CRA Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award
This award recognizes individual faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing. Click here for award information.
The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is proud to announce the three recipients of the 2025 Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award. The winners are Ryan Kastner from the University of California San Diego, Layla Oesper from Carleton College, and Blase Ur from the University of Chicago.
These outstanding individuals are being recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of their students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
Selection Committee: Co-Chair Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary), Co-Chair Renee Bryce (University of North Texas), and Yi-Chieh (Jessica) Wu (Verily)
Ryan Kastner is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, where he holds the William Nachbar endowed chair. He received a Ph.D. from UCLA and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Northwestern University. His research spans three primary areas: hardware acceleration, hardware security, and remote sensing. Professor Kastner has made significant contributions to accelerate computationally intensive tasks, enhancing the security of computing systems, and improving remote sensing technologies used in applications ranging from oceanography, biology, and archaeology.
Dr. Kastner is deeply committed to undergraduate research mentorship, guiding students in tackling real-world challenges at the intersection of hardware and software. Through his mentorship, students in the Engineers for Exploration program and the Kastner Research Group have engaged in projects that advance hardware acceleration, improve the security of computing systems, and explore innovative remote sensing applications. His undergraduate mentees have co-authored numerous published research papers, and many have continued to pursue graduate studies. Dr. Kastner’s approach to mentoring is hands-on and collaborative, fostering a dynamic environment where students develop the technical expertise and critical thinking skills needed to excel as researchers and leaders in the rapidly advancing field of computer science and engineering.
Layla Oesper is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carleton College, specializing in algorithms development for computational biology with a focus on cancer research. With a Ph.D. from Brown University, she has made significant contributions to algorithms used in large-scale genomic data analysis, aiming to enhance our understanding of complex biological systems and improve health outcomes.
Professor Oesper has been a driving force in empowering undergraduate researchers to excel and push the boundaries of computational biology. Her students have co-authored peer-reviewed publications, presented at conferences, and launched successful careers in both academia and industry. By creating a collaborative and inclusive research environment, she ensures that her students not only develop technical expertise but also cultivate the critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary to lead the future of computer science. Professor Oesper’s mentorship continues to inspire her students to achieve greatness and make meaningful contributions to society.
Blase Ur is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His group’s research spans computer security, privacy, ethical AI, and the design of usable computing systems. He earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was advised by Lorrie Cranor. He and his students work to bridge the gap between technical systems and the human-centered concerns of the real world, aiming to create secure and ethical technologies.
Professor Ur has played a pivotal role in nurturing the next generation of computer science researchers. Through his extensive undergraduate mentorship, he has inspired students to tackle interdisciplinary challenges, empowering them to become thought leaders in the field. He especially focuses on involving first-year and second-year undergraduates in research as part of fostering their long-term engagement with projects. Many of his students have gone on to lead and publish influential research, pursue graduate studies, and make meaningful contributions to both academia and industry. His commitment to mentorship ensures that his students are well-equipped to drive innovation and shape the future of computer science.
Selection committee: Monica Anderson (University of Alabama), Renee Bryce (University of North Texas), Gary Holness (Clark University), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary) Chair
Dr. Carrie Demmans Epp is an Assistant Professor of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her 
research interests include the use of technology for supporting learning and assessment. Dr. Demmans Epp has mentored 69 undergraduate students in the past 10 years. All of the undergraduate students she has mentored have moved into research roles or obtained industry positions where they use the development and analytic skills they learned while working with Demmans Epp: 6 are working as researchers (e.g., modeling user interactions with software, co-designing and evaluating technologies with Indigenous communities), 7 have completed research-based MSc degrees, another 11 have started an MSc, 2 are now pursuing PhDs in human-computer interaction (HCI), and 4 are applying to graduate programs in CS and HCI.
Dr. Demmans Epp’s mentees received prestigious awards to pursue their studies and research. Of Demmans Epp’s undergraduate mentees, 6 have been awarded large national scholarships (4 NSERC CGS-M, 1 NSERC PGS-D, 1 Facebook Fellowship, 1 Apple AI/ML Scholar, and 1 Google DeepMind Graduate Scholarship) to fund their graduate studies. Two of her mentees have also received large regional scholarships. Another 7 have been awarded the Canadian equivalent of the CRA’s CREU (i.e., NSERC USRA). Undergraduate students working with Demmans Epp have co-authored 29 publications, many of which have received prestigious awards.
