graduate awardees

View the 2023 Awards Ceremony slideshow.

2022-23 Graduate Student Campus Fellowship Awards

Selected for a Graduate Research Accelerator Fellowship

Yeganeh Aghamohammadi

Advisor: Jonathan Balkind

 

Selected for a Graduate Research Mentor Program Fellowship

Joyce Passananti

Advisor: Tobias Hollerer

 

Selected for a Graduate Research Accelerator Fellowship

Galen Pogoncheff

Advisor: Michael Beyeler

 

Selected for a Graduate Dissertation Fellowship

Yuke Wang

Advisor: Yufei Ding

 

UCSB 2023 University Award of Distinction

Alex Mei

Advisor: William Wang

This award is presented annually to graduating graduate students in recognition of excellence to students who have made an outstanding contribution to a particular area of UCSB student life and community activities. 

The awards recognize academic achievements along with in-depth or focused involvement and significant achievement in campus or community activities. 

Alex is involved in the CS Early Research Scholar Program (ERSP), as well as completing his own graduate research including publishing papers, and also has been an Undergraduate Learning Assistant and a Teaching Assistant for CS.

College of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Assistant

Junrui Liu

Advisor: Yu Feng 

This award is presented annually in recognition of excellence as a Teaching Assistant, as selected by the graduating seniors in Computer Science.

From students: “Junrui is one of the best TA's I've worked with throughout my undergrad. He always goes above and beyond in helping students. He is extremely accommodating with his office hours, going so far as to be available for whole days to help students with assignments. He is very patient when explaining difficult concepts and is always available and reachable over Slack. Without his help, I would not have enjoyed or learned as much from this class.”

Computer Science Outstanding TA Co-Award

Alex Mei

Advisor: William Wang

This award is presented annually in recognition of excellence as a Department of Computer Science Teaching Assistant.

From faculty: “Alex’s innovative approach to teaching is truly impressive… What sets Alex apart from other TAs is their unwavering commitment to student success. Alex is without a doubt the best TAI have had the privilege of working with in my 15 years in academia.”

From students: “He is always very clear and explains the questions completely. Alex is very responsive and designed great materials. He made sure to spend time with every student and answer all their questions. He explained things thoroughly and provided resources. He understood all the course material very well and was a great teacher. Alex was the best!”

Computer Science Outstanding TA Co-Award

Krushna Chirag Shah

Instructor: Lei Li

This award is presented annually in recognition of excellence as a Department of Computer Science Teaching Assistant.

From faculty: “Under her preparation and demonstration, we were able to run the machine problem and its automatic evaluation using gradescope platform and real datasets for training neural network models. Krushna completed a great effort in making the course better and helping our students learn more.”

From students: “Krushna did a great job teaching and her section was run well. She is amazing, patient and very nice. She is good at explaining ML concepts and terminology for homework.”

Computer Science Outstanding Publication Co-Award

Robert McLaughlin

Advisors: Christopher Kruegel and Giovanni Vigna

This award is presented annually in recognition of excellence as a main contributor of a paper accepted or published in 2022-23. 

Robert McLaughlin's paper, “A Large Scale Study of the Ethereum Arbitrage Ecosystem", appeared at USENIX Security 2023.

Co-authors: Christopher Kruegel and Giovanni Vigna

Computer Science Outstanding Publication Co-Award

Udit Paul

Advisor: Elizabeth Belding

This award is presented annually in recognition of excellence as a main contributor of a paper accepted or published in 2022-23.

Udit Paul's paper titled “The Importance of Contextualization of Crowdsourced Active Speed Test Measurements", received the Distinguished Paper Award at the 2022 ACM Internet Measurement Conference.

Co-authors: Jaimo Liu, Mengyang Gu, Arpit Gupta and Elizabeth Belding

Computer Science Outstanding Mentoring Award

Sharon Levy

Advisor: William Wang

This award is presented annually in recognition of significant contributions to mentoring undergraduate students.

From faculty: Sharon “has mentored a total of 14 undergraduate students for their Computer Science research in the last three years. By mentoring, I mean that every single week she devoted numerous hours of her time to talk to these students, and guide their research… Under her guidance, 9 students have published 5 papers at to computer science venues, which consistently have acceptance rates lower than 25%.”

