School of Computing and Data Science 2026 Letter

A Note from Michael Farmer, Dean, Wentworth School of Computing and Data Science  

Dear Friends, 

Having completed my first year this past April as the Dean of the School of Computing and Data Science, I want to share with you the school’s many exciting accomplishments and highlights from this past 2025-2026 academic year. 

Promotions: We are particularly proud that we have had three faculty members receiving promotions this past year and four more successfully completing their development period and advancing to Regular Appointment: 

  • Mehmet Ergezer was promoted to the rank of full Professor 
  • Yetunde Folajimi was promoted to the rank of full Professor 
  • Lauren Melfi was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor 
  • Gabe Cunningham advanced to Associate Professor with Regular Appointment 
  • Weijie Pang advanced to Assistant Professor with Regular Appointment 
  • Ashar Neyaz advanced to Assistant Professor with Regular Appointment 
  • Igor Minevich advanced to Assistant Professor with Regular Appointment 

New Hires: We are excited to welcome three new additions to the SCDS dean’s office within the past academic year: 

  • Deirdre Donovan, Ed.D. was hired as our Associate Dean.  Deirdre previously served as the Director of Foundational Math and as an Interim Associate Dean. 
  • Adam Salminen, PhD, was hired as the Director of Applied Math, Data Science, and Applied AI programs.  Adam previously served as the Department Chair of Mathematics at Kettering University. 
  • Albert Christie was hired as the Academic Coordinator. 

We also hired four new faculty members into SCDS: 

  • Eli Sanderson, Lecturer of Foundational Math. Eli was previously a Visiting Professor in Mathematics here at Wentworth and is a Wentworth Applied Math alum. 
  • Chris McDonald, Lecturer of Foundational Math. Chris was previously a Visiting Professor in Mathematics here at Wentworth. 
  • Zach Haney, Lecturer of Foundational Math. Zach was previously a Visiting Professor in Mathematics here at Wentworth. 
  • Zaihan Yang, PhD, was hired as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and holds the Francis A. Sagan Professorship in Artificial Intelligence. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Lehigh University and most recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Suffolk University. 

 

The Lecturer in Foundational Math is a newly created position established by Provost Maggelakis and President Thompson to recognize the critical importance of the foundational math sequence to the success of all Wentworth students.  These roles replace yearly visiting faculty appointments with ongoing lecturer positions dedicated to teaching and extending the pedagogy of foundational mathematics. 

  

Student Engagement, Support and Recognition Activities: 

  • This year, Wentworth established a chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the international honor society for computing and information disciplines. The new chapter provides a formal way to recognize students’ outstanding academic achievements and celebrate excellence in computing and data science. We marked this milestone with our inaugural induction ceremony with more than 20 of our students, with another 20 eligible but unable to make the event. 
  • SCDS worked with Wentworth Student Government to cohost the inaugural CodeWIT Colleges of the Fenway coding competition.  Students worked on a variety of coding challenges for prizes and recognition.  Our faculty were on hand to cheer the students on and provide occasional hints.  
  • SCDS partnered with Student Affairs and the Department of Athletics to develop an eSports competition area in one of our laboratories.  The lab will be used for classwork during the day and eSports practices and competitions in the evenings and on weekends.  We are currently working together to modify the room and prepare for the season.  The team will officially launch for the Fall 2026 semester. 
  • In collaboration with DTS and support from the provost’s office for a research co-op, SCDS created a ‘Help Desk’ style ticketing system for their general SCDS@wit.edu email.  The system will allow the school to follow student requests for assistance more easily and effectively and will also allow for the collection of metrics on time to reply, types of assistance needed, etc. to optimize the student experience.  The system went live in mid-June. 

Community Engagement Activities: 

  • SCDS hosted the AI Alliance at Wentworth for its regional networking event. The mission of the Alliance is to “Develop AI collaboratively, transparently, and with a focus on safety, ethics, and the greater good.”  The event consisted of networking and two panel discussions. The panel discussions consisted of both Wentworth faculty and students as well as AI experts from industry. The topics of the panel discussions were ‘AI and the Future of Work’ and ‘Responsible Open Agents.’ 
  • SCDS hosted its IPACs (Industry Program Advisory Councils) on campus in January.  The membership covers a broad range of industries, including representatives from NVIDIA, Apple, IBM, MIT Lincoln Lab, MassDOT, Accenture, Wayfair, and Liberty Mutual Insurance. 
  • SCDS hosted its first STEM Challenge competition for high school students.  We hosted the MathQuest competition for local high school students.  Faculty participated to cheer on the students, provide some helpful hints, and show them the problem solutions at the end.  In the upcoming year we plan to host both the MathQuest event and a CodeClash coding competition to engage high school students considering entering STEM fields.  

