This is an archived version of CCC's website. Please visit the new ccc website for the latest information.

Who are CIFellows

2009 Class of CIFellows

2010 Class of CIFellows

2011 Class of CIFellows

Feedback from our CIFellows

Success Stories

"The program was incredibly well thought out providing funds for postdocs to cover the expenses associated with our research and did an excellent job of pairing post-docs with mentors."

In early 2009 forecasts showed that the deteriorating economic climate would force a large number of new Ph.D.s in computer science and related fields to delay or altogether abandon a research career. Projected Ph.D. production was high, and jobs in academia and industry were few. Leaders of the computing research community feared a cohort of able researchers would be permanently lost to the profession.

With encouragement from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering (CISE), the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) proposed to develop and administer a short-term program that would provide postdoctoral positions for about 60 Ph.D.s - called Computing Innovation Fellows, or CIFellows - for one to two years. In its proposal, the CCC cited among the motivations for the program:

  • "The nation's universities and industrial research labs are facing unprecedented budget pressure as part of the international financial crisis. The result is considerably fewer openings for computing research and teaching positions than anyone imagined even six months ago."
  • "The nation's research universities will be producing a record number of new Ph.D.s in computer science and computing-related fields - approximately 1,800."
  • "Award recipients will remain in research positions, enabling them to advance the field while simultaneously gaining an opportunity for further training and learning."
  • "Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the primary goal of this program is to put talented people in situations that allow them to innovate. As a group, they persue new endeavors that, in turn, create new opportunities."

The proposal spelled out some key properties of the competition and awards:

  • Applicants must propose matches with specific mentors, who must be from institutions other than a given applicant's Ph.D. - granting institution. To facilitate mentor identification, potential mentors may indicate willingness to supervise postdocs by signing up on a webpage and including a summary of their research interests. Applicants are encouraged to propose more than one possible mentor, and are urged to contact mentors to discuss possible research directions. Mentors must endorse a paired applicant.
  • Industrial hosts are encouraged, provided an intellectual property agreement allows the CIFellow to publish based on his or her work.
  • A postdoc award is portable; the CIFellow may move to another institution provided a mentor pairing exists.
  • Awards are for one year, with the possibility of extension to a second year.

In its first year, 2009, the program was organized and executed very rapidly. The proposal was submitted to NSF on March 26; NSF approved a slightly modified proposal on May 15. The program was announced that same day - May 15, together with websites prepared to accept mentors and applicants. Two committees, spanning 35 leading researchers in academia and industry, were recruited and organized to steer the program and review the applications. By the application deadline of June 9, over 1,200 mentors had signed up and 522 applications completed, comprising 945 separate applicant-mentor pairings. On July 8, CCC announced the selection of 60 CIFellows.

Because economic conditions did not improve rapidly, the program was continued in 2010 and 2011 with additional funding from NSF/CISE. Overall, 127 CIFellows were funded - 60 in 2009, 47 in 2010, and 20 in 2011. As it was always intended to be a short-term effort, the program was ramped down in each successive year, and there will be no new CIFellowships awarded in 2012.

Collapse all | Expand all

The CIFellows Project was designed to determine a set of awards that was diverse along many dimensions. In addition to conventional diversity objectives, reviewers sought to balance awards among the sub-disciplines of the field. A unique component of the selection process was a so-called "max-two rule," which mandated that no more than two awardees could come from a single Ph.D.-granting college or university and no more than two awardees could go to a single host organization. The first part imparted some fairness among applicants; the second part infused "new blood" in institutions unable to hire new faculty because of economic conditions. An additional intent was to ensure "cross-flow" across institutional types, with the hope of establishing long-term collaborations among diverse institutions. (Indeed, it often happened in the selection process that a third, fourth, or fifth candidate from university X or going to organization Y would be encountered, causing reconsideration of the decisions made earlier in the review process. As a consequence, most of the finalists were discussed multiple times by the review committee throughout the process.) The impact was not surprising: many applicants wanted to go to top-ranked institutions (and came from larger programs), and thus ran into exceptionally stiff competition.

A result of the max-two rule described above, was that the 60 awardees in 2009 came from 44 different academic institutions and went to 45 different host organizations. Similar numbers were observed in 2010 and 2011. The following figure above illustrates the "cross-flow" achieved in the full set of 127 awards

The impact of the CIFellows Project cannot be measured well until the CIFellows have progressed further in their careers. However, a qualitative assessment by SRI International, completed in May 2011, concluded in part (emphasis added):

  • The results of this evaluation suggest that the design of the program helped to provide the CIFellows with the foundations for productive careers as research leaders and principal investigators. Confirmation of this outcome will not be possible, however, until the subsequent careers of the CIFellows can be studied...
  • The CIFellows Project appears to have achieved its short-term objectives of providing interim employment to early-career computing researchers, at least some of whom might have left the field without such support [based on interviews with the CIFellows].

