School of Computing & Data Science Faculty Highlights

The faculty in the School of Computing & Data Science have achieved significant milestones in research, teaching, and professional engagement throughout the past year. 

Mehmet Ergezer was appointed as an Amazon Visiting Academic, demonstrating his expertise in the field. His research contributions were recognized with three publications at top AI conferences: the NeurIPS Safe Generative AI Workshop and the AAAI-25 Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (AICS), with one additional paper submitted to arXiv. Professor Ergezer also secured funding for a student to present at the NeurIPS workshop. 

Yetunde Folajimi was selected for the prestigious Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence program for the 2024-2025 academic year. This enabled the School to host Dr. Shawren Singh from the University of South Africa, fostering valuable teaching, academic collaboration, and cultural exchange. 

Semere Gebresilasie experienced a successful year in teaching, leading six courses across the Spring and Summer semesters with positive student evaluations and high participation. He implemented innovative teaching methods, including in-class discussions, collaborative problem-solving worksheets in Probability and Statistics, and student-driven dataset analysis in Advanced Statistics. In research, Professor Gebresilasie collaborated with a PhD student, resulting in one publication and another submitted paper in Mathematical Finance. His sabbatical included workshops on undergraduate research mentoring, leading to the development of new undergraduate research projects. 

Bingyu Liu demonstrated significant progress in research activities, evidenced by receiving the 2024 Bistline Grant. 

Rachel Maitra celebrated the acceptance of a paper co-authored with BSAM alumni for publication in Nuclear Physics B. 

Mark Mixer was appointed as the Deputy Editor of Mathematics Magazine, a significant editorial role in the mathematics community. 

Steven Morrow achieved acceptance of a book chapter, a collaborative effort with Professor Mixer and Professor Husowitz, on sports analytics for Springer's "Handbook of Visual, Experimental and Computational Mathematics - Bridges through Data". 

Ashar Neyaz received the Spark grant in 2024 to support the development of a Digital Forensics Lab for Digital Forensics courses, enhancing the school's educational resources. 

Aspen Olmsted published a book on Secure Software Development, contributing valuable knowledge to the field. 

Weijie Pang co-authored a paper presented at the 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition on building an inclusive undergraduate data science program. Additionally, his research on netting and novation in repo networks was published in the International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance.