development and senior teaching faculty at CICS, is part of a team led by Ray Laoulache, dean of academic affairs at UMass Dartmouth, that is exploring ways to promote digital literacy and computer science... more
September 17, 2021
The university's Cybersecurity Institute has secured a renewal of its CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). A team of cybersecurity researchers, led by the College of Information and... more
September 10, 2021
Hang Su ‘20PhD and Aditya Sundarrajan ‘20PhD have been announced as the recipients of the 2021 CICS Outstanding Dissertation Awards, which are given annually to graduating doctoral students in recognition of exceptional work and to encourage the... more
September 09, 2021
Professor Yuriy Brun is one of 26 recipients of a 2021 Amazon Research Award (ARA), which will fund his research on software formal verification via proof synthesis. The winning project, “Formal Verification via Language-Modeling-Based Proof... more
September 02, 2021
Assistant Professor Sunghoon Ivan Lee has been selected as one of 46 UMass Amherst ADVANCE program faculty fellows for 2021–2022. Funded through a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, UMass ADVANCE is designed to... more
September 02, 2021
Recently, over 60 college-aged students gathered together in the Applied Science Center at UMass Amherst’s Mount Ida campus in Newton. The first cohort of the Commonwealth Fintech Bootcamp, they were welcomed by Jim Flynn, assistant dean for... more
August 27, 2021
The Computing Research Association has announced their cohort of 2021 Computing Innovation Fellows, including CICS graduates Sainyam Galhotra ‘17MS, ‘21PhD and David Tench ‘20MS, ‘20PhD. As part of the fellowship program, CICS will also host Swapna... more
August 19, 2021
A team of CICS students, led by doctoral student Ryan McKenna and including graduate students Joie Wu, Arisa Tajima, Brett Mullins, Siddhant Pradhan, and Cecilia Ferrando, recently won $43,000 in prize money in the 2020 National Institute of... more
August 06, 2021
Francine Berman, renowned data scientist, researcher and co-founder of the Research Data Alliance, will join the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) faculty in fall 2021 as a research professor... more
August 02, 2021
Seven CICS faculty have recently been promoted or granted tenure: Andrew McGregor, Yuriy Brun, Justin Domke, Tim Richards, Marius Minea, Matt Rattigan, and Justin Obara.
July 29, 2021
Jim Kurose, distinguished university professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences and associate chancellor for partnerships and innovation, is part of the research team recently awarded a $20 million National Science Foundation (NSF... more
July 21, 2021
CICS Assistant Professor Donghyun Kim, a specialist in dynamic, bipedal motion in robots, is helping to build a robot that can take robotic acrobatics to the next level—and he’s making his research publicly available.
July 01, 2021
A UMass Amherst team led by CICS Assistant Professor Sunghoon Ivan Lee has designed a prototype system that uses the human body to continuously charge wearable devices, making it easier for users to monitor their health 24/7.
June 29, 2021
Four UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Science faculty members—Associate Professor Justin Domke, Research Assistant Professor Mohammad Hajiesmaili, Assistant Professor Mohit Iyyer, and Assistant Professor Cameron Musco—have recently... more
June 24, 2021
CICS has joined a just-launched collaboration, called Mass Fintech Hub—a public-private partnership whose aim is to position Massachusetts as a leader in the financial technology industry. Fintech, or applying cutting-edge technology to create... more
June 07, 2021
A group of researchers at CICS led by Assistant Professor Hamed Zamani and doctoral student Helia Hashemi is one of ten teams worldwide selected to compete in the 2021 Alexa Prize TaskBot Challenge. Each team receives $250,000 in funding to compete... more
June 01, 2021
CICS Assistant Professor Narges Mahyar, Assistant Research Professor Ali Sarvghad, and Associate Professor Ethan Zuckerman, along with Distinguished Professor Jane Fountain of the School of Public Policy, have received a seed grant from the UMass... more
![[icon] Ribbon](https://www.cics.umass.edu/sites/default/files/styles/fixed_86x128/public/scholarship.jpeg?itok=tFA57Dlr)
May 25, 2021
Congratulations to UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) undergraduate students Alexandra Brandl '22, Serena Chan '21, Saicharan Dadireddy '22, Brijesh Vyas '24, and Renos Zabounidis '22, who recently received 2021... more
May 14, 2021
Philip Thomas, an assistant professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), has been selected to receive the college’s 2021 Outstanding Teacher Award. The award is granted annually to a faculty member who demonstrates... more
May 14, 2021
Eight graduating seniors have been chosen by the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) to receive 2021 Outstanding Undergraduate Achievement Awards, the college's highest honor given to undergraduates. This year's... more
May 05, 2021
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Associate Professor Yuriy Brun has been selected by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Council on Software Engineering (TSCE) to receive the 2021 Distinguished New Directions Award... more
April 28, 2021
A multi-university team of researchers, led by Prashant Shenoy, distinguished professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), is aiming for zero-carbon computing thanks to a $3 million... more
April 22, 2021
CICS students, faculty, and staff,
Last year, George Floyd was killed at the hands of a Minnesota police officer while bystanders, helpless to intervene, documented the tragedy. George Floyd's murder reignited the Black Lives Matter movement,... more
April 22, 2021
A University of Massachusetts Amherst biomedical informatician will use a $436,836 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore the use of "serious games" played independently on computer tablets to improve brain function in older... more
April 15, 2021
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Assistant Professor Sunghoon Ivan Lee has been selected as a 2021–2022 University of Massachusetts Amherst Lilly Teaching Fellow, a program that enables promising early-career faculty to develop... more
April 14, 2021
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences Professor Brian Levine and Research Fellow Jagath Jai Kumar, along with Professor Hany Farid of the University of California Berkeley were awarded a $250,000 grant by the Oak Foundation to... more
April 12, 2021
The UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) community mourns the passing of alumnus Lee Delaney '93BS, president, chief executive officer and director of BJ's Wholesale Club.