Perhaps most importantly, the CIFellows have been afforded a unique level of independence and flexibility, as compared to their counterparts in traditional postdoctoral positions. As SRI International wrote in its assessment:

[There is evidence to support that] the CIFellows Project provides an experience that is more likely to prepare postdoctoral fellows for careers as independent, innovative researchers, in contrast to typical postdoctoral training.

...Individuals involved in the Project argued that most postdoctoral positions in science and engineering require the postdoc to conduct whatever research his or her mentor requests. For postdoctoral positions [that] are funded through a specific research grant, the postdoc is expected to perform the research activities required under the grant. In contrast, the CIFellows are expected to pursue independent research under the guidance of [their mentors]. The CIFellows themselves have reported that the support of the CIFellows Project enables them to act in a manner different from other postdoctoral fellows at their host institutions; they have far more independence and flexibility than even colleagues in their labs. Based on their responses to the survey, the CIFellows noted that they have been involved in a wide range of activities beyond conducting research, including:

  • Authoring scholarly articles (95% of respondents)
  • Collaborative research with colleagues at the host institution (77%)
  • Collaborative research with students (71%)
  • Advising students or junior staff (68%)


             

2009 Class of CIFellows

Zlatan Aksamija

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

Web site

Research Interests: Computational nanoscience

CIFellowship Mentor: Irena Knezevic

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Wisconsin at Madison

Current Position: NSF Transformative Computational Science using Cyber Infrastructure (CITraCS) Postdoctoral Fellowship

Current Affiliation: University of Wisconsin at Madison


Sitaram Asur

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Ohio State University

Web site

Research Interests: Social computing, data mining, machine learning, information retrieval

CIFellowship Mentor: Bernardo Huberman

CIFellowship Host Organization: Hewlett Packard

Current Position: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Hewlett Packard


Paula Bach

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Pennsylvania State University

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work.

CIFellowship Mentor: Michael Twidale

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Current Position: User Experience Researcher

Current Affiliation: Microsoft Research


Cindy L. Bethel

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of South Florida

Web site

Research Interests: Human-robot interaction, affective computing, social robotics, and cognitive science

CIFellowship Mentor: Brian Scassellati

CIFellowship Host Organization: Yale University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Mississippi State University

Carleton Bosley

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New York University

Web site

Research Interests: Information assurance, security, privacy, cryptography

CIFellowship Mentor: Antonio Nicolosi

CIFellowship Host Organization: Stevens Institute of Technology

Current Position: Software Engineer

Current Affiliation: Google, New York


Quincy Brown

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Drexel University

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction, mobile learning, intelligent supports in learning environments

CIFellowship Mentor: Allison Druin

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Maryland at College Park

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Bowie State University

Yuriy Brun

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Southern California

Web site

Research Interests: Software engineering with a particular focus on self-adaptation techniques

CIFellowship Mentor: David Notkin

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Washington

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Current Affiliation: University of Washington

Scott Coull

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Johns Hopkins University

Web site

Research Interests: Statistical analysis, data mining and machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Michael Reiter

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill

Current Position: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: RedJack, LLC

Nicholas Diakopoulos

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Georgia Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction and information visualization

CIFellowship Mentor: Mor Naaman

CIFellowship Host Organization: Rutgers University

Current Position: Research Fellow

Current Affiliation: City University of New York and University of Bergen


Jeremy Fineman

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Algorithm design and analysis with a focus on parallel algorithms

CIFellowship Mentor: Guy Blelloch

CIFellowship Host Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Georgetown University

Davide Fossati

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Illinois at Chicago

Web site

Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, data mining, intelligent tutoring systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Mark Guzdial

CIFellowship Host Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

Current Position: Assistant Teaching Professor

Current Affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar


Xin Fu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Florida

Web site

Research Interests: Computer architecture, hardware reliability and the impact of nano-scale technology on multi-core processors

CIFellowship Mentor: Sarita Adve

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Kansas

Ronald Garcia

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Indiana University

Web site

Research Interests: Programming languages

CIFellowship Mentor: Frank Pfenning

CIFellowship Host Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of British Columbia


Ragib Hasan

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

Web site

Research Interests: Cloud computing, computer security, secure provenance, trustworthy databases and file systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Randal Burns

CIFellowship Host Organization: Johns Hopkins University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham

Michael Hines

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: State University of New York at Binghamton

Web site

Research Interests: Building and analyzing experimental, networked systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Jason Nieh

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Current Position: Research Staff Member

Current Affiliation: IBM Research



Daniel C. Howe

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New York University

Web site

Research Interests: Computation, literature, and education

CIFellowship Mentor: Andy van Dam

CIFellowship Host Organization: Brown University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong



Yuho Jin

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Texas A&M University

Web site

Research Interests: Computer architecture, interconnection network, multicore architecture, parallel computing

