Category: Event

At The University of Texas at Dallas, computer science and software engineering students thrive in a vibrant, collaborative environment. HackUTD, the university’s premier hackathon, has grown from 120 participants in 2015 to over 1,200 today. It is now the largest hackathon in Texas and the second largest in the United States. HackUTD is more than a hackathon—it’s a playground for innovation where ideas turn into impactful creations.

A new book about trailblazing women in computer science highlights Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham’s journey, from growing up in Sri Lanka to becoming a respected academic at The University of Texas at Dallas and a renowned cybersecurity expert. Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W, published in April by the Association for Computing Machinery, celebrates the 30-year history […]

2024 Spring International Contest on Software Testing Software testing continues to be the primary approach used in practice to ensure the development of high-quality software. However, students graduating with a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in computer science or software engineering may not be properly trained for doing software testing cost-effectively. To increase the awareness […]

UT Dallas celebrated graduation this spring with each of the University’s eight schools hosting its own ceremony. Twelve ceremonies in all were held, along with a doctoral hooding ceremony presided over by the school’s respective deans. More than 5,100 students participated in all the ceremonies. A total of 2,847 bachelor’s, 2,487 master’s and 98 doctoral degrees were awarded.  

Out of a total of 1,320 degrees awarded in spring 2024 in the Jonsson School, 566 bachelor’s degrees, 310 master’s degrees and eight doctoral degrees were awarded to computer science (CS) and software engineering (SE) majors. Ujwal Sandeep Shah, master’s (MS) in computer science and Lillie McMaster, bachelor’s (BS) in software engineering, were the keynote speakers for the Jonsson School graduation ceremonies.

Our first interview (in a new spotlight series on UT Dallas computer science faculty) is with Dr. Kevin Hamlen, a Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Com­put­er Science at UT Dallas, and the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of UT Dallas’ Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Re­search and Edu­ca­tion In­sti­tute (CSI). His research interests involve lan­guage-based se­cu­ri­ty, which le­ver­ag­es pro­gram­ming lang­uage the­o­ry and com­pil­er de­sign to en­force soft­ware se­cu­ri­ty. His tech­ni­cal interests in­clude bi­na­ry soft­ware hard­en­ing, cy­ber ­de­cep­tion, mal­ware de­fense, cloud/​web/​mo­bile se­cu­ri­ty, mod­el-check­ing, au­to­mat­ed the­o­rem prov­ing, cer­ti­fy­ing com­pil­ers, and type-safe in­ter­me­di­ate lan­guag­es.

This past semester, the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI), in conjunction with the UT Dallas Department of Computer Science, virtually conducted its 13th Annual Texas Security Awareness Week (TexSAW 2024) event.

TexSAW 2024 consisted of a free online capture-the-flag (CTF) competition over two days. Because the contest was virtual this year, participation was registered and advertised on ctftime.org and gained nationwide as well as worldwide attention.

The Spring 2024 Grace Series ended its run with Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, UT Dallas Founders Chair Professor of Computer Science and the Founding Executive Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) at UT Dallas.

Coincidentally, Dr. Thuraisingham was also the first speaker for the Grace Series when it began in the fall of 2015. The Grace Series honors the contributions of real-life women and men in science with the goal of inspiring and encouraging more of them to pursue STEM careers.

Tell us about yourself! What is your story?

My name is Mansi Patel, and I am an undergraduate senior majoring in software engineering at UT Dallas, as well as a software engineering Fast Track student. After graduation, I plan to pursue a master’s degree in software engineering at the university. I am from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and have been a Texas resident my entire life! I enjoy painting, watching movies, and spending time with friends and family in my free time.

The third installment of the Spring 2024 Grace Series featured data scientist (and proud UT Dallas Computer Science alum) Dr. Maryam Imani, who spoke about “Navigating the Data Science Journey: Insights and Inspirations.”

Dr. Imani earned her PhD in Computer Science at UT Dallas in 2020. During her doctoral studies, Dr. Imani was primarily involved in the Big Data Analytics Lab, working with UT Dallas CS professors Latifur Khan and Bhavani Thuraisingham, focusing her research on areas such as natural language processing (NLP), applied machine learning, and big data.

Every semester, the UT Dallas Computer Science department hosts a lecture series called the Grace Series, with the goal of to inspire and empower everyone in computer science and all forms of STEM. The Grace Series honors the contributions of women in science with the goal of inspiring and encouraging more women to pursue STEM careers.