From the Desk of Gagan Agrawal |
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I am excited to bring this update on our progress at UGA’s School of Computing. While the last several months have been challenging for academia and especially academic research programs, with strong support from the State of Georgia, University of Georgia, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and the College of Engineering, we continue to make strong progress.
We had a very successful faculty recruiting season and look forward to welcoming Jian Liu, currently at the University of Tennessee, as an Associate Professor and Zhenlin An, currently at University of Pittsburgh, as an Assistant Professor. Both have very strong research records and will strengthen the areas of Cyber Physical Systems, Mobile Computing, Sensing, AI/ML and Cybersecurity. The newly announced Dean of the College of Engineering, Alex Orso, is a software engineering researcher who will be holding a faculty appointment in our unit. We are also finalizing our third teaching track faculty line to join Karthika Subramani and Mozaharul Mottalib.
Our faculty research continues to shine. We are extremely delighted to share that our Assistant Professor, Ninghao Liu, has received the first ever Google Scholar Award at University of Georgia. Ninghao was also among the selected group of researchers nationwide to be invited to CCC Computing Futures Symposium. Prof. Roberto Perdisci, a highly coveted Amazon Research Awardee
, joining top researchers from prestigious international universities. Our research expenditure is on track for a cumulative 60% increase over 2 years and we started a new tradition of recognizing our PhD students with top publications – the first cohort was very impressive with publications including ones in Usenix security, IROS, NuerIPS, and others.
Our undergrads continue to excel. Our programming team competed on the national stage of Inter-Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC), our first ever appearance -- the team performed well and actually tied with Stanford and Yale! Our student teams also won prizes in Hackathon at Georgia Tech and Princeton. Our cybersecurity related groups had other accomplishments at the national level.
Our Fall ABET visit ended successfully, showing the strength of our BS Computer Science program. We have also worked with the AI institute on a new AI certificate to be available more broadly. Finally, several of our first-year students traveled to London during spring break for a study abroad that highlighted the global impact of computing and provided visits to Google, Viasat and more. We are currently seeking support for our study away programs so more students can participate in these impactful opportunities. If you are interested in supporting the School of Computing, click here.
Sincerely, |
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Gagan Agrawal
Director, School of Computing
University of Georgia |
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On May 9, 2025, the University of Georgia’s School of Computing buzzed with anticipation as it hosted its Spring Convocation Ceremony at the historic Georgia Center in Athens. Hundreds of students prepared to cross the stage, marking the culmination of years of hard work, late-night coding sessions, and transformative experiences.
Commencement speaker Venn Reddy’s speech was a heartfelt tribute to the School of Computing’s lively community, blending humor and authenticity. Read more |
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School of Computing Students Gain Experience Through Year-Long Capstone Projects |
Throughout the 2025 academic year, computer science students participated in a year-long capstone course, with projects ranging from working with soil and traffic light sensors, and analyzing farming data to measuring tire tread and self-serve computer training with manager dashboards. Clients included Capgemini, Delta Airlines, Gulfstream Aerospace, NASA, STEGO USA and Warner Robbins Airforce Base. |
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“The capstone project provided me with real-world experience,” said Jason Ouyang (BS Computer Science `25, Minor in Mathematics `25, CERT New Media `25) who contributed to the Delta Air Lines project. He explained that their D.E.P.T.H. (Digital Evaluation of Profile and Tread Health) project tackled a practical operational challenge. His team visited Delta and met with their aircraft maintenance technicians to learn about their current tire tread assessment tools. As a result, they developed a solution that was “convenient, easy-to-use, and consistent—all while increasing operational efficiencies.” Read more
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London Calling: UGA School of Computing Students Dive into Global Tech |
This spring break, first-year students from the School of Computing embarked on a nine-day trip to London as a part of the UGA’s Connect Abroad Program. Led by Principal Lecturer of Computer Science Bradley Barnes, students were exposed to the Silicon Roundabout, Google’s Pancras Square office, Bletchley Park and more. The program is aimed to inspire students to consider the global opportunities of computer science, fostering a sense of connection across the world. Read more
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UGA Offers New Online Master’s in Applied Data Science |
Designed for working professionals who are seeking career advancement and the opportunity to deepen their expertise in the field of data science, the new MS in Applied Data Science is designed to set participants apart in an increasingly competitive market.