From students: “Sharon excels by being responsive and always making time for her mentees for any questions we may have; she is willing to dive deep into technical issues that arise and frequently provides invaluable insights to help strengthen our research projects.”

Sharon also won the competitive 2023 UCSB Graduate Division Fiona & Michael Goodchild Campus Graduate Mentoring Award, which recognizes one PhD student each year campus-wide that has distinguished themselves as a mentor of undergraduates.

Computer Science Outstanding Dissertation Co-Award

Sharon Levy

Advisor: William Wang

This award is presented annually in recognition of a Ph.D. dissertation of technical excellence and high impact.

Thesis topic: “Responsible AI via Responsible Large Language Models”

Sharon is a leading scholar in the emerging area of Responsible AI with international reputations and she has published 16 top conference and journal papers at premier venues in Artificial Intelligence.

UCSB has acknowledged Sharon’s research with three distinct fellowship awards: the Regents Fellowship in Computer Science, the Holbrook Foundation Fellowship, and the Amazon Fellowship.

Sharon will complete a postdoc at Johns Hopkins in 2023 and has accepted an Assistant Professor position at Rutgers University in 2024.

Computer Science Outstanding Dissertation Co-Award

Udit Paul

Advisor: Elizabeth Belding

This award is presented annually in recognition of a Ph.D. dissertation of technical excellence and high impact.

Thesis topic: “Assessing the Presence and Extent of Digital Inequity”

Udit’s dissertation research is addressing critical and timely problems around digital inequity in the U.S. 

He developed a broadband-plan querying tool (BQT) and this work has revolutionized the ability to analyze Internet Service Provider’s (ISPs) pricing trends, discovering wide-scale digital redlining.

The information from his dissertation can arm residents, communities, and local governments with the data they need to challenge ISPs about over-stated coverage and poorly performing home connectivity. 

The Caitlin Scarberry Memorial Award: Computer Science BS/MS Student of the Year

Alex Mei

Advisor: William Wang

This award is presented annually in memory of Caitlin Scarberry, and in recognition of an outstanding BS/MS student who has excelled in their academics, research, teaching, and/or DEI.

Contributions:

Research: Alex has published two first-authored papers at top AI conferences with another THREE papers under review. He is by far the most passionate research student … [and will likely] become the most influential AI researcher in the history of our BS/MS classes

TA/ULA Performance: Alex has been a ULA/TA for 4 quarters: (for CS8, CS16, CS165B, and CS190I special topics). Alex is the best TA that I have experienced … at UCSB

Course Performance: he ranks #1 in his class with 4.0 GPA with mostly A+ in his courses.

Participation in DEI Related Activities: Alex spends more than 5-10 hours per week mentoring ERSP students, a program dedicated to promoting diversity in CS

Computer Science MS Student of the Year

Reeva Mishra

Advisor: Xifeng Yan

This award is presented annually in recognition of a Masters student who has excelled in both research and either department service or teaching

From faculty: ”Reeva was my TA for multiple quarters and is one of the best TAs I have ever had, her MS project was just mind blowing (she built this whole healthcare system herself). She has a 4.0 in our program with multiple A+ grades. She is a brilliant, kind, thoughtful, creative, and driven individual.“

“I learned from Reeva that you can do a master project in a way that is full of passion, leadership and great execution. I will take her project as a role model for my future MS projects.”

Computer Science PhD Student of the Year

Yanju Chen

Advisor: Yu Feng

This award is presented annually in recognition of a Ph.D. student who has excelled in both research and either department service or teaching

From faculty: “Yanju’s research is in the general field of software engineering (SWE) and programming languages (PL)… Yanju’s award-winning work has made outstanding contributions in tackling some of the key challenges in program synthesis.”

Yanju published ten papers in all of the top conferences in SWE and PL:  PLDI, OOPSLA, CAV, FSE, ASPLOS, and Security & Privacy.

He won the ACM SIGPLAN distinguished paper award at PLDI 2022.

He was the teaching assistant for a wide range of CS courses including a special topics course in program synthesis, PL, data structures, introductory programming, CS foundations, and an introductory CS course for non-majors