UCSB Computer Science Department

Good food, great code, better company! 🍔 🔥 Here’s a quick look back at all the fun from our recent CS Fall BBQ. It was great seeing our students, faculty, and staff come together to enjoy good food, great conversations, and celebrate the new school year! 💙 💛 #UCSB #ComputerScience #GauchoPride

Congrats to CS Prof. Xin (Eric) Wang on securing 3 new awards ($180K+ total) to advance practical, efficient & proactive AI agents! 🏆✨ 🔹 3rd consecutive @cisco.com Research Award 🔹 UCSB IEE Software Impact Grant 🔹 UCSB Academic Senate Grant #UCSB #AI #MachineLearning #CiscoResearch #AgenticAI

Love programming? 💻 The UCSB ICPC Local Contest is this Sunday, Oct. 25 in Phelps 3526. Registration closes Oct. 22 at midnight! Top teams advance to the SoCal Regionals on Nov. 7! 🏆 Register now: cs.ucsb.edu/~daniello/ic... #UCSB #ComputerScience #ICPC #CompetitiveProgramming

CS Gauchos take Seattle!🌲 Dept. Chair Divyakant Agrawal recently reconnected with 15 alumni (spanning 25 years of CS history) for an impromptu dinner! Seattle Alumni — Join the new CS Seattle Alumni LinkedIn group: www.linkedin.com/groups/40973... 💙💛 #UCSB #ComputerScience #Alumni

Thanks #NSF for granting us a $1M award to advance the mathematical foundations of AI! W/ @haewonjeong.bsky.social Yao Q Sanjukta K, we will study how AI learns higher-order interactions in physical systems. From 🌠 stars in galaxies to 🧠 neurons in the brain! @ucsbengineering.bsky.social

Calling all CS and CE students! Join ACM at UCSB tomorrow for an info session with Arista Networks! Meet their team, explore internships and full-time opportunities, and enjoy free pizza! 🍕 Oct. 14 | 12–1 PM | Henley Hall 1010 No registration required! #UCSB #ComputerScience #ACM #TechCareers

Big news! 🎉 CS faculty receive a $1 million NSF award to develop AI that uncovers the scientific laws governing complex systems. This also marks the first federal grant for UCSB's Real AI initiative! 🏆 Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AIResearch #NSF #WomenInSTEM

Big news! 🎉 UCSB's new undergraduate BS degree in AI is officially here — and the inaugural cohort just kicked off their freshman seminar with renowned AI researcher Professor Xifeng Yan! 🤖 Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AI #AIEducation #FutureOfAI

Is AI reshaping the internet and human mind simultaneously? 🤔 Join CS Professor Arpit Gupta & CS Affiliate Miguel Eckstein at the UCSB Library's next AI in Action Lecture on 9/29 at 4 PM to learn more! 🌐 🧠 Read more 🔗 news.ucsb.edu/2026/022806/... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AI #AgenticAI #AIinAction

Today at 3:30 p.m. is our colloquium on phylogenetic networks with Dr. Tandy Warnow! 🧬 She will introduce CAMUS, a breakthrough method that estimates networks with unprecedented speed and scalability! Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/index.php/ha... #ComputerScience #Bioinformatics #Phylogenetics #STEM

Every CGI film you've watched was shaped by research done at UCSB! 🎬 CS Affiliate Prof. Pradeep Sen and researchers received ACM SIGGRAPH's Test of Time Award for their pioneering 2015 paper. Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #ML #ComputerGraphics #SIGGRAPH

A new study in Neuron, co-first authored by @jacobgranley.bsky.social from @bionicvisionlab.org, with @ethz.ch and @umh.es, is using AI to design smarter, more accurate stimulation for blind patients. www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social #ComputerScience #Neurotech

Researchers from three institutions, including #UCSB, have demonstrated that artificial intelligence has the potential to make future visual prostheses, like a bionic eye, more precise, predictable and responsive to an individual user 👁️ Full story: https://ow.ly/XYKX50ZxM6V

Congrats to @pconrad.bsky.social and co-authors Aileen Tang, Christopher Hundhausen, Kevin Buffardi, and Summit Haque! 🏆 Their paper, “What Makes a Good Commit? A Delphi Study,” received a Best Paper Award at #CSEET2026. Learn more: cseet26.techconf.org/track/award #UCSB #ComputerScience

The overlap was caught at UCSB. Yao-Ting Lin, a doctoral student advised by Ananth, got a draft from MIT's Seyoon Ragavan the same afternoon he heard about the second proof in a meeting. He connected them before either paper was public. #Cryptography #QuantumComputing

Three hours and eighteen minutes apart, two teams posted proofs of the same open quantum encryption problem—both credit the same AI model with the core idea. UCSB's Prabhanjan Ananth co-authored the first! 🔐 www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #QuantumCryptography

A split second separates reacting from colliding! UCSB postdoc @mariusschneider.bsky.social earns $94K from Zaleski Discovery Award to build neuromorphic wearables that warn blind travelers in time⚡ Link: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AssistiveTech #NeuromorphicComputing

Congrats to our ACTION AI Institute for wrapping up its 3rd annual Review & Knowledge Expo on June 25–26! Representatives from all 12 ACTION campuses and partners from NSF, DHS, and IBM celebrated a year of breakthroughs in AI cybersecurity and trustworthy systems💡 #UCSB #ActionAI #AIResearch

What a showcase! 🎉 On June 5th, @ucsb_cs held our annual Undergrad Research Showcase, recognizing students' incredible work in quantum networks, watermarking, server workload architectures, and more. Congrats to all our presenters! 👏 #UCSB #ComputerScience #UndergradResearch

Congrats to Teaching Prof. Diba Mirza on being selected for CRA’s 2026 Emerging Leaders Cohort! 🎉 This national cohort recognizes rising leaders in computing research and connects them with senior leaders. We're proud to share this recognition! 💙💛 #UCSB #ComputerScience #WomenInComputing #CRA

The 2026 UCSB Computer Science Awards Ceremony celebrated outstanding achievements in research, teaching, mentorship, leadership, entrepreneurship, and service. Here's the full list of awards and recipients: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #STEM #Research #StudentSuccess

Congrats to CS student Sammy Lesner, recipient of the UCSB College of Engineering's 2026 Tirrell Award for Distinction in Undergraduate Research! 🎉 Her work has yielded publications at #SIGIR & #SIGCSE 2026 on search-engine design and computer science eduction! #UCSB #CompSci #UndergradResearch

Big news! 🎉 CS Asst. Prof. Murphy Niu has been awarded a $2 million DARPA grant as part of a multi-institutional team through the HARQ Program. UCSB is helping develop cross-platform error correction protocols to create scalable quantum computing and communication. #UCSB #QuantumComputing #DARPA

A 100x speedup in encrypted LLM token sampling: UCSB grad students and faculty will present Hyperion at ACL 2026 in San Diego. Full article: eprint.iacr.org/2025/2318 #UCSB #ComputerScience #NLP #MachineLearning #Privacy #ACL2026

UCSB's first fully online master's degree launches in Fall 2027.🎓 The Master of Engineering and Technology Leadership (METL) covers semiconductors, quantum computing, AI/ML, and tech management with CS faculty Wenbo Guo, B.S. Manjunath, Murphy Yuezhen Niu, and Ambuj Singh.

UCSB's Dahlia Malkhi elected Fellow of the CBER Forum, joining blockchain scholars from Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Duke as one of the few computer scientists in the cohort. She'll present "Byzantine Consensus in the Lens of Blockchains" at their annual conference on June 4.

Big congratulations to our 2026 Academic Senate award recipients! 🎉 We’re proud to celebrate their impact on teaching, mentorship, and student success at UCSB CS 💙💛 Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AcademicExcellence

Hundreds of qubits but quantum advantage remains elusive. @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social conference brings together researchers from Harvard, MIT, Google, and more to explore what's possible before fault tolerance. More info: www.kitp.ucsb.edu/activities/n... #UCSB #ComputerScience #KITP #QuantumAdvantage

To minimize the 50% of students across the country who switch out from their engineering major before graduating, UCSB's Integrated Networking, Scholarship and Peer Interaction for First-Year Engineers (INSPIRE) program provides support, seminars, guidance and mentorship💡 https://ow.ly/wmIb50YS5Hj

The next installment of our AI Foundations & Frontiers Series challenges us to rethink how humans and AI collaborate in Spatial Human–AI Interaction💡 Join April 29 3:30–4:30 PM in HFH 1132 or Zoom. More info: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #SpatialAI #XR @ucsb.bsky.social

Exciting things happening next week! Six undergraduate researchers from the Embedded Ethics Lab are presenting three talks and one panel at UCSB's campus-wide AI CoP Symposium on April 28-29. Read more: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... #UCSB #ComputerScience #UndergradResearch #EmbeddedEthics #AI

UCSB CS students just wrapped Capstone Day: presenting AI-powered healthcare tools, a stroke rehab smartwatch app, and a hospital safety system built alongside eight industry sponsors. Read more: www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #Capstone #HealthTech #AI #ComputerEngineering

6.9 million Bitcoin sit in wallets most exposed to a future quantum attack, per the Coinbase Quantum Advisory Board's first position paper, out today. UCSB's @Dahlia Malkhi is a board member: tinyurl.com/35nuzvn2 #UCSB #ComputerScience #QuantumComputing #Blockchain #Cryptography #Coinbase #Crypto

UCSB CS is shining at #ICLR2026! Multiple faculty papers were accepted (including one oral) spanning AI alignment, LLM safety, software benchmarking, and more. Congrats to all involved! www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... #UCSB #ComputerScience #AIResearch #LLM #VideoGeneration #AIBenchmarks

Team UCSB-WA is heading to the #ICPC World Finals in Dubai as the sole UC representative, after placing 16th at the North American Championship! One of the toughest programming competitions out there. Marking a big moment for #UCSB! @ucsb.bsky.social www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a...