"By all accounts, Lee was an intelligent and... more
April 08, 2021
Renos Zabounidis '22, a junior majoring in computer science, mathematics, and a Bachelor's Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC) in computational and cognitive science, recently received a UMass Amherst Rising Researcher Award and a Goldwater... more
April 01, 2021
Mohit Iyyer and Justin Domke have just received CAREER grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), among the most prestigious grants that the NSF offers. This makes four CAREER awards for CICS this year—so far.
March 25, 2021
The UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) is proud to announce the recipients of its 2021 Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy (OAA) awards.
Now in its twelfth year, the OAA Awards program celebrates the remarkable... more
March 23, 2021
The University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced that it will offer an online master of science in computer science to complement its nationally recognized computer science graduate programs. UMass is accepting applications now for the first... more
March 19, 2021
As colleagues in the College of Natural Sciences, College of Engineering, and College of Information and Computer Sciences, we feel compelled to speak out about the surge in acts of racial violence against members of the Asian community. Between our... more
March 18, 2021
Mohammad Hajiesmaili and Cameron Musco, both of UMass Amherst's College of Information and Computer Sciences, have received CAREER grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), among the most prestigious grants that the NSF offers.
March 16, 2021
Distinguished University Professor James Kurose has received the CRA 2021 Distinguished Service Award, an honor granted annually to one person or organization that has made an outstanding service contribution to the computing research community.
March 10, 2021
Associate Professor Mike Zink of the Electrical and Computing Engineering Department and CICS Professor Ramesh Sitaraman, along with colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas at Tyler, recently... more
March 05, 2021
DARPA has awarded the BINDS Laboratory the DARPA Ditto - Intelligent Auto-Generation and Composition of Surrogate Models project. This is one of the agency's AI Explorations. UMass's co-PI on this award is Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology... more
March 04, 2021
James Allan, chair of the faculty at CICS, and alum Jamie Callan '93PhD, now a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, have been selected to join the inaugural class of inductees into the ACM Special Interest Group on... more
February 26, 2021
Last weekend, over 200 current and aspiring data scientists participated in Voices of Data Science, a student-run conference co-sponsored by CICS and the Center for Data Science. The conference aims to provide a platform to amplify the voices of... more
February 12, 2021
Professor Charles Weems has been selected by the IEEE Computer Society to receive the Taylor L. Booth Education Award for 2021. The awards committee cited Weems, co-author of 28 textbooks who has taught computer science at UMass Amherst for 41 years... more
February 09, 2021
CICS has released results from its "Student Pulse Survey" administered through the Fall 2020 semester. The survey, created to help academic leaders at CICS understand how students feel about their overall experience and classroom experiences while... more
February 02, 2021
Assistant Professor Narges Mahyar and Research Assistant Professor Ali Sarvghad have been selected to receive a 2020 ADVANCE seed grant for their project, “Mapping Instability: The Effects of the Pandemic on the Civic Life of a Small Town.”... more
January 27, 2021
Prashant Shenoy, a distinguished professor and associate dean in the College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst (CICS), has been named the founding chair of the new Special Interest Group on Energy (SIGENERGY) of the Association for... more
January 15, 2021
Emma Anderson, director of inclusive education and teaching support, and Erika Dawson Head, director of diversity and inclusive community development in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), were recently announced... more
January 15, 2021
A team of researchers led by CICS doctoral student Amee Trivedi received the 2020 Best Paper Award at the International Green and Sustainable Computing Science Conference for the paper, “Phone-based Ambient Temperature Sensing Using Opportunistic... more
January 14, 2021
Professors James Allan and Brian Levine of the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) have been named Fellows by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing... more
January 04, 2021
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences Professor and Chair of the Faculty James Allan and Postdoctoral Fellow Razieh Negin Rahimi have been selected to receive a 2020 Manning/IALS Innovation Award to develop and explore the... more
December 21, 2020
Dear CICS Community:
With the end of the semester upon us, this is a great time to look back and to look ahead.
December 18, 2020
Associate Professor Andrew McGregor has been named as a 2020 Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
December 10, 2020
When an international student arrives on campus, she is a bundle of emotions - including a big willingness to try hard and give it her best shot, recalls computer science major Thao Trinh, who arrived as a first-year student from Ho Chi Minh City,... more
December 07, 2020
UMass Amherst students and faculty were recognized for innovative research, creativity, and impact for the greater good at Supercomputing 2020 (SC20), the largest international conference for high performance computing (HPC). The theme of the... more
December 03, 2020
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently named Bruce Croft, first dean and Distinguished Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), a Fellow of IEEE, an honor which recognizes members "with an... more
December 02, 2020
Professor Deepak Ganesan of the College of Computer and Information Sciences (CICS), with former students Pengyu Zhang and Pan Hu, recently received one of the 2020 Boston Patent Lawyers' Association (BPLA) tenth annual "Invented Here!" Awards for... more
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
July 22, 2020
Updated August 11, 2020
Four CICS faculty members have recently been promoted or granted tenure.
They are:
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
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
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
CICS Professor Hava Siegelmann Wins Meritorious Public Service Medal from U.S. Department of Defense
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
