Autonomous robots will soon rove the buildings and streets of The University of Texas at Austin campus. But unlike other commercial delivery services, this fleet of robots will help researchers understand and improve the experience of pedestrians who encounter them.
Timothy Liao, a physics Ph.D. student from The University of Texas at Austin, was recently selected to participate in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program along with 43 others. Liao will conduct part of his thesis research at Ames National Laboratory where he will develop computational tools for material design and discovery.
Rachel Ward, professor of mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin, has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science, or TRIPODS, Phase II award. The award will help establish The Institute for Emerging CORE Methods in Data Science (EnCORE), led by the University of California San Diego in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles; University of Pennsylvania; and UT Austin.
Seven faculty in The University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences have recently received distinguished Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER award recognizes junior faculty for their potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
Amy Pavel joined the College of Natural Sciences faculty in spring 2022 as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and research scientist at Apple. She obtained her Ph.D. and undergraduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley.
The University of Texas at Austin and the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to solving problems for a safer world, have formed a partnership that includes accelerating innovative ethical artificial intelligence (AI) research currently underway by interdisciplinary teams of researchers who are part of UT Austin's Good Systems research grand challenge.
Inderjit Dhillon, Gottesman Family Centennial Professor in Computer Science and a member of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, has been named a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).
In 2020, a deep learning generative model designed to turn low-resolution images into high-quality photos was posted online. When a user uploaded a low-resolution image of President Obama, though, it returned an image that is now referred to as 'White Obama.' The Face Depixelizer model, based on an algorithm called PULSE, was reconstructing images with predominantly white features, setting off a heated debate across social media.
Isil Dillig is an associate professor of computer science who works to improve the security and reliability of software systems and automatically generate programs from high-level specifications. She received a Sloan Research Fellowship and an NSF CAREER award.
As society's reliance on technology increases, computer scientists are now placed at the forefront of new and unique ethical decisions. However, most computer science curricula don't require a substantial education in ethics, despite that an educational discussion on ethical issues can lead scientists to have greater awareness of the consequences and repercussions of their creations.
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