Dear Bowers CIS community,
In a year of milestones for Cornell Bowers CIS, March has proven to be an exciting time!
We started the month celebrating more than 2,000 undergraduate majors within our three departments – Computer Science, Information Science, and Statistics and Data Science.
Last week we announced a unique five-year strategic partnership with LinkedIn to support research in artificial intelligence and to bolster diversity initiatives within the college. The multimillion dollar partnership – a first for both LinkedIn and the college – will help advance our commitment to being an academic leader of innovation for all students and allow for research collaborations with a forward-thinking, global company.
I hope you will take the time to read about these milestones as well as learn more about the groundbreaking research happening at the college. If you have news to share with our community, please connect via goodnews@cis.cornell.edu.
Kavita Bala
Dean, Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science
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The partnership – a first for both LinkedIn and the college – provides annual funding to the college to support doctoral students, engage faculty through research support, and amplify efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion. |
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For the first time in its 23-year history, the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science has more than 2,000 undergraduate majors within its three departments – the latest milestone amid a sixfold growth in enrollment over the last decade. |
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Help us welcome new community members: |
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Alexandra Ackert-Smith, Major Gift Associate, Alumni Affairs and Development (AAD)
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Deanna Eastwood, Finance Specialist, Sponsored Research Administration Center (SRAC)
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Amy Horner, Associate Director of Development, Alumni Affairs and Development (AAD)
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Bharath Hariharan and Justin Hsu, both assistant professors in the Department of Computer Science, are among the 11 Cornell professors who recently received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Award. The annual awards are one of the organization’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty and include a federal grant for research and education activities for five consecutive years.
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David Mimno, associate professor of information science, and collaborator Will Hobbs, assistant professor of psychology and information science field member, have been awarded grant funds to support a text-analysis conference at Cornell Tech in New York City.
The award from the Cornell Center for Social Sciences (CCSS) – one of six awarded to Cornell faculty – will help support the 12th annual New Directions in Analyzing Text as Data (TADA) meeting, which will take place at Cornell Tech.
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AutoPhoto, a robotic system developed by a trio of researchers (Master's student Hadi AlZayer, Hubert Lin, doctoral student in the field of computer science, and Dean Kavita Bala) can automatically roam an interior space and capture aesthetically pleasing photographs.
It is believed to be the first robotic-photographer system using a "learned aesthetic" machine learning model and represents a major development in using autonomous agents to visually document a space.
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Cornell researchers (Tapan Parikh) have created the most advanced virtual reality urban farm tour ever made – an online learning experience that promises to transport urban – and rural – farmers to New York City’s Red Hook Farms without ever leaving home.
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As Kessler Fellows, students receive classroom knowledge on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, and go on to spend the summer gaining hands-on experience at a startup internship. This year’s Kessler Fellows from Cornell Bowers CIS are:
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Somil Aggarwal ’22, computer science
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Max Clouser ’23, hotel administration and computer science
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Kendall Hoffman ’23, information science, and environment and sustainability
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Tewodros Mitiku ’23, computer science
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Students from 28 fields across six different colleges and schools gathered at the fourth annual Digital Agriculture Hackathon to find digital solutions to global food system issues while competing for cash prizes.
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More than 50 high-school principals, guidance counselors, students and leaders from community-based organizations recently gathered at Cornell Tech to discuss how to grow Cornell’s Bridges Scholars from a recruiting and enrollment pilot program into a national collaborative aimed at improving the diversity of students pursuing science and engineering degrees. Destiny Nwafor ’21, a software engineer at Microsoft, spoke about the Cornell programs and communities that ultimately helped her feel like she belonged.
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Hadi AlZayer explains how the Cornell team took a state of the art computational aesthetic system one step further, enabling the AI to not only determine the most pleasing picture in a given dataset, but capture new, original — and most importantly, good — shots on its own.
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John Abowd, the Edmund Ezra Day Professor Emeritus in Economics and Statistics and Data Science, discusses his career.
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Deborah Estrin, professor at Cornell Tech, talks about her founding of the Public Interest Tech Initiative at Cornell Tech.
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Have something to share? Win an award? Publish a paper? Let us know.
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