CIFellowship Mentor: Timothy Pinkston

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Southern California

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: New Mexico State University

Jeffrey Johns

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Web site

Research Interests: Autonomous learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Ronald Parr

CIFellowship Host Organization: Duke University

Current Position: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: US Department of Defense

Yong Joo Kil

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Davis

Web site

Research Interests: Algorithms and visualization

CIFellowship Mentor: Marshall Bern

CIFellowship Host Organization: Xerox PARC

Current Position: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Xerox PARC

Dara Kusic

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Drexel University

Web site

Research Interests: Networks and operating systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Daniel Mosse

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Pittsburgh

Current Position: Application Developer

Current Affiliation: Coriell Institute for Medical Research

Benjamin Lee

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Harvard University

Web site

Research Interests: Scalable technologies, power-efficient computer architectures and high-performance applications

CIFellowship Mentor: Mark Horowitz

CIFellowship Host Organization: Stanford University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Duke University

Katrina Ligett

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Online algorithms, algorithmic game theory, and data privacy

CIFellowship Mentor: Eva Tardos

CIFellowship Host Organization: Cornell University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: California Institute of Technology

Edgar J. Lobaton

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Berkeley

Web site

Research Interests: Robotics, computer vision, and sensor networks

CIFellowship Mentor: Ron Alterovitz

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: North Carolina State University

Cristian Lumezanu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Maryland at College Park

Web site

Research Interests: Networking, distributed systems, and security

CIFellowship Mentor: Nick Feamster

CIFellowship Host Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

Current Position: Research Staff Member

Current Affiliation: NEC Laboratories



Niti Madan

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Utah

Web site

Research Interests: Computer architecture and systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Pradip Bose

CIFellowship Host Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Current Position: Product Development

Current Affiliation: Oracle


Victoria Manfredi

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Web site

Research Interests: Ad hoc networks, adaptive sensor networks, and machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Mark Crovella

CIFellowship Host Organization: Boston University

Current Position: Network Scientist

Current Affiliation: BBN Technologies

Damon McCoy

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Colorado at Boulder

Web site

Research Interests: Privacy and security

CIFellowship Mentor: Stefan Savage

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at San Diego

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: George Mason University


Andrew McPherson

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Pennsylvania

Web site

Research Interests: Electronically-augmented instruments and creative expression

CIFellowship Mentor: Youngmoo Kim

CIFellowship Host Organization: Drexel University

Current Position: Lecturer

Current Affiliation: Queen Mary, University of London

Miriah Meyer

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Utah

Web site

Research Interests: Data visualization

CIFellowship Mentor: Hanspeter Pfister

CIFellowship Host Organization: Harvard University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Utah



Lilyana Mihalkova

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Texas at Austin

Web site

Research Interests: Arfificial intellgence and machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Lise Getoor

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Maryland at College Park

Current Position: Researcher

Current Affiliation: Google, Santa Monica

Antonina Mitrofanova

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New York University

Web site

Research Interests: Predictive modeling, bioinformatics, and computational biology

CIFellowship Mentor: Andrea Califano

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Current Affiliation: Columbia University

Deidra Morrison

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Northwestern University

Web site

Research Interests: Data visualization and social computing

CIFellowship Mentor: Juan E. Gilbert

CIFellowship Host Organization: Clemson University

Current Position: Freelancer and Visualization Developer

Ifeoma Nwogu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: State University of New York at Buffalo

Web site

Research Interests: Image processing, biometrics, computational geometry, and large-scale databases

CIFellowship Mentor: Chris Brown

CIFellowship Host Organization: State University of New York at Rochester

Current Position: Research Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: State University of New York at Buffalo

Iris Oved

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Rutgers University

Web site

Research Interests: Arfificial intellgence

CIFellowship Mentor: Ian Fasel and Paul Cohen

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Arizona

Current Position: Director

Current Affiliation: The Paradox Center




Joyojeet Pal

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Berkeley

Web site

Research Interests: Social computing and social informatics

CIFellowship Mentor: John Bennett

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Colorado

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Michigan

Jeff Phillips

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Duke University

Web site

Research Interests: Algorithms for data analysis

CIFellowship Mentor: Suresh Venkatasubramanian

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Utah

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Utah

Sally Pias

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New Mexico State University

Research Interests: High-performance computing for biomolecular simulations

CIFellowship Mentor: Carlos Simmerling

CIFellowship Host Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Anna Pyayt

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Washington

Web site

Research Interests: Biomedicine and computer architerctures

CIFellowship Mentor: Olav Solgaard

CIFellowship Host Organization: Stanford University

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Current Affiliation: Stanford University

Emilee Rader

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Michigan

Web site

Research Interests: Understanding individual - , group - , and system level influences on information sharing in the cloud

CIFellowship Mentor: Darren Gergle

CIFellowship Host Organization: Northwestern University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Michigan State University

Ioan Raicu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Chicago

Web site

Research Interests: Scientific computing, high performance computing, and data-intensive scalable computing

CIFellowship Mentor: Alok Choudhary

CIFellowship Host Organization: Northwestern University

Current Affiliation: Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology

Leena Razzaq

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction, human learning, and user modeling

CIFellowship Mentor: Beverly Woolf

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Current Position: Lecturer

Current Affiliation: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Lev Reyzin

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Yale University

Web site

Research Interests: Theory and practice of machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: John Langford

CIFellowship Host Organization: Yahoo! Research

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago

Guy Rothblum

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Theoretical computer science and computer security

CIFellowship Mentor: Boaz Barak

CIFellowship Host Organization: Princeton University

Current Position: Researcher

Current Affiliation: Microsoft Research

Sushmita Roy

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of New Mexico

Web site

Research Interests: Computational biology, machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Aviv Regev

CIFellowship Host Organization: Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Wisconsin at Madison

Linda Sellie

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of New Mexico

Web site

Research Interests: Systems and biomedicine

CIFellowship Mentor: Aviv Regev

CIFellowship Host Organization: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Current Position: Part-time Instructor/Researcher

Current Affiliation: Polytechnic Institute of New York University

Stelios Sidiroglou

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Columbia University

Web site

Research Interests: Systems, security, and programming languages

CIFellowship Mentor: Martin Rinard

CIFellowship Host Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Current Position: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Massachusettes Institute of Technology

David Soloveichik

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: California Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Molecular programming

CIFellowship Mentor: Georg Seelig

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Washington

Current Position: Systems Biology Fellow

Current Affiliation: University of California at San Francisco

Veselin Stoyanov

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Cornell University

Web site

Research Interests: Machine learning and computational linguistics

CIFellowship Mentor: Jason Eisner

CIFellowship Host Organization: Johns Hopkins University

Current Position: Assistant Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University

Julia Stoyanovich

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Columbia University

Web site

Research Interests: Modeling and data analytics

CIFellowship Mentor: Susan B. Davidson

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Current Position: Visiting Scholar

Current Affiliation: University of Pennsylvania

Cui Tao

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Brigham Young University

Web site

Research Interests: Ontologies, standard terminologies, and the semantic web

CIFellowship Mentor: Christopher G. Chute

CIFellowship Host Organization: Mayo Clinic

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Mayo Clinic

Lydia Tapia

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Texas A&M University

Web site

Research Interests: Motion planning, robotics, computational biology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality

CIFellowship Mentor: Ron Elber

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Texas at Austin

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of New Mexico

Duygu Ucar

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: The Ohio State University

Web site

Research Interests: Scientific data mining and computational biology

CIFellowship Mentor: Kai Tan

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Iowa

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow

Current Affiliation: Stanford University

Stephen Voida

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Georgia Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction and information systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Gloria Mark

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Irvine

Current Position: Assistant Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: University of Californi at Irvine

David Van Horn

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Brandeis University

Web site

Research Interests: Reliable software construction

CIFellowship Mentor: Matthias Felleisen

CIFellowship Host Organization: Northeastern University

Current Position: Research Assistant Fellow

Current Affiliation: Northeastern University

Lawton Verner

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Johns Hopkins University

Web site

Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and vision

CIFellowship Mentor: Simon DiMaio

CIFellowship Host Organization: Intuitive Surgical

Current Position: Research Engineer

Current Affiliation: Intuitive Surgical

Virginia Vassilevska Williams

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Theoretical computer science and computational social choice

CIFellowship Mentor: Satish Rao

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Associate

Current Affiliation: University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University

Ilya Wagner

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Michigan

Web site

Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and vision

CIFellowship Mentor: Shih-Lien Lu

CIFellowship Host Organization: Intel Corporation

Current Position: Research Engineer

Current Affiliation: Intel Corporation



Jennifer Wortman Vaughan

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Pennsylvania

Web site

Research Interests: Machine learning, algorithmic aspects of economics, and social computing

CIFellowship Mentor: Yiling Chen

CIFellowship Host Organization: Harvard University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of California at Los Angeles

Weijun Xiao

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Rhode Island

Web site

Research Interests: Computer system and architecture, distributed systems, and high performance computing

CIFellowship Mentor: David J. Lilja

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Minnesota

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Virginia Tech

Liangjun Zhang

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Web site

Research Interests: Path planning, visual, and control algorithms for autonomous vehicles

CIFellowship Mentor: Jean-Claude Latombe

CIFellowship Host Organization: Stanford University

Current Position: Research and Development

Current Affiliation: Honda Research Institute

2010 Class of CIFellows

Jae-wook Ahn

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Pittsburgh

Web site

Research Interests: Information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and (adaptive) social network information visualization

