Notable Computer Science Alumni from Rutgers University in Academia

Here are just a few of the alumni who graduated from Rutgers University with a PhD degree in Computer Science and went on to achieve international academic recognition in the form of Fellowships, Program Chair positions for conferences, members of editorial boards of distinguished journals, etc.

Elaine Weyuker [1977]

AT&T Fellow, AT&T Labs, Florham Park, NJ. — Researcher in Software Engineering, including software fault prediction, testing, and metrics. Formerly at the Courant Institute of NYU, she has received numerous honors, including being elected Member of US National Academy of Engineering, IEEE Fellow, and ACM Fellow. She also received the 2010 ACM Presidential Award, 2008 Anita Borg Institute Technical Leadership Award, 2007 ACM/SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award, and the 2004 IEEE Harlan D. Mills Award for Outstanding Research in Software Engineering. Dr. Weyuker is committed to increasing diversity in computing, and has been the Chair of the ACM Women's Council (ACM-W) since 2004, as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Coalition to Diversify Computing.

John Franco [1981]

Geier Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati — Researcher in algorithms, especially SAT solvers, their theory and application. Served formerly on the faculties of Case Western Reserve University and Indiana University. He is currently on the board of the Satisfiability Association, is a member of the steering committee for the series Symposia on the Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing and served as its Program Chair in 2010. He also serves in editorial capacity for the Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling, and Computation, and Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence

Barbara Ryder [1982]

J. Byron Maupin Professor of Engineering and Head, Dept. of Computer Science, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech. — Researcher in Software Engineering and Compiling, particularly static and dynamic program analyses for use in practical software tools. Formerly a professor at Rutgers University, she is an ACM Fellow, 2008 ACM Presidential Award winner, CRA-W Distinguished Professor, and 2001 ACM Distinguished Service Award winner. She is an active leader in ACM, serving as Vice President (2010-2012), Secretary/Treasurer (2008-2010) and ACM Council Member (2000-2008). Dr. Ryder has served in editorial capacity for journals such as Software, Practice and Experience, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. While at Rutgers, she graduated no fewer than 17 PhD students.

Ravi Sandhu [1983]

Professor, Lutcher Brown Endowed Chair in Cyber Security, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at San Antonio. — Researcher in Cyber Security, well-known for work on role-based access control mechanisms. Formerly a professor at Ohio State and George Mason Universities, he is an IEEE Fellow, ACM Fellow, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transaction on Dependable and Secure Computing, recipient of IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award and the 1992 and 1998 National Computer Security Conference Best Paper Awards.

Paul Utgoff [1984]

Professor (until his untimely death in 2008), Dept. of Computer Science, University of Massachussets, Amherst, MA. Researcher in Machine Learning, best known for work on incremental decision tree induction. He served in many organizational roles for the Int. Conf. on Machine Learning, including Chair, and in editorial capacity for the journal Machine Learning.

William Cohen [1990]

Associate Research Professor, Machine Learning Dept., Carnegie Mellon University. — Researcher in Artificial Intelligence, specifically machine learning, information extraction and text categorization. Formerly at AT&T/Bell Labs, he was elected a AAAI Fellow, served twice as Program co-Chair of the flagship International Machine Learning Conference, and served in editorial capacity for journals such as Artificial Intelligence, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and Machine Learning. He received the 2008 SIGMOD "Test of Time" Award for the most influential SIGMOD paper of 1998.

Sridhar Mahadevan [1990]

Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA — Researcher in Artificial Intelligence, in particular Machine Learning and Reinforcement Learning. He has been Area Chair for AAAI confernces, and Senior PC member for IJCAI and ICML conferences, as well as serving in editorial capacity for the journals Machine Learning, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and Journal of Machine Learning Research. He received best paper honorable mention at the 16th Int. Conf. on Machine Learning.

Prasad Tadepalli [1990]

Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Oregon State University. — Researcher in Machine Learning. He was chosen Program Chair for the Int. Conf. on Inductive Logic Programming, Area Chair and Senior Program Committee member for ICML and AAAI, as well as serving in editorial capacity for the journal Machine Learning, the Encyclopedia of Machine Learning, and Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.

Tao Yang [1993]

Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, University of California Santa Barbara. — Researcher in parallel and distributed systems, Internet search, and high performance scientific computing. Among many others, he served as area chair for the 33rd International Conference on Parallel Processing (2004), and in editorial capacity for the Journal of Computer Science and Technology, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, and the Journal of Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science. From 2000 to 2010, he was the Chief Scientist, Vice President of Search Engineering, and Senior Vice President for Ask.com, Ask Jeeves, and Teoma and he co-lead the research and development of ASK search engine, the fourth largest search engine in USA.

Prem Devanbu [1994]

Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, UC Davis, CA. — Researcher in Software Engineering. Formerly at AT&T/Bell Labs, he served as Program Chair for the premier Software Engineering conferences, Int. Conf. on Software Engineering (ICSE'10) and Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE'06), and in editorial capacity for the IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, and Empirical Software Engineering Journal. He has won best paper/distinguished paper awards at the 2010 Conf. on Mining Software Repositories, 2009 and 2004 ICSE Conferences, and was runner-up for the "ICSE 1992 Ten-year Most Influential Paper Award".

Ileana Streinu [1994]

Charles N. Clark Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics, Smith College; and Five Colleges 40th Anniversary Professor 2008-2011. — Researcher in Computational and Combinatorial Geometry, with applications, among others, in molecular biology. She received the 2004 Moisil Prize of the Romanian Academy, in Theoretical Computer Science and the 2010 Robbins Prize of the American Mathematical Society. She was Program Chair of the 16th Fall Workshop on Computational Geometry, and served in editorial capacity for major journals such as Discrete and Computational Geometry and Contributions to Discrete Mathematics.

Valerie Barr [1996]

Professor and Chair, Dept. of Computer Science, Union College, Schenectady, NY. — Researcher in Software Testing and Computer Science education. Formerly at Hofstra University, she has been Program co-Chair for the FLAIRS conference, and editor of a special issue of International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools.

 

Deborah McGuinness [1996]

Professor, Tetherless World Constellation endowed chair, Dept. of Computer Science and Cognitive Science Dept., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). — Researcher in Semantic Web and Ontologies, especially languages, environments and applications. Formerly Acting Director of the Knowledge Systems AI Lab at Stanford University, and researcher at AT&T/Bell Labs, she was Program co-Chair of the AAAI Conference, the International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation, and the International Semantic Web Workshop/Conference, also serving in editorial capacity for journals such as ACM Transactions on Internet Technology..