Dr. Raja Kushalnagar is a Deaf Professor at Gallaudet University. He directs both the undergraduate Information 
Technology program, and the graduate master’s Accessible Human-Centered Computing program. Gallaudet is a private, federally chartered university that was founded in 1864. It is a bilingual, diverse, multicultural institution of higher education that ensures the intellectual and professional advancement of deaf and hard of hearing individuals through American Sign Language (ASL) and English.
Dr. Kushalnagar has mentored 130 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students over 13 years, from 2010-2023. Specifically, of those 130 undergraduate mentees, 85 have identified as DHH, and 45 have identified as hearing. Additionally, about 40 mentees have identified as black, Hispanic, or Asian. He has also mentored 10 deaf and hard of hearing masters’ and doctoral students, through service on their dissertation committees. He has collaboratively published 63 refereed papers with his mentees, and some have received best paper awards, or honorary mentions. He provides advice and guidance on applying to graduate school. Three of his mentees have received GRFP awards, and one received a CSGrad4US award. A total of 9 mentees have gone on to pursue PhD degrees.
Dr. Mubarak Shah, the UCF Trustee Chair Professor, is the founding director of Center for Research in 
Computer Visions at University of Central Florida (UCF). Dr. Shah is a fellow of ACM, IEEE, AAAS, NAI, IAPR, AAIA and SPIE. He has published extensively on topics related to human activity and action recognition, visual tracking, geo registration, visual crowd analysis, object detection and categorization, shape from shading, etc. He has served as ACM and IEEE Distinguished Visitor Program speaker. He is a recipient of 2022 PAMI Mark Everingham Prize for pioneering human action recognition datasets; 2019 ACM SIGMM Technical Achievement award; 2020 ACM SIGMM Test of Time Honorable Mention Award for his paper “Visual attention detection in video sequences using spatiotemporal cues”; 2020 International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) Best Scientific Paper Award; an honorable mention for the ICCV 2005 Where Am I? Challenge Problem; 2013 NGA Best Research Poster Presentation; 2nd place in Grand Challenge at the ACM Multimedia 2013 conference; and runner up for the best paper award in ACM Multimedia Conference in 2005 and 2010. At UCF he has received Pegasus Professor Award; University Distinguished Research Award; Faculty Excellence in Mentoring Doctoral Students; Scholarship of Teaching and Learning award; Teaching Incentive Program award; Research Incentive Award.
Dr. Shah has been a cornerstone in the development and success of the NSF REU Site on Computer Vision, which is the longest running REU program in the country. His mentorship has been instrumental in providing undergraduate students with immersive research experiences.
Dr. Shah has consistently provided students with high-quality, high-impact research experiences. He has mentored over 100 undergraduate research students over the past ten years, with at least 34 of these undergraduate students who have gone to graduate school. Dr. Shah’s passion for undergraduate research mentoring extends beyond his own research program by empowering other faculty to become better undergraduate research mentors. His undergraduate students published in top conference papers and received various research awards.
Selection committee: Monica Anderson (University of Alabama), Gary Holness (Clark University), Tijana Milenkovic (University of Notre Dame), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary) Chair
Dr. Yi-Chieh (Jessica) Wu is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College (HMC). Her research develops and applies computational and mathematical models to study evolutionary biology. Currently, she focuses on reconstructing gene histories across multiple species, with the goal of understanding differences within and across species, particularly in how genes form and function. She is the recipient of the prestigious 2018 NSF Faculty Early Career Development grant: “CAREER: Algorithms for Gene Family Evolution with Gene Duplication, Loss, and Coalescence”. Within HMC and her department, Wu stands out as an exceptionally productive scholar in terms of both the impact of her work and also her ability to meaningfully involve undergraduates in her research.
Wu has consistently provided students with high-quality, high-impact research experiences. She has mentored 29 undergraduate research students since joining the Harvey Mudd faculty in 2014, 28 of whom have already graduated and 10 of whom have gone on to PhD programs at schools including MIT, UC Berkeley, University of Washington, and Penn, among others. A total of 18 students were co-authors on nine distinct papers, some of which appear in the top venues in computational biology. Wu’s passion for undergraduate research mentoring extends beyond her own research program by empowering other faculty to become better undergraduate research mentors. She has served as faculty mentoring coordinator for the CS department and currently serves as Director of the HMC Postdoctoral Program in Interdisciplinary Computation (PIC). The PIC program provides postdoctoral scholars with an opportunity to pursue in-depth research and novel pedagogical methods while gaining the experience and preparation necessary for teaching, conducting research with undergraduate students, and promoting diversity and inclusion at a small liberal arts college.
