News

Computer Science Distinguished Professor Prem Devanbu received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his accomplishments in research and teaching. Each year, the award recognizes world-renowned researchers from all disciplines whose fundamental discoveries, theories and findings have had a lasting effect on their field. The awardees are then invited to German institutions as visiting scholars.

Doctors already rely on a patient’s medical history to prescribe the right treatments and medications, but Computer Science Distinguished Professor Kwan-Liu Ma and Dr. Shin-Ping Tu at the UC Davis School of Medicine think they can also use it to improve how the entire medical system works together.

The Department of Computer Science is excited to welcome four new faculty members in the 2021-22 academic year.

The face already plays an important role in communication, but a group of UC Davis computer scientists led by Ph.D. student Shuyi Sun is taking this to the next level. The team is designing facial jewelry that can use signals from a person’s facial muscles to send wireless commands to at-home devices like Alexa and Google Home. By reading a user’s conscious and unconscious gestures, the technology has the potential to help silently operate lights or other devices or discreetly send messages to get out of potentially dangerous situations.

Computer Science Assistant Professor Jason Lowe-Power received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award this year, the agency’s highest honor for young faculty. The award recognizes those with the potential to be leaders in their fields and funds five-year research and education projects that should serve as the foundation for their careers.

Software code is written to be read by both computers and humans. Machines quickly and perfectly understand the computational meaning, while humans read it the same way they read natural language: not as quickly and sometimes incorrectly. With a new $1.2M three-year NSF-funded project, a group of software engineers and social scientists at UC Davis will leverage this bimodality to develop tools that make writing, reading and maintaining code easier and improve the overall programming experience.

As the pandemic surged in spring 2021, third-year computer science major Shrey Sheladia used the programming skills he learned at UC Davis to help increase India’s vaccination rate. For four months, Sheladia ran an online notification program that helped more than 40,000 people in India receive COVID-19 vaccines by alerting them when a vaccine appointment was available.

Machine-learning algorithms, while not intended to replace human doctors, can be powerful tools to help process and make sense of patient data. Electrical and computer engineering professor Chen-Nee Chuah and computer science professor Xin Liu are preparing sensors and algorithms to work alongside doctors to treat patients.

As of October, Google Flights displays carbon emissions estimates alongside the duration, layovers and price for each flight. New research from UC Davis computer science professor Nina Amenta and Institute of Transportation Studies environmental psychologist Angela Sanguinetti suggests that this new interface will cause small but important changes in how people choose flights and possibly lead to lower emissions.