News Headlines
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
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