Courses are taught by world-class UGA faculty with interests and expertise in areas including statistics, data science, management of information systems, and linguistics, among others. Students can expect to gain experience in data-driven discovery, statistical modeling, Python and more. Applications for Fall 2025 are open now. Read more |
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Pictured: Molly McGrath (right) and NASA astronaut Christina Koch (left) |
| From UGA School of Computing to NASA: Molly McGrath Reaches for the Stars |
Recent UGA School of Computing graduate Molly McGrath returned to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in a full-time position where she creates software tools for the space center and serves as a subject matter expert on tests for the software. McGrath interned for NASA in the Summer of 2024 where she had the opportunity to meet astronaut Christina Koch and learned about the hardware of the Artemis II spaceship. Read more
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Computer Science Alumna Recognized at Franklin Alumni Awards |
This January, Sharmin Pathan, (MS Computer Science ’18), was honored at the Franklin Alumni Awards with the Innovation Award. Pathan is currently a senior applied scientist at Amazon, specializing in research on early diagnosis, aging, and disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease. Read more. |
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| Research Improves AI for Smartphones |
UGA School of Computing faculty members Gagan Agrawal and Wei Niu have recently developed an innovative software framework called SmartMem, designed to make artificial intelligence (AI) applications run faster and more efficiently on mobile devices. The software is described in a 2024 article published in the journal of the computer systems conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS ’24) and achieves 7.9 times faster performance compared to popular mobile AI compiler frameworks. Read more
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UGA School of Computing Finds Humanity in
the Algorithm |
Eddie Alexander Gomez Schieber (PhD Computer Science `27) and Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Ari Schlesinger are exploring the community and humanity potential of electronics. Their research is on human-centered computing in UGA’s new lab, Schlesinger’s Socially Responsible Tech Lab, focused on the social good of technology. In a time of advanced technology, Gomez and Schlesinger’s research is important for the future of computing to ensure humans are not forgotten. Read more
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| Sloka Sudhin Named Goldwater Scholar |
Sloka Sudhin (BS Data Science `25, BS Mathematics `25, Minor in Film Studies `25) was selected as one of three University of Georgia students among the 441 undergraduates from across the nation to be recognized as a Barry Goldwater Scholar for spring of 2025. Goldwater Scholars earned the highest undergraduate award of its type for mathematics, engineering, and natural sciences. Read more
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Gen AI Competition Encourages Pushes Creative Boundaries |
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Balancing Code and Computations: Turner Clay Thompson’s Trifecta Journey in Computer Science, Finance and Mathematics |
Third-year School of Computing student, Turner Clay Thompson, is an ambitious student pursuing a triple-major in computer science, mathematics, and finance. From being the president of his own club to securing a summer internship to having post-graduation education plans, Thompson has and continues to do it all. Read more |
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School of Computing Advances to Two National Finals and Celebrates UGAHacks Turning 10 |
Two School of Computing teams advanced from regional competitions and are headed to finals. First place winners Abdu Addis and Hiep Pham are headed to the International Competitive Programming Contest (ICPC) after winning Division 2 in the Big South Region advancing from regional competition. The Hack Pack team placed second in the NCAE Cyber Games and is advancing to the national competition. Read more
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UGA’s School of Computing club, UGAHacks, hosted the 10th annual Hackathon with over 48 hours beginning in the Zell B. Miller Learning Center. The event showed the community of driven individuals here at Franklin, as there were 12 sponsors, over 500 passionate participants and 150 innovative project submissions. Read more |
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Google and Amazon Recognize School of Computing Faculty |
Faculty at UGA’s School of Computing are being noted and rewarded for their AI expertise.
