News & Events
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
CICS Doctoral Student Ryan McKenna Wins First Place in Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge
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.
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:
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
Zilberstein to Give Distinguished Faculty Lecture Talk, “AI Will Change Everything, But Not So Fast”
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
March 08, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Professor and Chair of the Faculty James Allan has been elected treasurer of the Computing Research Association (CRA) Executive Committee. Allan was elected to the post by the CRA Board of... more
March 01, 2019
Applications for donor-funded scholarships within the College of Information and Computer Sciences may be submitted starting today, March 1, through midnight on March 31.
To Apply:
February 28, 2019
On April 5, the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) will honor selected alumni during the 11th annual Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy (OAA) award banquet and ceremony. The OAA awards were established to celebrate the remarkable... more
February 28, 2019
UMass Center for Data Science professor Benjamin Marlin has received a three-year, $250,000 National Science Foundation grant from its Computer and Information Science and Engineering Community Research Infrastructure program to develop mResearch, a... more
February 20, 2019
The February 2019 issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM) features a paper by UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral student Matteo Brucato, NYU Abu Dhabi Assistant Professor Azza Abouzied, and CICS Assistant... more
February 19, 2019
Barna Saha, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship for her research in theoretical computer science and the mathematical foundation... more
February 15, 2019
On Monday, January 28, the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) unveiled its new makerspace. The innovative new space, located in 2,970 square feet on the first floor of the Lederle Graduate Research Center, will provide aspiring... more
February 11, 2019
The College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) held an interdisciplinary panel comprised of UMass professors on January 29 discussing how important it is for computer science majors to study social sciences and humanities.
The panel was co... more
CICS Doctoral Student Ryan McKenna Wins Third Place in Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge
February 07, 2019
College of Computer and Informational Sciences doctoral student Ryan McKenna has recently won third place and a $5,000 prize in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) first ever Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge.... more
February 07, 2019
Assistant Professor Joydeep Biswas has recently been awarded an Amazon Research Award of $80,000 to fund his research on modeling dynamic human environments for robot perception.
February 04, 2019
UMass Amherst College of Computer and Information Sciences Chair of Faculty and Computing Research Association (CRA) Board Member James Allan has recently been profiled by the Computer Research Association (CRA) in their February 2019 CRA Bulletin.
January 24, 2019
Professor Shlomo Zilberstein has been chosen to receive the 2019 Distinguished Service Award by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a nonprofit society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of... more
January 23, 2019
College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) doctoral student Huaizu Jiang has been selected to receive a $50,000 2019-2020 NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship.
The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship program acknowledges highly accomplished graduate students... more
December 12, 2018
A second edition of the widely used textbook, "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" by College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) professor emeritus Andrew Barto and alumnus Richard S. Sutton (PhD '84) was released this month by MIT... more
December 12, 2018
College of Information and Computer Sciences Assistant Professor Sunghoon "Ivan" Lee recently received a National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Trailblazer Award to support a collaboration with Katherine Boyer, associate... more
December 10, 2018
The National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) recently awarded the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) a $10,000 NCWIT Extension Services for Undergraduate Programs (ES-UP) grant for their female undergraduate... more
December 09, 2018
SUNY University at Albany Associate Professor of political science Virginia Eubanks gave a talk on campus on Nov. 8 as part of The Futures lecture series. In her talk, Eubanks discussed her book, "Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile,... more
December 09, 2018
Women for UMass Amherst recently granted the CS Women Graduate group $6,000 to fund their travel scholarship. Women for UMass Amherst (WFUM) is a network of alumni that "promotes the advancement of campus programs that provide access, support, and... more
December 09, 2018
UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) PhD student Huaizu Jiang has been named a 2019 Adobe Research Fellow. The Adobe Research Fellowship program acknowledges highly skilled graduate students conducting impactful research... more
December 04, 2018
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world's largest professional organization for the advancement of technology, has elevated UMass Amherst Computer Science Professor Ramesh Sitaraman to the honorary position of Fellow... more
November 30, 2018
The National Science Foundation has awarded College of Information and Computer Sciences researcher Subhransu Maji its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, a five-year, $545,586 grant to support his work in computer vision and artificial... more
November 11, 2018
In a paper presented at SenSys 2018, the 16th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems Nov. 4-7 in Shenzhen, China, a team of UMass Amherst scientists introduced Tribexor, a fabric-based triboelectric joint sensing system that can be... more
November 11, 2018
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named computer science professors Emery Berger and Deepak Ganesan 2018 ACM Distinguished Members for their outstanding scientific contributions to computing.
The two are among 49 innovators honored... more
November 06, 2018
Professor James Allan, chair of the faculty in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences, is a member of the leadership team on a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant to support the... more
November 01, 2018
Terrie Kellogg, a software specialist in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), was recently selected to receive the 2018 Outstanding Staff Award for her exceptional work in the college's Computer Science Computing... more
