UNC Computer Science Department invites all alumni, current UNC students, faculty and staff to connect with each other through the new virtual networking community, UNC CS Career Network via Heels Engage.
CS major Christine Mendoza received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, which provides three years of financial support, including a $37,000 annual stipend and $16,000 cost-of-education allowance. Mendoza was one of only 207 recipients nationwide in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering category.
After graduating in 2023, computer science alumna Rida Bayraktar traveled to Turkey to teach and mentor children and teens in refugee camps and to improve educational infrastructure with her non-profit organization Pink STREAM.
The Department of Computer Science is excited to announce the addition of several new faculty members in 2023 and 2024. Six faculty members have already begun their work for the Fall 2023 semester, and another will join for Fall 2024.
While many 2023 grads are preparing for their next steps in industry or academia, Rida Bayraktar is digging deeper into work she started as an undergraduate by bringing STEM education programs and infrastructure to earthquake relief centers in Turkey.
June marks the month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ pride and community. UNC CS honors Pride Month and supports LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff by sharing campus, local, and national resources and highlighting the history of LGBTQ+ individuals in tech.
The Department of Computer Science held a professional memorial service for Department Founder Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. on March 4, 2023. Brooks was remembered in panel discussions featuring colleagues from throughout his long career in the computing industry and academia.
Theodore Kim (Ph.D. 2006) received the Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the development of the elastic simulation system Fizt2. First used in Coco (2017), Fizt2 improves speed, robustness, and generality of simulation for both cloth and flesh.
Purdue University computer scientist Aniket Bera and others are working to help a variety of robots “better incorporate and understand human behavior and emotion.” While the focus is on the robots’ abilities, the changes lead to increased medium-as-social-actor presence, improved human-machine communication, and important positive – even life-saving – outcomes.
Alumna Tanya Amert (Ph.D. 2021) was awarded the 2022 ACM SIGBED Paul Caspi Memorial Dissertation Award. The award recognizes outstanding doctoral dissertations that significantly advance the state of the art in the science of embedded systems.
