2nd Annual CS Research Expo Encourages Research Amongst Undergraduate Students
Last February, the UT Dallas Computer Science Department held the second Annual Computer Science Research Expo (CSREX) as a way to encourage undergraduate research. Computer Science students from around Texas and the Southwest submitted their research papers, posters, and software demos for the Expo. The Expo aimed to promote undergraduate research by having Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) undergraduate students present their research. Undergraduate UT Dallas CS/SE Students were especially encouraged to participate.
The 2016 CS Research Expo received twenty-one submissions, including several from students outside UT Dallas. Of those, fifteen submissions were selected to be presented at the Expo. Among the selected submissions, five were selected from schools outside of UT Dallas, including Louisiana State University (LSU), Kansas State University, California Polytechnic at San Luis Obispo, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the University of Houston. Notably, three of the UT Dallas student teams came from Drs. Linda Morales and Janell Straach’s Undergraduate Research course in Fall 2015 where students conducted research under the guidance of UT Dallas CS/SE faculty.
Presentations at the Undergraduate CS Research Expo were selected and judged by a program committee consisting of UT Dallas CS faculty including Prof. John Cole (chair), Prof. Shyam Karrah, Dr. Gopal Gupta, Dr. Zygmunt Haas, Dr. Ryan McMahan, Dr. Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, and Dr. Ovidiu Daescu.
The 15-minute student presentations in the morning and afternoon ranged from research papers to posters to software demos. Presentations covered a wide variety of topics in computer science including cyber security, computing theory, intelligent systems, interactive computing, networking, software engineering, and systems. The presentations subsequently were judged by the Program Committee aided by Dr. Khiem Le, UT Dallas CS professor. The Expo offered cash prizes of up to $5,000.
The expo also included a series of brief talks given by UT Dallas CS faculty members. Dr. Zygmunt Haas gave a short presentation on the importance of attaining a PhD and the advantages of obtaining a PhD from UT Dallas. Drs. Andrian Marcus, Sanda Harabagiu, Xiaohu Guo, Benjamin Raichel, Jason Jue, and Bhavani Thuraisingham highlighted research currently being conducted in areas of Cyber Security, Computer Systems, Software Engineering, Networking, Computing Theory, and Intelligent Systems groups, respectively, within the UT Dallas CS Department.
The winners of the 2015 Computer Science Expo were the following:
First Place – Improving CRISPR colorectal cancer prognostic measurements using algorithmic mining and Deep Learning (poster) – Vasu Jindal – UT DallasSecond Place – Experimental Study with Real-world Data for Android App Security Analysis using Machine Learning (paper) – Jordan DeLoach – Kansas State University
About the UT Dallas Computer Science Department
The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 1,600 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,100 master’s students, 160 PhD students, and 80 faculty members, as of Fall 2015. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.
