News & Events
October 30, 2015
Two College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) Ph.D. students, Srinivasan Iyengar and Stephen Lee, took home first place in the third annual HackUMass, a 36-hour, student-run hackathon that drew almost 400 participants to UMass Amherst's... more
October 16, 2015
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week named University of Massachusetts Amherst professor of computer science Gerome Miklau to lead a 4.5-year, $2.8 million grant to develop tools and techniques that enable the agency... more
October 16, 2015
On October 15th, approximately 50 CICS students participated in the college's popular wearable electronics workshop led by Rui Wang, associate professor of computer science.
During the workshop, Wang used his expertise in computer graphics to help... more
October 15, 2015
In an interview with Barna Saha, CICS assistant professor, she described some of the research challenges and latest advances in the area of algorithm design and analysis.
October 09, 2015
UMass Amherst computer scientists receive part of $10.8 million for big data research
September 30, 2015
Alexandra Meliou, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently received a five-year, $549,996 National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development award to design and develop new... more
September 29, 2015
Andrew McCallum, CICS professor and director of the Center for Data Science, Mark McCartin-Lim, doctoral student in computer science, and Mark Maier, CICS alum (Ph.D. '14), were mentioned in articles about MassTech Collaborative's "Tech Trek" event... more
September 29, 2015
A study by Microsoft Research published this month ranks work by assistant professor Yuriy Brun as the most relevant software engineering research in the last five years. In a survey of over five hundred software developers at Microsoft, Brun's work... more
September 29, 2015
Distinguished professor Bruce Croft, interim dean of the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) and director of the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR), and James Allan, professor and co-director of the CIIR, are co-... more
September 14, 2015
The National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity program today announced a three-year, $1 million grant to three University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers and others to work with Holyoke Gas &... more
August 19, 2015
AMHERST, Mass. - University of Massachusetts Amherst computer scientist Beverly Woolf, an international leader in intelligent tutoring systems and expert in science and mathematics learning, recently received a one-year, $199,944 grant from the... more
August 19, 2015
A feature story in the Daily Hampshire Gazette looks at 'Exploring Computer Science,' a professional development workshop for high school teachers held earlier this month at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke.
The... more
August 11, 2015
AMHERST, Mass. - Computer scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by Evangelos Kalogerakis today unveiled a new software modeling program that uses sophisticated geometric matching and machine learning to successfully mimic the... more
July 31, 2015
University of Massachusetts Amherst provost, Katherine Newman, announced this week the launch of a search for the founding dean of the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS).
The dean will have a unique opportunity to shape and grow... more
July 28, 2015
A feature story in The Boston Globe looks at UMass Amherst's Coaches Connect workshop held at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke earlier this month. The workshop, now in its fifth year, helps parents and educators... more
July 08, 2015
For the third consecutive year, the College of Computer and Information Sciences (CICS) is hosting Girls Inc. of Holyoke's Eureka! program, a national initiative that brings girls 12-18 onto college and university campuses to explore science,... more
June 11, 2015
UMass President Robert L. Caret awarded two Science and Technology Initiative Fund grants to faculty of the College of Information and Computer Sciences faculty.
Andrew McCallum and David Jensen were awarded $85,000 to support the Center for Data... more
June 01, 2015
Lori Clarke, professor and chair of the School of Computer Science, retired this month after forty years at UMass Amherst.Dr. Clarke is co-director of the University's Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) where her research... more
April 15, 2015
AMHERST, Mass. - Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced today the establishment of a new College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst effective Sept. 1. W. Bruce Croft, Distinguished Professor of... more
April 14, 2015
The Seventh Annual Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy Awards ceremony will be held on Friday, May 1, 2015. View OAA 2015 site for details on this year's recipients.
April 13, 2015
The Winter/Spring 2015 Significant Bits newsletter is now available. View now. Alums and friends should receive this issue in the mail by mid April. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for the print or electronic version, send email... more
March 26, 2015
UMass Amherst is creating a new Center for Data Science to coordinate and significantly expand its capacity for research, training and industrial collaboration in support of the exploding demand for the acquisition and analysis of "big data."
March 25, 2015
Assistant Professor Yuriy Brun received a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for the project "Improving Software Quality using Dynamically Inferred Models.""Software has become an integral... more
March 25, 2015
Professor James Allan, co-Director of the UMass Amherst Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, is collaborating with Northeastern University's NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks on a half million dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon... more
March 24, 2015
Things were very different on campus when Professor Robert Moll began teaching in the 1970s. In the Campus Center, for example, instead of clusters of tables with laptops like are seen today, there were rows of pinball machines. It was at the "... more
March 23, 2015
During his first month on the job at NSF as Assistant Director of CISE, Jim Kurose, CS Distinguished Professor, testified before the Subcommittee on Research and Technology for the Science, Space, and Technology Committee of the U.S. House of... more
March 22, 2015
Four UMass Amherst computer science doctoral students received prestigious fellowships from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and NASA.John Vilk was chosen for a 2015-2016 Facebook Fellowship, one of only 11 Ph.D student winners in the U.S. and Europe.... more
March 19, 2015
Professor Robert Moll retired this past December, after spending more than forty years on the UMass Amherst Computer Science faculty. He arrived with a full black beard from MIT in the fall of 1973, after completing a doctorate in theoretical... more
March 19, 2015
Figure 1: User interface for creating and exploring virtual creatures by specifying semantic attributes reflecting high-level design intent.
March 18, 2015
EMC Corporation established an undergraduate scholarship this year, and continued funding the EMC Student Participation Awards. The 2015 recipients of the EMC Award for Outstanding Achievement as a Sophomore are Maya Bergandy and Karl Schmeckpeper.... more
March 18, 2015
In October, the School of Computer Science welcomed CS alumni and friends to a social event held at Amazon's Cambridge, MA facility. The event was at capacity with 150 registered to attend. CS Chair Lori Clarke welcomed attendees and provided a... more
March 18, 2015
Professor Shlomo Zilberstein has embarked on a National Science Foundation-funded project to explore the planning and challenges involved in automated planning for semi-autonomous systems. On this four-year NSF grant, he is working with Professor... more
March 18, 2015
Faculty NewsProfessor Andrew McCallum was an invited speaker at the 2014 Workshop on Automated Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC). He and co-authors received Outstanding Paper Awards at AKBC 2014 for their papers "Knowledge Base Completion using... more
March 17, 2015
Since 2008, Cisco Systems has provided undergraduate scholarships to students within the School of CS. The recipients of the 2015 Cisco Systems Awards for Outstanding Achievement as a Junior Undergraduate are Batkhuyag Batsaikhan, Anna Deng, Molly... more
March 17, 2015
CS students attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) in October, joining nearly 8,000 women at the event held in Phoenix, AZ. Yahoo! provided travel support for some of the students to attend the conference. GHC Attendees... more
March 16, 2015
Recent Computer Science Ph.D. graduates (September 2014)John Altidor; Subtyping with Generics: A Unified Approach; Yannis Smaragdakis, Advisor; Sept. 2014; Researcher, BBN Technologies
March 10, 2015
Emeritus Professor Leon J. Osterweil retired in May 2014 after 21 years of service at UMass Amherst. Through a post-retirement appointment, Osterweil continues to co-direct the Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) within the... more
March 10, 2015
On October 30th, 2014, the UMass Amherst School of Computer Science held an Industrial Affiliates Program Day with a Research Review and Career/Internship Fair. During the morning research review, attended by industrial affiliate partners and CS... more
January 15, 2015
The UMass Amherst campus was selected to house the state-wide Energy Extension Initiative to put clean energy research technologies into practice in the Commonwealth. The Initiative is led by David Damery (PI), environmental conservationist and... more
January 10, 2015
In October, National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins announced the National Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K). Prof. Deepak Ganesan is leading the Sensors-to-Information research area within the MD2K... more
January 05, 2015
In honor of Professor Neil Immerman's 60th birthday, an "ImmermanFest" Workshop was organized as part of the Fifteenth International Workshop on Logic and Computational Complexity (LCC 2014) held in Vienna, Austria. During the daylong ImmermanFest... more
January 03, 2015
More than 200 young women from 30 high schools in Massachusetts and the region attended the Engineering and Computing Career Day Conference held on campus on Oct. 27th, 2014. The program aims to inspire and encourage female high school students to... more
January 03, 2015
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are conducting a pilot project with the Holyoke Gas & Electric Co. that will show the utility and its customers how smart electric meters can save money and power.
December 29, 2014
CS Professors Donald Towsley and Ramesh Sitaraman, with ECE Professor Christopher Hollot and CS alum Zhi-Li Zhang (Ph.D. '97; now Prof. at Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities), are collaborating on a National Science Foundation-funded Internet content... more
December 01, 2014
Thank you to everyone who has given to the School of Computer Science in support of our students and faculty on #GivingTuesday! We appreciate your generosity and hope that the CS community's giving will benefit everyone in the School who needs help... more
December 01, 2014
On November 13 through 17, three graduate students from the UMass Amherst School of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering Department won the $5,000 first prize in the Juniper/Comcast Northeast Division Hackathon. The winning team... more
November 06, 2014
The First Annual UMass Cognitive Science Workshop was held on Thursday, November 13, 2014 from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m. in the School of Computer Science, CS Building, Rooms 150/151.The Workshop was organized to gather a cross-disciplinary group together... more
September 26, 2014
We are pleased to announce that four new tenure-track faculty joined our School of Computer Science this Fall as Assistant Professors. Amir Houmansadr, Subhransu Maji, Brendan O'Connor, and Barna Saha joined the School in September 2014. The new... more
September 25, 2014
From the NSF press release 14-127 (http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=132794): The National Science Foundation (NSF) has selected University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst Professor James F. Kurose to serve as assistant director (AD)... more
September 14, 2014
The UMass Amherst College of Computer and Information Sciences is pleased to invite you to our annual New England Networking Evening.
Learn more about the new college, reconnect with professors and friends, and expand your professional network.... more
September 10, 2014
On Thursday, October 30, 2014, the UMass Amherst School of Computer Science will hold an Industrial Affiliates Program Day with a Research Review and Career/Internship Fair. During the morning Research Review, CS Faculty will discuss some of the... more
September 09, 2014
The Summer 2014 Significant Bits newsletter is now available. View now. Alums and friends should receive this issue in the mail by late September. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for the print version, send email to bits@cs.umass.... more
August 30, 2014
Computer Science undergraduate enrollment is skyrocketing. The figure below shows CS Amherst enrollments since we first introduced the undergraduate program. This graph is similar to the national trends over this same period of time. Some people... more
August 11, 2014
The CS Community Drive was launched during our 50th anniversary celebration last fall. The friends and alumni of the School of CS have stepped up to help us achieve our goals, but we can still use your help. CS still needs to gather many more alumni... more
August 11, 2014
Between July 8th and 15th, the School of Computer Science hosted ten rising 8th graders for a five-day workshop as part of the Girls Inc. of Holyoke Eureka! program. Eureka! is a national Girls Inc. initiative that brings girls onto college and... more
August 09, 2014
Assistant Professor Benjamin Marlin served as the general co-chair of the symposium on Meaningful Use of Complex Medical Data (MUCMD) held on Aug 7-8 at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The symposium, founded in 2011, brings together machine... more
August 07, 2014
Gordon Anderson joins the CS faculty this fall as a Lecturer. Anderson's computer education and software engineering research interests include educational applications, biological computation models, and psychological and philosophical aspects of... more
August 01, 2014
Faculty NewsEmery Berger was promoted to full Professor and Andrew McGregor was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
August 01, 2014
Daniel Stubbs (BS '14) received a 2014 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Stubbs, who also received the Computing Research Association 2014 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer... more
July 30, 2014
CS Alumnus Rajesh Jha ('90 MS) and his wife, Sudha Mishra, have stepped forward with a donation to create a scholarship in Professor Lori A. Clarke's honor. Once it is fully funded, the Lori A. Clarke Scholarship in Computer Sciencewill be awarded... more
July 30, 2014
As a tribute to Distinguished Professor James "Jim" Kurose's many outstanding, and on-going, contributions to both the UMass Amherst CS community and the field of computer science, alumnus Steve Vinter ('85) has established the James Kurose... more
July 24, 2014
ACM (The Association for Computing Machinery) announced the election of Alexander L. Wolf (Ph.D. '85) as ACM President for a two-year term beginning July 1.
July 23, 2014
The UMass Amherst School of Computer Science hosted our very first alumni organized meet-up for UMass Amherst CS alums (and current student interns) at Google's Mountain View, CA facility. It was great to see so many of our alums at the event, over... more
July 23, 2014
Professor Emery Berger and members of his PLASMA research lab were well-represented in the list of award recipients at the 35th annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2014).
July 20, 2014
Professor Sridhar Mahadevan has been elected a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) "for significant contributions to the field of machine learning including pioneering work in robot learning and... more
July 19, 2014
Assistant Professor Benjamin Marlin received a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for the project "Machine Learning for Complex Health Data Analytics." Marlin's CAREER award research will... more
July 14, 2014
Jane Fountain, Distinguished Professor in political science and public policy, was named to the "Top Federal 100" by Federal Computer Week. She is one of only two academics to make the list of leaders from government, industry and academia who had... more
July 10, 2014
Nearly 40 middle school students gathered at the School of Computer Science during spring 2014 to build and program robots in an all-girl team environment. The event, Girls Connect, introduced girls to LEGO Mindstorms robot building and programming... more
July 01, 2014
Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Arnold (Arny) Rosenberg retired from UMass Amherst CS in 2007, but that does not mean that he has slowed down in private life or in research. This year, he and his wife Susan celebrated 50 years of... more
July 01, 2014
Elif Aktolga; Integrating Non-Topical Aspects into Information Retrieval; (James Allan, Advisor); May 2014; Research Engineer, Apple
June 30, 2014
Congratulations to our Computer Science students who are on the Spring 2014 Dean's List and those who are recognized for their outstanding performance in the CS classroom during the Spring 2014 semester. View lists.
June 30, 2014
We are pleased to announce that Jody Daniels (Ph.D. '97) received the 2014 campus Distinguished Alumni Service Award at the Massachusetts State House in April 2014. According to the Alumni Association, the Distinguished Alumni Award is the highest... more
June 13, 2014
Associate Professor Ramesh Sitaraman was presented with the 2014 College of Natural Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award during the 2014 CNS Faculty and Staff Awards Reception held in May. The purpose of the award is to recognize excellence in... more
June 08, 2014
In June, Professor Leon Osterweil accepted the 2014 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award "for promoting and expanding the field of software engineering through visionary leadership of the Impact Project and for bringing the community to China,... more
June 04, 2014
Professor Andrew McCallum is a recipient of a 2014 Yahoo! Faculty Research and Engagement Program (FREP) Award. McCallum received the award for his work on "Knowledge Base Augmentation of Entities and Relations with Tensor Factorization."
May 30, 2014
Assistant Professor Yuriy Brun has received one of twelve 2014 Microsoft Research Awards from the Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF), which support academic research in software engineering technologies, tools, practices, and teaching... more
May 23, 2014
Professor Andrew McCallum is a 2014-2015 UMass Amherst Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Award Recipient, one of three chosen from the UMass Amherst campus. As a Conti Fellow, McCallum receives a year's leave of absence to concentrate on activities... more
May 22, 2014
Akshat Kumar (Ph.D. '13) was selected as the winner of the ICAPS (International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling) 2014 Best Dissertation Award. His dissertation "Exploiting Domain Structure in Multiagent Decision-Theoretic Planning... more
May 22, 2014
The Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society named Distinguished Professor Bruce Croft as a recipient of its 2014 Technical Achievement Award for "outstanding contributions to information retrieval and the... more
May 19, 2014
Tung Pham, a CS undergrad and Commonwealth Honors College student, who works with Professors Tim Richards and Rick Adrion, has recently received the Barbara B. Burn Memorial Scholarship. Dr. Barbara B. Burn founded the International Programs Office... more
May 02, 2014
The Sixth Annual Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy Awards ceremony was held on May 2, 2014. View OAA 2014 site for details on this year's recipients.
March 06, 2014
The Winter 2014 Significant Bits newsletter is now available. View now. Alums and friends should receive this issue in the mail by mid March. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for the print version, send email to bits@cs.umass.edu.
March 04, 2014
The following students have been named 2014 EMC Student Participation Award recipients: Elisabeth Baseman, Shiri Dori-Hacohen, Amanda Gentzel, Chang Liu, Ayse Pinar Ozisik, and Jennie Steshenko. EMC Corporation has established this new award to... more
March 03, 2014
Distinguished Professor Jim Kurose was re-elected to a three-year term on the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board of Directors.More on CRA elections.
March 01, 2014
During the UMass Amherst Faculty Convocation held in September, 2014, Distinguished Professor Bruce Croft was presented with the UMass Amherst 2014 Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity. He is one of eight... more
February 28, 2014
Mobile devices and apps have seen a phenomenal growth in the last few years and have transformed our daily lives. Today, the number of smartphones alone far exceeds the number of wired computers on the Internet, and Internet traffic from mobile... more
February 05, 2014
Professor Prashant Shenoy's smart-grid research is the feature story on the UMass Amherst Research NEXT site in the story, "Toward a Smarter, Greener Grid."Excerpt:
February 03, 2014
In the Northeast Regional Preliminary Contest of the 2013 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Competition, the UMass Amherst Computer Science team, "Execution Time," placed first, qualifying them for the... more
February 02, 2014
Colorado State University (CSU) Computer Science Professors Ross Beveridge and Bruce Draper did their Ph.D. work in the UMass Amherst Computer Vision Group, under the joint direction of Professors Ed Riseman and Al Hanson, and both graduated with Ph... more
February 02, 2014
Recent Computer Science Ph.D. graduates
Marc-Allen Cartright; Query-Time Optimization Techniques for Structured Queries in Information Retrieval; (James Allan, Advisor); Sept. 2013; Software Engineer, Google, Inc.
February 02, 2014
The Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE), and its successor project, the Expanding Computing Education Pathways alliance (ECEP), both National Science Foundation-funded alliances to broaden participation in computing,... more
February 02, 2014
Thanks to generous contributions from CS alum Daniel E. Flynn (BS '87), the John E. and Alice M. Flynn Scholarship was established in 2013 to honor his parents. The Scholarship will provide support to undergraduate students majoring in Computer... more
February 02, 2014
Doctoral student Yunmeng Ban is the recipient of a 2014 Microsoft Research Graduate Women's Scholarship. She is one of ten scholars chosen from 101 applicants. The Microsoft Research Graduate Women's Scholarship is a one-year scholarship program for... more
February 01, 2014
Latest CS research - from microgenetic learning to space explorationA few of the school's many research projects are highlighted below.
February 01, 2014
Faculty NewsAssistant Professors Alexandra Meliou and Andrew McGregor each received a 2013 Google Faculty Research Award for structured data research. Meliou's research project is "Bidirectional Data Cleaning" and McGregor's is "Summarizing and... more
December 21, 2013
Professor Emeritus Andrew Barto was selected as the 2014 recipient of the International Neural Network Society (INNS) Hebb Award "in recognition of long-standing contribution and achievements in biological and computational learning."
