Awards and Scholarships in the Department of Computer Science

04-17-2023

 

Every spring, the Department of Computer Science honors students, faculty, and staff who have been chosen to receive fellowships, awards, and scholarships.

 

We offer our congratulations to this year's winners. We are proud of your accomplishments and look forward to your future contributions.

 

Photos of the event are available here.

 

Purdue Presidental Scholarships

Purdue Presidental Scholarships are prestigious awards given to incoming students at the time of their admission to the university. These scholarships prioritize high academic achievement combined with leadership and service in school and/or community. The following future Boilermakers are recipients of the Purdue Presidental Scholarships; Grace Cantrell, Ryan Cheng, Brady Hurd, and Nathan Walsh. They will begin their studies in the fall 2023 semester.

 

 

  

 

Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Award

Professor Maurice H. Halstead joined the computer science faculty in 1967. He was a pioneer in software engineering, and wrote some of the first books on compiling and decompiling of software. He is generally considered as the "father" of code decompilation. Professor Halstead is perhaps best known as the founder of the approach to defining and measuring software products and processes known as Software Science. Many people believe that his work, and that of former Professor Samuel Conte, was the true foundation for software metrics and software engineering. Following Professor Halstead's death, a memorial fund was established in 1979 by his students, family, and colleagues to recognize a Purdue student who has made exemplary contributions to software engineering research. The winner is selected by the CS Awards Committee based on nominations submitted by the faculty and presented with an engraved plaque. The recipient receives a $5,000 monetary award and their name inscribed on a permanent plaque in the display case by Room 3102 in Lawson Computer Science Building.

This year, Guanhong Tao is the recipient of the 2022 Halstead Award. Tao was nominated by Professor Xiangyu Zhang for his contributions to software architecture and design as well as software analysis. Professor Zhang stated, “Tao's contributions are reflected in his outstanding publication record. He is one of the most productive students I have ever had. Guanhong has published 20 papers in the past five years, all in top venues in the areas of software engineering, security, and deep learning. He is the first-author for five of the papers and has made substantial contributions in all of them."

 

 

Raymond Boyce Graduate Teaching Award

The Raymond Boyce Graduate Teaching Award was established in 1975 by Sandy Boyce and friends in memory of Raymond Boyce who received his PhD in computer science in 1972 with high honors. Raymond passed away unexpectedly on June 18, 1974. This year the Boyce Graduate Teacher Award was awarded to Sayali Kate for the fall of 2022 and Mir Imtiaz Mostafiz for the spring of 2023. Their names will be inscribed on a permanent plaque in the display case by Room 3102 in Lawson Computer Science Building.

 

 

Emil Stefanov Memorial Partial Fellowship

Blake Holman won the Emil Stefanov Memorial Partial Fellowship. The fellowship was created in memory of Emil Stefanov, who earned his BS from Purdue in 2009 and passed away in 2014. This award is given to a domestic graduate student specializing in security who shows originality and creative thinking in research. Professor Jermiah Blocki commented on Holman's nomination, "Blake is a second year PhD student and a rising star in the computer science department here at Purdue. It has been a great privilege to serve as his advisor. Although Blake has only been here for two years, he has already made stellar progress towards his research goal of characterizing the classical and post-quantum security of Memory-Hard Functions."

 

John R. Rice Partial Fellowship in Scientific Computing 

John R. Rice, the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Purdue, was one of the earliest faculty members of Purdue’s first-in-the-nation computer science program. This year, the John R. Rice Partial Fellowship in Scientific Computing was awarded to Charles Colley. Colley was nominated by Professor David Gleich. 

  

Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award 

The Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award honors an undergraduate student for their work as a teaching assistant. This award is given to an undergraduate student who serves as a teaching assistant, faculty members nominate students they believe are deserving of special recognition. This year’s recipient, AJ Ernandes, was nominated by Professor Jeff Turkstra. On why Ernandes deserves this award, Turkstra shared, "AJ has done an excellent job as a TA for CS 240. He has made significant contributions in terms of test module and homework development as well as answering an incredible number of Ed Discussion questions compared to his peers and GTAs (more than 6X the responses of other GTAs). Overall, he has done a phenomenal job this semester."

 

Outstanding Service to the Department by a Student

The Outstanding Service to the Department by a Student Award is determined by votes of computer science and data science students. This year, Owen Eckart, Arslan Khan, and Frances O'Leary won the award.

 

  

 

Outstanding Research Effort by an Undergraduate Student

The Outstanding Research Effort by an Undergraduate Student went to Trung Dang He was nominated for his accomplishments in research. 

Dang was an author on one paper during his undergraduate career with two others in review. 

Zitao Li, Trung Dang, Tianhao Wang, and Ninghui Li. 2021. MGD: A Utility Metric for Private Data Publication. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Networking, Systems and Security (NSysS '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 106–119.

 

Outstanding Student Awards

The department chooses students from each year in the computer science and data science majors to honor the exceptional work they have contributed. The students are awarded Outstanding Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior awards.

Outstanding Students in the Computer Science Major

• Sarthak Mangla (Outstanding Freshman)
• Chi-Wei (Willy) Lien (Outstanding Sophomore)
• Riya Verma (Outstanding Junior)
• Trung Dang (Outstanding Senior)

 

Outstanding Students in the Data Science Major

• Sravya Nagalakunta (Outstanding Freshman)
• Reagan Becker (Outstanding Sophomore)
• Brian Fernando (Outstanding Junior)
• Elise Miller (Outstanding Senior)

 

 

  

  

 

  

 

 

Outstanding Staff Member

The award for Outstanding Staff Member is selected from staff nominations. This year's winners are Mike Motuliak and Ha Nguyen.

  

  

Purdue's Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Chapter Awards

The Purdue CS Student Chapter of the ACM provides awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching assistant plus a faculty award. This years winners are; Andrew Plank for the ACM Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, Professor Jeffrey Turkstra for the ACM Faculty Award, and Kedar Abhyankar for the ACM Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award (this is his second year winning the award).

 

 

  

Graduate Student Association's Awards

Arslan Khan, president of the Graduate Student Association present awards that were selected by graduate students. For the Most Influential Professor Award, Professors Kent Quanrud and Xiangyu Zhang were selected. 

 

  

The Department of Computer Science congratulates all winners and thanks our corporate and scholarship sponsors.

Photo link.