Welcome to CSE @ UCR
The Department of Computer Science & Engineering at UCR
Welcome to Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of California, Riverside! The department offers the B.S. degree in Computer Science (ABET accredited), and Business Informatics, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, and we participate in the Computer Engineering Program (ABET accredited). We are also proud to introduce our new Five-Year Joint B.S.+M.S. degree in Computer Science and the M.S. degree in Computer Engineering. We have strong research programs in architecture, compilers, embedded systems, algorithms, computational biology, databases, data mining, computer networks, distributed processing, artificial intelligence, software engineering, and graphics. CSE students at UCR enjoy the benefits of a smaller campus, which include a more relaxed and personal atmosphere with specialized attention and guidance. In addition, our students can also take advantage of the innovative research, first-rate professors, and worldwide networking that comes from being part of the prestigious UC System. Our department currently has five lecturers and 22 tenure-track faculty that include three ACM Fellows, four IEEE Fellows, five AAAS Fellows, one NSF Presidential Young Investigator, one AFOSR Young Investigator, and nine NSF CAREER award holders. Our external research funding is around $3.5 million per year. Although relatively young, we have quickly become a well established and well known research department, with 174 graduate students (M.S. and Ph.D.) enrolled in the 2011-12 academic year. We graduate approximately 15 Ph.D. students per year and place them in highly respected organizations, and in June of 2010 we celebrated our 100th Ph.D. graduate. The Department is pleased to announce a significant increase in the ranking of our program from such organizations as the National Research Council (NRC), Princeton Review, and U.S. News & World Report. Ph.Ds.org showed an independent analysis of the NRC data and rated us very high as well. We anticipate an increase in student applications from prospective graduates utilizing this information and are looking forward to a successful recruiting season. I invite you to further explore our department and the exciting opportunities that we provide on our web site and again, welcome you to Computer Science and Engineering at UCR! Laxmi N. Bhuyan
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In the News
CSE Shines in New NRC RankingsThe National Research Council's long-awaited ranking of PhD programs, widely accepted as the gold standard, places CSE's in the top echelons of programs nationwide. Our relatively young program places well ahead of many solidly-established national leaders. This is not surprising - these rankings are based on actual data for 20 quality metrics, while typical rankings are greatly influenced by perception. CSE excels in Research, as well as in overall ranking of program quality. NRC's rankings have been designed not to skew in favor of large programs, a typical bias in most rankings. CSE's outstanding per-capita productivity allows CSE to showcase its quality. NRC uses two ranking approaches, called the S- and the R-rankings, respectively. S-rankings are computed by asking respondents how each of the 20 quality metrics should be weighted while the R-ranking method first obtains ratings for a set of programs by asking respondents to rate random subsets. It then derives the weights implicit in these ratings by regressing the program ratings against the values for the metrics. See for yourself how well CSE compares with other programs in the University of California, as well as nationwide. For more information on the process and to download the data, see the NRC website. |
CSE Researchers Discover Relationship between Twitter and Financial MarketsCSE Professor Vagelis Hristidis, CSE PhD student Eduardo Ruiz and their collaborators found that the Twitter activity is correlated with the exchanged volume and price of stocks in the stock market. In particular, they found that the more distinct topics, which they refer as "connected components", are discussed about a company, the higher its exchange volume. They also found a weaker correlation with the stock price. Using this technique to augment a trading strategy led to better profitability in a limited study. This study introduces novel ways to quantify the activity in microblogging networks by leveraging the relationships between users, posts and topics. The techniques employed can potentially be used to study the relationship of microblogging activity to other applications like public health monitoring or detecting social trends. The findings of this study have been covered by many media, including Forbes, Yahoo, The Telegraph (UK), The Independent (UK), Daily Mail (UK), La Republicca (Italy), Univision TV, and NewsTalk 92.5 FM. |
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Computer Security Startup Founded by CSE Professor and Alumnus Raises $1.1 MillionTechnology start-up StopTheHacker founded by Anirban Banerjee (PhD 2008 UCR) and Prof. Michalis Faloutsos (UCR) has raised $1.1 million from Runa Capital, private investors, and the NSF SBIR program. The startup has developed novel techniques for helping web site owners prevent, detect and recover from hacker attacks. This is the more recent instance of the surge of startup activities at UCR. |
CSE's Harsha Madhyastha Receives NSF CAREER AwardAssistant professor Harsha Madhyastha has been awarded a CAREER award by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER program identifies outstanding new faculty whose vision aims to significantly advance the state of the art in both research and education. Madhyastha will receive a total of $499,309 over five years to fund his efforts in enabling cost-effective deployments of applications in the cloud. Today, the performance and availability of any application deployed on the cloud is limited by the characteristics of the cloud service on which the application is deployed. Madhyastha's work will develop novel algorithms and software systems that will enable application providers to obtain better availability and performance, while keeping costs low, by planning and managing application deployments that span multiple cloud services. Madhyastha's CAREER award winning project also has a significant education component with the introduction of new graduate and undergraduate classes, and public talks to increase awareness about cloud services among small and non-profit businesses. |
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CSE's Iulian Neamtiu Receives NSF CAREER AwardAssistant professor Iulian Neamtiu has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. The CAREER program targets outstanding new faculty who intend to develop academic careers involving both research and education. Neamtiu will receive a total of $498,228 over five years to fund his efforts in improving software evolution. Changes made to source code in the course of evolution might not have the intended meaning (fix bugs, add features), which negatively impacts both software producers and software consumers, and has high economic costs. His work will use type theory and empirical software engineering to better understand, and facilitate the software evolution process. The results of this research will also help uncover certain kinds of errors before software is deployed, and reduce the incidence of, and costs associated with, software bugs and incorrect software updates. |
CSE's Srikanth Krishnamurthy Elected IEEE FellowDr. Srikanth V. Krishnamurthy, a professor in the CSE Department, has been elected to the rank of IEEE Fellow. Dr. Krishnamurthy was elevated for his contributions to "Cross Layer Protocol Design in Wireless Networks." Over the last ten years, Dr. Krishnamurthy has made significant contributions to understanding the interactions between the protocol stack in wireless networks. IEEE Fellow ``is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation." The total number selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting Institute membership. |
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CSE's Rajiv Gupta Elected AAAS FellowCSE's Rajiv Gupta has been elected to the rank of AAAS Fellow. The AAAS is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association. Each year the AAAS Council elects members whose “efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished.” Dr. Gupta's areas of research interest include Compilers and Architectures for Parallel Systems, Software Tools for Monitoring and Debugging, and Dynamic and Static Program Analysis. His research has been funded by NSF, DARPA, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and HP. He has published over 225 articles in refereed conferences and journals and he holds 8 US patents. |
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CSE's new faculty, Dr. Vagelis HristidisVagelis Hristidis joined as Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, Google, IBM and the Kauffman Entrepreneurship Center, including the NSF CAREER Award. His main research addresses the problem of bridging the gap between databases and information retrieval, with particular interest in the interdisciplinary direction of Healthcare Informatics. His work has received more than 2,500 citations according to Google Scholar. He has also edited and co-authored the book “Information Discovery on Electronic Health Records”. |
CSE's new faculty and inaugural chair, Dr. Tamar Shinar!Tamar Shinar will join CSE faculty as the inaugural Amrik Singh Poonian Chair in Fall 2011. Currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Courant Institute at New York University, Shinar earned her Ph.D. in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University in 2008. Her research focuses on mathematical simulations of fluid and solid behaviors and computational algorithms for physically based simulation. The Amrik Singh Poonian Chair in Computer Science and Engineering was established through a generous endowment gift from Duane and Kelly Roberts, keepers of Riverside’s historic Mission Inn and Spa. For more info see here. here. Congratulations and welcome, Tamar! |
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