Computer and Information Science @ Penn Engineering

In January 2022, the Comp Info Sci department will welcome Andrew Head as an Assistant Professor. Andrew, who will be starting a Penn HCI (Human Computer Interaction) Group with associate new hire Danaë Metaxa, mainly focuses on helping others express their work fluidly and efficiently.

“My particular sliver of Human Computer Interaction: I work on designing interactive systems that help scientists, and data scientists and programmers,” said Head. “Essentially I want to improve the interactions that we have to support programming, writing and the sharing of expertise.”

Andrew first discovered his interest in HCI soon after graduating college and realizing that the prevailing field of technical learning tools was kind of lacking.

“When I started out with my PhD, I really wanted to be able to equip people with better tools to be able to communicate the learnings that they got from their everyday work — with other people,” said Head. “I see each of the projects that I work on as being this different incarnation of this basic idea: how can we help people work together with computers, who know about their work, and what went into it, and the history of it, and all the little dependencies between it, and be able to shape it up in a form and be able to share it with other people and empower them.”

One example Andrew gives the example is a recent project he worked on that allowed people who built video games to deconstruct the code, and augment it with input and explanations, in order to teach others how they did it.

In addition to the appeal of all sharing resources with the renown faculty already teaching in the department, Andrew also decided to join the Penn team because of his desire to literally teach his passions to others.

“I know from talking with a bunch of the students, there’s a lot of interest for this style of work,” said Head. “Seeing that it would both be a fertile ground for bringing the things that I really love about research to a broader audience, I knew that there would also be a receptive set of awesome researchers across the department to work on these cross-disciplinary projects.”

Andrew and Danaë also plan to create and HCI speaker series in Fall 2022 so that students across the department can learn more about HCI from active researchers in the field.

When asked what made them passionate about the work that they do, Danaë Metaxa describes an intrinsic calling to look to the needs of those that scientific design and application neglects.

“If you’re the type of person that exists at some of those intersections, as I am, you start to see the ways in which those assumptions that system designers or that developers have made, they don’t serve you.” said Metaxa. “You start realizing the limitations of those approaches and the short-sightedness, or even active exclusion, of different types of people. And I think once you notice that, at least for me, as soon as I became attuned to that, it was really hard to look away.”

Metaxa, who recently successfully defended their dissertation at Stanford, is slated to join the Comp Info Sci Department in January 2022 as an assistant professor. They worked in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Group while at Stanford, and plan to co-found a new Penn HCI Group with fellow new hire Andrew Head.

“In my research, I develop and deploy methods for studying bias and representation in algorithms and algorithmic content, focusing on high-stakes social settings like politics and employment, and on the experiences of marginalized people,” according to Metaxa’s professional site. “The work I do spans identifying biases in existing systems through building interventions or new systems that try to remedy some of those.”

While at Stanford, they were advised by a computer scientist as well as a communications scholar while completing their P.h.D., and will take on a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication when they start in the Fall. Metaxa cites Penn’s cross-curricular emphasis as a huge factor in deciding to join the Comp Info Sci team.

“I think there’s a lot of places that talk about interdisciplinarity, but there aren’t as many that follow that up in their actions, and show that that’s actually a central value,” said Metaxa. “Something that I’ve loved as grad student at Stanford has been just the strength of the other students around me, even when they do things that are totally different from what I do, because it lets me learn and grow in new and unexpected ways. And Penn — the overall multifaceted strengths of the University — have been a big appeal for me.”

Going forward, in addition to designing a series of HCI classes for the Penn community, Metaxa also plans to engage more with the practical applications of these technologies in the political sphere.

“I think that, unfortunately, there’s a lack of technical expertise in a lot of our government,” said Metaxa. “So it’s really important that lawmakers and policymakers have technologists to work with, and also, as technologists, that we have that broader impact lense, and consider the political and social and environmental context of the work that we do.”

Courtesy of Penn Engineering Online Learning:

“We are excited to announce the Spring 2021 winners for the Outstanding TA Awards! We are continually amazed at the level of dedication from our TA staff at MCIT Online, we truly appreciate their contributions in delivering a supportive experience for our students. As selected by their students, peers and faculty, please join us in congratulating this semester’s Outstanding TAs for their commitment in leadership and student support. We thank you for a great semester!”

Learn more about these wonderful students at the MCIT Online TA Awards site.