Dr. William Wang is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science Department at UC Santa Barbara. He is also the Mellichamp Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Designs and Director of UCSB’s Center for Responsible Machine Learning. He co-directs the campus academic initiative on Mind and Machine Intelligence and the Natural Language Processing group. Since his arrival at UCSB in 2016, he has received many prestigious national and international awards, including the 2021 NSF CAREER Award, 2020 IEEE Intelligent Systems’ AI’s 10 to Watch, 2019 CVPR Best Student Paper Award, 2018 DARPA Young Faculty Award, and more than 10 faculty awards from Google, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, JP Morgan, Adobe, IBM, etc.
He has mentored over 60 undergraduate students at UCSB, including 13 female and under-represented students. Among those, 32 mentored students entered a graduate research program in computing, and 12 were enrolled into top Ph.D. programs at Carnegie Mellon, UIUC, Duke, ETH, Michigan, UPenn, UCSB, and USC. His undergraduate students have published 23 top conference papers, and among those, four undergraduate student, first-authored papers have independently reached 100+ citations in three years; one was included in the graduate curriculum at Stanford and Princeton. His undergraduate students have received major awards, including two Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Research, three CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award finalists and two honorable mentions, an NSF Graduate Fellowship in Machine Learning, a Siebel Fellowship, a Google Lime Scholarship, and a Tirrell Award for Distinction in Undergraduate Research.
Dr. Nanette Veilleux is a professor in the Computer Science and Informatics department at Simmons University. Her research interests include primary research in computational models of speech, as well as investigations of pedagogical methods in STEM education. She has received multiple awards and honors, including Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and many others. She currently serves as a principal investigator on one collaborative NSF funded grant.
She has mentored over 450 undergraduate students at Simmons. Among those, 15 mentored students entered graduate research programs at Rice University, Northeastern University, Boston University, Brandeis, Dartmouth and London School of Economics and Political Science among others. Veilleux advises research projects for students who are interested in graduate school, helps students who want to enter the workforce to find jobs, and keeps in touch with Simmons alumni, all while continuing to inspire new undergraduates to pursue Computer Science. She engages with her students as people, not just as students, and works to understand their unique strengths, motivations, and challenges. Veilleux reaches beyond the classroom to connect her students to projects that will broaden their interests and experiences. She has been tireless in her efforts to recruit and retain women in the field of Computer Science, going out of her way to expose students to subject matter they may not have previously considered. Her passion for her teaching and her research has had a real impact across students and faculty at Simmons.
Selection committee: Monica Anderson (University of Alabama), Gary Holness (Clark University), Lenore Cowen (Tufts University), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary) Chair
Darko Marinov is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His main research interests are in software engineering, in particular improving software quality using software testing. He published over 100 conference papers, winning three “test-of-time” awards — two ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper awards (2012 and 2019) and one ASE Most Influential Paper Award (2015) — and eight more paper awards – seven ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper awards and one CHI Best Paper Award (2017).
Marinov has mentored in research over 60 undergraduate students over the past 20 years at the University of Illinois and MIT. Twenty-five of his undergraduate students have already enrolled in highly competitive graduate programs, including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Illinois, Princeton, Cornell Tech, Northwestern, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of South California, National University of Singapore, and EPFL in Switzerland. Several of these students have themselves become faculty members, including at UT Austin, UC Berkeley, Columbia, Illinois, and Imperial College London. Marinov has co-authored 30 papers with 24 undergraduate students, including papers published in premier software engineering conferences such as ICSE, ESEC/FSE, ASE, ISSTA, and ICST. His students have made innovative contributions by releasing open-source software and datasets and contributing to the existing open-source projects. Marinov’s students have been recognized by winning multiple national and departmental awards, including one NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, one national Runner-up CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, as well as two Finalists and one Honorable Mention, and two departmental Best Undergraduate Research Project Awards. Marinov’s advising has been recognized at the University of Illinois with a prestigious Campus Award for Excellence in Guiding Undergraduate Research in 2020.
