A RESEARCH AND ALUMNI NEWS MAGAZINE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE BROWN UNIVERSITY

WHEN IS THE MIGHTIER THAN

WHENTH ISE THE K PENEYBOARD? MIGHTIER THAN THE KEYBOARD?

Alan Kay's Dynabook Vision Spring|Summer 2008

Notes from the Chair: the Latest News from 115 Waterman

Greetings to all CS alums, supporters and friends! ◗ Sung-Phil Kim is working with We are well into the second semester of the year and are as busy as Michael Black on several ever. Great things continue to happen in the department and I am research areas including the thrilled to be able to share the highlights with you. analysis and design of mathe- matical decoding models used Amy Greenwald and Anna Lysyanskaya will be promoted to Associate for neural prostheses and data Professor with tenure, effective July 1, 2008. Amy’s research focuses mining and feature extractions on game-theoretic artifi cial intelligence. Her honors include a Sloan in neural population activities. Research Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and an NSF CAREER award. Anna works in the area ◗ Fumei Lam is working in the of cryptography. She is the recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship Center for Computational and an NSF CAREER Award. She has been included in the 2007 Molecular Biology, directed by Sorin Istrail. Her research focuses on TR35, Technology Review’s list of 35 innovators in science and the human genome and the genetic basis of disease. technology under the age of 35. Congratulations to Amy and Anna! ◗ Working with Andy van Dam in the Center for Research The fi rst few months of the year also brought a number of awards on Pen-Centric Computing, Chuanjun Li investigates the recogni- and honors to our faculty and students. Congratulations are in tion of various 2D handwritten notations for pen-centric computing. order for the following people: Michael Black, recipient of a grant Our quest to expand the CS curriculum continues with a new from the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council; course, Programming for Digital Art & Literature. A joint effort Anna Lysyanskaya, who has been awarded a Sloan Research between CS and Literary Arts at Brown and Digital+Media at RISD, Fellowship; Claire Mathieu, recipient of the 2007 INFORMS this course explores advanced tools and techniques for the Computing Society prize; Ben Raphael, selected for a Brown creation of innovative and expressive works of digital art by Career Development Award; Andy van Dam, appointed as chair of applying best practices from the software design community to the CRA’s new Education Committee; Yanif Ahmad, recipient of an context of digital media. Students from both Brown and RISD are IBM Ph.D. Fellowship; and Colin Gordon ’08, selected for Honor- currently taking the course, which is taught by Daniel C. Howe, a able Mention in the Computing Research Association’s Outstand- digital artist and researcher from NYU’s Media Research Lab who ing Undergraduate Award competition for 2008. More details received a Master’s from Brown’s literary arts program in 2007. about these awards can be found within this publication. In other recent news, Brown has joined forces with more than a Congratulations are also in order for Lauren Clarke, who is now dozen research universities and historically black colleges and the faculty and student affairs manager. Lauren is new to the universities to promote robotics and computer science education position but not to the department, having worked with Andy van for African-American students. At Brown, Chad Jenkins is spear- Dam and his research team for the past three years. We are heading the program, which will develop outreach programs to delighted to have her assume this new role. With Lauren moving encourage African-American students at both the K-12 and college on, Rachel Reisner has joined the staff as Andy van Dam’s levels to pursue careers in computer science and robotics