Here in Madison, it's beginning to feel like spring, a time of growth and renewal. It's a time of growth in CS as well, as we are in the thick of recruiting new faculty. The department and UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank are also thinking about growth on a much broader scale, with the appointment of a special task force on ways to enhance computing on campus (more on that below). I welcome your thoughts on this matter; feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Warm regards, Guri Sohi , Computer Sciences Chair

In a time of booming enrollments for UW-Madison CS, Chancellor Rebecca Blank has appointed Tom Erickson, a tech entrepreneur and ECE graduate, and Michael Lehman (pictured), who recently served as interim CIO on campus, to head an advisory group drawn from alumni, industry and campus. The group will assess options to boost computing education and research on campus.

Find out more about the working group and its charge

Zainab Ghadiyali has been selected for the Wisconsin Alumni Association's "40 under 40" award, which recognizes young alumni making a big impact. As cofounder of Wogrammer, Ghadiyali (MS '12) shines a spotlight on women in tech and their contributions, providing inspiration and encouragement to others. Madison also nurtured her entrepreneurial spirit, and she enjoys sharing advice with others. Says Ghadiyali, "I am so proud and lucky that I get to call myself a Badger!" 

Get to know Zainab Ghadiyali

While debugging is part and parcel of software development, it has remained an afterthought in the world of machine learning. That's changing, thanks to NSF-supported research by Professors Jerry Zhu and Steve Wright, along with graduate student Xuezhou Zhang (pictured). Their work on training set debugging was recently presented by Zhang at AAAI 2018.

Learn more about the team's research

Several faculty have good news to share: Tom Reps was honored with the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement award. Aditya Akella was awarded an H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, and new faculty member Theo Rekatsinas was selected for an Amazon Fellowship. Congrats, all!