Jelani Nelson is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California Berkeley. His main research interests are in Theory. He is a winner of multiple highly prestigious awards and honors, including Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2017), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2017), ONR Young Investigator Award (2015), NSF CAREER award (2014), and the Best Paper Award at ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (2010) among the others.
Nelson had advised both formally and informally many undergraduate students. Three of his students became the winners of the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award. The students that he mentored and advised over the years have enrolled into the Ph.D. programs at top universities, including MIT, Berkeley, Stanford among the others. Nelson maintains a small research group and interacts frequently and in a hands-on manner with his mentees and does not have a hierarchical structure to his group. Although he believes strongly that PhD students should identify or define their own research problems, he does initially assist undergraduates in this process. He says “I usually suggest many different broad areas first and ask them which they find most interesting, then I suggest problem directions within those areas and let them choose. Later on, I do try to encourage them to develop the skill of reading papers and finding
their own problems. I also include undergraduate researchers in the reading group meetings, and I mostly treat them just as I do my graduate students (that is, I set the bar high so that they rise to it).” Nelson has also been running “AddisCoder” (see addiscoder.com), which introduced over 500 Ethiopian high schoolers to theoretical computer science (specifically algorithms), and several of his alumni have eventually enrolled in PhD programs (and one has already obtained a PhD degree in math).
Selection committee: Monica Anderson (U of Alabama), Margaret Burnett (Oregon State), Maria Gini (U of Minnesota), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary) Chair
Tijana Milenkovic is a Frank M. Freimann Collegiate Associate Professor of Engineering at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Milenkovic has been a Notre Dame faculty since 2010, after earning her Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of California Irvine in the same year. Her research focuses on challenging problems in the fields of network science, graph algorithms, computational biology, scientific wellness, and social networks. She has been a recipient of multiple prestigious awards including 2015 NSF CAREER and 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR YIP) awards.
Milenkovic has mentored 25 undergraduate students. Of these, ten (40%) have been women, and four (16%) have been African-American or Latinx. She is passionate about engaging undergraduate students in research. Milenkovic invests significant time and effort into each of her undergraduate students – meeting with them individually each week to discuss concepts, helping them to ask and answer challenging and cutting-edge research questions through exploring new ideas, developing software, designing and executing experiments, and ultimately writing papers and publishing their work in well-respected venues. She has provided exceptional mentorship to her students and has engaged in numerous broader outreach activities. Seven of her mentored students have continued to graduate school at e.g., Stanford and MIT. Several of them have then proceeded to faculty careers at highly ranked universities, including UIUC and UC Riverside. Beyond individual mentoring, Milenkovic is actively engaged in recruitment and retention of female, ethnic, and other underrepresented minority students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
Saad Biaz is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Auburn University. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Texas A&M University in 1999.
Biaz’s research is in the area of wireless networking, distributed systems, mobile, pervasive computing and unmanned aerial vehicles. He has been a recipient of multiple awards related to his teaching, research and mentoring activities at Auburn university.
Biaz has mentored a number of undergraduate students over the years. As many as 27 students that he has mentored have gone to a graduate school including Yale, Berkeley and CMU. Biaz has been an attentive mentor to his students. He reads every word every student writes and provides detailed feedback to them. He also helps students learn how to make strategic decisions about the direction of their research, and when and how to decide if a particular approach is successful or whether they should redirect their efforts in another direction. The value of Biaz’s interactions with the students can be seen in the large number of them who stay in touch with him. Overall, he has provided exceptional mentorship to his students and has engaged in numerous broader outreach activities.
Selection committee: Eric Aaron (Colby College), Chandra Krintz (UC Santa Barbara), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary) Chair,
Jennifer Rexford (Princeton)
Lenore Cowen is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University, where she leads a group of faculty and students in the study of Computational Biology. She received her Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from MIT in 1993 and her B.A. degree in
mathematics from Yale in 1987. She received multiple awards over her career including ONR Young Investigator Award, Robert S. Pond Teaching Award and a prestigious NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship among others.
Cowen is passionate about teaching students the interdisciplinary skills necessary to be successful researchers in computational biology or more generally data science. Her mentoring style is very hands on: she works hard to help students understand the entire research process from beginning to end. She challenges students by asking them true research questions. As the nomination letter mentions “students can better understand what graduate-level research will look like and make an informed decision about whether or not they will enjoy it.” She has mentored 19 undergraduate students since 2002, integrating them into interdisciplinary computational science research and publishing extensively with them as co-authors. Her mentees have been recognized in the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards as runner-up and honorable mention awardees, and three of her students received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Her students have matriculated in Ph.D. programs at MIT, Princeton, University of Washington, University of Southern California, Brown, Rice, and University of Maryland.
