Teaming humans and AI to fight cyberattacks.
So Much Raspberry Pi
1,000+ cluster brings low-powered supercomputing to UCSB.
Smart Bionic Eye
Neuroscience meets AI with support of new NIH grant.
Alferness-Henke
Donor David Henke endows new chair for UCSB Computer Science.
Student teams find innovative solutions to industry problems.
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Warmest greetings from the Computer Science Department to all our alums! As we conclude yet another academic year, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the accomplishments we have made. My association with UCSB and the department began in the late ’80s when we were still not an independent graduate degree granting department.
Fast forward to today, and our graduate enrollment is the largest among all academic departments on the campus. In the same vein, the number of applications for the undergraduate computer science major at UCSB has increased from 2,089 in 2013 to 10,794 in 2023—a more than quadruple increase in 10 years. This rapid rise has resulted in an admission rate of as low as 9% compared to 30% for the campus.
A part of this growth is indeed driven by the demand for computer science both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, but a significant part is also due to the increased visibility of the department in terms of teaching and research. Two of our faculty, Chris Kruegel and Tim Sherwood, were recently named ACM fellows, bringing our total number of ACM fellows to seven. And our recognition in industry and academia continues to grow as the innova-
tions and contributions of our highly successful alums prove the value of a CS@UCSB degree well after graduation. As an example of this success, I would like to mention that two of our alums— Huican Zhu (PhD, 2000) and Hongjun Zhu (PhD, 2002)—serve as members of the UCSB Board of Trustees.
Given the backdrop of extreme growth in computer science, there is tremendous pressure on the department to enroll a larger number of students, especially at the undergraduate level. At our end, we continue to grow our enrollment (from 363 undergraduate students in 201415 to 663 in 2022-23). But this growth
Over the past two decades, alumni participation with the department has resulted in multiple endowed chairs that have been crucial for recruiting the best faculty.
has to be carefully monitored and measured to ensure that we do not negatively impact the quality of our pedagogy. The critical factors that contribute to the quality of teaching and mentoring are the teaching resources: faculty members, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate learning assistants. Being a public institution, growing these
resources takes time. This is where alumni participation becomes crucial. For example, over the past two decades, alumni participation with the department has resulted in multiple endowed chairs that have been crucial for recruiting the best faculty especially at the junior level. The department is in need of a similar endowment for PhD fellowships to compete for the best talent for graduate education.
Finally, for our outstanding undergraduate students, alumni engagement is crucial for Capstone projects, summer internships, and job placements.
It is through this collective engagement that we continue to increase the value of your CS@UCSB degree!
“These are some of the very best people in AI and security. They have been at the forefront of expanding the foundations of AI, machine learning, game theory, and computer security.”
Imagine a modern city. Imagine the infrastructure that keeps it running smoothly: an aqueduct, a power plant, a smart-city system running on open-source software to monitor and distribute services. Now imagine a hostile nation-state that targets that software system, identifies vulnerabilities, gains administrative access to the main server, and shuts down the aqueduct and the power plant, causing paralysis and chaos.
The scenario is hypothetical—for now. It’s also realistic enough that the National Science Foundation recently named UCSB as the lead institution on a five-year, $20 million grant to pursue new approaches to cybersecurity.
“The basic idea of the ACTION Institute is to combine two cultures,” explains computer science professor Giovanni Vigna, the institute’s director. “One looks for new ways to do AI and the other looks to use AI in new ways to improve security. We hope that by putting them in the same room, something amazing will result.”
The problem is complex. Countering the evolving tactics, techniques, and procedures of bad actors as they
attack massive, mind-bogglingly complicated, and rapidly changing systems is increasingly beyond the capabilities of human defenders alone. There’s just too much happening, and it’s happening too quickly.
“Solving the time-and-scale problem will require automation,” Vigna says. “And it has to be smart automation, and that means AI.”
Complicating matters even further is the idea that attackers will also be using automation and AI to overcome cyberdefenses. Responding to these threats will require reasoning and acting based on small amounts of data, while adapting to untrainable and unspecified scenarios.
“In the case of security,” says UCSB CS professor Ambuj Singh , a co-PI on the project, “humans and AI may have different perspectives on the implications of actions. This is where the synthesis of humans and AI becomes useful.”
The integrated approach will use AI agents to prevent or repel attacks in time and at scale, supported by extensive domain knowledge, logic-based reasoning, and human-agent and agent-agent interactions.
Research thrusts are highly integrated and interdependent—four each in foundational AI and cybersecurity.
According to the project proposal, over time these intelligent security agents will become increasingly robust and effective, capable of composing strategies and plans in the face of uncertainty. They will be more collaborative with each other and with humans for mutually complementary teaming, and for adapting to unfamiliar attacks.
Development work on the project is being shared among 11 academic institutions, with the goal of answering a series of research questions about the capabilities needed to build these intelligent security agents—questions covering such topics as learning and reasoning, human-agent and agent-agent interaction, and game theory.
“These are some of the very best people in AI and security,” says Vigna. “They have been at the forefront of expanding the foundations of AI, machine learning, game theory, and computer security.”
They will each be working primarily in one of eight highly integrated and interdependent research thrusts— four each in foundational AI and cybersecurity.
The ACTION Institute, in turn, is just one part of a much larger investment by the NSF to advance a cohesive national approach to AI-related opportunities and risks.