CIFellowship Mentor: Ben Shneiderman

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Maryland at College Park


Alvin AuYoung

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at San Diego

Web site

Research Interests: Distributed systems, with a focus on resource allocation and scheduling

CIFellowship Mentor: Partha Ranganathan

CIFellowship Host Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs


Aruna Balasubramanian

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Web site

Research Interests: Systems and networking

CIFellowship Mentor: David Wetherall

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Washington

Robert Bocchino

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

Web site

Research Interests: Programming language design, type theory, formal verification, and concurrency

CIFellowship Mentor: Jonathan Aldrich

CIFellowship Host Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

Lillian Chang

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Control, human motion simulation, humanoid robotics, and manipulation

CIFellowship Mentor: Dieter Fox and Joshua Smith

CIFellowship Host Organization: Intel Corporation and University of Washington

Current Title: Researcher

Current Affiliation: Intel Corporation

Yanhua Chen

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Wayne State University

Web site

Research Interests: Data mining, machine learning, and biomedical/health informatics

CIFellowship Mentor: Peter X.-K. Song

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Michigan

Marc Chiarini

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Tufts University

Web site

Research Interests: Provenance-aware troubleshooting, performance analysis, system configuration management, and tools for system adminstration

CIFellowship Mentor: Margo Seltzer

CIFellowship Host Organization: Harvard University

David Choffnes

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Northwestern University

Web site

Research Interests: Practical approaches for improving Internet realiability and performance

CIFellowship Mentor: Tom Anderson

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Washington

Current Affiliation: University of Washington

Tamara Clegg

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Georgia Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Educational technology

CIFellowship Mentor: Allison Druin

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Maryland at College Park

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Maryland at

College Park

Jyotirmoy V. Deshmukh

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Texas at Austin

Web site

Research Interests: Formal methods, tools, and algorithms for the verification, analysis, synthesis, and repair of software systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Rajeev Alur

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Pennsylvania

Xiaoning Ding

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: The Ohio State University

Web site

Research Interests: Operating systems, computer architecture, distributed systems, and database systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Phillip Gibbons

CIFellowship Host Organization: Intel Labs - Pittsburgh

Current Position: Assistant Professor - Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Intel Labs

David Doty

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Iowa State University

Web site

Research Interests: Theoretical computer science, particularly algorithmic information theory and computational complexity

CIFellowship Mentor: Erik Winfree

CIFellowship Host Organization: California Institute of Technology

Jenny Rose Finkel

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Stanford University

Web site

Research Interests: Natural language proccessing, machine learning, and probabilistic graphical models

CIFellowship Mentor: Michael Collins

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Current Affiliation: Columbia University

Current Position: Postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University

S. Dov Gordon

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Maryland at College Park

Web site

Research Interests: Theoretical cryptography and practicial applications of secure computation in modern computing environments

CIFellowship Mentor: Tal Malkin

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Current Title: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: Telcordia

Elena Grigorescu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Theoretical aspects of computer science, particulary property testing, sublinear algorithms, codes, and complexity theory

CIFellowship Mentor: Chris Peikert and Santosh Vempala

CIFellowship Host Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Purdue University

Haryadi S. Gunawi

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Wisconsin at Madison

Web site

Research Interests: Cloud reliability and cloud storage

CIFellowship Mentor: Joseph M. Hellerstein

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Chicago

David Harmon

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Columbia University

Web site

Research Interests: Physical simulation, contact mechanics, numerical methods, modern geometry, and computing animation

CIFellowship Mentor: Denis Zorin

CIFellowship Host Organization: New York University

Timothy Havens

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Missouri

Web site

Research Interests: Pattern recognition and machine learning, with an emphasis on classification and clustering in large-scale and hetereogenous data

CIFellowship Mentor: Anil Jain

CIFellowship Host Organization: Michigan Technological University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Michigan Technological University

Michael Hay

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Web site

Research Interests: Developing practical tools for privacy-preserving data analysis

CIFellowship Mentor: Johannes Gehrke

CIFellowship Host Organization: Cornell University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Colgate University

Houman Homayoun

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Irvine

Web site

Research Interests: Computer architecture including CAD and VLSI circuit design

CIFellowship Mentor: Dean M. Tullsen

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at San Diego

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: George Mason University

Daniel C. Howe

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New York University

Web site

Research Interests: Computation, literature, and education

CIFellowship Mentor: Andy van Dam

CIFellowship Host Organization: Brown University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong

Shaili Jain

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Harvard University

Web site

Research Interests: Incentives in peer production and crowdsourcing systems, network economics, mechanism design, and contract theory

CIFellowship Mentor: Joan Feigenbaum

CIFellowship Host Organization: Yale University

Saket Joshi

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Tufts University

Web site

Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, particularly at the intersection of decision theoretic planning, knowledge representation, and machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Prasad Tadepalli

