Department of Computer Science

Tian Han, assistant professor of computer science at Stevens, recently received a five-year, $599,729 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award program to explore generative AI.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.

Han aims to overcome three of the most significant hurdles regarding generative AI, which leverages advanced learning models to generate content such as articulate text and realistic images and videos.

“First, we will work to extract useful information from high-dimensional data such as images or text to learn structured knowledge for smart generative AI models,” said Han. “Then we will create controllable models that allow users to adjust both the models and the results, such as tweaking the intensity of a smile or adding a hat in a photo. Finally, we will design general, flexible frameworks that can simultaneously process data from different domains, such as text and images, to deliver consistent content.”

The grant also includes funding to train undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. students. Research topics and findings will be used to further strengthen the AI curriculum at Stevens to continue to help lead the future of generative AI.

The Department of Computer Science’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) plan has been verified by the BPCnet Resource Portal. The BPCnet Resource Portal is an initiative by the Computing Research Association with support from the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

Effective January 2024 through January 2026, the BPC plan seeks to improve diversity within the department through active recruiting and outreach efforts. In accordance with regional demographics, the plan focuses especially on increasing three historically underrepresented groups: women, Black and Hispanic students and faculty.

Additional goals include increasing academic, career and professional development activities and supports for historically underrepresented groups; exploring curricular and pedagogical changes to better support historically underrepresented students; and implementing processes for improving transparency, equity and addressing bias.

Under the leadership of Professor and Department Chair Dave Naumann, the Department of Computer Science is the first department at Stevens to receive BPC approval. Of Stevens’ approximately 9000 students, roughly 20% are pursuing degrees in the computer science department.

Teaching Assistant Professor Erisa Terolli led the plan's creation. She is also a member of the Stevens Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee.

Samantha Kleinberg, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been appointed as the Farber Chair Associate Professor for a three-year term, effective September 1, 2023. This appointment has been made in recognition of Kleinberg’s excellence in scholarly activities and quality of teaching, as well as her significant contributions to Stevens and her field of expertise.

Since joining Stevens in 2012, Kleinberg has developed an international reputation as a leader in interdisciplinary work on causality, health and decision-making, as evidenced by 60 invited talks (21 international in nine countries), $8 million in funding as PI, two international collaborations, a best paper award, two books and an interdisciplinary edited volume. Her active research awards include three National Institute of Health grants and three National Science Foundation grants.

Her research uses computational methods to address problems in health, and it aims to advance human health by helping doctors and patients make better choices with data. In addition to the core impact on society, this has led to impact in other fields such as philosophy, psychology and biomedical sciences.

Team NAM (Never Alone with Me) of the Department of Computer Science have placed second in the fifth annual Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge, sponsored by Amazon.

Advised by Assistant Professor Jia Xu and assisted by postdoctoral fellow Abdul Rafae Khan, the team was awarded a $50,000 prize, in addition to the $250,000 research grant they’d earned to compete in the competition. Final team members included first-year master’s students João Luís Lins Rodrigues Cruz, Sai Nikhil Reddy Maligireddy, Abhijeet Gusain and Yeshwanth Reddy Peddamallu.

The Stevens team was selected in August 2023 as one of only five teams to compete in the final round of the university challenge competition, which focuses on creating a socialbot that easily and clearly chats with users on trending topics and news for 20 minutes.

The student’s interactive socialbot, which is an artificial intelligence-based system capable of interacting with a user conversationally through text and images, was released to the public via Amazon Alexa devices and apps, allowing them to gather feedback directly from customers in order to refine their approach. Capable of learning through interaction, the NAM socialbot was designed to ask clarifying or follow-up questions in order to clear up conversational confusion or uncertainty. The final evaluation was performed by judges interacting on a screen-equipped device in a closed session.