Roberto Perdisci was one of 73 international recipients of an Amazon Research Award (ARA). Perdisci, an expert in computer and network security, malware detection, pattern recognition, and data mining in the School of Computing, is one of four awardees in the AI for Information Security area. Read more
Dr. Ninghao Liu has become the first faculty member at the University of Georgia to receive a Google Research Scholar Award, an early-career researcher award that will support his award-winning proposal, "Enhancing Medical Knowledge in Multimodal Foundation Models through Self-Synthesized Data," introducing a novel framework that enables AI systems to generate their own training data. The AI then retrieves this medical knowledge and creates diverse, synthetic data samples, which the model can be fine-tuned to deliver more accurate, explainable, and accessible tools to assist doctors in diagnosis and patient care. Read more
Additionally, this summer, Dr. Liu participated at the Computing Community Consortium (CCC)'s Computing Futures Symposium with his work “Enhancing Cognition and Explainability of Multimodal Foundation Models with Self-Synthesized Data” -- presenting a novel framework to enhance the cognitive reasoning and explainability of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) by fine-tuning them with self-synthesized data that integrates language-based knowledge and visual understanding, significantly improving performance on specialized knowledge-intensive visual tasks. Read more
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Prashant Doshi Named Inaugural Executive Director of Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and UGA’s 2025 Entrepreneur of the Year |
The University of Georgia is proud to announce Doshi as the inaugural Executive Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence at the University of Georgia. With over two decades of expertise, Doshi was identified as the ideal candidate to lead the Institute into its next chapter. Read more |
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Prashant Doshi, professor in the School of Computing, was recognized as the University of Georgia’s 2025 Entrepreneur of the Year. Doshi is transforming artificial intelligence research into real-world applications through his work on human-robot collaboration and inverse reinforcement learning. Read more |
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| Several School of Computing Faculty Receive IAI Seed Grant Awards |
The University of Georgia’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI) has awarded its first-ever seed grants to four interdisciplinary research projects focused on artificial intelligence. These grants aim to support innovative, cross-disciplinary work with the potential to secure further funding. Funded by the Office of the Provost, the initiative aligns with UGA’s long-term strategy to lead AI and data science research. |
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UGA School of Computing faculty members, Fei Dou, Gagan Agrawal, and Ninghao Liu, received a seed grant for their research project, “Advances in Multimodal and Explainable ML Methods for Predicting Protein Post-Translational Modifications,” from UGA’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Tianming Liu, School of Computing, received a seed grant for “Developing Multimodality Large Language Models for Telemedicine” in conjunction with the College of Public Health and the College of Pharmacy. Read more
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Decoding the Future: UGA School of Computing Research Day Unveils the Next Chapter
of Innovation |
This spring, UGA’s School of Computing hosted its annual Research Day, showcasing the leading-edge innovation and research endeavors of over 80 graduate and undergraduate students. The event hosted notable figures including Dr. Thomas Ploetz, professor and associate chair of graduate studies at Georgia Tech. Research Day 2025 exemplified the outstanding innovation and high momentum for research within the School of Computing. Read more
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Four Graduate Students Receive New Top Publications Award |
UGA’s School of Computing has instituted new awards to recognize students who have presented their research publications at top venues. The inaugural winners include: |
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Aiman Munir (PhD Computer Science `27) for “Anchor-Oriented Localized Voronoi Partitioning for GPS-denied Multi-Robot Coverage” at International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) ’24;
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Nicolas Nino (PhD Computer Science `27) for “Unveiling IoT Security in Reality: A Firmware-Centric Journey” presented at USENIX Security ’24;
- Yucheng Shi (PhD Computer Science `27) for “Black-box Backdoor Defense via Zero-shot Image Purification” presented at the conference for Neuro Information Processing Systems (NeurolPS ’23);
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Aditya Shinde (MS Artificial Intelligence `20, PhD Computer Science `27) for “Modeling Cognitive Biases in Decision-Theoretic Planning for Active Cyber Deception” presented at International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) ’24
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Thanks to our faculty advisors Ramaviyas Parasuraman, Le Guan, Ninghao Liu, and Prashant Doshi. Read more |
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Mentorship and Community: Teaching Assistant Khoa Le’s Journey |
School of Computing Teaching Assistant Khoa Le (BS Computer Science `24, MS Computer Science `26) was initially drawn to the program by its research opportunities and accessible faculty. Le is grateful to the School of Computing for the collaborative and supportive community and the numerous learning and networking opportunities available. Read more |
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Celebrating Our Newest Alumni |
The School of Computing is pleased to welcome the newest alumni – 310 undergraduates and 52 master's, and six PhD's. |
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Your gift is important to us and helps support critical opportunities for students and faculty alike, including lectures, travel support and any number of educational events that augment the classroom experience.
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| Update your Alumni Profile |
Update your alumni profile so we can stay in touch and share the news about the School of Computing and the Franklin College. |
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Mentorship is proven to help students succeed in their personal, academic, and professional endeavors. Our personalized mentoring experience allows you to connect with students no matter your location and on your schedule - ranging from one, one-hour session to an ongoing mentorship match. |
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