“If you use AI wrong, you can hurt entire classes of people,” explains Chris Kruegel , another ACTION Institute co-PI and UCSB professor. “And that has occurred. So we have to be careful about what we encode in the agent’s knowledge, what we learn from the data, how we learn it, and how we align it to conform to the highest ethical values. Developing AI that is ethical and trustworthy is not an option; it’s the only thing you can do, and it’s ingrained in this community.”
“We want to have ethical AI,” adds Vigna. “We don’t want it to be making decisions that could cause harm … We want to be sure that decisions are made with a human in the loop, but in an efficient, targeted way that makes the best use of that person’s capability.”
A supercomputer consisting of 1,050 Raspberry Pi 3B+. The next largest system that we know of is a cluster of 750 at Los Alamos National Lab.
Why is it?
The short answer, according to creator Chris Bensen in his series of videos detailing the project, is “because it kicks a**.” The longer answer lies in Oracle’s support for a series of outside-the-box projects designed to attract the attention of engineers and developers.
How did it get to UCSB?
It started with PhD student Animesh Dangwal ’s internship at Oracle Labs. Professors Rich Wolski and Chandra Krintz explain that as a result of Dangwal’s outstanding work, his Oracle supervisor came to visit UCSB.
“In the course of discussing Animesh’s research, we mentioned that we do a lot with Raspberry Pis,” says Wolski.
They showed off their own cluster of 18 devices, and the supervisor wondered if their lab would like some more that Oracle wasn’t using.
“I’m thinking he had maybe 20,” Wolski says. “I said yeah, absolutely!” He thought they could make room in the shoe rack that houses their current cluster. “The next thing that happens, here come a thousand of these things.”
“This has been sitting at Oracle for two years not being used,” adds Krintz. “They really wanted someone
Bigger on the inside: Professors Rich
and Chandra
with engineer Chris Bensen and his creation.
to take it forward. There’s so much great technology here that they wanted to pass along for its next generation.”
How will we use it?
“Our students are going to go crazy on this,” says Wolski. “We’re going to use it in a couple of ways. We have large scale, high performance computing problems that we want to experiment with on a low power device. And from a high performance computing perspective, this is a very low power device. The other part is, we didn’t have an instrument like this where we can train students on the systems end of it. This is a significant system.”
“It’s very different if I taught you how to manage 12 Raspberry Pis,” says Krintz, “than it is to do something at this scale. This gives us the ability to train students in a way that nobody else on the planet can.”
“You can make donuts in your kitchen,” adds Wolski, “but if you want to make donuts for the Super Bowl, it’s different—this is the Super Bowl.”
UCSB’s interdisciplinary Bionic Vision Lab is on a mission. Their goal? To unravel the science behind the bionic technologies that could one day restore useful vision to people living with incurable blindness.
“One idea is to put a chip in the eye or the brain and stimulate the surviving neurons with electrical current,” explains Assistant Professor Michael Beyeler , the lab’s principal investigator. “If you do that, the other neurons can’t tell whether they were activated artificially by an electrode or naturally.”
Although the field is in its infancy, such prosthetic devices already exist. They are known as “bionic eyes.” Beyeler’s interest is in taking them to the next level and developing smart bionic eyes.
Michael Beyeler
In their current state, what the users of these devices see are basically flashes of light. “That’s what people describe,” Beyeler says. “It’s like looking at fireworks.
Perko, UC Santa Barbara
Sometimes the flashes combine to form something more complex, and sometimes they don’t. It’s really a matter of understanding the neuroscience behind it—and then tapping into that as computer scientists and engineers and leading the brain into thinking it saw something.”
So the lab is focusing on the fundamentals of neuroscience, and then incorporating AI to optimize the way these devices are stimulated.
It’s a challenging project, made more so because any two people wearing the same device don’t see the same things. The Bionic Vision Lab’s team of PhD students, MS students, and undergrads is bringing together their expertise in computer science and psychological and brain sciences to explore and find solutions to these problems.
“Some of our great CS students have built deep learning models to predict—if you want to produce a certain image in the mind of the patient—how you should stim-
ulate the device. And you can personalize that strategy using feedback, like human-in-the-loop algorithms.”
For his efforts, Beyeler was recently awarded the prestigious National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award, providing a five-year, $1.5 million grant for his project “Towards a Smart Bionic Eye: AI-Powered Artificial Vision for the Treatment of Incurable Blindness.”
This is only the fifth time that this highly competitive grant has gone to UCSB.
“The idea of the grant is that we can preprocess the images in a better way,” he explains. “We can use computer vision, we can use machine learning, to extract what is important and then visualize that in an intuitive way.”
As an example, he talks about looking for lost keys. With current devices, you’re just looking through a mess of flashes of light.
“What we do is we segment the image. We would figure out, okay, here’s a table, here’s a different object on top of it, and detect in this input image where the keys are, and then highlight that for the user.”
He envisions a system that could speak with you, or you could give it audio commands. Based on your con-
“The idea of this grant is that we preprocess and segment the image. We can use computer vision, we can use machine learning, to extract what is important, and then visualize that in an intuitive way.”
text or task, the demands change. If you’re in a room looking for keys, you could say “Hey bionic eye, where are my keys?” and the device would highlight them visually when you look around the room. But there’s a different set of circumstances when you’re navigating outside, for example, and you have to cross the street. In that case, the device might highlight nearby obstacles or approaching cars.
