Awards and Honors

Computer Science Professor Matt Bishop recently received two prestigious honors in recognition of his research and teaching: The Taylor L. Booth Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and election to the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) Hall of Fame. Bishop is the first UC Davis faculty member to receive either honor.

“I’m surprised and pleased to receive these honors,” he said. “They speak to my teaching and research, and speak well of both of them.”

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.

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.

Computer science professor Nina Amenta was honored with the 2021 Outstanding Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching by the UC Davis College of Engineering.

Each year, the UC Davis College of Engineering recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and community with the Outstanding Faculty Awards. Faculty members are nominated by their respective departments and are selected by the college’s faculty awards committee.

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.

Computer science professor Patrice Koehl has received a 2020-21 Graduate Program Advising and Mentorship Award from UC Davis Graduate Studies, in honor of his excellence in advising and mentorship of graduate students.

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.