AI Bests Expert Human Players at Video Game

race cars rounding corner on race track

A still from the video game Gran Turismo Sport. Credit: Jamie Wynder /Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

02/23/2022 - An artificial intelligence system made history recently by beating a human world champion in Sony's popular video racing game, Gran Turismo Sport. The technological feat, which made the cover of the journal Nature, involved an AI system designed in part by three University of Texas at Austin computer science Ph.D. alumni and professor Peter Stone. Read More

The Importance of Ethics in Computer Science

02/18/2022 - Co-written by Bettina Mateo and Lauren Cotton As society’s reliance on technology increases, computer scientists are now placed at the forefront of new and unique ethical decisions. However, most computer science curriculums don’t require a substantial education in ethics. This can be a troubling thought since a lack of educational discussion on ethical issues can lead scientists to be unaware of the consequences and repercussions of their creations.  Read More

How Block Encodings are Optimizing Phase Estimation

02/10/2022 - In his recent paper, “Faster Coherent Quantum Algorithms for Faster Phase, Energy, and Amplitude Estimation”, UTCS PhD graduate Patrick Rall puts forth novel quantum algorithms for estimating important fundamental qualities of our complex world. Patrick’s approach simplifies the necessary computations compared to the current standard method. Estimation of these properties has applications in condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry as well as machine learning and finance.  Read More

Waters Named ACM Fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery

Brent Waters
01/20/2022 - The Association for Computing Machinery, the primary professional organization in the field of computer science, has named Brent Waters as an ACM Fellow. The award goes only to highly distinguished computer scientists representing the top 1% of ACM members.  Read More

Texas CSB Students Earn President’s Leadership Awards

Benjamin Mathew on left and Chris Wang on right
01/11/2022 - The President’s Leadership Awards were created in 1985 with an endowment from past Texas Exes president Frank Denius. These awards recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated outstanding leadership within the student community at The University of Texas. One sophomore, two juniors and three seniors receive the award annually. This year, two Texas Honors Computer Science and Business (Texas CSB) are among the recipients. Read More

UTCS Professor Sarah Abraham Earns CNS Teaching Excellence Award

12/07/2021 - The College of Natural Science Teaching Excellence award was created with the intention to promote quality teaching in CNS by recognizing faculty members that have had a positive influence on the education of their students. Every year each CNS department has the opportunity to nominate a faculty member for the award. This year, The University of Texas Computer Science department is proud to announce that our own Sarah Abraham was awarded The Teaching Excellence Award 2021.  Read More

UTCS Alum Dr. Ajita John shares her lifelong passion for computer science

UT Computer Science alum Ajita John against a gray backdrop
12/03/2021 - From a young age, Dr. John gravitated towards math and logical problem-solving. Although most of her family were in the humanities, they nurtured her unique interests in her early years. The definite logic and reasoning of mathematical concepts struck a chord with her that encouraged her curiosity in the field. As she pursued this curiosity as an undergrad at the Indian Institute of Science, it became clear to her that she had found her purpose. Dr. John had always planned on moving to the US for her Ph.D. and when she visited Austin she immediately knew that this was the place for her. Read More

All That Jazz: Improving Automated Piano Note Transcription

hands playing a piano
11/17/2021 - Any fan of jazz music can attest to the beauty of musical improvisation. However, many famous improvisational piano pieces aren't recorded in sheet music. “There's a lot of music that exists in the world that doesn't have musical transcriptions because it was played improvisationally—virtuosos that never decided to write anything down,” explained Varun Rajaram. This is because transcribing the notes of a piece (especially polyphonic pieces where multiple notes play at a time) is a difficult task even for skilled musicians. Read More

Shacham Receives NSF Grant for Cybersecurity Research

UT Computer Science Professor Hovav Shacham
11/10/2021 - The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced four new flagship funding awards through the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, including for a project focused on securing web browser operations led by Hovav Shacham, professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. Read More

Using Neural Networks to Personalize Treatment for Bilingual Aphasia Patients

10/11/2021 - Bilingual aphasia is a language impairment to multilingual people acquired through some sort of injury, usually a stroke. Patterns of language impairment in multilingual stroke patients are very diverse. Sometimes language impairment affects all languages the person speaks equally, while other times it affects one language more than the other. The way in which a stroke affects a multilingual patient depends on many different variables such as when each language was learned, how frequently each one is used etc. Read More

Bill Press Named to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

UT computer scientist Bill Press
09/22/2021 - William H. Press, a computer scientist and computational biologist at The University of Texas at Austin, will provide scientific perspective to the White House, as a recently named member of President Biden's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Read More

As AI Becomes Ubiquitous, There are Risks, Says New AI100 Report

cityscape with white artificial intelligence line graphic symbols over-layed
09/16/2021 - Artificial intelligence has reached a critical turning point in its evolution, according to a new report by an international panel of experts assessing the state of the field for the second time in five years. Read More

UTCS Undergraduate Program Climbs to Top 10 in the Nation

Number 10 Best Undergraduate Computer Science Program in the Nation
09/14/2021 - UT Computer Science rose to No. 10, up from No. 11 last year in U.S. News & World Report’s latest undergraduate rankings.  UT Computer Science Undergraduate Program ranked No. 10 nationally, with five top-10 specialty rankings:  Read More

New Materials Could Lead to Computers That Work Like the Human Brain

Mock-up of a quantum photonic device, which could form part of a neuromorphic computing system. From Silverstone et al., IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 22, 6 (2016). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Mock-up of a quantum photonic device, which could form part of a neuromorphic computing system. From Silverstone et al., IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 22, 6 (2016). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

09/14/2021 - For decades, computer chips have gotten denser, faster and more energy efficient. But in recent years, those improvements have slowed to a crawl. Yet some of the most exciting new applications engineers are exploring — self-driving cars, microscopic robots to diagnose and treat diseases inside the human body, and systems collecting environmental data for battlefield awareness or public health forecasting — need fast, compact, energy-efficient computer chips that can be integrated directly into these systems, rather than relying on connecting to supercomputers far away. Read More

How Life Experiences Pushed UTCS Alum Natalie Berestovsky to Pursue Her Passion in Computer Science

UT Austin Computer Science Alum Natalie Berestovsky
08/19/2021 - UT Computer Science alum Natalie Berestovsky struggled to speak English at the level of her peers as a sophomore in high school when she first migrated to Texas from Moscow. Coincidently, this hardship is what pushed her to begin her journey in computer science. The high school she went to offered computer science classes to its students which gave Natalie more confidence as they evened the language playing field between her and her classmates. Suddenly they were all learning a new language, Java, and no student was more proficient than the others.  Read More

Kristen Grauman Rethinks How Floor Plans are Created

Aerial view of gray scale home layout with sound wave graphics in yellow
07/22/2021 - Floorplans are used in many industries to help people visualize what the inside of a building looks like without actually seeing it. Traditionally, floorplans have been created by actually observing a 3D environment either manually or with the aid of 3D sensors. But what happens when the luxury of observing the 3D environment isn’t available—for example, when a robot is introduced to a new environment? Would it be able to quickly create floor maps without actually seeing the entire environment being mapped in detail? Read More

Professor Chand John Works Toward a More Inclusive Computer Science Education

UTCS Professor Chand John
07/13/2021 - Dr. Chand John graduated from UT as a math and computer science dual major in 2003 and then went on to earn his CS master’s and PhD from Stanford. He noticed that CS textbooks are often “grey” and not visually appealing, so he decided to try his hand at CS art. Now, Dr. John creates computer science-based comics and is the creator of an animated lesson on sorting that has amassed over 3 million views on YouTube. Read More

UTCS Alum Romelia Flores: Prolific Inventor, System Designer, Diversity Initiatives Leader

Black and white photo of Romelia Flores.
07/01/2021 - Alum Romelia Flores was born and raised in Eagle Pass, Texas along the Mexican border. When she first arrived at UT, Romelia tried out a few different majors before landing on computer science. She came in as a biology major, then declared a math major due to her love of mathematics. She thoroughly enjoyed mathematics courses, particularly calculus because the formulas and equations were natural for her to understand and logically obtain correct results. Read More

Kristen Grauman Named Finalist in 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists

06/15/2021 - University of Texas at Austin computer science researcher Kristen Grauman was selected as a finalist for the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Read More

Eighteen UTCS Students Awarded Endowed Presidential Scholarships

Congratulations to our 2021-22 Unrestricted Endowed Presidential Scholarship Award Winners
06/02/2021 - UT has announced the Endowed Presidential Scholarship Award winners for the 2021-2022 year and we are proud to announce that 18 of our UTCS students were selected for the prestigious award!  Read More

Four UTCS Students Named 2021 Dean's Honored Graduates

UTCS students and Dean's Honored Graduate's James Dong, Marissa Elise Chabella Jenkins, Niklas Lauffer, and Nivedhitha Selvaraj
05/25/2021 - Each year, the College of Natural Sciences selects a group of outstanding graduating seniors to receive the college’s highest honors. They are recognized as the Dean's Honored Graduates because they have demonstrated multidisciplinary excellence, excelled in both academics and scientific research, personal intellectual pursuits, leadership, service, entrepreneurship and community building. Fewer than one percent of the graduating CNS class received this distinction. Read More

Graduating Computer Science Student Leaders Look Back on Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Computer science seniors Audra Collins and América Quistiano
05/21/2021 - Computer science seniors América Quistiano and Audra Collins said they would not be here, on the cusp of graduating from one of the best computer science programs in the country, without the Hispanic Association of Computer Scientists and the Association of Black Computer Scientists. "I 100% believe I would have dropped out," Quistiano said. "I wouldn't have switched majors, not even switched schools — I would have dropped out if it weren't for HACS and ABCS." Read More

UTCS Alum Ron Green’s Lifelong Love for AI Started at UT, Now He Works to Democratize It

UTCS Alumnus Ron Green
05/17/2021 - Alum Ron Green might not have always known what he wanted to major in, but he always knew he wanted to attend UT Austin. He grew up watching Longhorn football legend Earl Campbell play at a young age and recalls being a die-hard Longhorn ever since. Read More

Seven UTCS Students Awarded Black and Latinx Advocacy Council’s Aspire Award

Audra Collins, Chineye Emeghara, Edén Garza, Marissa Jenkin, Mikayla Moore, América Melany Quistiano
05/11/2021 - The Department of Computer Science is proud to announce that seven of our students were recently awarded the 2021 Aspire Award. The Aspire Award recognizes undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in the sciences and celebrates their achievements in research, service and leadership. Read More

Alison Norman Selected by Alumni to Receive the Alcalde's Texas 10 Award

Alison Norman, MS ’06, PhD ’10 Associate Professor of Instruction, Department of Computer Science | Years at UT: 10
05/05/2021 - Each year, the Alcalde asks alumni to vote for their favorite professors: the teachers who inspired them and helped make their college experience unforgettable. This year UTCS professor Alison Norman is among these Texas 10. Read the full article, Introducing the 2021 Texas Ten, to learn more about Alison Norman and the other 2021 Texas Ten. Read More

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