Hello from Madison!

As I look out my office window, I see some familiar sights. Snow on the ground -- not a lot, but it's there, on the rooftops and greenspaces nearby; students, hurrying off to class, or wherever it is that students go when they are running around during the day -- perhaps a library, or perhaps The Library; the beautiful Capitol in the distance, now surrounded by an increasing number of condominiums and other tall buildings. But I also see an unfamiliar sight: an empty space, just north of the CS Building, between Psychology and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. This space has just been cleared to make way for our new building and will house not only the entire CS Department, but also the Statistics Department, the iSchool, the American Family Insurance Data Science Institute, and some colleagues from the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics. It is exciting to see this massive project begin, even in these early stages!

This fall, we welcomed three new faculty members: Rishab Goyal, from MIT; Kirthevasan Kandasamy, from UC-Berkeley; and Patrick McDaniel, who comes to us as a tenured professor from Penn State. And we have two new teaching faculty joining us: Girmail Singh and Scott Swanson. In this issue you can also read about a visit from Turing Award winner and UW alum Pat Hanrahan who created groundbreaking technology for Pixar, three CS professors who were honored by the College of Letters & Science in their first ever Investiture Ceremony, and the work of graduate student Shashank Rajput focusing on federated learning. We also have an update from the Open Science Grid User School, where they taught students from around the world about the power of high-throughput computing. We are sorry to say goodbye to Emeritus Professor Seymour Parter, who passed away at the end of October. And finally, we include updates from the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences Director Tom Erickson and College of Letters & Science Dean Eric Wilcots.

Please stay in touch and let us know if you'll be in town. One of the best parts of my job is meeting with our fabulous alumni!

On, Wisconsin!

-Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau

Department Chair

Grace Wahba Professor of Computer Sciences

Turing Award winner Pat Hanrahan speaks to an overflowing UW-Madison crowd

UW alum and Turing Award winner Pat Hanrahan spoke in the CS building this fall about Renderman and the rest of his career. Read about it here.

CS grad student Shashank Rajput aims to build efficient, scalable machine learning algorithms

Rajput was awarded a Google PhD fellowship for cutting-edge computing research. Learn all about how he's shifting his work focus to federated learning here.

Open Science Grid User School welcomes students from around the globe

Five students from Uganda and Mali participated in the OSG User School as a part of The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the African Centers for Excellence in Bioinformatics and Data-Intensive Science (ACE) partnership program. Read about what the students learned about using high-throughput computing here.

In memoriam: Seymour Parter

With heavy hearts, we report that CS Emeritus Professor Seymour Parter passed away in October, 2022. Read his obituary here.

From the Desk of CDIS Director Tom Erickson



Three years ago, UW–Madison took a bold step to be a leader in the information age and created the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences (CDIS). Our three nationally ranked departments – Computer Sciences, Statistics, and the Information School – have made significant progress in a short amount of time. Notable accomplishments include creating two new undergraduate majors (Data Science and Information Science) as well as three new graduate programs (MS in Information, MS in Data Science, and MS in Data Engineering). Read more here!

Message from L&S Dean Wilcots

Fall semester is well underway, and there is much to celebrate this year! UW-Madison’s freshman class is, once again, the largest in history, and it is also the most diverse. Here in L&S, we have a student body full of talent and we are providing a world-class experience for those students. Engagement at SuccessWorks, our innovative career advising center, is at record levels.

One of my top priorities is to make sure we have a welcoming and inclusive environment in which all of our students can thrive and feel at home. Keep reading here!