CIFellowship Host Organization: Oregon State University

Thomas R. Kiehl

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Web site

Research Interests: Computational neuroscience

CIFellowship Mentor: Scott Tenenbaum

CIFellowship Host Organization: State University of New York at Albany

Samantha Kleinberg

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: New York University

Web site

Research Interests: Causality, inference from complex data, and biomedical informatics

CIFellowship Mentor: George Hripcsak

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Stevens Institute of Technology

J. Zico Kolter

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Stanford University

Web site

Research Interests: Applying machine learning and control techniques to problems in energy and sustainability

CIFellowship Mentor: Russ Tedrake

CIFellowship Host Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Carnegie Mellon University

Lukas Kroc

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Cornell University

Web site

Research Interests: New techniques and approaches for solving hard combinatorial problems, especially with application in artificial intelligence

CIFellowship Mentor: Allon Percus

CIFellowship Host Organization: Claremont Graduate University

Current Title: Research Scientist

Current Affiliation: SpaceX

Vijay S. Kumar

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: The Ohio State University

Web site

Research Interests: High-performance computing, distributed systems, performance modeling and evaluation, and big data

CIFellowship Mentor: Jay Wylie

CIFellowship Host Organization: Hewlett Packard Labs

Current Title: Researcher

Current Affiliation: GE Global Research

Homin K. Lee

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Columbia University

Web site

Research Interests: Computational learning theory, combinatorics, and computational complexity

CIFellowship Mentor: Adam Klivans

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Texas at Austin

Current Title: Senior Data Scientist

Current Affiliation: Bundle

Yuliya Lierler

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Texas at Austin

Web site

Research Interests: Artificial intelligence, particulary in the areas of knowledge representation, automated reasoning, declarative problem solving, and natural language understanding

CIFellowship Mentor: Miroslaw Truszczynski

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Kentucky

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Nebraska at Omaha

Xiaojuan Ma

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Princeton University

Web site

Research Interests: Augmented human-human and human-robot interactions

CIFellowship Mentor: Jodi Forlizzi

CIFellowship Host Organization: Carnegie Mellon University

Amon Millner

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Human computer interaction, tangible user interface design, community organizing, and the learning sciences

CIFellowship Mentor: Lynn Andrea Stein

CIFellowship Host Organization: Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Arifa Nisar

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Northwestern University

Web site

Research Interests: High performance I/O systems, parallel I/O, and file systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Ethan Miller

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Santa Cruz

Amit Pande

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Iowa State University

Web site

Research Interests: Various aspects of multimedia systems including compression, communications, security, and architectures

CIFellowship Mentor: Prasant Mohapatra

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Davis

Sharoda A. Paul

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Pennsylvania State University

Web site

Research Interests: Human-computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work, social computing, and healthcare informatics

CIFellowship Mentor: Ed Chi and Peter Pirolli

CIFellowship Host Organization: Google and Palo Alto Research Center

Current Title: Collaboration researcher at GE Global Research

Current Affiliation: GE Global Research

Brian Price

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Brigham Young University

Web site

Research Interests: Computer vision

CIFellowship Mentor: Scott Cohen

CIFellowship Host Organization: Adobe Systems

Current Position: Researcher at Adobe Systems

Current Affiliation: Adobe Systems

Dustin Reishus

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Southern California

Web site

Research Interests: Self-assembly and self-organization with emphasis on the theoretical foundations, fundamental limits, and potential applications of self-organizing systems

CIFellowship Mentor: Nikolaus Correll

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Colorado

Ricky J. Sethi

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Riverside

Web site

Research Interests: Machine learning, computer vision, social computing, collaborative intelligence, financial modelling, science learning, and physics education research

CIFellowship Mentor: Jennifer Wortman Vaughan and Yolanda Gil

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Los Angeles and University of Southern California, Information Science Institute

Current Affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles

Saurabh Srivastava

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Maryland at College Park

Web site

Research Interests: Theory and tools for program synthesis and program verification

CIFellowship Mentor: Rastislav Bodik

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Muthuramakrishnan Venkitasubramaniam

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Cornell University

Web site

Research Interests: Cryptography and complexity, with focus on building theoretical foundations and techniques to secure protocols in the Internet, i.e., concurrent security

CIFellowship Mentor: Yevgeniy Dodis

CIFellowship Host Organization: New York University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: State University of New York at Rochester

Erin Walker

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Adaptive technology for influencing student learning from collaboration

CIFellowship Mentor: Winslow Burleson

CIFellowship Host Organization: Arizona State University

Current Position: Assistant Professor (effective winter 2013)

Current Affiliation: Arizona State University

Susan P. Wyche

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Georgia Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Research focuses on human-computer interaction, interaction design, and cultural studies of technology

CIFellowship Mentor: Steven Harrison

CIFellowship Host Organization: Virginia Tech

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: Michigan State University

Yinglong Xia

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Southern California

Web site

Research Interests: High performance computing, parallel algorithm design, and their applications in sparse solvers, graphical models, and machine learning problems

CIFellowship Mentor: Anshul Gupta

CIFellowship Host Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Yang Xiang

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Kent State University

Web site

Research Interests: Biomedical informatics, computational biology, algorithms, graph theory, data mining, databases, and networks

CIFellowship Mentor: Kun Huang

CIFellowship Host Organization: The Ohio State University

Cem Yuksel

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Texas A&M University

Web site

Research Interests: Computer graphics

CIFellowship Mentor: Doug James

CIFellowship Host Organization: Cornell University

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: University of Utah

Ting Zhu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Minnesota

Web site

Research Interests: Energy-aware computing, embedded systems, network protocols and architecture, mobile computing, smart-grid, security, and wireless sensor networks

CIFellowship Mentor: Don Towsley

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Current Position: Assistant Professor

Current Affiliation: State University of New Yorkat Binghamton

Caroline Ziemkiewicz

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Web site

Research Interests: Information visualization for structuring a user's thinking process

CIFellowship Mentor: David Laidlaw

CIFellowship Host Organization: Brown University

Current Affiliation: Aptima

Current Title: Associate research engineer at Aptima

2011 Class of CIFellows

Amin Ansari

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Michigan

Web site

Research Interests: Computer architecture with a focus on reliability, low-power design, and single-thread performance

CIFellowship Mentor: Josep Torrellas

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ferhat Ay

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Florida

Web site

Research Interests: Bioinformatics, computational biology, epigenomics, and regulatory genomics

CIFellowship Mentor: William Noble

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Washington

Selina Chu

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Southern California

Web site

Research Interests: Machine learning, data mining, audio signal processing, and pattern recognition

CIFellowship Mentor: Thomas Dietterich

CIFellowship Host Organization: Oregon State University

Shay Cohen

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Computational linguistics and machine learning

CIFellowship Mentor: Michael Collins

CIFellowship Host Organization: Columbia University

Travis Deyle

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Georgia Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Novel sensor and actuator technologies, robotics, and wireless power harvesting

CIFellowship Mentor: Matt Reynolds

CIFellowship Host Organization: Duke University

David Feil-Seifer

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Southern California

Web site

Research Interests: Socially assistive robotics algorithms, systems for post-stroke rehabilitation, elder care, and therapeutic interaction.

CIFellowship Mentor: Brian Scassellati

CIFellowship Host Organization: Yale University

Lakshmi Ganesh

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Cornell University

Web site

Research Interests: Scaling reliability and availability in large-scale distributed storage

CIFellowship Mentor: Mike Dahlin

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Texas at Austin

Jonathan Huang

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Carnegie Mellon University

Web site

Research Interests: Probabilistic reasoning and learning algorithms

CIFellowship Mentor: Leonidas Guibas

CIFellowship Host Organization: Stanford University

Mohit Tiwari

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of California at Santa Barbara

Web site

Research Interests: Program analysis, computer architecture, and system software

CIFellowship Mentor: Krste Asanovic

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Hemanta Maji

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Web site

Research Interests: Cryptography with emphasis on lower bounding techniques

CIFellowship Mentor: Amit Sahai

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Los Angeles

David Mimno

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Web site

Research Interests: Extracting meaning from large document collections and topic modeling

CIFellowship Mentor: David Blei

CIFellowship Host Organization: Princeton University

Ankur Moitra

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Web site

Research Interests: Algorithms, learning, and convex geometry

CIFellowship Mentor: Avi Wigderson

CIFellowship Host Organization: Institute for Advanced Study

Rohan Murty

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Harvard University

Web site

Research Interests: Networking and distributed systems.

CIFellowship Mentor: Hari Balakrishnan

CIFellowship Host Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Joshua Reich

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Columbia University

Web site

Research Interests: Software defined networking, virtualization, cloud computing, and green computing

CIFellowship Mentor: Jennifer Rexford

CIFellowship Host Organization: Princeton University

Suchi Saria

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Stanford University

Web site

Research Interests: Data-driven solutions to improve the delivery and consumption of health care

CIFellowship Mentor: Kenneth Mandl

CIFellowship Host Organization: Harvard Medical School / Children Hospital Boston

Erin Solovey

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Tufts University

Web site

Research Interests: Human-computer interaction, including brain-computer interfaces, tangible interaction, and reality-based interaction

CIFellowship Mentor: Missy Cummings

CIFellowship Host Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ian Stevenson

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Northwestern University

Web site

Research Interests: Improving statistical models of neurons in primary visual cortex as they respond to natural scenes

CIFellowship Mentor: Bruno Olshausen

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Berkeley

Kalliopi Tsota

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Purdue University

Web site

Research Interests: VLSI computer-aided design, reconfigurable computing, and numerical methods for large-scale optimization.

