School Continues Award-Winning Trend in 2023-2024 Academic Year

The College of Computing’s countdown to commencement began on April 11 when students, faculty, and staff converged at the 33rd Annual Awards Celebration.

The banquet celebrated the college community for an exemplary academic year and recognized the most distinguished individuals of 2023-2024. For Alex Orso, the reception was a high-water mark in his role as interim dean. 

“I always say that the best part about my job is to brag about the achievements and accolades of my colleagues,” said Orso.

“It is my distinct honor and privilege to recognize these award winners and the collective success of the College of Computing.”

Orso’s colleagues from the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) were among the celebration’s honorees. School of CSE students, faculty, and alumni earning awards this year include:

• Grace Driskill, M.S. CSE student - The Donald V. Jackson Fellowship
• Harshvardhan Baldwa, M.S. CSE student - The Marshal D. Williamson Fellowship
• Mansi Phute, M.S. CS student- The Marshal D. Williamson Fellowship
• Assistant Professor Chao Zhang- Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award
• Nazanin Tabatbaei, teaching assistant in Associate Professor Polo Chau’s CSE 6242 Data & Visual Analytics course- Outstanding Instructional Associate Teaching Award 
• Rodrigo Borela (Ph.D. CSE-CEE 2021), School of Computing Instruction Lecturer and CSE program alumnus - William D. "Bill" Leahy Jr. Outstanding Instructor Award
• Pratham Mehta, undergraduate student in Chau’s research group- Outstanding Legacy Leadership Award
• Alexander Rodriguez (Ph.D. CS 2023), School of CSE alumnus - Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

At the Institute level, Georgia Tech recognized Driskill, Baldwa, and Phute for their awards on April 10 at the annual Student Honors Celebration.

Driskill’s classroom achievement earned her a spot on the 2024 All-ACC Indoor Track and Field Academic Team. This follows her selection for the 2023 All-ACC Academic Team for cross country. 

Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning released in summer 2023 the Class of 1934 Honor Roll for spring semester courses. School of CSE awardees included Assistant Professor Srijan Kumar (CSE 6240: Web Search & Text Mining), Lecturer Max Mahdi Roozbahani (CS 4641: Machine Learning), and alumnus Mengmeng Liu (CSE 6242: Data & Visual Analytics).

Accolades and recognition of School of CSE researchers for 2023-2024 expounded off campus as well.

School of CSE researchers received awards off campus throughout the year, a testament to the reach and impact of their work.

School of CSE Ph.D. student Gaurav Verma kicked off the year by receiving the J.P. Morgan Chase AI Research Ph.D. Fellowship. Verma was one of only 13 awardees from around the world selected for the 2023 class.

At the end of the year, the National Science Foundation announced that School of CSE Ph.D. student Alec Helbling and undergraduate Mihir Birfna won Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) awards. Helbling studies machine learning in Chau’s group, and Birfna studies computer science under Xiuwei Zhang, J.Z. Liang Early-Career assistant professor in the School of CSE.

Along with seeing many of his students receive awards this year, Polo Chau attained a 2023 Google Award for Inclusion Research. Later in the year, the Institute promoted Chau to professor, which takes effect in the 2024-2025 academic year. 

Schmidt Sciences selected School of CSE Assistant Professor Kai Wang as an AI2050 Early Career Fellow to advance artificial intelligence research for social good. By being part of the fellowship’s second cohort, Wang is the first ever Georgia Tech faculty to receive the award.

School of CSE Assistant Professor Yunan Luo received two significant awards to advance his work in computational biology. First, Luo received the Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health, which provides $1.8 million in funding for five years. Next, he received the 2023 Molecule Make Lab Institute (MMLI) seed grant.

Regents’ Professor Surya Kalidindi, jointly appointed with the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of CSE, was named a fellow to the 2023 class of the Department of Defense’s Laboratory-University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI).

2023-2024 was a monumental year for Assistant Professor Elizabeth Qian, jointly appointed with the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and the School of CSE.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research selected Qian for the 2024 class of their Young Investigator Program. Earlier in the year, she received a grant under the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots Initiative.

Qian began the year by joining 81 other early-career engineers at the National Academy of Engineering’s Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2023 Symposium. She also received the Hans Fischer Fellowship from the Institute for Advance Study at the Technical University of Munich.

It was a big academic year for Associate Professor Elizabeth Cherry. Cherry was reelected to a three-year term as a council member-at-large of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Cherry is also co-chair of the SIAM organizing committee for next year’s Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE25).

Cherry continues to serve as the School of CSE’s associate chair for academic affairs. These leadership contributions led to her being named to the 2024 ACC Academic Leaders Network (ACC ALN) Fellows program.

School of CSE Professor and Associate Chair Edmond Chow was co-author of a paper that received the Test of Time Award at Supercomputing 2023 (SC23). Right before SC23, Chow’s Ph.D. student Hua Huang was selected as an honorable mention for the 2023 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship.