CICS Assistant Professor Barna Saha was awarded a 2015 Yahoo! Academic Career Enhancement (ACE) Award and a Google Faculty Research Award. Assistant Professor Yuriy Brun and Professor Prashant Shenoy also received Google Faculty Research Awards.
Saha's Yahoo! ACE award is for her work in algorithm design and analysis, data analytics, and randomization in computation. This prestigious award is designed to aid promising first- and second-year professors at research universities who are conducting academic research that is relevant to Yahoo! Labs. She was one of three recipients selected out of talented professors considered for the award worldwide, each of whom must be nominated by Yahoo! Labs scientists and campus relationship managers.
The Fall 2015 Google Faculty Research Awards were announced in February 2016. Saha received a Google award in the area of machine learning and Shenoy for systems research. In the Fall 2015 round, Google funded 151 projects from 950 proposals, covering 55 countries and over 350 universities. Brun was a recipient of the Summer 2015 Google awards that funded 113 projects from 805 proposals. He received his award in the area of software engineering and programming languages. According to Google, the "Faculty Research Awards program plays a critical role in building and maintaining strong collaborations with top research faculty globally."