Fall 2018 State of the Department

The USF Computer Science department is thriving with four new tenure-track faculty members, two new research labs, a new graduate “Bridge” program that readies graduates from other majors for a Master’s in CS, and graduate enrollments that have doubled since 2016 and undergraduate enrollments that have tripled since 2013. The department is the largest and most diverse it has ever been in terms of both faculty, students, and expertise.

New Faculty

The new faculty members include Beste Yuksel who just started her third year and works in Human- and Brain-Computer Interfaces, Matthew Malensek (2nd year) who works in Big Data, David Guy Brizan (2nd year in CS) who works in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, and Vahab Pournaghshband (1st year) who works in Networks and Security. Hiring in CS is a huge challenge and we are thrilled to have added these terrific teachers and researchers to our department, and to have broadened our areas of expertise. Continue reading “Fall 2018 State of the Department”

USF Computer Science Sends First Cohort to Tapia

Each year, the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing brings students, professionals, and academics together to acknowledge, promote and celebrate diversity in computing. Participating for the first time, USF Computer Science sent five students to Orlando, Florida to participate, network, and recruit upcoming diverse computing leaders.

This year’s conference, themed Roots of Innovation “reminds us to celebrate the historical role of diversity with respect to STEM innovation, and declare it as a standard essential set of roots for computing innovation in the future.” We asked the student participants to share their experience at this year’s conference: Continue reading “USF Computer Science Sends First Cohort to Tapia”

WiT & ACM Host Empowerment Hackathon

 

Students at Empowerment Hackathon
Students at Empowerment Hackathon

Introduction by Professor Beste Yuksel

We are very proud to announce that we held a hackathon on the theme of ‘Empowerment’ at the University of San Francisco in the department of Computer Science this year. This hackathon was sponsored by the very generous donations of Craig Newmark Philanthropies. It was organized by the Women in Tech (WiT) and ACM Student Chapter organizations. We had 53 students take part, 43% of which were female or non-binary! This is a huge coup for Computer Science where women generally make up 20-25% of classrooms and traditionally do not attend hackathons as much as men.

Continue reading “WiT & ACM Host Empowerment Hackathon”