Dear Bowers CIS community,

2023 is off to an excellent start, and the next few months will be filled with exciting opportunities for learning, discovery, and growth.

One of those opportunities is Bits On Our Minds, also known as BOOM. I am excited to share that after a three-year hiatus, BOOM is back! The premier showcase for student tech projects will return to Cornell from 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 27.

Applications for showcasing at BOOM will open in a few weeks, and I strongly encourage students of all levels to apply. BOOM has always been one of my favorite events of the semester. It is a great opportunity for student innovators – like you – to showcase your hard work to peers, faculty, and young STEM students. Stay tuned for more details on BOOM.

I hope I see you at BOOM ’23 or at one of the many other Bowers CIS events this semester, where you can recharge your batteries and gain new knowledge and inspiration.

Best,

Kavita Bala

Dean

Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

dean@cis.cornell.edu

Multicollege department to bridge design and technology

Recognizing design’s integral role in the development of technologies reshaping the built environment and how we live and work, Cornell has established the multicollege and transdisciplinary Department of Design Tech.

Welcome new community members:

Kimberly Budd, Faculty Course Support Specialist, CS

Sahri Chery, Asst. Director of Undergraduate Advising, focusing on InfoSci

Longxiulin Deng, Temporary Research Aide

Carrie Irwin, Director Human Resources

Three new faculty members join

Cornell Bowers CIS

Giulia Guidi, assistant professor, computer science

Rachee Singh, assistant professor, computer science

Yian Yin, assistant professor, information science

CS Colloqiuim: Dr. Darío Gil

Dr. Gil, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at IBM, discussed the future of quantum computing and its potential to solve problems that are out of reach for even the most powerful supercomputers.

Sreyoshi Das named Engaged Faculty Fellow

Inaugural diversity awards honor students who foster inclusive communities

Three students and three recent alumni from the college received the inaugural Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) awards.

Hirsh elected AAAS Fellow

Haym Hirsh, professor of computer science, is one of 12 Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine faculty members who have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.

Allison Koenecke awarded CCSS Grant

Fred Schneider's paper receives NSA cybersecurity award

Juels and Ristenpart Win Test of Time Award at CCS 2022

Ari Juels and Thomas Ristenpart received the Test of Time Award at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security for their co-authored 2012 paper, “Cross-VM side channels and their use to extract private keys.”

Allison Koenecke and Nikhil Garg selected for Forbes 30 Under 30: Science

Travel worsens poor conditions for rural health aides

Nicola Dell

Bot gives nonnative speakers the floor in videoconferencing

Susan Fussell

Xiaoyan Li

Cornell initiative empowers humanists to leverage AI

David Mimno

Matthew Wilkens

Monitoring invades truckers’ privacy without boosting safety

Karen Levy, associate professor of information science, started research on truck drivers as a graduate student, and is now the author of the new book “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance.”

NSF awards grant for AI Center On Speech-Language Disorders

Sasha Rush

Better digital tools could help immigrants access benefits

Natalie Bazarova, Diana Freed

Aptos Labs awards $50K grant

Lorenzo Alvisi

New testing paradigms offer better code with fewer bugs

Owolabi Legunsen

Mating causes ‘jet lag’ in female fruit flies, changing behavior

Sumanta Basu

MPS Projects explore natural language processing, blockchain

Every semester, students in Cornell Information Science’s master of professional studies (MPS) program draw on ingenuity, problem-solving, and teamwork to develop solutions for client companies.

Roujin Cai awarded Snap Research Fellowship

Dhruv Agarwal named

2023 Quad Fellow

Student teams pitch gizmos, research at information science showcase

The showcase featured nearly 100 semester-end projects from five information science courses.

‘Dream Grants’ help students realize their visions

Somil Aggarwal

Maitreyi Chatterjee

Rishi Malhotra

Adele Smolanksy

Anya Ji ’23 wins Best Paper at top conference

The senior and master of engineering student majoring in computer science and psychology, is the first author of the award-winning paper.

Four undergrads recognized for research excellence by the Computing Research Association (CRA)

Anya Ji, Yifei Zhou, Kevin Jiang, Fangcong Yin

Graduate Student Spotlight: Aspen Russell

Aspen Russell is a doctoral student in information science from Hillsboro, Oregon. She earned a B.S. in computer science from American University and now studies the relationship between what a platform is, how it affects users, and the resulting interactions.

Info Sci Ph.D. awarded grant for AI auditing research

Briana Vecchione, a doctoral student in the field of information science, has been awarded a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab to explore tools and resources used by auditors of AI systems.

Graduate Student Spotlight: Dhruv Agarwal

Dhruv Agarwal is a doctoral student in information science from Gurgaon, India. He studied computer science at Ashoka University in India as an undergraduate and now looks to design responsible AI technologies for marginalized people.

AI Isn’t Artificial or Intelligent - Vice News

Chinasa T. Okolo

An AI Pioneer on What We Should Really Fear -

The New York Times

Yejin Choi ’10

Coverage around Karen Levy's book “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance."

cis.cornell.edu