News Archives | Department of Computer Science

News + Awards

First Annual Outstanding Achievement and Advocacy Awards Banquet

(Thu March 5, 2009)

Prof. Arun Venkataramani receives NSF CAREER award

(Thu February 19, 2009)

Assistant Professor Arun Venkataramani has received a five-year Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation for his proposal "A Robust Protocol Stack for Diverse Wireless Edge Networks.

Prof. Kevin Fu awarded a Sloan Fellowship

(Tue February 17, 2009)

Assistant Professor Kevin Fu is among 118 researchers in the United States and Canada to be awarded a prestigious 2009 Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Prof. Lesser named as recipient of IJCAI-09 Research Excellence Award

(Tue January 27, 2009)

Professor Victor Lesser is the 2009 recipient of the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09) Award for Research Excellence.

This lifetime achievement award is given to a scientist who has carried out a program of research of consistently high quality yielding several substantial results. Professor Lesser is recognized for his seminal work on the foundations of blackboard control architectures and multi-agent systems and his foundational role in the formation of the multi-agent systems community.

UMass, state and community colleges join forces to spur interest in IT careers

(Fri January 9, 2009)

Students looking for a ray of hope in hard economic times should consider preparing for a career in information technology, or IT, because employers are looking for new people, according to Rick Adrion, professor of computer science at UMass Amherst. He says gaining IT knowledge and skills now will pay off in job opportunities in everything from tech support and health care database management to software design and computing research. And, the university wants to help.

Letter from the chair

(Mon December 15, 2008)

Andrew Barto, Professor and Chair

Distinguished Alum Award Program - Call For Nominations

(Wed December 10, 2008)

The Computer Science Department is initiating the process of identifying the recipients of its First Annual Distinguished Alum Awards. The Distinguished Alum Award (DAA) program is being set up to recognize outstanding accomplishments by individuals who have received their degrees from the UMass Amherst Computer Science Department. For this first year, the award categories are:

Prof. Lesser named IEEE Fellow

(Mon December 8, 2008)

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has named Computer Science Professor Victor Lesser as a Fellow, recognizing his contributions to distributed intelligent systems and architectures.

Ransford and Fu discover that headphone magnets interfere with pacemakers

(Sun November 9, 2008)

Graduate student Ben Ransford and Assistant Professor Kevin Fu discovered that magnets in headphones interfere with pacemakers and defibrillators. Their doctor-collaborator then reproduced the results on volunteer patients. The medical study, published by the American Heart Association, has been repeated in several hundred news venues (Reuters, Washington Post.com, ABC News, etc.).

View the American Heart Association press release for more details on the research.

In Memoriam: Paul Utgoff (1951 - 2008)

(Wed October 15, 2008)

The Department is very saddened to report that Professor Paul E. Utgoff died on October 11, 2008 at the age of 57 due to complications from surgery that he elected to undergo as part of his battle against appendiceal cancer.

Professor Utgoff joined the department as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 1985. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1991 and to full Professor in September 2008.

CS Alum Award Program Initiated

(Tue October 14, 2008)

Department Chair Andy Barto has announced that the Department is initiating an Awards Program aimed at recognizing outstanding achievements by alums of the Department. Recognition will take the form of an award, presented at an annual UMass Amherst Computer Science Awards Banquet. The first Banquet is being planned for the weekend of May 1, 2009. The awards program will recognize achievement in such areas as entrepreneurship, scientific research, and education.

RIPPLES - a MANIC decade

(Tue October 14, 2008)

The Research in Presentation Production for Learning Electronically Group (RIPPLES) has seen more than a decade of truly MANIC research, development, and educational applications. This research has been driven by rapidly changing technologies, creative new teaching and learning approaches, student and curricula demands, and interdisciplinary research.