Samir Khuller is currently the Barris professor and chair of Computer Science within the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University. He is professor emeritus in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Cornell in 1990, his M.S. degree in computer science from Cornell in 1989 and his B.S. degree in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1986. He received multiple awards over his career, including the Test of Time Award from European Symposium on Algorithms in 2016, Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award in 2007 and NSF CAREER among others.
Khuller has been passionate about the professional and personal development of students of all levels with his mentorship of undergraduate students being particularly notable. As his nomination letter writer notes: “I can attest first-hand to the many hours he devotes to his students and to the numerous ways that he inspires, motivates, and nurtures their growth.” The nomination letter also notes that Khuller “has a real knack for quickly understanding a student’s particular strengths and so is able to suggest problems that, while challenging, are well suited to the student’s skills.” He mentored 28 undergraduate students over the last 10 years with a number of these students matriculating into many outstanding graduate programs at Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Princeton, Duke, CalTech and University of Maryland. Also, Khuller has worked very well with students of diverse backgrounds. For example, over the last decade roughly half of the students that he has mentored are women, and two are African-American. He has an outstanding record of completing undergraduate research experiences into publications that appear at very good conferences and journals. One of his mentees has been recognized by the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award as the national winner and many others received honorable mentions.
Selection committee: Pat Morreale (Kean University, committee chair), Eric Aaron (Colby College), Chandra Krintz (UC Santa Barbara), and Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary)
Jennifer Rexford, Ph.D., is the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, an ACM Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She is a CCC Council member and former CRA board member.
Rexford began her career at AT&T Research before joining Princeton University. In addition to her distinguished research career, she has actively mentored students, particularly undergraduates. Rexford established events and spaces to motivate undergraduates as researchers, and to support members of traditionally underrepresented groups in CS. In 2010, she mentored students who established a women in computer science group (PWiCS) in the department, and the group is still active.
With a smaller pool of undergraduate students, Rexford advises students both in single semester independent projects, as well as theses. She regularly publishes with undergraduate mentees, and there are multiple papers on which undergraduates were the first author. Rexford has mentored 23 undergraduate students in 10 years, half of who are women, and her mentorship has led to student placement at top graduate schools. She has mentored students who have received recognition in the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards as awardee, runner-up, and honorable mention, and three of her students received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Her students have matriculated in Ph.D. programs at MIT, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, and University of Washington.
The nomination letter noted that Rexford provides “office space and a support network of helpful graduate students and postdocs to conduct nonjudgmental discussions. Despite being the Department Chair of Computer Science at Princeton, she still makes time to meet personally with her undergraduate advisees, often taking out more than an hour every week for each advisee. Mentees thrive in this supportive environment, becoming highly confident in their own skin…”.
Westley Weimer, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He is also an ACM Senior Member and a NSF CAREER awardee.
Each year, Weimer includes undergraduate students in his research group and works with them in a focused approach, providing mentoring and support in a manner similar to that given to a Ph.D. student. He has had 18 mentees in 10 years, and is known for his empathy in mentoring diverse student populations. His undergraduate mentees are often first authors on the papers that they co-author with Weimer.
His undergraduate mentees are trained on the basics of how to conduct research and work on projects, as well as communicating research results and impact. In his approach, Weimer takes the time to fully develop students, leading one student to state “he has had more impact on my career than any other person.” Several noted that the skills learned by students mentored by Weimer allowed the students to be more successful, sooner, in their Ph.D. programs as the expertise gained in “think[ing] about research: how to explore, develop, and communicate ideas” was invaluable. The one-to-one mentoring provided by Weimer to his undergraduate students is supported by the full participation of the undergraduates in research presentations, meetings, and lab activities along with graduate students. His students have matriculated in Ph.D. programs at Cornell University, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, and University of Michigan.
Selection committee: Chandra Krintz (UC Santa Barbara), Pat Morreale (Kean University), Denys Poshyvanyk (William & Mary), Barbara Ryder (Virginia Tech, committee chair) and Neil Spring (University of Maryland)
Michael Ernst, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle (UW), a Fellow of the ACM, and an NSF CAREER award winner.
