News Headlines
Hackers Trick Facial-Recognition Logins With Photos From Facebook (What Else?)
August 19, 2016 | WIRED.com
FACIAL RECOGNITION MAKES sense as a method for your computer to recognize you. After all, humans already use a powerful version of it to tell each other apart. But people can be fooled (disguises! twins!), so it’s no sur … Read more
Frequent Password Changes Is a Bad Security Idea (Bruce Schneier references a UNC CS study)
August 6, 2016 | Bruce Schneier blog
I’ve been saying for years that it’s bad security advice, that it encourages poor passwords. Lorrie Cranor, now the FTC’s chief technologist, agrees: By studying the data, the researchers identified common techniques acc … Read more
Through the Looking Glass (UNC CS research in virtual environments)
August 5, 2016 | Endeavors Magazine
We live in a world where 3-D and computer graphics are an integral part of science, medicine, communication, and entertainment. Today’s chemists create 3-D models of complex molecules, using them to discover properties i … Read more
Computer scientist Diane Pozefsky: ‘I started building software and saw the impact it could have’
July 25, 2016 | College of Arts and Sciences
Diane Pozefsky is a research professor and director of undergraduate studies in the UNC College of Arts & Sciences Department of Computer Science. Pozefsky’s expertise includes software engineering and the social, le … Read more
Longtime Google engineer Matt Cutts (M.S. 1998) is joining the Pentagon’s digital team
June 30, 2016 | The Verge
Matt Cutts, a 16-year Google veteran who authored the company’s SafeSearch content filter, is taking a leave from the search giant to work on the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service. The division, formed last fall, is res … Read more
Bansal and Porter join UNC CS faculty
June 28, 2016
The award-winning faculty of the UNC Department of Computer Science is growing by two. The department has announced the hiring of its two newest faculty members, Mohit Bansal and Don Porter, who will begin this fall. Ban … Read more
UNC CS students compete to beat the odds at ACM ICPC World Finals
May 20, 2016
Three UNC undergraduate computer science students, Dayton Ellwanger, Forrest Li and David Spencer, will return from Thailand this week after representing UNC-Chapel Hill in the World Finals of the ACM ICPC (Association f … Read more
Computer Science recognizes 228 graduates in annual Commencement
May 17, 2016
Department photos from both ceremonies can be found here.Professional photos were taken of each student at Commencement by Photo Specialties. Contact Nicole Terhune to purchase photos. For a list of graduates, view the C … Read more
Avoiding the Crush (featuring crowd simulation research by Dinesh Manocha)
May 3, 2016 | ACM News
Earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes take lives around the world, due to their unpredictable nature and massive power. Humans are responsible for similar levels of carnage through human crushes or stampedes; for example, … Read more
UNC CS hosts Maze Day 2016 for visually impaired children
April 30, 2016
Sight-impaired children from all over the state had an opportunity to test computer applications at Maze Day 2016. Participants came to the Department of Computer Science in Sitterson Hall to experience research and play … Read more
National Consortium for Data Science chooses researchers from three universities as 2016 -2017 Data Fellows
April 28, 2016 | National Consortium for Data Science
Three researchers located at Drexel University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been named 2016 -2017 Data Fellows by the National Consortium for Data Science (NC … Read more
CS student Samantha Petrie profiled by Wogrammer
April 19, 2016 | Wogrammer
“I was introduced to computer science my first year of college at UNC Chapel Hill. A friend of mine was taking an online introductory JavaScript course. I followed along and taught myself the basics of code. I was a bioc … Read more
UNC CS Featured at IEEE VR 2016 Conference — Two of four papers presented win awards
April 3, 2016
Ming Lin was the keynote speaker at the IEEE VR Conference on March 19, 2016. Lin’s talk, “Towards Immersive Multimodal Display: Interactive Auditory Rendering for Complex Virtual Environments” presented an overview of r … Read more
Hackathon inspires women in technology
April 3, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
High school and college women across the region came to Sitterson Hall on April 2 and April 3 for the third annual Pearl Hacks hackathon. Attendees went to workshops, created technological applications and supported gend … Read more
Holmes earns Google Lime Scholarship
March 30, 2016
Tia Holmes, a first-year computer science major at UNC-Chapel Hill, was awarded a 2016 Google Lime Scholarship. The scholarship carries a $10,000 grant for the 2016-2017 academic year. The Google Lime Scholarship is a pa … Read more