  •  

    • SCDS, in collaboration with all the other schools within Wentworth, created a B.S. in Applied Artificial Intelligence.  The program is a completely interdisciplinary program using expertise from faculty across the entire Institute.  The program is designed with a core of math, computer science, and AI courses, and a collection of Domains representing industrial application areas related to each of the schools.  The initial launch included domains in Computing, Life Sciences, Business Management, and Construction Management.  Subsequent domain launches will include Architecture and Design, Cybersecurity, and Engineering.  The program will admit its first cohort in Fall 2026. 
    • SCDS also received approval through the Board of Trustees for the launch of an MS in Artificial Intelligence.  It is currently in review with the State of Massachusetts.  The expected launch date for this program is Fall 2027. 
    • SCDS completed an articulation agreement with Bunker Hill Community College for students transferring from their A.S. and A.A. in Computer Science into the SCDS Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Data Science, and Applied Artificial Intelligence B.S. programs.  This is an exciting first step in making the transfer pathways from our critical regional community college partners into our programs easier for students. 

     

    Faculty Leadership in External Events: Our faculty organized and chaired numerous exciting research workshops across the globe. 

    • Semere Gebresilasie organized a special session on “Mathematical Finance, Environmental Science, and Data Science” at the American Mathematical Society (AMS) meeting held at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, on October 18–19, 2025. 
    • Salem Othman served as a judge for the IEEE ClarkHack 2026 at Clark University, a student hackathon, where he evaluated technical projects and provided feedback to participating teams. The event encouraged students to use technology, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving to develop impactful solutions. 
    • Salem Othman presented at the Pace University AI Insight Series, May 4, 2026. His presentation was titled “Building Transformers from Scratch: Understanding the Architecture Behind Modern LLMs.” The presentation explained the foundational components of transformer models and how they support modern large language models. 
    • Salem Othman participated in a Boston Tech Week panel discussion hosted by Leebry by MacPaw on the realities of AI adoption beyond demonstrations. We discussed data quality, permissions, model reliability, evaluation, and the importance of effective human-AI collaboration. 
    • Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Salem Othman, organized the International Conference on the Social Impact of AI (SIAI 2026), Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 
    • LeonidasDeligiannidis with KC (Kyungseok) Choo, Jolly Upadhyaya, Joseph Assan, organized the International Conference on Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (ICCAI 2026).  
    • LeonidasDeligiannidis with KC (Kyungseok) Choo, Jolly Upadhyaya, Joseph Assan, organized the 2nd Annual Endicott Global Education Conference: Justice, Security and Artificial Intelligence at Endicott College, Beverly, MA. 
    • Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Salem Othman, and Shawren Singh organized the Track on Social Impact of AI: Research, Diversity, and Inclusion Frameworks (SIAI-ReDI'25) at the prestigious 39th Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'25) conference. 
    • Mehmet Ergezer served as an Amazon Scholar. 

    Faculty expertise was on display at a multitude of international conferences and workshops, as well as in publications covering an incredibly wide range of topics from cybersecurity to quantum gravity.  Additionally, our faculty published nine papers with students at a variety of national and international conferences and journals.  And, faculty worked with students on three special externally funded research projects with local organizations and companies.  This deep connection between faculty and students is what makes a Wentworth education so special.   

     

     

    Faculty-student external research collaborations: 

    • Aspen Olmsted worked with two students with Keville to transform a single user business analytics solution into an enterprise cloud and business analytics solution utilizing Microsoft Azure and Power BI.  This project was in collaboration with Hari Naganathan from the School of Management. 
    • Mehmet Ergezer with students from COMP4960, Software Engineering, partnered with NeighborHealth on a semester-long applied software project focused on improving the prior authorization/referral workflow. In addition to the software prototype, Wentworth also delivered an agentic AI demonstration showcasing emerging approaches to workflow automation and decision support. SCDS would like to thank Xander Bennett from Advancement for securing the opportunity. 
    • LeonidasDeligiannidis, with students from COMP5500, Senior Project, designed and implemented an AI-assisted voice intake and triage system called ClearPath Health for the Outer Cape Health Services (OCHS).  The system escalates high-risk cases and supports controlled appointment routing for non-emergent concerns.  Once again, SCDS would like to thank Xander Bennett from Advancement for securing the opportunity. 

     

    Faculty-student publications (students are in bold): 

    • Semere Gebresilasie, Andrew Giacalone, Musie Ghebremichael, “Sentiment Analysis of Underlying Assets Using Median Residual Lifetime,” Indian Journal of Statistics (submitted in March 2026). 
    • Patrick Keufack, Penelope Lopez, Damian Archer, Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Salem Othman, Leonidas Deligiannidis, “AI-Assisted Voice Intake and Triage System”, 18th International Conference on Human System Interaction (HSI), Sarajevo Bosnia & Herzegovina. July 15-17, 2026. 
    • Marko Tyhansky, Daren Yun, Damian Archer, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Salem Othman,” CAID: A Privacy-Aware Community Resource Recommendation System for Social Determinants of Health”, 18th International Conference on Human System Interaction (HSI), Sarajevo Bosnia & Herzegovina. July 15-17, 2026. 
    • Weijie Pang, Ashar Neyaz, and Raymond Eichner, "Enhancing Phishing URL Detection with Machine Learning Algorithms." 2026 14th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS). IEEE, 2026. 
    • Abdullah Al Farooq, Daniel Conde, Thomas Moyer, "Binary Instrumentation of Programmable Logic Controller Programs for Enhanced Controlled System Resilience", Digital Innovation Center of Excellence Conference 2026. 
    • Gabe Cunningham and Hugh Trexler, “Tangled Temperature,” Submitted to Mathematics Magazine, 2026. 
    • Aspen Olmsted and Jasdish Singh, “Brownfield Secure Software Development - Logical & Physical Partition Identification,” World Congress on Education, Aug. 2025. 
    • Rachel Maitra and Nathan Bednar, "Numerical Analysis of Wave Functions for Quantized Taub Cosmology with Varied Factor Ordering,” Eastern Gravity Meeting, 2025. 
    • Sean Naughton, Bingyu Liu, Ashar Neyaz, and Leonidas Deligiannidis. “CryNet: An Empirical Study Toward a Versatile IRC Botnet Framework for Realistic Cybersecurity Assessments”. 12th International Conf. on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence (CSCI'25), 2025. 

     

     

    Conference Papers and Presentations by SCDS Faculty: 