Annual awards are given to undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Computer and Information Science in recognition of outstanding scholarly achievements and service to the School of Engineering and Applied Science and University community. Departments select each recipient and students are recognized at the Annual Awards Recognition Dinner held during the spring semester. Students also select faculty recipients of the annual Penn Engineering Teaching and Advising Awards each year.

The Department is proud to present its 2021 recipients!

Click here to view the brand new student awards page.

April 21, 2021, 3-4PM

Join the Machine Learning Research team at Morgan Stanley for an exciting interactive research talk!

Find out more info below, and register HERE.

The Computer and Information Science Department is proud to present this year’s student award winners:

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Undergraduate Affairs Committee Awards:
Manfred Altman Memorial Award – Vishaal Kumar

Ben and Bertha Gomberg Kirsch Prize (Applied Science Prize) – Arun Kirubarajan

The Albert P. Godsho Engineering Prize – Pedro Sacramento de Oliveira

M&T Award – Liana Patel

The Hugo Otto Wolf Memorial Prize – Caroline Evans and Jose A. Mendez

Moore School Awards:
John Grist Brainerd Award – Eric Wang
E. Stuart Eichert, Jr. Memorial Prize – Tirtha Kharel
Walter Korn Award – Anshul Tripathi

Departmental Awards:
Computer Science Award – Allison Smith

Exceptional Service Awards (Faculty Appreciation):

1. Michael Abelar
2. Hannah Pan
3. Zhilei Zheng
4. Varun Ramakrishnan
5. Michael Song
6. Jules Pierce
7. Eugene Enclona
8. Desiree Penaranda

Imagine a world in which the robots we see dancing on viral videos do so, not because they were programmed to, but because they had seen it in a video. Computer Science PhD alumnus Georgios Pavlakos seeks to help make this a reality.

The current BAIR postdoc has received the 2021 Morris and Dorothy Rubinoff Award for his project titled “Learning to Reconstruct 3D Humans,” advised by Professor Kostas Daniilidis. The School of Engineering and Applied Science presents this award yearly “to a graduate degree candidate whose dissertation has resulted in or could lead to innovative applications of computer technology.”

“The goal is to make systems [that are] automatically able to perceive the human pose, humans from images, the way a human would,” said Pavlakos. “We started with more coarse representations, using just the hip points to represent the main joints of the human body, then increasing the detail, reconstructing the full surface of the body, and then finally, going into even more detail and expressive representations.”

The findings of such work can mean amazing breakthroughs in the realm of American Sign Language interpretation. A system would be able to look at the video, translate the human pose, and then map that pose to language, according to Pavlakos. Successful practical application of the research would also produce the opposite: a system able to translate language into real-time model animations.

Although the work is relatively far from these solid outcomes, crucial foundations have been laid.

“We can capture facial expressions, we can capture hand gestures,” said Pavlakos. “These are crucial to get the subtleties of sign language.”

Pavlakos has always been excited by the possibility of creating systems that can perceive human physicality without hardcode, but Kostas Daniilidis has made this particular project possible.

“This came from the excitement of my advisor, Kostas Dan***,” said Pavlakos. “This was a line of work and direction that he was always very excited about, a line of work that was active in the lab.”

The possible practical applications, as well as the thrill of scaling empirical mountains, is what continues to reel him in.

“The pure challenge of the problem, scientifically, and the excitement of the things that you can do with a system like that: this kind of problem used to always amaze me,” said Pavlakos. “And it still does. “

Click here to view the full dissertation.

Raj and Neera Singh Term Assistant Professor Sebastian Angel is the latest in a line of astute educators to be granted funding through the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program.

Angel and his team received the funds, roughly $125k received to date, to continue research on their project “Tools for building online services that hide metadata“.

“The project is all about finding different ways to give companies the tools that they need so they can continue to operate as they do today, but without having to acquire as much information about users,” said Angel. “For example, how can we build social networks where Facebook doesn’t have to know everything about you or your friends.”

According to the project abstract, although it is “grounded by the needs of companies, this project designs algorithms, tools, and infrastructure to help services continue to work without accessing or collecting certain metadata (e.g., the social graph), limiting the harm of data breaches and insider attacks.”

While benefits to the user that include both comfort and security are apparent, the next phase of the project will hone in on benefits for companies, said Angel. Tracking these metrics is profitable for companies for many reasons.

“One reason they do this is because they want to get a better understanding of what content is popular, so they can promote it,” said Angel. “The point of this research is can we still allow companies to provide relevant advertising, to figure out which sites or which articles are popular, without the provider necessarily learning information about individuals.”

The research aims to confront the challenge of scaling up, as well as one more specific: “how much information can we actually give [companies], while still providing strong privacy guarantees for users?” said Angel.

When the ideal balance is struck, users could possibly plug this work into their lives in many ways, including their streaming and online news experiences.

“You go to the New York Times and you want to read an article,” said Angel. “You might want to do that without revealing to the New York Times which article you’re reading.”

The next phase of the project, to be funded with this latest NSF grant, will focus on enticing companies with mockups of what their services could be.

“So now we’re working towards building this online advertising ecosystem,” said Angel. “Then we want to work on building versions of existing services that don’t require collecting metadata, but still work as users would expect.”

“Our hope is that once [companies] see that it is possible, that privacy and financial viability are not necessarily in tension, then they might be willing to employ some of our ideas.”

Kevin Johnson has been named the University of Pennsylvania’s 27th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor (PIK).

Professor Johnson joins a distinguished group of interdisciplinary educators who have been appointed to two or more Penn Schools since Pres. Amy Gutmann launched the PIK initiative in 2005. The program’s agenda: “to recruit to Penn renowned scholars whose work draws from two or more academic disciplines and whose achievements demonstrate a rare ability to thrive at the intersection of multiple fields.”

Johnson will start in November with joint appointments in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics (DBEI) and CIS, a secondary appointment with the Annenberg School for Communication, and will also serve as Vice President for Applied Informatics at UPHS and Professor of Pediatrics at CHOP.

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“Kevin Johnson is a gifted physician-scientist who has harnessed and aligned the power of medicine, engineering, and technology to improve the health of individuals and communities. He has championed the development and implementation of clinical information systems and artificial intelligence to drive medical research, encouraged the effective use of technology at the bedside, and empowered patients to use new tools to better understand how medications and supplements may affect their health. He is a board-certified pediatrician, and his commitment to patient health and welfare knows no age limits. In so many different settings, Kevin’s work is driving progress in patient care and improving our health care system. He is a perfect fit for Penn, where our goal is to create a maximally inclusive and integrated academic community to spur unprecedented global impact.”

Penn President Amy Gutmann, as featured in Penn Today

The past year has brought us no shortage of resourceful students and faculty developing tools to help mend the social rifts caused by the pandemic. In January, Vraj Shroff (MSE in SE, BSE in CSCI) and two of his teammates joined those ranks.

The 3 students developed a new website and app called Magic Connects. Earlier in the year, Shroff told the Daily Penn that the platform is “distinct from other popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Tinder, because it matches students based on their interests.”

The article reported that, at the time of publication, Magic Connects had received over 100 pre-registered students, one month before its launch. CIS decided to check in with a few of the platform users several months after its release for some feedback.

Varun Jana, Junior in CIS
“I actually don’t know of any other platform that kind of asked me about what kind of relationships I want and what kind of people I want to connect with. Magic Connects asked me if I want to meet the people from the same school or clubs or majors specifically.”

Joy Cai, Senior in Business
“You can do friendship, dating and professional connection and each of these relationships are concrete and already established so everyone knows why they’re there and there’s no ambiguity. It’s all one single platform, so it makes it all the more powerful because it’s convenient and it has multiple uses and all of the users are specified.”

Anannya Shandilya. Senior in Finance
“A lot of other media platforms like Facebook encouraged connection, but virtually. In Magic Connects it has this feature where we can select that, I want to meet people in my own university it’s kind of taking over that barrier, because once i’m connected with people, then I can share your meetings. I think that’s a really good advantage that’s not there on other platforms.”

Radhik Patel, Wharton ’22
“The reason that I joined Magic next is because I’m really interested in entrepreneurship and it’s really helped me connect with other students who have similar interests at different universities. I’m part of the entrepreneurship club, but that only limits me to the students that are here at Penn. I think the scale at which I can meet other individuals who are like-minded as me is something that certainly helped me meet new people and build my network.”

Vraj Shroff, Founder, shares key updates based on user feedback:
“I put a lot of thought in the security side of it and making sure it’s a secure and safe community when they’re using this platform. A few of my female friends told me they don’t feel secure sharing their location, so now, you can enter your location, rather than allowing your phone to access a location. Now you have to sign up with your school email so it’s not up to you to make sure there’s a real person on the other side of your phone, and you’re talking to a student.”