This is a big vision for a young technology, and much of the groundwork is still being laid. A number of manufacturers are working to develop devices, but none are currently close to commercialization.
“That’s one of our challenges as an academic group. We constantly have to think on our feet, finding new partners as the industry changes.”
Some of the Bionic Vision team recently traveled to Spain to visit one such collaborator, who has a cortical device that bypasses the eye and goes directly into the visual cortex.
“We were able to test our theories and algorithms on those patients and collect data, then come home and analyze it.”
That’s just one more small but important step on a long road toward completing an ambitious vision.
Before joining UCSB as an assistant professor, Dr. Shiyu Chang completed both his undergraduate and PhD studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by several years working in research labs. That includes time at the MITIBM Watson AI Lab, where he collaborated with faculty and students on advanced machine learning and natural language processing.
Santa Barbara has been a fantastic place to live and work … I feel fortunate to be part of this family.
Dr. Chang continues this work at UCSB with research into enhancing the trustworthiness of large language models, addressing issues such as bias, uncertainty, robustness, and hallucinations. One of his highlights here so far, he says, has been teaching an undergraduate deep learning course.
“It has been incredibly rewarding to see students from various backgrounds come together, engage with the material, and bring their unique perspectives to class … Watching their growth and enthusiasm, and seeing them apply these concepts to their fields of study, has been truly rewarding.”
Dr. Dahlia Malkhi joined the CS department at UCSB as a professor in 2024. Prior to that, her work over two decades brought scientific innovation into fruition in several leading industrial settings. Her research spans broad aspects of reliability and security of distributed systems, recently with focus on blockchains and advances in financial technology. Her work resulted in over 200 publications as well as a strong impact on computing technology.
A select sample of technologies she participated in creating includes:
• Co-inventor of HotStuff, the golden standard for blockchain design, driving the Diem blockchain core engine, the Aptos blockchain core engine, and many other blockchains.
• Co-founder of VMware blockchain.
• Co-inventor of Flexible Paxos, the technology behind Log Device.
• Creator of CorfuDB, a databaseless database driving VMware’s NSX-T distributed control plane.
• Co-lead of the FairPlay project, the pioneering materialization of secure multi-party computation.
When David Henke graduated from UCSB in 1978 with a degree in mathematics and highest honors, the opportunities to study computer science were limited. From the few CS courses available to him at the time, all he learned was how to program badly.
“When I took my first job after graduating from UCSB, I went to McDonnel Douglas as a mathematician-programmer,” Henke says. “It was a perfect job for me. I was doing second partial derivatives, I was doing a lot of math. We were basically taking objects and intersecting them so we could emulate and graphically represent airplanes.”
He was given nine months to program his first major project in Fortran IV. He did it in three and a half.
“I was very excited. And it all worked perfectly. My mathematician boss said ‘Beautiful work, you’ve got one error here, after that it’s perfect. Great work.’ But my programming boss said ‘This is the worst program I have ever seen. You will rewrite this program based on my standards and the standards of McDonnell Douglas or you will be fired. You have one month.’”
Adds Henke: “It was the best thing that ever happened to me—because this guy taught me how to program correctly.”
Henke, who now serves on the UCSB Board of Trustees and is an advisory board member to UCSB’s College of Engineering, would go on to have a distinguished career in computer science. After two successful startups in the 1980s, he served as director of engineering at Silicon Graphics, VP of engineering/operations at AltaVista, and senior VP of engineering/operations at both Yahoo! and LinkedIn.
Computer science and computer science education have changed a lot since Henke’s own rocky start, but he remains a passionate proponent of both. At LinkedIn, which grew from 200 to 2,700 engineers during his tenure, 35 percent of those hires came straight from univer-
sities—and Henke strongly advocated for recruitment from UCSB.
“I always appreciate being attached to the university,” he says. “I give a lot of money to a lot of different things, but the number one priority is always going to be about education.”
Most recently this giving resulted in the funding of the new Alferness-Henke Endowed Chair in Computer Science, named in part for Rod Alferness, Henke’s friend and former dean of the College of Engineering.
“Rod is exactly the opposite of me,” Henke says. “He’s an introvert. He’s super smart. I’m an extrovert, not so smart. And he also would take the time to listen. That’s what I really like about him. He told me computer science is the place we need to invest, because it has bigger bang for the buck for not only the sciences, but for the whole university. Everything benefits from a strong computer science department.”
took him from being an engineer to being a manager.
“The Alferness-Henke Chair in Computer Science is the eleventh endowed chair in the department,” notes Distinguished Professor Divyakant Agrawal , who himself holds the Leadership Endowed Chair in Computer Science. “The availability of endowed chairs enables the department to compete for the best and the brightest talent in all areas of computer science. We are extremely grateful to David Henke for his lasting legacy to the Department of Computer Science and UCSB.”
Although Henke is now retired—and not for the first time—he stays involved in the industry as a member of various advisory boards and as an engaging speaker with plenty of stories to tell and wisdom to share.
A recurring theme running through a lot of what he says is the importance of surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you are.
“Big time,” he emphasizes.
Computer science is the place we need to invest. It has a bigger bang for the buck not only for the sciences, but for the whole university.