    • Mehmet Ergezer, “Temporal Context and Architecture: A Benchmark for Naturalistic EEG Decoding,” IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2026". 
    • Mehmet Ergezer, “Enhancing Undergraduate Data Science Education Through Structured, Project-Based Learning,” ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2026. 
    • Mehmet Ergezer, Ella Howard, Weijie Pang, Brian Ernst, “Beyond the Core: A Domain-Based Curriculum for Undergraduate Applied AI,” ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2026. 
    • Laura Garland, Erasmus Mfodwo, Ashar Neyaz, Cihan Varol, “3D-printed firearm identification: A comparison of machine learning models,” Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2026.  
    • Bingyu Liu and Ashar Neyaz, “Collaborative Pathways from Classroom to Community in Engineering Education,” American Society of Engineering Education, 2026. 
    • Al Farooq, Abdullah, Tanvir Rahman Akash, and Manash Sarker, "Wall-PROV: Revisiting Firewall Rule Misconfigurations with Data Provenance and Verifying the Provenance Graph Properties.", Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2026. 
    • Akash, T. R., Mohammed, A. A., Al Farooq, A., Zerine, I., Kabir, M. H., & Wata, C. “IoHT attack detection using transformer-aware feature selection with CNN-BiLSTM optimized by hybrid WOA–GWO,” Discover Artificial Intelligence, 5(1), 423, 2025. 
    • Gabe Cunningham, Yan-Quan Feng, Dong-Dong Hou, Egon Schulte,” Symmetric polytopes whose automorphism groups are 2-groups,” Journal of Algebra, 698, 2026. 
    • Aspen Olmsted, “Brownfield Secure Software Development - Generating Secure Dynamic Models from Existing Codebases,” SECURWARE 2025- The Nineteenth International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies, 2025. 
    • Aspen Olmsted, “Secure AI-assisted Software Development,” CAE in Cybersecurity Community Symposium, 2026. 
    • Rachel Maitra, “Evolution in quantum cosmology as finite-velocity diffusion through minisuperspace,” Eastern Gravity Meeting, 2025. 
    • Bingyu, Liu, and Weijie Pang. "Exploring Undergraduate Research Opportunities through Senior Projects." 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2026. 
    • Javier Orduz, Leonidas Deligiannidis, “Architectural and Complexity Foundations for Quantum-Accelerated Retrieval in Large Language Models,” Conference on Emergent Quantum Technologies (ICEQT'23), IEEE CPS, 2026. 
    • Salem Othman, Erik Noyes, Yetunde  Longe-Folajimi, Vishal Shrivastava, Leonidas Deligiannidis, “Value Horizon: An Interactive LLM-Powered Framework for Mapping Product Evolution,” International Conference on the AI Revolution: Research, Ethics, and Society (AIR-RES 2026).  
    • Haifa El-Sadi, Salem Othman, Yetunde  Longe-Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, “Generative Synthesis for Cognitive Load Management: Reducing Mental Friction in Thermodynamics via AI-Driven Mind Maps,” Int. Conference on the AI Revolution: Research, Ethics, and Society (AIR-RES 2026), 2026. 
    • Ibukunoluwa Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Salem Othman, “Benchmarking Interpretable Machine Learning Models for Student Academic Failure Prediction,” International Conference on Applied Computing, (CAC 2026), 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, Leonidas Deligiannidis, "Integrating Theoretical Foundations with Practical Applications in Cryptography,” 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, Salem Othman, Leonidas Deligiannidis, and Robbie McCue, “Exploration of Bottlenecks and Optimizations in Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Inference,”14th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS'26). 2026. 
    • Salem Othman, Youssef Qranfal, "Hidden Stylistic Schools of Pre-Islamic Poetry." 2026 IEEE International Conference on AI and Data Analytics (ICAD 2026), 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, Salem Othman, Ashar Neyaz. "Scaffolding Learning in Blockchain: From Basics to Systems Thinking in STEM Education." 2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, 2026. 
    • Salem Othman, "SPAR: Scalable Prioritized Agent Routing for Multi-agent Networks." Applied Cognitive Computing and Artificial Intelligence, as part of the 27th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI'25), 2026. 
    • Sukherman, L., Longe-Folajimi, Y., & Konkol, M., “Tool or Agent? The discursive construction of AI agency,” IEEE International Conference on Responsible Artificial Intelligence, 2026.  
    • Martin Jimenez Gil, Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Salem Othman, Leonidas Deligiannidis, “Evaluating Ensemble Learning for Robust Real Time Deepfake Detection,” 2025 International Conference on Large Language Models (LLM'25), 2025. 
    • Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Salem Othman, and Ibukun Folajimi, “Unveiling Fibromyalgia Research Frontiers: Transformer-Based Topic and Sentiment Modeling for Biomedical Meta-Analysis,” Proceedings of AI for Accelerated Research Symposium, vol 3, 2026. 
    • Andrew Galvin, Elijah Dodson, Salem Othman, "Detecting Toxic Content Using Emoji Patterns." Computing Conference 2025, 2025. 
    • Sukherman, L., & Folajimi, Y., “Enhancing mathematical reasoning in GPT-J through topic-aware prompt engineering,” Adjunct Proceedings of the 33rd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, 2025. 
    • Abby L Pekoske Fulton, “GIFTS - Enhancing 3D Visualization Skills for Multivariable Calculus Students through Open-source Software, CalcPlot3D,” ASEE Mid-Atlantic Section Conference, 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, “Analysis of Trustworthiness and Fairness in Machine Learning for Healthcare ,” IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops (SPW), 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, Ali Arastehfard, Rujia Wang, Weiran Liu, Zhongjie Ba, Shanglin Zhou and Yuan Hong, “Secure and Efficient Video Inferences with Compressed 3-Dimensional Deep Neural Networks,” Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY), 2025. 
    • Bingyu Liu, “Trustworthy and Reliable Machine Learning for Healthcare”, IEEE 14th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS), 2026. 
    • Bingyu Liu, “A Systematic Study of Security and Privacy in Large Language Models,” IEEE 14th International Symposium on Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS), 2026. 

     

    Journal Papers: In addition to the incredible output in conference papers, several of our faculty were successfully published in some leading journals in their fields. 