Ernst is an accomplished researcher. Over the past 15 years he has authored nine best or distinguished papers at major conferences in programming languages and software engineering such as ECOOP, ESEC, FSE, ICSE, and ISSTA.
A champion of undergraduate research, Ernst has an exceptional mentorship record that spans multiple institutions, projects, and high-quality publications. He is typically described as a caring and careful mentor who is selfless, patient, quality-driven, and student-focused. Impressively, more than 60 of his 123 undergraduate mentees have attended graduate school in computer science. He has also co-authored 51 publications with his mentees. His undergraduate students have become faculty members at universities such as Harvard, University of Massachusetts and University of California, San Diego. One commented, “I strive to use as much of prof. Ernst’s mentoring style in my own advising as I can.”
Ernst’s extraordinary mentoring has produced a broad impact. He has built a research environment that is collaborative, welcoming to undergraduates, and mindful of teaching graduate students, postdocs, and other faculty how to successfully work with undergraduates. He has adopted state-of-the art research tools that are used in undergraduate classes and has included research explorations in undergraduate project classes. His “Advice for researchers and students” webpage is used throughout the CS community.
Catherine Putonti, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Biology at Loyola University Chicago as well as in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Stritch School of Medicine. She is also director of the interdisciplinary bioinformatics program and an NSF CAREER Award winner. According to a colleague, Loyola is an institution “where undergraduate students do the bulk of the lab work for principal investigators.” In 10 years, Putonti was awarded two university awards for excellence — the Sujack Master Researcher Award and the Sujack Teaching Excellence Award. She is the only faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences of Loyola to recently receive both of these honors.
Putonti has successfully mentored 45 undergraduate students since spring 2008, and 16 of these students have continued to graduate school in computer science, bioinformatics, or computational biology. Her “top in department” placement of students at outstanding graduate programs across the country and across disciplines is exceptional, with students gaining admission to schools such as University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Stanford University.
Putonti hosts up to a dozen undergraduate research students in her two labs, one a molecular biology lab and the other a computational lab, annually. She actively encourages her mentees in their work (even beyond graduation), and reviews their applications for funding, awards, graduate admission, and scientific publication. One mentee remarked that “Dr. Putonti truly strikes a magical balance between having a structured research environment and encouraging independence and creativity from her students in research.”
Selection committee: Nancy Amato (Texas A&M University), Jeff Forbes (Duke University), Pat Morreale (Kean University), Manuel Pérez Quiñones (UNC Charlotte), and Barbara Ryder (Virginia Tech, committee chair).
Margaret Burnett, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oregon State University (OSU), a member of the ACM CHI Academy, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. Burnett has contributed pioneering research on how ordinary users interact with software and optimizing that interaction. This resulted, in part, in the development of a new subarea, which is at the intersection of human-computer interaction and software engineering, called end-user software engineering.
Throughout her academic career, Burnett has continuously worked with undergraduate researchers and even accommodated high school students in her lab. She has mentored 39 undergraduate students in research; 21 were from underrepresented groups in computing, 32 co-authored published research papers, and 25 went on to graduate studies. A selection of the honors of her highly accomplished mentees includes three Google Scholarships, three NSF Graduate Fellowships, and two National Physical Sciences Consortium Graduate Fellowships. In her nomination, several mentees attested to her personal influence on and involvement in their lives and careers.
Impressively, Burnett influenced the culture of faculty undergraduate research mentoring in her school, increasing it to 50% participation. She has also led efforts to better support a diverse undergraduate population through trips to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the adoption of a diversity plan, and new experimental scholarships for incoming freshmen women in computing. She has received awards from NCWIT, Microsoft, and OSU for her mentoring and research.
Nayda Santiago, Ph.D., is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus. Her research areas are computer performance evaluation and engineering education. Santiago is a founding member of the Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI). For the past 12 years, she has been promoting undergraduate research and the Affinity Research Group model among the Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and in her own department. She also is active in FemProf, an organization aimed at encouraging undergraduate female computer science and computer engineering students to attend graduate school. Santiago has been recognized as a Distinguished Computer Engineer by the Puerto Rico Society of Professional Engineers and Surveyors, and has received honors for her educational achievements from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference.
