Department News
WELCOME
New Faculty Appointments
Alex Berg is an Assistant Professor whose research involves computer vision. Prior to joining the department, Alex was on the faculty at Stony Brook University.
Tamara L. Berg is an Assistant Professor working in computer vision. She also joins us from the faculty at Stony Brook University.
Michael J. Fern is the Associate Chairman for Administration, Finance, and Entrepreneurship. Before joining the department, he earned a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Ashok Krishnamurthy, Deputy Director at RENCI, was appointed an Adjunct Professor in Computer Science in March 2013.
Cynthia Sturton is an Assistant Professor and Peter Thacher Grauer Fellow who specializes in computer and hardware security. Cynthia joined the department after obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
New Staff
Bridgette Cyr joined us as Human Resources/Student Services Assistant in June 2013.
Chase Debnam joined the department in August 2013 as an Accounting Technician. Prior to joining, he worked for UNC-Chapel Hill Disbursement Services.
Megan Erlacher joined the department in May 2013 as a Travel Coordinator from UNC-Chapel Hill Disbursement Services.
Latasha Mingo joined the department in June 2013 as Business Manager. She was previously at Auburn University.
Kristen Palmer joined the department as a Proposal and Outreach Coordinator in January 2013. She works with the Research Support and Communications team.
Brett Piper joined the department in October 2013 as a Communication and Publication Specialist working with the Research Support and Communications team.
Alden Sharpe joined the department as a Faculty Support and Outreach Coordinator in May 2013. She works with the Research Support and Communications team.
Jim Mahaney re-joined the department in February 2013 as a Senior Research Associate.
Jordan Wolf joined the department as Human Resources Manager in August 2013 from the UNC Equal Opportunity Office.
THANKS AND FAREWELL
Donna Boggs, Human Resources Coordinator, retired from the department at the end of July 2013 after 28.5 years of service.
Andrea Bunn, an Accounting Assistant, retired from the department on July 31 after 13.5 years of service to the department (nearly 24 years at UNC).
Katrina Coble, Administrative Manager, retired from the department on June 30, 2013 after 31 years of service.
Kelli Gaskill, the News & Notes editor and Communications Manager, left the department in January 2013 after 10 years of service to study nursing at UNC-Chapel Hill. She will graduate in May 2014 with a nursing degree.
Cory Quammen left the department on November 1, 2013 for a position at Kitware, Inc. Cory received a degree in the department and worked here for three years as a Senior Software Engineer.
Timothy Quigg, Lecturer and Associate Chairman for Administration, Finance, and Entrepreneurship, retired on May 31, 2013 after being with the department for 22 years.
CONGRATULATIONS
Faculty and Staff
Henry Fuchs received the 2013 IEEE Virtual Reality Career Award. For more details see the story here.
Sanjoy Baruah was named one of the IEEE Fellows of 2013. Story here.
Katrina Coble won the 2012 Catherine G. Perry Staff Excellence award. You can read about the award here.
James Anderson received a Kenan Professorship and was named an ACM Fellow for 2013. See this page for the story.
Jan-Michael Frahm and Marc Niethammer were elevated to Associate Professors as of January 1, 2014.
Adjunct Professor Greg Welch has been named Florida Hospital Endowed Chair in Healthcare Simulation at the University of Central Florida.
2013 SIGGRAPH Awards were given to Mary Whitton (Outstanding Service Award) and Turner Whitted (Steve Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics).
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. won the 2013 UNC General Alumni Association Faculty Service Award.
Brian White received an IT Award. Read about his award here.
Graduate Students
Ravish Mehra won a Link Foundation Fellowship in Advanced Simulation and Training for 2013-2014. The Link Foundation awards up to five fellowships to qualified doctoral students in academic institutions for research in advanced simulation and training. The grants, totaling $26,000 each, are to support students while they complete their dissertation research.
Graduate students Andrew Maimone, Xubo Yang, Nate Dierk, Andrei State, Mingsong Dou, and Henry Fuchs won Best Short Paper Award at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference for their paper, “General-Purpose Telepresence with Head-Worn Optical See-Through Displays and Projector-Based Lighting.”
Graduate students Zhimin Ren, Hengchin Yeh, and professor Ming C. Lin received Honorable Mention for their paper “Auditory Perception of Geometry-Invariant Material Properties” at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference.
Björn B. Brandenburg received the Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award for his dissertation “Scheduling and Locking in Multiprocessor Real-Time Operating Systems.” For more details, see this page.
Graduate student Vicente Ordonez and professors Alex Berg and Tamara L. Berg won the 2013 Marr Prize for Best Paper for their paper “From large scale image categorization to entry-Level categories” at the 14th International Convention on Computer Vision. For more on the 2013 Marr Prize, read the story here.
Undergraduate Students
Preeti Arunapuram, junior computer science major, was the recipient of the 2012-2013 Charles H. Dunham Scholarship. As a part of her scholarship, she will intern at SAS.
Michael J. Guarino, Patrick Lee Waivers, Ian Sang-June Kim, and Zachary Taylor Cross were initiated into the Alpha of North Carolina Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in the Fall of 2012.
Willem Wyndham received the 2013 Stephen F. Weiss Award for Outstanding Achievement in Computer Science.