    • Aspen Olmsted, “Developing Domain Specific Threat Models for Secure Software Development,” International Journal on Advances in Security, v 18 n 3&4 2025. 
    • Aspen Olmsted, “- Brownfield Secure Software Development,” International Journal on Advances in Security, v 19 n 1&2 2026. 
    • Semere Gebresilasie, “Pricing Variance Swaps Using Extended Heston Model,” Journal of Stochastic Analysis, January 2026. 
    • Mark Mixer and Steve Morrow, “Two Famous Matching Problems Merged to Solve a Tennis Challenge,” Mathematics Magazine, 2026. 
    • Sukherman, L., Longe-Folajimi, Y., & Konkol, M., “Cognitive grounding for perspective integration in multi-LLM systems,” Computers, 15(5), 277, 2026. 
    • Folajimi, Y., “Navigating the complexities of fibromyalgia research: An artificial intelligence-driven exploration,” Journal of Medical Artificial Intelligence, 8, 29, 2025.  
    • S. Jeong, S. Lee, and K. Wang, “A $C^0$ Weak Galerkin Method with Preconditioning for Constrained Optimal Control Problems with General Tracking,” Journal of Scientific Computing, 2026. 

     

    Technical Magazines: Our faculty also publish regularly in technical magazines through organizations such as IEEE. 

    • M.D. Schuster, “Two-Dimensional Convex Polygon Collision Detection with the Separating Axis Theorem”, Comput. Sci. Eng., Submitted 2026 
    • M.D. Schuster, “Particle Based Hydraulic Erosion of Heightmap Data”, Comput. Sci. Eng., 28 (1), (2026) 
    • M.D. Schuster, “Modeling Diffusion Limited Aggregation”, Comput. Sci. Eng., 27 (4), (2025) 
    • M.D. Schuster, “Lattice Gas Fluid Simulation Case Study”, Comput. Sci. Eng., 27 (2), (2025) 
    • M.D. Schuster, “Image Processing Case Study: Noise Reduction with the Kuwahara Filter”, Comput. Sci. Eng., 27 (1), (2025). 

     

    Books and Monographs: 

    • Leonidas Deligiannidis, George Dimitoglou and Hamid R. Arabnia, Editors, AI in Education -Pedagogy, Ethics, and Society, Springer Nature. (expectedly in late 2026)  
    • George Dimitoglou, Leonidas Deligiannidis, and Hamid R. Arabnia, Editors, Large Language Models – AI Tools, NLP and Use Cases, Springer Nature. (expectedly in late 2026)  

     

    External Reviewing and Editing: 

    • Leonidas Deligiannidis received the Editor of Distinction Award from Springer Nature, for their Journal of Supercomputing, 2026. 
    • Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Salem Othman served on the editorial board for the International Conference on the AI Revolution: Research, Ethics, and Society (AIR-RES 2026). 

    External Funding: In addition to the extraordinary research output, our faculty also participated in external grant writing with wonderful success. 

    • Mehmet Ergezer, "Project CAILA: Course-Adaptive AI Learning Assistant for STEM Gateway Success, Total Request: $1,098,271 (4-Year Total), submitted but not funded 
    • Ying Wang, Corporate sponsored research project: Maximizing Veterans’ Access to Medicine for Alzheimer’s Disease Under the New Therapeutic Paradigm Our grant was signed with UMass Lowell (Dr. Xia, the PI, who had master contract with the company EISAI). 
    • Quantum Intelligence: Bridging the Computational Gap. Leonidas Deligiannidis (PI). (Bistline grant) Spring - Fall 2026, $9K 
    • Brain-Sensing: Adaptive Human-Computer Interaction. Leonidas Deligiannidis (PI), Yetunde Longe-Folajimi, Salem Othman. (Spark grant) Spring 2026, $2K 
    • Yetunde Longe-Folajimi: Research Fellowship Award, NAIR Lab, University of Lagos Jul.’25-June’27, ₦13,000,000 (~$10K) 

     

    I am so excited and honored to be serving as the Dean of the School of Computing and Data Science. As demonstrated by all this outstanding work, we have an incredible team of faculty and staff who are extremely committed to excellence, and I am looking forward to another exciting year.  The faculty and I welcome our new incoming class of exceptional students in the fall and congratulations to all our 2026 graduates! 

     

    Best wishes, 

     

    Michael Farmer, PhD