That lesson was reinforced early in his career when he started work at Silicon Graphics. Out of 200 programmers at the company, he would have ranked himself 197th best.
“I’ll tell you, that was a hard pill to swallow,” he says. “But it was a good one. I figured either I’m going to feel bad about this or I’m going to feel good. And the good part is I can learn. I can learn from these others.”
It was that attitude combined with drive and dedication—and a bit of arm-twisting from the company—that
“I didn’t want to do it. They said you really don’t have a choice. You either do it or you’re fired.” And in putting together a pair of teams that navigated the company through a half-billion dollar crisis, he had a realization: “I learned I could get a lot more done if I had a lot of really good people around me … That was when I transitioned from being an individual contributor to being a manager. It was a hard decision. I think what you’ll find is a lot of managers are nerds. We still like to program. We miss it. But we’re not the center of that world anymore. You have to give that up if you want to lead other people.”
With changes in the industry, though, lately he’s been considering another approach. He gave his usual leadership speech to a group of students recently, and afterward all they really wanted to talk about was AI.
“Very rarely do I have regrets where I wish I could be 21 again,” he says. “But this is one time where I think it would be super great to be 21 and to be in computer science.”
The internet was huge, he explains. Mobile was huge. Big data was huge. But AI, built on top of all these things, is going to be even bigger. It’s going to disrupt the way things are done. It’s going to require retraining for a lot of currently comfortable people. But it’s coming.
“If you’re not there doing it, you’re a dinosaur,” he warns. But he sees it as an exciting time. “If I could be there as a young engineer training these systems, I would love it.”
sequence presents an opportunity to develop innovative solutions to real industry
ou won’t find answers to these problems in textbooks, on message boards, or in off-the-shelf software packages —because students in this class are among the first ever to solve them. Working together with industry leaders, student teams take on the most challenging problems of the day with technological innovation, creativity, and boatloads of hard work.
Led by professors Tevfik Bultan and Giovanni Vigna, nine teams of students this year united with industry leaders from Artera, Appfolio, Terawe, Forta, Aziksa, and Veridise. The challenges they addressed ranged from making it easier for non-native English speakers to communicate in the workplace to using AI for early detection of melanoma.
Capstone courses are offered during fall and winter quarters at UCSB, culminating in project presentations before industry judges in mid-March at Henley Hall.
Capstone comprises two courses: CS189A and CS189B. In the first course, students choose a project and develop it with milestones such as vision statements, requirements, and design goals. The course culminates with inclass presentations and demos. In the subsequent course, students develop real systems for their projects, test them in front of real users, adjust their designs based on feedback received, and finally show off their projects publicly in a day of poster presentations, lunch, one-onone talks with industry judges, and final presentations —with cash prizes going to the top three teams!
The Capstone program is a fun and exciting opportunity to gain practical experience and connections, making it a highlight of the CS undergrad experience at UCSB!
First Place: Team Realty Reel. A platform for creating professional videos of real estate properties in minutes using AI and machine learning.
Second Place: Team Aware. An Apple Watch alcohol risk estimator to determine levels of intoxication by measuring walking steadiness and heart rate.
Third Place: Team Logos. A universal platform for developing, compiling, and auditing ZK circuits.
Students here are of high quality and working with them is enjoyable — and of course the campus is gorgeous.
Dr. Wenbo Guo joined UCSB as an assistant professor after completing his postdoc at UC Berkeley, his PhD at Penn State, and his master’s at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His interests center around the intersection of computer security and machine learning. Recent research has focused on designing foundation models and building Reinforcement Learning-driven planning systems for software and network security problems, and improving the explainability and robustness of large models and RL. He was drawn to UCSB for its strength in security and ML, specifically noting the ACTION Institute and the Center for Responsible Machine Learning.
“Our faculty are collegial, talented, and nice individuals,” he says. “I enjoy collaborating with them.”
In his free time, Wenbo enjoys playing and watching sports, and he finds that Santa Barbara is an ideal place for pursuing that passion—not to mention being an ideal place for CS research!
Divy and Shubra Agrawal opened their home this spring to faculty and friends for an event welcoming the four newest members of the Computer Science Department faculty family.
Murphy Niu , Dahlia Malkhi , Wenbo Guo , and Maryam Majedi (pictured above) braved a windy Santa Barbara sunset to join with seasoned faculty, staff, partners, and CS supporters for an evening of food, music, and fun.
Professor Tevfik Bultan entertained by bringing (some of) his band Previously Committed, including Sumita Pennathur (professor of mechanical engineering) on alto sax and Aashish Mehta (professor of global studies) on keyboards and flute. Bultan’s son Aydin joined on drums. Delicious Indian food from Masala Spice kept everyone warm as the sun set, and then the ice cream got them all dancing—led by the smooth moves of Professor Giovanni Vigna and Professor Agrawal himself!
Viewers of Instagram Reels were clearly envious of all the fun when they wrote “Nothing like �� Bollywood hits to get a CS party going!” and “More turnt than IV on a Friday night! ”
Dr. Maryam Majedi joined UCSB in July 2023 as an assistant teaching professor. She holds a PhD in data privacy from the University of Calgary and an MSc in high-performance scientific computing from the University of New Brunswick, as well as a fellowship in medical innovation from Western University. Her research falls into the intertwined areas of data privacy and embedded ethics. She looks forward to teaching the next generation of scientists, educators, and technology developers how to incorporate ethical considerations into computer science technologies throughout their careers.
UCSB stands out as an exceptional institution. I treasure every moment spent here.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $300,000 grant for a demonstration project led by UCSB’s Richert Wang and CSU Chico’s Kevin Buffardi. The project focuses on improving representation, relevance, and equity in computer science by framing high school instructional practices from the perspectives of women and Hispanic students.
In CS literature, there’s a lot of evidence showing that retention rates are directly correlated to a lack of identity. When students are in high school and they don’t see people like themselves in academic or professional positions, for example as software engineers, it sends an early message that this is something unattainable for them.
“The field of computer science does struggle with representation,” explains UCSB Associate Teaching Professor Richert Wang. And that’s a problem, because industry is eager to hire people from diverse backgrounds with diverse perspectives. “It’s all about inclusive design. We need people to think differently in order to build the best products possible.” He gives examples of crash test dummies modeled after male engineers, resulting in higher casualty rates for female passengers, or digital cameras that turned out to have difficulty focusing on darker skin. “Just having that representation, that different point of view, really helps improve products in the industry.”
But bringing these diverse voices into computer science presents plenty of challenges. Lots of students, especially from lower income school districts, have never had the opportunity to study CS in high school. And once they get to college, CS courses can be very difficult to get into. And if they manage to get that far?
“My first impressions of UCSB have been very positive,” she says. “The department feels welcoming and dynamic, with collaboration between students and professors. The passion for learning and research is evident, and it is clear that the department values innovation and wants everyone to feel involved.”
“Imagine somebody coming in, facing impostor syndrome, seeing a bunch of people that don’t look like them already seemingly knowing what to do—that is really discouraging. Having role models is essential for keeping students in the classroom, keeping students interested, and having students believe that they can actually do computer science.”
With their Broadening Participation in Computing project, Wang and Buffardi are attempting to broaden the pipeline into CS by opening doors at the high school level. The pilot project is a platform of instructional material with auto-graded exercises. It will be tested next year,
including locally at Santa Barbara’s Dos Pueblos High School, and eventually it will be available for anyone to access and use for free online.
Wang is currently mentoring three CS undergrads in the creation of instructional videos covering various curriculum topics. “We want these students to not only teach computer science, but have the audience and prospective students get to know them as people and role models. So the examples they’re coming up with are relatable to their interests, relatable to their life, and kind of provide their own unique perspec-
tive of computer science than what you typically find in a textbook.”
That means things like teaching object-oriented programming concepts in the context of In-n-Out’s secret menu, or learning about multidimensional arrays as a canvas for pixel art.
“Even if a student is not interested in computer science, they can use this as a learning tool to get some sort of informal instruction, to see some relatability of peer mentors. The hopes are this will open some doors that weren’t open for them before.”
“It’s all about relatability. It’s about mentoring student peers to introduce concepts, serve as role models, and talk about computer science in their own words.”
This is a busy, busy place” says Assistant Professor Misha Sra, director of UCSB’s Human-AI Integration Lab, also known as HAL. “It’s not just PhD students. I have a whole lot of undergrad students, I have masters students, I have visiting researchers like Kojiro who’s here from Toyota Research. I also have faculty spending their sabbatical year here from Japan. It’s a lively place.”
And working diligently in all that buzz of activity for the last few years has been PhD student Atieh Taheri, whose lifetime of experience with spinal muscular atrophy has broadened the perspective of a lab that’s focused on human-computer interaction, extended reality, and AI.
general population while overlooking people in different situations or medical conditions.
“Whatever experience you’re trying to simulate for people,” she says, “you also need to consider this underrepresented group.”
“Well I mean she’s an engineer, right? And that’s what engineers do. They solve hard problems.”
“This has been the challenge in Atieh’s prior work,” Sra explains. “When you think about gaming systems and input devices we have for computers, everything assumes that you can use your hands for the most part. If you don’t have control over your hands, accessibility features are not going to help you.”
“My field of research is accessibility for people with motor impairments, motor disability,” Taheri says. “People kind of similar with the situation I have.”
As an example she talks about current virtual reality implementations, and how they mostly consider the
With that in mind, Taheri’s first project in the lab was a gaming input system based on facial expression recognition. She built it during the Covid shutdown, conducting a remote user study with 12 other people who have muscular dystrophy or spinal muscular atrophy.
“It was one of the hardest studies I have ever seen done,” Sra says. “Atieh did it, building a system that was
usable for folks who can’t necessarily rely on their hands to set up and play.”
The system, which relies on AI and a web camera with speech input, is customizable by letting users with different degrees of facial and muscle control map different
• EntangleVR ’23
• ARLang ’23
• Spatial Music ’23
• ModBand ’23
• Sonic Storyteller ’23
• ARFit ’23
• Appearance Editing ’23
• FaraPy ’21
• TiNO-Edit ’24
• DanceGen ’24
• GITM ’23
• Living Memories ’23
• Virtual Instructors ’23
• EChat ’23
• Recoloring ’23
• Mix3D ’22
• Txt2Vid ’22
• GenAI ’22
• Emotion Awareness ’23
• Spatial Memories ’23
• ARfy ’23
• Experiential Artifacts ’22
• CardsVR ’22
• Virtual Steps ’24
• Mouse Clicker ’24
• Hands-free Input ’21
• Virtual Buddy ’23
• Facial Expressions ’21
Visual summary of recent work in the Human-AI Integration Lab (HAL)
facial expressions to game character motions or actions. Games downloaded from Steam that allow keyboard remapping worked well right out of the box with the system.
