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Dear Bowers CIS students,

As I write this message, I know many of us continue to experience a variety of emotions and concerns related to the events of the past few weeks. With the added weight of busy schedules and prelims upon us, I encourage you to take proactive steps to prioritize your well-being. Take breaks. Connect with your peers and community. And, remember that our student services team and the DEI office are here to help and support you.

Today I also share some of the latest research highlights, accolades and good news happening in the college, including an update on the new building. I am happy to report the excavation phase is now complete, and we are on schedule for a spring 2025 opening.

I hope you have a restorative Thanksgiving break!

Best,

Kavita Bala

Dean

Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

dean@cis.cornell.edu

Welcome new community members:

Rebecca Liu: Software Engineer, Department of Computer Science

Andrew DeFran: End User Support, IT Department

Tenure and Promotions:

Noah Snavely: Promoted to Professor, Department of Computer Science

A color photo showing a group of students at the new majors welcome for Cornell Bowers CIS.

The college welcomes majors to their new 'intellectual home'

The college celebrated the newest cohort of students to declare a major within the college, providing dinner, swag, and introductions to the various clubs, services, and resources now available to them.

New building update

A photo collage showing the construction progress on the new building for Bowers CIS

Meet the new faculty

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Alex Conway

Alex Conway is an assistant professor of computer science. He comes to Cornell from the research arm of VMware, a cloud computing and virtualization technology company, where his work spanned every aspect, from theory to systems to product.

Sainyam Galhotra

Sainyam Galhotra is an assistant professor of computer science. Previously, Galhotra was a Computing Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago.

Daniel Susser

Daniel Susser is an associate professor of information science.

Before arriving at Cornell, Susser was the Haile Family Early Career Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology and a research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University.

A color photo of a man smiling for a photo with text congratulating Noah Stephens-Davidowitz

Stephens-Davidowitz named Packard Fellow

Noah Stephens-Davidowitz, assistant professor of computer science and information science, has been named a Packard Foundation Fellow for his work in theoretical computer science and cryptography.

Researchers bring home awards from CSCW conference

Research from several Cornell faculty and students received recognition at the 26th Association of Computing Machinery Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW).

Nicola Dell

Steven Jackson

The logos for Cornell Bowers CIS and CSCS 2023

Florentina Bunea to give keynote at NeurIPS

Florentina Bunea, professor of statistics and data science in the college, will give a keynote talk at the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), held Dec. 10-16 in New Orleans.

Zhang receives UbiComp’s 10-year Impact Award

Cheng Zhang, assistant professor of information science, has received the 10-year Impact Award from the ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp) held earlier in October.

Bracy named senior member of the ACM

Anne Bracy, senior lecturer (CS), has been named a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a recognition given to ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience who have demonstrated performance through technical leadership and professional contributions.

Guidi wins ISSNAF Young Investigator Mario Gerla Award

The Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) has selected Giulia Guidi, assistant professor of computer science, for the 2023 Mario Gerla Award for Research in Computer Science.

Cornell researchers have developed a new optimization tool, OmniMotion.

OmniMotion allows for better video motion estimation

Ruojin Cai

Yen-Yu Chang

Bharath Hariharan

Noah Snavely

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After the crisis: Lessons from pandemic online learning

Ji Yong Cho

René Kizilcec

Robot stand-in mimics your movements in VR

François Guimbretière

Mose Sakashita

Processor made for AI speeds up genome assembly

Giulia Guidi

Glasses use sonar, AI to interpret upper body poses in 3D

Saif Mahmud

Cheng Zhang

Rubambiza receives Best Doctoral Presentation at Tapia Conference for digital ag work

Gloire Rubambiza, a doctoral candidate in the field of computer science, is tackling a tough problem: How to develop the technology for digital agriculture – sensors, software, and communication networks for digitizing and automating agricultural work – when farming communities often have poor internet connectivity.

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CS undergrad’s ‘moxie’ leads to internship developing AI field cameras

To find an internship this past summer, Sahil Hosalli ’26 followed the money.

“I knew a lot of bigger companies didn't typically offer internships to first-year students like me,” said Hosalli, a computer science major and data science minor. “But I was kind of interested in seeing if smaller companies – startups, companies with government grants – would be willing to do that.”

Graduate Student Spotlight: Mehrnaz Sabet

Mehrnaz Sabet is a doctoral candidate in information science with a minor in computer science from Shiraz, Iran. She earned her B.Sc. in computer engineering at the University of Tehran and now studies human-autonomy learning under the guidance of Susan Fussell at Cornell.