News Headlines
UNC-Chapel Hill Hosts Women in Tech Week
March 28, 2017 | Chapelboro
Several events to promote women who opt for careers in the technology industry will be held at UNC-Chapel Hill as part of the Department of Computer Science’s Women in Tech Week. The five-day promotion was conceived by K … Read more
‘Spork Lab’ tackles password security
March 28, 2017 | Carolina Arts & Sciences Magazine
Creating passwords that are memorable, hintable and resistant to attack is an increasingly important issue, especially in the age of savvy cyber-hackers — but computer-generated passwords are often too hard for people to … Read more
Real Sound in a Virtual World
March 13, 2017 | Endeavors
Take a moment to focus on the sounds around you. Maybe you’re sitting at a desk and someone walks by in the hallway. Even though you can’t see them, you can hear their footsteps and can tell when they get closer, when th … Read more
Dept. of Computer Science to Celebrate Pi Day with ‘Pi Your Professor’ Fundraiser
February 28, 2017
The UNC Department of Computer Science will celebrate Pi Day this year by hosting a “Pi Your Professor” fundraiser to support CS student clubs and initiatives. Comp Sci students can buy a ticket for $10 to lob a “pi” at … Read more
Fruits Of Valve’s Impulsonic Acquisition Appear: Steam Audio Beta Launched
February 22, 2017 | Tom's Hardware
In early January, we discovered that Valve had acquired a 3D audio company called Impulsonic. Valve didn’t reveal the news, but Impulsonic’s website indicated that Valve swallowed up the company’s assets and employees. I … Read more
Pearl Hacks 2017 unites more than 300 women for overnight hackathon
February 17, 2017
Pearl Hacks 2017 brought women from all over the country to UNC-Chapel Hill in February. The event sought to address the gender imbalance in computer science and technology by providing resources and education and by bui … Read more
AI Predicts Autism From Infant Brain Scans Increased brain growth during the first year of life accurately predicted whether a child at high risk of autism developed the disorder
February 15, 2017 | IEEE Spectrum
Twenty-two years ago, researchers first reported that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder had increased brain volume. During the intervening years, studies of younger and younger children showed that this brain “ov … Read more
Free online library for UNC students celebrates 10 millionth book read
February 3, 2017 | The Daily Tar Heel
Faculty from the UNC School of Medicine and the Department of Computer Science came together on Tuesday to celebrate the 10 millionth book read on TarHeelReader.org. The online library of free books for students with dis … Read more
Tar Heel Reader Celebrates 10 Million Books Read (Video)
February 1, 2017 | YouTube
Tar Heel Reader, an online, open source library of free, easy-to-read, accessible books, recently reached 10 million books read.
UNC-Chapel Hill student Benjamin Kompa named Churchill Scholar
January 27, 2017 | UNC.edu Spotlight
Benjamin Kompa, a fourth-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named a recipient of the prestigious Churchill Scholarship, a research-focused award that provides funding to outstanding … Read more
Researchers Demonstrate 100° Dynamic Focus AR Display With Membrane Mirrors
January 27, 2017 | Road to VR
Achieving a wide field of view in an AR headset is a challenge in itself, but so too is fixing the so-called vergence-accommodation conflict which presently plagues most VR and AR headsets, making them less comfortable a … Read more
Politics Aside, Counting Crowds Is Tricky
January 23, 2017 | NPR
There has been a lot of arguing about the size of crowds in the past few days. Estimates for President Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March a day later vary widely. And for crowd scientists, that’s pretty normal. ” … Read more
Tar Heel Reader Reaches 10 Million Books Read
December 19, 2016
Chapel Hill, NC—Tar Heel Reader, an online program that helps students with disabilities learn to read independently, reached 10 million books read on January 7 at 7:35 p.m. The site, which was created by Karen Erickson … Read more
Profiles in Computing: Tanya Amert
December 15, 2016 | Computing Research Association
Tanya Amert, a computer science Ph.D. student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found herself drawn to computer science because she enjoyed figuring out how things work. At 13 years old, she was a big fan of … Read more
News Release: DHS S&T Transition to Practice Program Transitions Eighth Cybersecurity Technology for Commercialization
December 14, 2016 | Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the eighth cybersecurity technology transitioning to commercializ … Read more
UNC-Chapel Hill Students Win TD Ameritrade’s Collegiate Virtual Trading Competition, the thinkorswim Challenge
December 7, 2016 | Business Wire
Trading right up until the closing bell, four students from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (“UNC-Chapel Hill”) turned in a 127 percent total portfolio gain in four weeks, outperforming nearly 2,500 others to … Read more
Morales earns $2,500 Royster Award
December 6, 2016
Nicolas Morales, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, was recognized on November 11 with a 2016 Royster Student Scholarship Award by the North Carolina chapter of the Acoustical Society of America (N … Read more
HackNC 2016 attracts hundreds of student coders to UNC for hackathon
November 21, 2016
HackNC, a 24-hour hackathon held annually at UNC-Chapel Hill by the UNC Department of Computer Science, brought more than 700 computer science students from all over the east coast to Fetzer Gym in October. A hackathon i … Read more
Reiter earns 2016 SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award
October 28, 2016
Professor Michael K. Reiter was recognized by the ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (ACM SIGSAC) with its Outstanding Contributions Award for 2016. Reiter was selected for pioneering research cont … Read more
Departments attempting to break stigmas and foster more inclusion
October 17, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
This semester, there are 10,882 female and 7,740 male undergraduate students enrolled at UNC. Despite the higher number of women, some departments are still struggling to have their enrollment reflect the diversity of th … Read more
UNC professor training internet to recognize images
September 28, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
This is part of a series of profiles on professors doing interesting things across UNC’s campus. Computer science professor Jan-Michael Frahm is teaching computers to see. Frahm is the head of the 3D Computer Vision grou … Read more
Ramesh Raskar awarded $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize
September 13, 2016 | MIT.edu
Ramesh Raskar, founder of the Camera Culture research group at the MIT Media Lab and associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, is the recipient of the 2016 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize. Raskar is the co-inven … Read more
Professor is the brains behind robots that advance in-home medical assistance
August 29, 2016 | The Daily Tar Heel
Computer science professor Ron Alterovitz is using robots to solve problems in health care. “Originally, I was interested in computer science and using computers and software to solve problems,” Alterovitz said. “I was v … Read more
Berg receives UNC Hettleman Prize
August 19, 2016
Associate Professor Tamara Berg has been honored with UNC’s Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty. The Hettleman Prize, which carries a $5,000 stipend, recognizes the ach … Read more
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