The University of California, Davis, is first and foremost an institution of learning and teaching, committed to serving the needs of society. The Department of Computer Science contributes to the mission of the University in three ways. First, its undergraduate and graduate education programs seek to educate students in the fundamental principles of computer science and the skills needed to solve the complex technological problems of modern society; the breadth of course work provides a framework for life-long learning and appreciation for multidisciplinary activities. Second, through our research programs, the department contributes to the development and progress of computer science, and software and information technology, to provide innovative, creative solutions for societal needs. Finally, the department disseminates its research - to enhance collaborations with the public sector, further interdisciplinary interests that benefit society, and educate the public - through publications, public service, and professional activities.
CS News
Professor Nelson Max was recently elected as an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow for his contributions to visualization tools and computer animation. The ACM Fellows Program, initiated in 1993, celebrates the exceptional contributions of the leading members in the computing field. These individuals have helped to enlighten researchers, developers, practitioners and end-users of information technology throughout the world. The new ACM Fellows join a distinguished list of colleagues to whom ACM and its members look for guidance and leadership in computing and information technology.
ProfessorKwan-Liu Ma was recently elected as an IEEE Fellow. The citation is for "contributions to large-scale data visualization."
Congratulations to Associate ProfessorXin Liu, who was recently selected as a Chancellor's Fellow. The Chancellor's Fellows program is designed to honor and encourage faculty members early in their careers. Each fellow receives a $25,000 prize from private contributions to the UC Davis Annual Fund and Davis Chancellor's Club, with the money to be used for research, teaching or service activities.
Raju Pandey, Chief Technology Office and co-founder of SynapSense of Folsom and Associate Professor in CS, was named the Clean Tech Innovator of the Year at the 2011 Clean Tech Showcase. The fifth annual event is sponsored by CleanStart, an initiative of the tech-focused nonprofit Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance. SynapSense uses and develops technologies using wireless networks to monitor and control electricity use in data centers. The technology can save 30 percent of electricticiy usage, which is significant in the growing power-hungry world of data centers.
The Synthetic Biology iGEM team won the gold this year in the regional/continent competition and is going to the finals that will be held in Boston (MIT) NOvember 5-7, where teams from around the world will compete. The computer science department was one of the sponsors of the team that Assistant Professors Ilias Tagkopoulos and Marc Facciotti are advising.
Alumni news! Chris Bird, PhD 2010, formerly a postdoc at Microsoft Research, has received a permanent appointment there as a Researcher. Eric Wohlstadter, PhD 2004, has been promoted to Associate Professor (tenured) at University of British Columbia. Also, Mark Gabel Ph.D. 2011 has been appointed Assistant Professor, UT Dallas.
Professor and Vice Chair Nina Amenta, along with CS adjunct assistant professor Owen Carmichael and Joel Hass, professor and chair of Mathematics, have been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a project titled, “Shape Differences in the Biological Sciences." The collaboration is interested in defining and computing what it means for three-dimensional biological shapes to resemble each other; as specific examples, they consider the shapes of fossil primate bones. The goal is to put fossil shape data into the context of much larger sets of data collected from existing species, both morphological and genomic data from earlier research. Read the abstract