“We were going for Atieh to play a first-person shooter. And she did! Car racing, too. Hard games!”
Sounds difficult?
“Well I mean she’s an engineer, right?” says Sra. “And that’s what engineers do. They solve hard problems.”
During her time in the lab, Taheri has also worked on a computer mouse modification project that provides tactile feedback for people with hand motor impairments, a virtual buddy for redefining conversational AI interactions, and Virtual Steps, a VR experience that simulates walking for lifelong wheelchair users.
“I don’t know if my walking in VR is the same as real walking in physical reality, I don’t know that,” Taheri says. “But it’s comfortable for me and it’s consistent with the model I have in my mind from watching others. It’s consistent with my mental model of walking.”
She’s quick to point out that not everyone will want to experience walking—and that’s fine. Her projects are more about bringing focus to those with disabilities, about bringing awareness to designers who don’t necessarily have the perspective of disability. Sra adds that disability is not necessarily a siloed condition. It’s more of a continuum, with people sliding in and out of degrees of disability throughout their lives with illness, injury, and age—making these kinds of projects relevant to all of us.
As a Presidential Postdoc Fellow, Taheri will continue to expand her knowledge and expertise in accessibility research while contributing to the vibrant research community at Carnegie Mellon University.
Meanwhile, the lively work continues in the Human-AI Integration Lab as new waves of researchers innovate and expand the possibilities of human augmentation with AI and XR.
Our students are sharp and eager to learn. They really are a pleasure to teach and mentor.
After earning his MS in EE/CE from USC, Dr. Ziad Matni took a short 13-year break in the tech industry before returning to academia for a PhD from Rutgers. He joined UCSB as an assistant teaching professor and now serves as director of the CS department’s Early Research Scholars Program. His own research focuses on the intersection of computer science and human behavior around information seeking and sensemaking—including the use of AI and Large Language Models in education. He loves teaching undergrads but—after recently getting nothing but blank stares from his very bright students upon mentioning the names Jobs and Wozniak—he now fantasizes about adding a history of CS course!
“UCSB is the best of many worlds,” he says. “It’s a world class research leader in a gorgeous location. I’ve found the faculty to be intellectually stimulating and very approachable. The staff consistently demonstrates exceptional generosity with their time and expertise. And our students are sharp and eager to learn.”
Dr. Murphy Niu describes herself as a physicist by training and a computer scientist by choice. As an assistant professor at UCSB, her research deals with harnessing the imperfections and the unique advantages of different quantum hardware through machine learning and algorithm designs.
She looks forward to introducing a new undergraduate course that will teach paradigms in quantum mechanics and quantum computing to CS students with no background in quantum physics.
Dr. Niu is excited by the thriving quantum research community at UCSB but also by the campus culture and the beautiful natural environment.
There’s so much to learn, observe, listen to, and enjoy here in Santa Barbara. I’m just getting started!
“I’ve visited Santa Barbara often,” she says, “but nothing compares to actually living here.” It’s a perfect place for some of her favorite activities old and new, including bird watching, wildlife advocacy, hiking, scuba diving—and anything else that will keep the learning curve high.
The Computer Science Department’s committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has announced the launch of the PhD Application Support Program. Spearheaded by Professors Michael Beyeler and Frederic Gibou , this initiative supports aspiring CS scholars from under-served backgrounds through a preapplication review service.
The PhD ASP provides mentorship and feedback on application materials, including resumes, CVs, and statements of purpose. Current PhD students or postdocs from the CS department serve as reviewers, undergoing specialized training to offer insightful advice.
In its first year, the program supported 53 students, mostly first-generation college students, from 43 institutions in 11 countries. An anonymous survey revealed participants found the program invaluable, praising the feedback for significantly improving their application materials. Each application receives two reviews for diverse perspectives. One participant noted, “My materials were read carefully, and very useful suggestions were provided. I am extremely grateful for this support program.” The program aims to expand in the coming years to benefit more students.
Prospective applicants from underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds in CS are encouraged to submit their application documents for review. The program guarantees confidentiality, ensuring that participation details are not shared with the faculty committee reviewing applications.
Recognizing the systemic challenges faced by many applicants from marginalized communities, the program emphasizes guidance and improvement. “It comes with no guarantee of admission, of course, but is meant to strengthen the written materials of those who might ‘not look so good on paper’,” noted Professor Beyeler.
We hope to start the next cycle of the PhD ASP in October ’24. At that time, interested prospective students will be able to apply at https://cs.ucsb.edu/ education/graduate/phd-application-support-program.
By introducing the PhD Application Support Program, CS@UCSB reaffirms its commitment to fostering diversity and inclusivity, providing valuable support to prospective scholars.
Big thanks to our outstanding CS staff for all they do to keep the department running smoothly every day!
Congratulations to our faculty, undergrads, grad students, and alumni who continue to impress with notable successes on and off campus. Your hard work and dedication elevates the profile of UCSB Computer Science and collectively increases the value of a CS@UCSB degree!
