Announcing the 2021 Computing Innovation Fellows

This past spring, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announced funding for a cohort of Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) for 2021, with strong support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program sponsors two-year postdoctoral research positions in computing, as well as career development and cohort building activities, to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent Ph.D. graduates. The program aims to address the continued disruption in hiring practices at academic institutions due to COVID-19. This effort was inspired by the CRA/CCC’s NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellows Programs with cohorts starting 2009, 2010, and 2011, CRA’s Best Practices Memo on Computer Science Postdocs and the Computing Innovation Fellows 2020 Project.

Many thanks to all the people that invested their time and talents to make the CIFellows 2021 program possible including reviewers, staff, and committee members; and a special thank you to the selection committee: Elizabeth Bradley (CCC Chair and University of Colorado, Boulder), Emery Berger (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Azer Bestavros (Boston University), Randal Bryant (Carnegie Mellon University), Ken Calvert (University of Kentucky), Marie desJardins (Simmons University), Jessica Hodgins (Carnegie Mellon University), Ben Kuipers (University of Michigan), Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University), Ray Mooney (University of Texas Austin), Sean Munson (University of Washington), Jelani Nelson (University of California, Berkeley), Katie Siek (Indiana University) and Ellen Zegura (former CRA Board Chair  and Georgia Tech). We received 238 applications covering a wide variety of research areas and over 108 universities. After 476 reviews by 102 community members, the selection committee chose 69 new CIFellows. Thank you to the entire community for your involvement in promoting, mentoring, and reviewing applications for our recent graduates.

CRA and CCC are extremely excited to announce the CIFellows for 2021! This cohort is comprised of 69 diverse researchers covering a broad range of areas in computing. The 2021 class of CIFellows is 52% women, come from 49 universities, and will be beginning their fellowships at 48 different universities. Below is a listing of the 2021 CIFellows. You can find out more about each CIFellow and the program here.

CRA and CCC are working with the computing community to ensure that this program facilitates career and skill growth for the CIFellows in supportive environments to foster the talent of the future computing research community.  Please join us in congratulating the new CIFellows!

 

CIFellow	Primary Affiliation	Host Institution	Mentor
Sara Abdali	University of California, Riverside	Georgia Institute of Technology	Srijan Kumar
Ben Abramowitz	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Tulane University	Nicholas Mattei
Taslima Akter	Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing	University of California, Irvine	Anne Marie Piper
Kevin Bello	Purdue University	University of Chicago	Bryon Aragam
Prajakta Belsare	University of Alabama, Birmingham	Dartmouth College	Temiloluwa O. Prioleau
Jasmine Berry	University of Southern California	University of Michigan	Odest Chadwicke Jenkins
Alexis Block	ETH Zurich	University of California, Los Angeles	Veronica Santos
Kiante Brantley	University of Maryland	Cornell University	Thorsten Joachims
Ceara Byrne	Georgia Institute of Technology	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Giovanni Traverso
Francisco Castro	Worcester Polytechnic Institute	New York University	Kayla DesPortes
Janelle Clark	Rice University	University of Massachusetts, Lowell	Holly Yanco
Michael Craige	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	Antonina Mitrofanova
Mallesham Dasari	Stony Brook University, SUNY	University of Minnesota	Feng Qian
Sami Davies	University of Washington	Northwestern University	Samir Khuller
Matthew Drescher	Université libre de Bruxelles	University of California, Davis	John Owens
Kuan Fang	Stanford University	University of California, Berkeley	Sergey Levine
Rebecca Faust	University of Arizona	Virginia Tech	Chris North
Adriane Ferand	University of California, San Diego	Carnegie Mellon University	Lining Yao
Sainyam Galhotra	University of Massachusetts, Amherst	University of Chicago	Raul Castro Fernandez
Ali Ghanbari	University of Texas, Dallas	Iowa State University	Hridesh Rajan
Anitha Gollamudi	Harvard University	Yale University	Zhong Shao
Leah Horgan	University of California, Irvine	Northeastern University	Sara Wylie
Layne Hubbard	University of Colorado, Boulder	University of California, Irvine	Mark Warschauer
Andrew Hundt	Johns Hopkins University	Georgia Institute of Technology	Matthew Gombolay
Umar Iqbal	University of Iowa	University of Washington	Franziska Roesner
Shweta Jain	University of California, Santa Cruz	University of Utah	Blair Sullivan
Gayithri Jayathirtha	University of Pennsylvania	University of Oregon	Joanne Goode
Emmanuel Johnson	University of Southern California	University of Southern California	Yolanda Gil
Anne Jonas	University of California, Berkeley	Michigan State University	Jean Hardy
Swapna Joshi	Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing	University of Massachusetts, Amherst	Narges Mahyar
Sushrut Karmalkar	University of Texas, Austin	University of Wisconsin, Madison	Ilias Diakonikolas
Saba Kawas	University of Washington	University of Minnesota	Lana Yarosh
Sualeh Khurshid	Texas A&M University	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Themistoklis Sapsis
Nurit Kirshenbaum	University of Hawaii	University of Hawaii	Jason Leigh
Tiffany Knearem	Pennsylvania State University	University of California, San Diego	Elizabeth Eikey
Adam Li	Johns Hopkins University	Columbia University	Elias Bareinboim
Yun Li	George Mason University	Emory University	Liang Zhao
Tianyu Liu	University of Wisconsin, Madison	Stanford University	Nima Anari
Zoey Liu	University of California, Davis	Boston College	Emily Prud’hommeaux
Samiha Marwan	North Carolina State University	University of Nebraska at Omaha	Briana Morrison
Stephen McAleer	University of California, Irvine	Carnegie Mellon University	Tuomas Sandholm
Mehran Mirramezani	University of California, Berkeley	Princeton University	Ryan P. Adams
Kenneth Boyenah Nimley	Drexel University	George Mason University	Aditya Johri
Tapti Palit	Stony Brook University, SUNY	Purdue University	Pedro Fonseca
Sunoo Park	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Cornell University	Helen Nissenbaum
Denis Peskov	University of Maryland	Princeton University	Brandon Stewart
Vincent Peta	South Dakota State University	University of South Dakota	Etienne Gnimpieba
Lauren Pick	Princeton University	University of Wisconsin, Madison	Aws Albarghouthi
Raghavendra Pradyumna Pothukuchi	University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign	Yale University	Abhishek Bhattacharjee (and Jonathan Cohen)
Ghulam Jilani Quadri	University of South Florida	University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill	Dr. Danielle Albers Szafir
Lana Ramjit	University of California, Los Angeles	Cornell Tech	Nicola Dell
Tatiana Ringenberg	Purdue University	Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing	Jean Camp
Michael Rivera	Carnegie Mellon University	University of Colorado, Boulder	Laura Devendorf
Amrita Roy Chowdhury	University of Wisconsin, Madison	University of California, San Diego	Kamalika Chaudhuri
Gourav Saha	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	Purdue University	Xiaojun Lin
Jean Salac	University of Chicago	University of Washington	Amy J Ko
Shruti Sannon	Cornell University	University of Michigan	Tawanna Dillahunt
Joseph Seering	Carnegie Mellon University	Stanford University	Michael Bernstein
Nasim Sonboli	University of Colorado, Boulder	Tufts University	Bert Huang
David Tench	University of Massachusetts, Amherst	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey	Martin Farach-Colton
Jerald Thomas	University of Minnesota	Virginia Tech	Doug Bowman
Wil Thomason	Cornell University	Rice University	Lydia Kavraki
Jesus del Carmen Valdiviezo Mora	Duke University	University of California, Berkeley	Teresa L. Head-Gordon
Jessica Vandenberg	North Carolina State University	North Carolina State University	Bradford Mott
Troi Williams	University of South Florida	University of Maryland	Pratap Tokekar
Le Xu	University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign	University of Texas, Austin	Aditya Akella
Fumeng Yang	Brown University	Northwestern University	Matthew Kay
Wanrong Zhang	Georgia Institute of Technology	Harvard University	Salil Vadhan
Jieyu Zhao	University of California, Los Angeles	University of Maryland	Hal Daumé III