Students

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‘The Backdrop’ Podcast Features Scholar on How Social Media Algorithms Can Foster Political Radicalization

  • by Soterios Johnson
  • December 14, 2022
A new study from UC Davis suggests that artificial intelligence recommendation algorithms on sites like YouTube and TikTok can play a role in political radicalization. The research team trained “sock puppets” — artificial entities that act like users. Each sock puppet was given a series of right- or left-leaning videos to watch every day, and then the team would compare the recommendations on the sock puppet’s homepage to see if its recommended videos gradually became more biased.
uc davis computer science fake amazon reviews

Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews

  • by Simon Hill
  • November 04, 2022
Ph.D. student Rajvardhan Oak stumbled upon an underground market for fake Amazon reviews by accident while scrolling through Facebook. Seedy scam networks are using social media to organize campaigns that influence product ratings. They’re a headache for shoppers—and tough to crack down on.
uc davis computer science youtube recommendation algorithm polarization radicalization

Do YouTube Recommendations Foster Political Radicalization?

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • August 25, 2022
A new study from UC Davis suggests that AI recommendation algorithms on sites like YouTube and Tik Tok can play a role in political radicalization. If the algorithm sees that a user is watching a lot of biased political videos, the researchers found that it can trap them in a “loop effect,” recommending similarly biased and potentially more extreme content on their homepage and sidebar.
EcoCAR students

EcoCAR EV Challenge Marks a New Era for UC Davis Engineering

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • May 03, 2022
Over the next four years, UC Davis students will be designing the car of the future as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s EcoCAR Electric Vehicle (EV) Challenge. The competition challenges students to convert a Cadillac LYRIQ EV into an autonomous, next-generation battery-electric vehicle with vehicle-to-everything connectivity so it can interact with devices and the environment.
uc davis computer science design wearable jewelry communication technology shuyi sun

Using Jewelry to Communicate

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • March 31, 2022

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.

uc davis covid 19 vaccine appointment system india computer science student shrey sheladia

UC Davis Student Builds COVID-19 Vaccine Appointment Notification System to Increase Vaccinations in India

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • January 11, 2022

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.

concept guide learning YouTube videos Jingxian Liao uc davis computer science

A Guide for Learning from YouTube

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • September 22, 2021

Whether it’s coding, cooking or calculus, more people are using YouTube and other video sharing websites to learn new things. Computer science Ph.D. student Jingxian Liao, part of associate professor Hao-Chuan Wang’s group, is trying to make this experience better and easier by creating a structured learning experience from a list of video search results.

simbarashe nyatsanga uc davis computer science ibm phd fellow gestures animation computer vision

Simbarashe Nyatsanga Receives IBM Ph.D. Fellowship for Research in Gesture Generation

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • August 30, 2021

Computer science Ph.D. student Simbarashe Nyatsanga aims to make an impact in animation and computer vision through his groundbreaking research in speech-driven gesture generation. He is one of only 16 recipients worldwide this year of the prestigious IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding Ph.D. students with demonstrated academic excellence and expertise in pioneering research in computer science.

“In animation, there’s a lot of room for improvement, so it’s wonderful to see that IBM recognizes the importance of my research,” he said.

comptuer science undergraduate led android app development course uc davis akshey nama omar burney

Computer Science Undergraduates Teach Upper-division Android App Development Class

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • August 23, 2021

This past winter, computer science (CS) majors Akshey Nama and Omar Burney developed, planned and taught their own upper-division CS class at UC Davis. Their project-based app development course covered the principles of programming for Android, brought in experts from the Android developer community and built a network of students interested in the platform.

uc davis computer science female women hackathon lovelace hacks

UC Davis Hosts First Women-focused Hackathon

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • July 15, 2021
From April 23 – 25, Davis Women in Computer Science (WICS) and SacHacks co-hosted Lovelace Hacks, UC Davis’ first women-focused hackathon. This hackathon aimed to create a space for people of all majors, backgrounds and experience who identify as women and gender minorities to grow their interest in technology and data science.
suchita mukherjee ms thesis award uc davis computer science

Suchita Mukherjee Receives College of Engineering Master’s Thesis Excellence Award

  • by Rachel Steere
  • June 09, 2021

Suchita Mukherjee is the first recipient of the annual Master’s Thesis Excellence Award in the College of Engineering. She is graduating from UC Davis this spring with a master’s degree in computer science and will be joining Zillow Group as a software developer.

She was selected for this award based on her research, “Fixing Dependency Errors for Python Build Reproducibility,” under the mentorship of computer science Professor Cindy Rubio-González.

uc davis computer science arboretum memorial antara bhowmick

Arboretum Bench Dedicated in Honor of Late Computer Science Student

  • by Noah Pflueger-Peters
  • May 13, 2021
A bench tile in the UC Davis Arboretum was dedicated this spring in honor of Antara Bhowmick ‘19, a computer science (CS) M.S. alumna who passed away in September 2019. Bhowmick is remembered as a dedicated student, teaching assistant and researcher and loyal friend who maintained a tight-knit social group at UC Davis.
uc davis computer science graduate best paper sung kook kim

Ph.D. Student Sung Kook Kim Wins Young Researcher Best Paper Award

  • November 19, 2020
Sung Kook Kim, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department advised by assistant professor Aditya Thakur, was awarded the Radhia Cousot Young Researcher Best Paper Award at the 27th Static Analysis Symposium (SAS 2020) for his paper, "Memory-Efficient Fixpoint Computation."
uc davis computer science covid berkeley lab graduate students

Computer Science Students Tackle COVID-19 at Berkeley Lab

  • October 27, 2020
As a part of the Computational Research Division’s (CRD) summer student program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, four graduate students from UC Davis researched a method that could allow doctors and researchers to leverage valuable health information in the battle against COVID-19 while also preserving patient privacy in COVID-19-related electronic health records.
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