Arpit Gupta
Best (Long) Paper Award, ACM Internet Measurement Conference
Applied Networking Research Prize, IRTF Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM CCS
2023-24 Hellman Fellowship NSF Early CAREER Award
Induction to the IEEE VGTC VR Academy
Richert Wang
NSF grant for Broadening Participation in Computing UCSB Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award
Divyakant Agrawal
IEEE MDM 2024 Test of Time Award NSDI 24 Outstanding Paper Award
IEEE MDM 2024 Test of Time Award NSDI 24 Outstanding Paper Award
ACM Fellow
Distinguished Paper Award, ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation
2022-23 CS Department Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award
William Wang
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Early Career Technical Achievement Award
CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
Karen Spärck Jones Award
Yan Best Paper Honorable Mention, ACM SIGGRAPH
VLDB Test of Time Award
2024 Distinguished Alumni
John Yoder, undergrad
Maureen Heymans, MS
Daniel Nurmi, PhD
College of Engineering
Outstanding Teaching Assistant
Junrui Liu
Computer Science Outstanding TA Awards
Vinayak Gajjewar, Trysten Hess, Galen Pogoncheff
Computer Science
Outstanding Publication Award
Xinyi Wang
Computer Science
Outstanding Mentoring Awards
Arthur Caetano, Radha Kumaran
Computer Science
Outstanding Dissertation Awards
Ishtiyaque Ahmad, Tsu-Jui Fu
Caitlin Scarberry Memorial Award: Computer Science BS/MS Students of the Year
Erwan Fraisse, Aditya Sharma
Computer Science MS Student of the Year
Ryan Keeney
Computer Science PhD Student of the Year
Zach Sisco
Goldwater Scholarship
Isaac Hair
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
Honorable Mention
Guy Wilks
UCSB Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Guy Wilks
College of Engineering
Outstanding Senior Awards
Jonathan Cheng, Arik Cheslog, Andy Ouyang, Ivy Wang
Computer Science
Outstanding Undergraduate Mentor Award
Tianle Yu
Computer Science
Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award
Isaac Hair
Computer Science Students of the Year
Vaishnavi Himakunthala, Zackary Glazewski
GauchoChat Team: Rajan Saini, Weizhi Wang, Marina Zhukova, Hong Wang, and advisor Xifeng Yan
Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 5
GauchoChat Team, First Place
Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge
GauchoAI Team, Second Place
NSF Graduate Research Fellows
Haarika Manda, Joyce Passananti
CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher
Isaac Hair, Runner Up
Matthew Ho, Honorable Mention
Shivani Sista, Honorable Mention
Rising Stars in Machine Learning Awarded by the University of Maryland Wanrong Zhu
IJCNLP-AACL Area Chair’s Award
Liangming Pan
WG 2024 50th Intl Workshop on Graph Theoretical Concepts in Computer Science
Ryan Keeney, Best Student Paper Award
UCSB 25th Annual New Venture Competition
Bowen Zhang (EyeClimate Team), First place
CSAW Logic Locking Competition 2023 at NYU
Yeganeh Aghamohammadibonab & Jaber Daneshamooz, Second Place
UCSB AI Community of Practice Spring Symposium 2024, AI Digital Presentation Competition
Tianle Yu, First Place
Neal Fenzi Resonant Founder Fellowshp
Michael Saxon, Vaishali Surianarayanan, Zach Sisco
The Department of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara is a world leader in computing research and education. Our highly ranked graduate and undergraduate programs are in high demand and attract ambitious and talented students. Our faculty and students produce some of the finest research in the field, and our alumni in academia and industry create solutions for the world’s most challenging problems.
The continuing support of our alumni and friends is critical to our ability to grow and build on our success. The department’s priority funding areas provide a number of ways to impact our future.
Through the Student Support Fund you will enhance the overall student experience and ensure that UCSB Computer Science continues to attract and educate the students who will become tomorrow’s leaders.
• Named Scholarships & Fellowships
• Named Lecture Series
• Undergraduate Lecture Series
• Distinguished Lecture Series
• Unrestricted Support
Research-directed gifts help us recruit and retain the very best faculty and graduate students from around the world who will focus their talents and energies on creating technological solutions to increasingly complex global problems. These gifts help us remain competitive with our peers and continue to elevate our national and international stature.
• Named Endowed Chairs
• Named Visiting Professorships
UCSB Computer Science students and faculty need facilities and spaces that support collaboration, inspiration, and discovery. The Department seeks support of a generous donor to establish a new state-of-the-art building. Smaller scale gifts are sought to help upgrade and maintain facilities and to support priority capital projects, including new expanded instructional computer labs for our undergraduate students.