Founding UNC’s computer science department was an experiment — but it paid off for Fred Brooks
March 7, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
Fred Brooks retired in 2015 after 51 years at UNC — but he started teaching long before he got here. “I started regular teaching when I was in high school,” he said. “My senior year, one of the teachers came down with ca … Read more
Computer science class gets modern twist
February 18, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
With a little help from DJ Khaled, Kris Jordan is revolutionizing UNC’s intro level computer science program. Instead of taking the traditional bottom-up approach and building from basics to the harder stuff, Jordan said … Read more
Two students named 2016 Gates Cambridge Scholars
February 18, 2016 | UNC News
UNC-Chapel Hill students Larry Han and Matthew Leming have been awarded prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarships, which provide full support for graduate study at the University of Cambridge in England. This is the first … Read more
Dr. Dinesh Manocha discusses the rise of robots and future development in China (published in Chinese)
December 31, 2015 | OFweek.com
NC IDEA WINNER: Rheomics, Building Tools For More Accurate Blood Testing
December 15, 2015 | ExitEvent
Rheomics is one of six startups to win ~$50K in grant funding from the nonprofit Durham-based NC IDEA Foundation. Since 2006, the foundation has awarded nearly $4.2 million to 104 startups around the state. The six compa … Read more
The New Social Network (feature on telepresence research at UNC)
December 11, 2015 | Endeavors
Aman sits outside a café in North Carolina. His wife, in Paris, calls him and tells him she would like to have lunch. He puts on a pair of eyeglasses and presses a button. Then, suddenly, she is sitting across the table … Read more
Entrepreneurship and education come together in new master’s program
November 19, 2015 | The Daily Tar Heel
UNC officials say the new Master of Arts in educational innovation, technology and entrepreneurship, which was introduced on Monday, is the first of its kind in the U.S. Although it is based in the School of Education, t … Read more
DARPA seeks “non-traditional” robotics innovators
November 18, 2015 | ZDNet
The government has a robotics problem. Government grants for cutting edge robotics research and development typically favor large military contractors. But a lot of the development in robotics these days comes from indiv … Read more
Syrian immigrant Bahij Dahdal juggles parenting and school (CS major profile)
November 2, 2015 | The Daily Tar Heel
For transfer student Bahij Dahdal, school is not the only thing he has to worry about each day. The father of three has to get up early each day to take his children to school before making the commute to UNC from Wake F … Read more
Computer science majors outpace department’s budget, faculty
October 27, 2015 | The Daily Tar Heel
The computer science department at UNC is using one of the largest classrooms on campus, but students still complain they can’t get into classes they need. The number of computer science majors at UNC has increased fivef … Read more
Workshop shows that data matters at Carolina
October 7, 2015 | renci
When you put more than 50 faculty members, center directors, and researchers from 30 different campus units in a room, ideas are inevitable. However, all the attendees at the Data@Carolina Workshop last week agreed on on … Read more
How Impulsonic Makes VR & Gaming More Immersive… With Help From the Triangle
September 18, 2015 | ExitEvent
What do you get when you mix a group of computer science PhDs, a vibrant startup culture and an ultra-supportive university department? You get Impulsonic, the Carrboro-based startup that’s pioneering work in the softwar … Read more
eBay buying Twice (founded by alumnus Calvin Young) in hopes of bringing back amateur sellers
July 20, 2015 | CNET
eBay wasted little time in starting its new mission of rebuilding its marketplace. On the same day eBay began trading separately from its former payments unit, PayPal, eBay revealed it will be buying the core technology … Read more
UNC explores future of transportation
July 8, 2015 | WNCN News
Ever since Henry Ford strapped on four wheels to the base of the Model T back in 1908, society has fostered a growing question: When will we be able to get behind the wheel of a self-driving car? Cartoons as far back as … Read more
Developers create 3D models from public photos
July 7, 2015 | Spatial Source
United States modelling group URC ventures, in partnership with the University of North Carolina Department of Computer Science, has developed a 3D reconstruction method using computer vision and 3D modelling techniques … Read more