CIFellowship Mentor: Jason Cong

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of California at Los Angeles

Lirong Xia

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: Duke University

Web site

Research Interests: Computing at microeconomics.

CIFellowship Mentor: David Parkes

CIFellowship Host Organization: Harvard University

Hong-Sheng Zhou

Ph.D.-Granting College/University: University of Connecticut

Web site

Research Interests: Cryptography, both classical and quantum

CIFellowship Mentor: Jonathan Katz

CIFellowship Host Organization: University of Maryland at College Park

Feedback from our CIFellows

I view my fellowship as a bridge between graduate school and an academic career. With respect to this, I believe my experience so far has been extremely successful. I started working on several exciting projects, which open up new research avenues for my future. I have already submitted three papers to conferences and workshops, out of which one has already been accepted. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I met and began collaborating with top researchers in my area.
While [my mentor] and I have many overlapping research interests, we have very different backgrounds; her [expertise] is primarily in economics, [while] mine is primarily in machine learning. Our collaboration has allowed us to learn from each other and come up with new ideas that neither of us would have been able to develop in isolation. We get along well and are able to teach each other new things.
The program was incredibly well thought out providing funds for post-docs to cover the expenses associated with our research and did an excellent job of pairing post-docs with mentors.
The [CIFellows Project] has excelled in nearly all respects, including the flexibility of the [CIFellowship] to accommodate mentor selection and location, the generous funding for both salary, supplies and traveling, and the opportunity to attend a very informative career development conference in Washington, DC.
[The CIFellow] greatly contributed to the research my group has been able to produce. In addition to his leadership capabilities, he also brought expertise that complemented the existing areas of expertise in my group and enabled us to do research we would otherwise have had a difficult time doing.… I believe [he] will have a great career...
I am extremely happy with the funding that this program has provided to support [my CIFellow]. This is exactly what I was hoping for, and I sincerely wish it [would] continue...

Feedback from hiring committees

...I can attest that her postdoctoral experience... enhanced her attractiveness to us as a candidate. In our small isolated department it is difficult for Assistant Professors to succeed coming directly out of graduate school. We also liked that she had spent time at one of the better departments in the country, which supports the "max 2" policy... It's a great program and deserves to continue!
I think [the CIFellows Project has] been very valuable. [My department has] interviewed several CIFellows, and they are very well prepared to be successful in the professoriate. My CIFellow... is being offered a tenure-track assistant professor position in large part, I think, due to the CIFellow experience he's been afforded. So the program seems to be working...

Success Stories

Together, the cross-flow and independence have contributed to exceptional experiences for the CIFellows and their mentors, furthering the careers of both in most cases. For example, Hanspeter Pfister, a graphics/visualization researcher at Harvard University, is mentoring 2009 CIFellow Miriah Meyer from the University of Utah. Hanspeter says that the CIFellows Project allowed Miriah (and him) to explore a new research area, for which they would have been unlikely to obtain grant support (given the initial stage of the project). The area in which they are working is visualizing data that do not have any inherent spatial characteristics, specifically genomics visualization. If one is visualizing a brain image, or a fluid flow simulation, it is pretty obvious how to "lay it out," because the data are inherently spatial. By contrast, there exists a new challenge - a "design" challenge - in how best to lay out data that lack inherent spatial information, and that's what Hanspeter and Miriah are exploring.

Similarly, Yiling Chen, an economic mechanisms expert at Harvard, mentored CIFellow Jennifer Wortman Vaughan from the University of Pennsylvania during the 2009-10 academic year. Jennifer earned her Ph.D. from the group of Michael Kearns – a computer scientist and expert on machine learning and game theory renown for his work on the connections between networks and human behavior. Yiling, too, is effusive in her praise of CIFellows. Jennifer departed the CIFellows Project at the end of her first year, assuming a faculty position at UCLA this past fall – and, in an interesting example of cross-flow, she immediately took on a 2010 CIFellow, Ricky Sethi. Meantime, Yiling was in the derby for a second CIFellow in 2010, and she would likely enter it again this fall should this Project be funded.

It is also worth noting that Hanspeter and Yiling are both new faculty members. They each had some previous experience under their belts (Hanspeter at Mitsubishi Research and Yiling at Yahoo! Research), but these are cases in which the CIFellows Project has paired an outstanding new graduate with an outstanding new faculty member and achieved a really excellent result.

Finally, Sitaram Asur, a CIFellow working at HP Labs under Bernardo Huberman, made tremendous progress on the development of a new algorithm that uses Twitter to gauge real-time interest in movies and accurately predict how they will perform at the box office on opening weekend. The work received substantial publicity in the popular press, including the Los Angeles Times. Sitaram's outstanding contributions prompted HP Labs to hire him as a permanent Researcher effective summer 2010.

These accomplishments serve to illustrate how the CIFellows Project is having a broader impact for our computing research community.