RECENT SPONSORED RESEARCH AWARDS
Adaptive and Scalable Network Policy Enforcement. PI: Michael Reiter. U.S. Office of Naval Research
Aggregate Formation Under Turbulence: Small-scale Biophysical Interactions Driving Carbon Flux in the Ocean. Co-PI: Leandra Vicci. National Science Foundation
CC-NIE Network Infrastructure: Enabling Data-driven Research. PI: Jay Aikat. National Science Foundation
CGV: Small: Interactive Sound Rendering for Virtual Environments. PI: Ming Lin. National Science Foundation
Clarity Evaluation. PI: Russell Taylor. Molecular Devices LLC
Collaborative Research: CyberSEES: Type 2: A New Framework for Crowd-Sourced Green Infrastructure Design. Co-PI: Jack Snoeyink. National Science Foundation
CPS: Breakthrough: Collaborative Research: Bringing the Multicore Revolution to Safety-Critical Cyber-Physical Systems. PI: James Anderson. National Science Foundation
CSR: Small: Real-time Computing Using GPUs. PI: Sanjoy Baruah, Co-PI: James Anderson. National Science Foundation
Dense Crowd Simulation and Applications. PI: Dinesh Manocha, Co-PI: Ming Lin. The Boeing Corporation
DURIP: High-Performance Clusters for Computational Acoustics and Sound Simulation. PI: Ming Lin, Co-PI: Dinesh Manocha. U.S. Army Research Office
EAGER: Automatic Classification of Programming Difficulties by Mining Programming Events. PI: Prasun Dewan. National Science Foundation
EAGER: Data Association and Exploitation for Large Scale 3-D Modeling from Visual Imagery. PI: Jan-Michael Frahm, Co-PI: Enrique Dunn. National Science Foundation
EAGER: Interactive Reconstruction and Visualization of Metropolitan-Scale Traffic. PI: Ming Lin. National Science Foundation
EAGER: Leveraging 3D Structure Estimates for Photo Collection Based Geo-localization and Semantic Indexing. PI: Jan-Michael Frahm, Co-PI: Enrique Dunn. National Science Foundation
Efficient Tracking, Logging, and Blocking of Accesses to Digital Objects. PI: Fabian Monrose. Department of Homeland Security Advanced Projects Research Agency
GENI in the Classroom: Course Modules for Teaching Networking Concepts. PI: Jay Aikat. Raytheon BBN Technologies Corporation (Prime: National Science Foundation)
HCC: CGV: Small: Eyeglass-Style Multi-Layer Optical See-Through Displays for Augmented Reality. PI: Henry Fuchs. National Science Foundation
II-NEW: A Robot Testbed for Real-time Motion Strategies and Autonomous Personal Assistants. PI: Dinesh Manocha, Co-Inv: Ron Alterovitz, Jan-Michael Frahm, Henry Fuchs, Ming Lin. National Science Foundation
Integration of Endoscopic and CT data for Radiation Therapy Treatment Planning. PI: Julian Rosenman, Co-PI: Stephen Pizer, Ron Alterovitz, Jan-Michael Frahm. NIH National Cancer Institute
Mechanisms of Risk and Resilience in ASD: Ontogeny, Phylogeny and Gene Disruption. PI: Martin Styner, Co-Inv: Marc Niethammer. Emory University (Prime: National Institute of Mental Health)
MRI: Development of Pneumatic Water Wave Genesis: A Versatile Wavemaking Instrument for the UNC Joint Fluids Lab. Co-PI: Leandra Vicci. National Science Foundation
Multi-lumen Steerable Needles for Transoral Access to Lung Nodules. PI: Ron Alterovitz. NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
NSF Support for the 2014 USENIX Security Symposium. PI: Fabian Monrose. National Science Foundation
Poisson. PI: Dinesh Manocha. Sandia National Laboratory
Privacy on the Line: Next-Generation Defenses for Securing VoIP Communications. PI: Fabian Monrose. U.S. Army Research Office
REU Supplement for UNC GENI. PI: Kevin Jeffay, Co-Inv: Jay Aikat. Raytheon Co. (Prime: National Science Foundation)
Robotic Natural Orifice Skull Base Surgery. PI: Ron Alterovitz. Vanderbilt University (Prime: National Institutes of Health)
SBIR-Approach-Specific, Multi-GPU, Multi-tool, High-realism Neurosurgery Simulation. PI: Dinesh Manocha. Kitware Inc. (Prime: National Institutes of Health)
STTR-Interactive Acoustic Simulation in Urban and Complex Environments (Phase II). PI: Dinesh Manocha. Impulsonic, Inc. (U.S. Army Research Office)
STTR-Image-Based Quantification and Analysis of Longitudinal Lung Nodule Deformations. PI: Marc Niethammer. Kitware, Inc. (Prime: National Institutes of Health)
STTR-Multimodal Image Based Assessment System For Traumatic Brain Injury. PI: Marc Nitethammer. Kitware (Prime: National Institutes of Health)
STTR-Scalable Communication and Scheduling for Many-Core Systems. PI: James Anderson. Real-time Innovations (Prime: Department of Defense)
Travel Subsidies for 2013 CPS PI Meeting. PI: James Anderson. National Science Foundation
TWC SBES: Medium: Collaborative: Crowdsourcing Security. PI: Michael Reiter. National Science Foundation
TWC: Frontier: Collaborative: Rethinking Security in the Era of Cloud Computing. PI: Michael Reiter, Co-PI: Jay Aikat. National Science Foundation
TWC: Small: Toward Pronouncable Authentication Strings. PI: Fabian Monrose.