Two Gauchos just earned NSF Graduate Research Fellowships: Naomi Rehman in computer architecture and AI, and Rohil Shah in time-aware search systems. Congrats to each student! www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #NSFGRFP #ComputerArchitecture #InformationRetrieval #WomenInSTEM

Congrats to Professor Yuheng Bu on receiving an NSF CAREER Award for foundational research on LLM watermarking that develops multi-bit methods with provable guarantees, moving well beyond binary AI detection. www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #NSFCareer #AIWatermarking #LLM

New this spring: AI Foundations and Frontiers, a weekly CS seminar series at UCSB. Six speakers, topics from adaptive LLM inference to spatial human-AI interaction. First talk TODAY with Prof. Xifeng Yan. www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #ArtificialIntelligence

🚀 UCSB's new B.S. in Artificial Intelligence has its own home. First cohort starts Fall 2026! 🔗 Explore the program at ai.cs.ucsb.edu. #UCSB #ComputerScience #AI #AIEducation #MachineLearning #DeepLearning #ResponsibleAI #ComputerVision #NLP #STEM

🎉 UCSB Give Day 2026 is here! Support the next generation of innovators at UCSB Computer Science. Every gift—big or small—makes a difference. 💙💛 🔗 Donate today: giveday.ucsb.edu/giving-day/1... #UCSB #UCSBGiveDay #GiveDay2026 #GoGauchos @ucsb.bsky.social @ucsbengineering.bsky.social

Did you know we have a nationally ranked game design program at UCSB? According to The Princeton Review, UCSB's undergrad program in game design studies is one of the top 50 in the U.S., coming in at #28 overall & #4 on the undergraduate West list: https://ow.ly/3hmX50YF7jH

After year 2, @ucsb.bsky.social's NSF-funded INSPIRE program saw 0 attrition among its first-year engineering cohort—compared to a previous 10% loss —led in part by CS faculty Elizabeth Belding and Diba Mirza. www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a... #UCSB #ComputerScience #StudentRetention #STEM #FirstGen

@ucsb-cs.bsky.social at #CHI2026: 6 papers, 1 Best Paper 🏆 From #AR that works on real bodies, to systems that shape bodily action, to programmable fabrication (DeltaXY Best Paper)—the common thread: computing is getting physical. programs.sigchi.org/chi/2026/peo... Come find us in Barcelona!

Our own Eric Wang (@ericxw.bsky.social) is speaking at the Library’s #AI in Action series. “Building AI Agents that Reason, Act, and Evolve” → not just chatbots, but systems that actually do things. 🗓 Apr 9, 4–5 PM 📍 #UCSB Library Register to attend here: www.library.ucsb.edu/events-exhib...

Last month, UCSB library launched the "AI in Action" series 🔬 The next event takes place April 9. "It aims to foster an open, interdisciplinary community exploring how AI can deepen understanding, expand access to knowledge and inspire new forms of scholarship." https://ow.ly/u33P50Yt3iF

At #IEEEVR2026, Prof. Tobias Höllerer argued for a simple idea: #AI should empower people, not make them dependent. #XR may be one of the best ways to get this right. #UCSB #HumanCenteredAI

@ucsb.bsky.social CS Chair & Distinguished Professor Divy Agrawal receives the 2026 ACM @sigmod2025.bsky.social Contributions Award—the field’s top honor for service & leadership. Transformative impact on both the conference and the community. Congrats Divy! Read more: cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/a...

University of California has topped the National Academy of Inventors list for the most U.S. utility patents 👉 #UCSB holds 389 active US patents, according to UCSB Office of Technology & Industry Alliances, which builds relationships between UCSB & industry collaborators: https://ow.ly/IjZZ50YxBz0

🎉 Congrats to @ucsb.bsky.social CS Associate Professor Arpit Gupta on being named a UC Presidential Faculty Fellow! As a fellow, he'll be working with government agencies to help inform implementation of the $42B BEAD Program. Read more: www.benton.org/blog/what-we... #PublicPolicy #BroadBand

Congratulations to 4 UCSB @ucsb.bsky.social students—Javin Zipkin, Gabriel Pizarro, Ziv Weissman, and Eirini Schoinas—for earning Honorable Mention in the 2026 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award! Read more: cra.org/crn/2026/01/... #UCSB #ComputerScience