Today’s UCSB Computer Science students are the future software engineers, researchers, and architects who will drive your organization into the next generation of technology and beyond. Consider taking the first step to invest in your future. Check out the UCSB Corporate Relations page for more information: http://tinyurl.com/35nw2kb8
Ryan M. Allen ’18,’19
Dr. Amr El Abbadi and Janet Head
Nayan Ashar
Richard L. Basanese ’86
Gang Bao
Julie Bechtloff ’95 and George Weising
Bright Funds
Omar K. Buzdar ’23
Wai Chan and Justin Liu
Dr. Douglas Chang ’98
Eunice Cheung
Jackie and Raymond Choi
Dr. Hae Don Chon ’02
Sharon Clay
Carolyn A. Cox ’88
Jennifer Rose Cryan ’15,’17
Gregory E. Davis ’98
Mayumi ’83 and Dr. Gregory
DeHaan ’83,’85
Lei Dong and Changlin Ma
Dr. Zoran Dimitrijevic ’04
Suvanan Dutta
Daniel ’02 and Rebecca Elder ’02
Ethereum Foundation
Lopker Family Foundation
Floyd Goldstein
Dr. Nevena Golubovic ’19
Paul D. Goodrich ’95
Mayumi and Roy Gottlieb
Larry D. Hale and Yanmin Tao
Chris and Jean Hamabe
Kelly Harrel
Karin E. Havemose ’88,’91
Yi He and Rong Feng
Hannah Hultgren
David Henke ’78 and Elana
Tabachnikoff
Deanna M. Hartsook ’16
Suzan D. Jackson ’86
Xiangdong Jin and Aihua Fu
Sara D. Kalin ’97
Saagar S. Kausheeka ’18
Vach and Jacintha Kompella
Forrest P. Laureano ’67
Brian H. Lee ’12
Dr. Kuo-Chin Lien ’16
Dr. Rone Kwei Lim ’12
Dr. Honglei Liu ’17
Matthew M. Misiurak ’06
Fereshteh ’99 and Neil Morgan ’99
John and Janis Mori
Jana and Jonathan Multhaup
Dr. Priya A. Nagpurkar ’07
NCWIT
Rong Nie and Qing Zhou
Open Source Hardware Association
Ramesh Pabbichetty and Vakula Vura
Lucien and Jessica Patenaude
Kimberly and Carl Pawley
Conor M. Pawley ’11
Patricia and Jim Pflaging
Linda Rice-Zamora
Michael J. Richmond ’05
Pedro Rivas
The Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Onur Sakarya ’08
Suzanne and Mark Scarberry
Bill and Christina Sequeira
Amy Shen and Robert Jiang
Xiaodong Shen ’99 and Jane Xu
Mel Sibony ’79
Renee Slattery ’87
Joel Silverman
Soobin and Christian Son
Liling Song ’02
Tayloe and Cindy Stansbury
Sanjay and Ashima Suri
Jufang Tan
Dr. Hong Tang ’04 and Man Luo
Qun Tang
Jerry and Wendy Tsai
Tentcho Totev
Colleen Vandevoorde
Matthew ’06 and Sara ’07
Vlasach
Chengbo and Xiaohua Wang
Liaoteng Wang and Yulin Zhang
Randy Wang ’13
Zhiqiang Wang
Waterclowns
The Susan & Bruce Worster Foundation
Chen Wu and Yanmu Huang
Daniel Wu ’04
Dr. Ping Wu ’07, ’08 and Juan Wang ’08
Xiujun Wu
Jenny Xia and Dennis Fang
Ping Yang
Xiaodong Yang and Yu Fang
George Yuan
Chunlian Zhang and Gang Lu
Zhongdang Zhan and Rong
Zhang
Daping Zhang and Zonghuan Wu
Yihong Zhang and Benquan Yu
Guoxing Zhao and Lusheng Chen
Jingyi Zhong and Yifeng Yang
Qiyu Zhong, Class of 2024
Hongjun Zhu ’98 and Jing Wang ’98 (Ann Jie Foundation)
Jun Xiu Zhu and Jian Wen Zeng
Zhu Family Foundation, Inc.
AbbVie
Activision Publishing, Inc.
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Alcon
Algorand
Allthenticate
Amateur Radio Digital Communications
Amazon Web Services, Inc.
Amazon.com, Inc.
Ampere Computing LLC
AppFolio, Inc.
Artera
Beegol
Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd.
Benevity Lam Research
Benevity Pfizer
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Digilent
Evidation Health, Inc.
Google, Inc.
IBM Corporation
Intel Corporation
Invoca, Inc.
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
Linctex Digital Technology
LogMeIn, Inc.
MAZ Group
McNally Media
Megagon Labs
Microsoft
MystenLabs
Nanjing Weiwu Internet Technology Co.,Ltd
NEC Laboratories America, Inc.
PayJunction
PicsArt, Inc.
Pivotal Ventures
PowWow Energy
PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP
QAD, Inc.
Qualcomm, Inc.
Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.
Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving
ScOp Ventures, LLC
Semiotic AI
Shellphish Support
Syndicate
SmartContract, Inc.
SmartRG Inc.
Snap Inc.
Snowflake, Inc.
SyncReality
Teladoc Health
Telekom
TrueVision Systems, Inc.
Viasat, Inc.
Visa, Inc.
Watermark Insights, LLC www.Bill.com
Xenon Partners
XVerse Technology
Yardi Systems, Inc.
Computer Science Professor Emeritus Ömer Eğecioğlu published a new book in 2023 titled Fibonacci Cubes with Applications and Variations with his coauthors Sandi Klavžar (Ljubliana) and Michel Mollard (Grenoble). This compendium features the state of research into Fibonacci Cubes, which have been a popular area of inquiry since the 1990s. The book serves as a fundamental source for further research, benefiting advanced students in CS and mathematics.
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5130