Santiago has an impressive record of caringly mentoring of undergraduate researchers into high-quality computing graduate programs at Research I institutions. She communicates the possibilities for graduate study and a research career to her students, and since 2004, 21 of her 56 undergraduate research mentees have entered graduate school.
In fall 2015, there were 35 undergraduate researchers working with her on 6 different projects, a department record. Santiago co-authors papers with her mentees and has them present their work at technical venues. These achievements are extraordinary because she is mentoring in a Hispanic-serving Masters I institution with limited internal resources for research support.
Margo Seltzer, Ph.D., is the Herchel Smith professor of computer science and the faculty director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society in Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Her research in computer systems, broadly defined, includes systems for data provenance, transaction processing, new architectures for parallel execution, and healthcare informatics. Seltzer also conducts research in pedagogy and the retention of women in computer science. Seltzer is an ACM Fellow, a Sloan Foundation Fellow in computer science, and has won awards for mentoring and teaching from Harvard. She is a member of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Academies, and a past president of the USENIX Association.
Seltzer has thoughtfully mentored 49 undergraduate students over her career, 16 of whom have matriculated into computing graduate studies. And many of these students have entered academia. She has co-authored 29 papers with her undergrad mentees, and has included them in her research team as full-fledged members. Seltzer takes deep personal interest in her mentees and interacts with them and their families beyond the research relationship. She serves as a role model and an effective advocate for the women undergraduates in the Harvard program. One of her mentees remarked, “I credit my undergraduate experience with Margo as the genesis of and essential training for my research career.”
Selection committee: Nancy Amato (Texas A&M University, committee chair); Eric Aaron (Vassar College); Pat Morreale (Kean University); Barbara Ryder (Virginia Tech)
Pieter Abbeel is an associate professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. He works in machine learning and robotics, more specifically on making robots learn from people (apprenticeship learning) and how to make robots learn through their own trial and error (reinforcement learning). His robots have learned: advanced helicopter aerobatics, knot-tying, basic assembly, and organizing laundry. He currently advises and mentors 15 undergraduates. In 7 years on the faculty at UC Berkeley, the research opportunities he provided motivated 33 of his undergraduate mentees to pursue graduate programs in computing, with the majority pursuing or having received a Ph.D.
His successful mentoring of undergraduates focuses on early identification of students, individual encouragement to pursue research, weekly research meetings, discussion of research skills, ongoing advice about graduate school, and help during the graduate application process. Pieter co-authored over 40 journal or conference publications with his undergraduate researchers. The number of undergraduates mentored, the high quality of the student accomplishments, and the regular, annual placement of his students in top-tier Ph.D. programs over the past decade, demonstrates not only the success of his approach but also his energy, dedication, and vision for his students.
Marie desJardins is an associate dean of engineering and information technology and a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research is in the area of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer science education. Currently, her research group includes six undergraduates and five graduate students. Since 2005, she has mentored over 70 undergraduate students. At least 29 of them have enrolled in graduate programs in computing, with 8 of the 29 having pursued a Ph.D. in computer science.
Many of the undergraduates Marie has mentored never imagined that they would be involved in research and consider graduate education. Marie’s strategy for working with undergraduate majors involves engaging with students in their first two years and building teams in which her more senior research students (graduate and undergraduate) help train and lead the junior students. She is known for her unconditional support, encouragement, and dedication. She encourages students from underrepresented minorities to get involved with national organizations and programs, including CRA-W, NCWIT, Grace Hopper, IJCAI and AAAI. She stays in touch with her mentees beyond their graduation, and she has helped some to become effective mentors themselves.
Judy Goldsmith is a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky. Her research is in the area of artificial intelligence and theory of computation. She is dedicated to promoting participation of underrepresented groups, especially women, not only at University of Kentucky, but also other institutions in the state. Judy has mentored over 25 undergraduate students, involving them in her research program or in software projects. In the last 10 years, four of her mentored students have enrolled in Ph.D. programs in computer science.
Judy’s mentoring approach is influenced by the diversity of students she encounters. Many students have worked to put themselves through college, are the first in their family to attend college, and may not know why one would attend graduate school. Judy gives attention to students in and outside of her classroom and provides an active model of mentoring. She works tirelessly on personalized ways to excite them about research, attract them to her research program and, most importantly, retain them. Her weekly AI Seminar doubles as a key mentoring experience for undergraduates. She provides all with a window into academic research and stresses the importance of professional training in conduct and engagement.
