School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has named Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University, to the Information Science and Technology Study Group for a three-year term beginning this summer. The group brings 30 of the brightest scientists and engineers together to identify new areas of development in computer and communication technologies and to recommend future research directions.

Burnett is the second Oregon State member of the study group. Tom Dietterich, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, a part of the steering committee for the group.

“This is a chance to be a part of making a real impact together with some of the leading minds in science and technology, and change the world for the better,” Burnett said.

Burnett specializes in research at the intersection of human computer interaction and software engineering, and is known for her pioneering work in visual programming languages, end-user software engineering, and gender-inclusive software. She has received recognition from national organizations including the CHI Academy, the National Center for Women and Technology, ACM SIGSOFT, and IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

The Information Science and Technology Study Group was established by DARPA in 1987 to support its technology offices and provide continuing and independent assessment of the state of advanced information science and technology as it relates to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Lizhong Chen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, joins five others this year who were inducted into the Hall of Fame of the IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture. It is the top venue in the field and there are only 53 inductees in its 26-year history who meet the requirement of having at least eight publications accepted to the symposium.

“I feel honored, as most of the current members in the Hall of Fame are senior researchers who are IEEE and/or ACM Fellows,” said Chen. “I appreciate the recognition as it acknowledges my technical contribution to the computer architecture community in the past decade. It also helps to increase the visibility of Oregon State in this research field.”

Earlier this year, Chen received the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at the 2020 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture. He also received the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2018.

Chen is the founder and organizer of the Annual International Workshop on AI-Assisted Design for Architecture. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the Association for Computing Machinery, and currently serves as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computers.

Support with teaching from the undergraduate learning assistants was appreciated even more than usual spring term, as all classes switched to remote teaching due to the coronavirus pandemic. In recognition of the students’ efforts, a new award was created in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Greg Healy and Nadia Najim received the awards this year which included a certificate and $500.

Photo of Greg Healy — Greg Healy, postbaccalaureate student in computer science.

Greg Healy holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering and is pursuing a degree in computer science to become a full-stack web developer. He has been the learning assistant for the web development course for the online degree program in computer science for postbaccalaureate students.

In course evaluations, the students said Healy was as the most influential component of their success. In addition to being extremely responsive to student questions, he also created video demonstrations to walk students through more challenging content. When asked by the course instructor, Eric Ianni, to review assignments and suggest improvements, Healy went one step further and designed several assignments that built to a towards a final assignment.

“Greg is a once in a lifetime undergraduate learning assistant,” Ianni said.

Photo of Nadia Najim — Nadia Najim, undergraduate in applied and computational mathematics.

Nadia Najim is a bachelor’s student in applied and computational mathematics. She has been an undergraduate learning assistant for large electrical engineering courses and served as the head assistant where she managed a team of up to 12 other assistants. Najim was nominated by four faculty who wrote in their letter that she “made sustained and absolutely outstanding contributions to the education of more than 2,000 undergraduate students.”

By creating reusable content, Najim has made an impact beyond her own interactions with students. She generated weekly topical material, including group and individual practice problems, as well as guidance and training for fellow assistants on best practices, tips, and tricks for approaching each course topic.

Najim’s skills were especially appreciated by Pallavi Dhagat, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who taught engineering fundamentals for the first time in spring term.

“All through the term, she kept ahead of me, alerting me to what was coming next in the recitation sessions, creating sample problems for help sessions before the midterm and final exams, rallying the other learning assistants and students during stressful times in the term, advising me on concepts she felt I could reinforce in my lectures and giving me valuable feedback on the length and difficulty of my exams,” Dhagat said.

Ni Trieu (’20 Ph.D., Computer Science) was recognized for her work in an area of cryptography called private set interaction. It allows two entities to compare databases to find items in common without leaking other information such as passwords.

Trieu received the dissertation award from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for research that improved the speed and security of private set interaction. She also developed the first practical techniques to compare more than two sets of data.

“Ni has a great aptitude for research, and a compelling vision of how cryptographic tools can protect the privacy of everyday people,” said Mike Rosulek, associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering. “She matches her technical aptitude with an equal measure of hard work and persistence.”

Trieu grew up in Vietnam and received a scholarship to do her undergraduate studies in Russia at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University. During her time there, she developed an interest in theoretical computer science, including cryptography, which she describes as a bridge between theory and practical applications.

As a student at Oregon State, Ni also spent several summers as a research intern at Bell Labs, Visa Research, and Google. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Berkeley. She will be joining Arizona State University as an assistant professor this fall.

Photo of Souti Chattopadhyay — Souti Chattopadhyay, graduate student of computer science.

Souti Chattopadhyay, graduate student of computer science in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, was first author on a paper that won the Honorable Mention Award at the 2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The distinction is given to the top 10% of the papers presented.

Other authors include her advisor, Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science, and colleagues at Microsoft and University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

“This award means that our research matters and provides deeper insight into what the future can hold in terms of accessible and inclusive computing,” Chattopadhyay said.

Chattopadhyay’s research examines how data scientists make decisions when interacting with programming interfaces. The goal is to make programming tools contextually assistive with freedom to delay and review the outcomes of decisions along the path.

What’s Wrong with Computational Notebooks? Pain Points, Needs, and Design Opportunities

Souti Chattopadhyay¹, Ishita Prasad², Austin Z. Henley³, Anita Sarma¹, Titus Barik²

Oregon State University¹, Microsoft², University of Tennessee-Knoxville³

ABSTRACT

Computational notebooks—such as Azure, Databricks, and Jupyter—are a popular, interactive paradigm for data scientists to author code, analyze data, and interleave visualizations, all within a single document. Nevertheless, as data scientists incorporate more of their activities into notebooks, they encounter unexpected difficulties, or pain points, that impact their productivity and disrupt their workflow. Through a systematic, mixed-methods study using semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and survey (n = 156) with data scientists, we catalog nine pain points when working with notebooks. Our findings suggest that data scientists face numerous pain points throughout the entire workflow—from setting up notebooks to deploying to production—across many notebook environments. Our data scientists report essential notebook requirements, such as supporting data exploration and visualization. The results of our study inform and inspire the design of computational notebooks.

Congratulations to the 512 students majoring in electrical and computer engineering or computer science who made the College of Engineering Dean’s List for winter term of 2020! These undergraduate and postbaccalaureate students achieved better than a 3.75 GPA with at least 12 credits.

Nikolas Achatz
Benjamin Adams
Victor Agostinelli III
Walter Agra Neto
Humza Ahmed
Francesco Aiello
Alhusam Sarhan Hilal Al Harthy
Abdulaziz Al-Mannai
Ibrahim Alarifi
Ryan Alder
Ali Mohamed Abdulrahman Sheikh Alhabshi
Matthew Alonso
Nawaf Alothman
Benjamin Alvi
Jacob Anderson
Hannah Armstrong
Theodora Arnold
Kevin Atkins
Aaron Au
Stephanie Babb
Aditya Bagchi
Xiaoqin Bai
Ian Bailey
Spencer Bain
Dakota Baird
Alexander Baird-Appleton
Aeijan Bajracharya
Wesley Bakane
Jack Barnes
Nicolas Barraclough
Joshua Barringer
Samuel Barton
Kyle Barton
Aylish Bateman
Jordan Baxter
Ryan Bay
Jared Beale
Aidan Beery
John Behman
Bolivar Beleno Santos
Rebecca Bell
Kenton Bender
Sebastian Benjamin
Connor Bentzley
Braam Beresford
Justin Bethel
Tyler Betley
Nicholas Biggerstaff
Anthony Bishop
Zachary Bishop
Jackson Bizjak
Megan Black
Peter Bloch
Roman Bober
Reed Boeshans
Carl Bohme
Francisco Bolanos
Michael Boly
Lauren Boone
Sean Booth
Piers Borngasser
Miklos Bowling
Samuel Brimhall
Nicholas Broce
Ian Brown
Brayden Brown
Felix Brucker
Sawyer Brundage
Kiet Song Bui
Timothy Bui
Peri Cabrales
Claire Cahill
Sonia Camacho
John Pierre Carr
Milton Carreno Rodriguez
Brian Cebra
Blake Cecil
Lilian Chan
Michael Chan
David Chan
Jason Chen
Yuhang Chen
Min Chew
Hae Won Cho
Sanchit Chopra
Brian Christensen
Hunter Christiansen
Malachi Christman
Kendrick Chu
Adam Clayman
Evan Cochran
Tyler Cole
Michael Commins
Beniamin Condrea
Adam Conrad
Joshua Cook
David Coons
Kira Corbett
Devon Crane
Amanda Crawford
Gabriel Crew
Thomas Croll
Brian Cross
Rebecca Croysdale
Nathan Crozier
Ryan Cryar
Ziqi Cui
Jackson Cutler
Zeyu Dai
William Dam
William Dang
Dominic Daprano
John Davis
Hudson Dean
Mark Deane
Wyatt Deck
Hao Deng
Abbi Devins-Suresh
Madison Dhanens
Austin Dibble
Joseph Didner
Chetan Dindukurthi
Heather DiRuscio
Kristen Dolan
Samuel Dorning
Miles Drake
Jonathan Dressel
Dylan Drudge
Liang Du
Dafei Du
Alexander Dunn
Sarah Eastwood
Victoria Ebert
Christopher Eckerson
Dirar El Hadar
Rasheed El Kassed
Mohamed Eldebri
Mark Ellarma
Robert Elsom
Jacob Engstrom
Martin Escoto
Kyle Esquerra
Alyssa Estenson
Maxwell Evdemon
Michael Fagan
Shannon Farazi
Anousha Farshid
Danila Fedorin
Kyle Felix
Matthew Ferchland
Christopher Feth
Anthony Filippello
Julian Fortune
Neal Fredrick
Duncan Freeman
Sierra Freihoefer
Johannes Freischuetz
Caden Friesen
Michael Fuller
Calvin Gagliano
Aaron Galati
Kate Galle
Lyubomir Gankov
Jared Gaskin
David Gasper
Tristan Gavin
Kai Gay
Andrew Gehrke
Sean Gillen
Timothy Glew
Yesh Godse
Austin Goergen
Jackson Golletz
Bradley Gore
Sergiy Greblov
Benjamin Green
Connor Greenwald
Alex Grejuc
Taylor Griffin
Isaac Grossberg
Shengjun Gu
Matthew Guo
Gavin Gutowsky
Melanie Gutzmann
Alexander Guyer
Grant Haines
Adam Hamilton-Sutherland
Geoffry Hammon
Quinn Handley
Lucas Hanssen
Donald Harkins
Keaton Hartman
Nathan Hausman
David Headrick
Elise Hebert
Claire Hekkala
Kyle Hiebel
Aleksi Hieta
Arthur Hiew
Benjamin Hillen
Ethan Hirsch
Eric Hoang
Jaiden Hodson
Tyler Holeman
Monica Holliday
Evan Hopper-Moore
Zachary Horine
Caulin Horowitz
Christien Hotchkiss
Bart Hough
Wei-Chien Hsu
Catherine Hu
Andy Hua
Zijing Huang
Michael Huang
Jianlong Huang
Casey Huggins
Megan Hurley
Mark Huynh
Kevin Hwang
Gaetan Ingrassia
Matthew Jacobsen
Kyler Jacobson
Brieanna Jeibmann
Fischer Jemison
Manda Jensen
Junhyeok Jeong
Nathaniel Jewell
Helen Jiang
Laura Jiang
Nicholas Johansen
Lukas Johnson
Ethan Jones
Cameron Jones
Donald Joyce
Sowmya Jujjuri
Nelson Mwangi Kangethe
Kyle Kanwischer
John Kaufman
Zavi Kaul
Matthew Kerr
Nicholas Kiddle
Trenton Kilgore
Jinwon Kim
Brian Kim
Kwanghyuk Kim
Atsuhito Kita
Cameron Kocher
Matthew Koenig
Amber Kolar
Noah Koontz
Andrey Kornilovich
Nicholas Kosa
Aditya Dilip Kothari
Chase Kozol
Rajat Kulkarni
Violet Kurtz
Lindsey Kvarfordt
Jacob Lagmay
Brandon Lam
Joseph Landreville
Kevin Le
Dustin Lear
Yevgeniy Lebid
Youngjoo Lee
Benjamin Lee
Juichi Lee
Joe Lei
Oscar Lemus
Samuel Leonard
Grayson Lewis
Samuel Lewis
Yue Li
Jia Yi Li
Wence Li
Feng Liang
Megan Liles
Xinwei Lin
Virginia Link
Ryan Little
Jaelyn Litzinger
Suyang Liu
Haolin Liu
Zhihui Liu
Susan Liu
Nathan Liu
Alexis Lopez
Jose Lopez Alcala
Simon Louie
Grayland Lunn
Kenny Luong
Tristan Luther
Phi Luu
Stanislav Lyakhov
Jiaheng Lyu
Xinyu Ma
Melvin Ma
Jonathan Macias
Matthew Macovsky
Seika Mahmud
Theresa Mai
Cameron Markwell
Isaac Marquez
Jordyn Marshall
Benjamin Martin
Anthony Martin
Mary May
Shawn Mc Mannis
Cody McCall
Patrick McGrath
Danielle McIntosh
Patrick McKillop-Bay
Daniel Mesa
Nicholas Milford
Leif Miller
Harry Miller
Aedan Mills
Brogan Miner
Luke Mitchell-Nelson
Jasmine Mittal
Jiawei Mo
Grayson Molesworth
Alex Molisani
Anna Mollere
Alexander Molotkov
Santiago Monleon
Samson Mont
Danyelle Montalvo
Stephen More
Michael Morelli
Pablo Moreno
Kevin Moy
Joshua Muir
Hamza Munaf
Trevor Murphy
Colin Murphy
Alexander Nead-Work
Kevin Neiger
Aiden Nelson
Evan Newman
Ethan Ng
Don Nguyen
Triet Nguyen
Anthony Nguyen
Bao Nguyen
Minh Nguyen
Khanh Nguyen
Coulby Nguyen
An-phong Nguyen
Hoang Nguyen
Nancy Nguyen
Thuy-Vy Nguyen
Jonathan Nguyen
Quan Nguyen
Pham Phuoc Loc Nguyen
Corey Nielsen
Jacob Niphanprasart
Kyle Noble
Josie O’Harrow
Timothy O’Rourke
Stephen Oh
Sae Hyoung Oh
Jaegeun Oh
Carter Olsen
Payton Olson
Nicholas Olson
Breanne Oo
Rachel Orrell
Felipe Orrico Scognamiglio
Drew Ortega
Steven Owens
Alexa Pack
Ajay Pallekonda
Justin Parks
Zachary Parsons
Christopher Patenaude
Ethan Patterson
Joshua Pauls
Michael Payne
Kawin Pechetratanapanit
Zack Pelster
Jessica Peterson
Preston Pickering
Trinity Polk
Thomas Prihoda
Ashyan Rahavi
Ridwana Rahman
Jose Ramos
Lyell Read
Mateo Rey-Rosa
Kyle Rosenau
Ekaterina Rott
Emmanuel Rovirosa
Chalida Ruangrotsakun
Nikita Rubocki
Matthew Ruder
Daniel Safarov
Sachin Sakthivel
Ricky Salinas
Micah Samaduroff
Gregory Sanchez
McIntyre Santa Cruz
Andrew Sauer
Bailey Sauter
Zakiah Schaefle
Shifra Schectman
Mitchell Schenk
Jason Scott-Hakanson
Nathan Seabourn
Jett Seale
Richard Seals
Karen Setiawan
Noah Seumalo
Nathan Shaaban
Jordan Sheller
Joshua Shequin
NianJun Shi
Isaac Shih
Patrick Shuler
Elijah Shumway
Zhaowei Si
Jonah Siekmann
Pranav Simha
Roy Simons
Harshvardhan Singh
Andy Situ
Allison Skinner
Richard Smith
Madelyn Smith
Thomas Snyder
Sebastian Sojka
Cruz Solano-Nieblas
Nathan Stageberg
Jason Stallkamp
Avery Stauber
Benjamin Steele
Zachary Steinberg
Matthew Sterrett
Keith Stevens
Shanti Stewart
Yuhao Su
Clayton Surgeon
Cole Swanson
Marjorie Symonds
Blaise Takushi
Wei Tang
Pavan Thakkar
Zachary Thomas
Tristan Thompson
Thomas Tonini
Logan Traffas
Khoa Tran
Shayla Tran
Brayden Tremper
Andy Trinh
Anthony Trinh
James Trotter
Leif Tsang
Alexis Tucker
Jeremy Udarbe
Alexander Uong
Rohan Varma
Aaron Vaughan
Hannah Vaughan
Andres Vega
Aishwarya Vellanki
Jeffrey Visosky
Chinmay Wadgaonkar
Aaron Walder
Kyle Walker
Benjiman Walsh
Alexander Wan
Huahua Wang
Shiyao Wang
Faaiq Waqar
Benjamin Warschauer
Philip Warton
Christopher Weiner
Nicholas Weinert
Chung Weng
Joshua Wentzel
Natashia White
Austin Wilmoth
Calder Wilson
Blair Wilson
Odyssey Wilson
Andrew Wilson
Justin Womack
Jason Wong
Bradford Wong
Jackson Wright
Cheng Xie
Yuechen Xu
Qi Xu
Tianbao Yan
Jiayun Yan
James Yang
Xiaoyan Yang
Orel Yehuda
Eugene Jie Yee Yong
Arthur York
Logan York
Sam Young
Alex Young
Jason Yue
Ulises Zaragoza
Samantha Zeigler
Haoxuan Zhang
Dianxiong Zhang
Zisong Zhang
Jiaming Zhu
John Zontos

A collaborative project with researchers at Oregon State University and University of Southern California received Best Paper Runner-Up Award at a top conference for computer architecture. The research examines if machine learning can also teach us anything about computer architectural design.

Ting-Ru Lin (University of Southern California), Drew Penney (Oregon State University), Massoud Pedram (University of Southern California), Lizhong Chen (Oregon State University) received the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at the International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture on February 26, 2020.

Drew Penney is a doctoral student of electrical and computer engineering, and Lizhong Chen is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State.

The paper, “A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Architectural Exploration: A Routerless NoC Case Study,” develops a deep reinforcement learning based framework for flexible and efficient architectural design space exploration. The work demonstrates the viability of utilizing machine learning to improve computer architecture, and the framework will be useful for many researchers in the community.

Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of computer science, was awarded the 2020 iGIANT Champion Award for her outstanding research contributions to inclusive software design. iGIANT® (impact of Gender/Sex on Innovation and Novel Technologies) is a nonprofit corporation that promotes best practices for gender/sex-specific design elements.

“I am honored to be recognized for my work with iGIANT, but all of it was a team effort,” Burnett said. “None of it would have been possible without the help of many other volunteers, including Larissa Letaw and Jillian Emard here at OSU, working together to help iGIANT’s mission of inclusiveness and equitable experiences for all genders.”

Over the last decade, much of Burnett’s research has focused on gender inclusiveness in software. Her internationally recognized work in this area with students and collaborators has shown gender differences in ways people problem solve with software.

Burnett developed a method called GenderMag with her collaborators that enables IT professionals to identify and eliminate gender biases in the software. She and Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science, lead the research team that is helping academic and industry partners develop inclusive design for software and websites. Their work was featured in the story, “Oregon State leads fight against gender bias in software,” published by Oregon State’s news and research communications office.

Gabor Temes (right) works with doctoral student Yanchao Wang.

Gabor Temes, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been named to the rank of fellow by the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction bestowed upon academic inventors.

According to the academy’s website, “The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.”

Temes’ work in analog circuits has led to improvements in cell phones, medical devices and other technologies.

“My students and I contributed to the development of new data converters, which are used in many hundreds of millions of devices,” he said.

Temes received his undergraduate education at the Technical University and Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, from 1948 to 1956, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 1961.

In addition to Oregon State, he has held academic positions at the Technical University of Budapest, Stanford University and UCLA and worked in industry at Northern Electric R&D Laboratories (now Bell-Northern Research) and Ampex Corp.

Temes and the other 167 new fellows will be honored in April in Phoenix at the academy’s annual meeting.

“Open source software is changing the technology and workforce landscape. Our work will help open source software tools and technology support diverse cognitive styles that will help bring diversity in thought by enabling diversity in open source contributors.”

– Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Oregon State.

Principal investigators:

Lead PI: Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science, Oregon State University
Co-PI: Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of computer science, Oregon State University

In collaboration with:

PI: Igor Steinmacher, assistant professor, Northern Arizona University
Co-PI: Marco Gerosa, associate professor, Northern Arizona University

Agency:

National Science Foundation

Award amount:

$1.4 million between the two universities, $870,773 to Oregon State.

Research objectives:

This research will investigate whether and how open source software tools and technologies have gender biases tied with diverse problem-solving styles, and how to remove any such biases.

This work will harness foundational gender research to provide theory-based yet practical solutions and redesigns of open source software projects to address the underrepresentation of women.

The redesigns and the process of creating inclusive tools will be empirically evaluated to create a compendium of “best practices” for fixing gender-bias bugs, in both products (what suitable fixes are to such bugs) and processes (how open source software teams can work together to fix gender-bias bugs).

Broader impacts:

Open source is having a significant impact on society, in the products it produces and the career paths that it facilitates. However, women are vastly underrepresented among open source developers. This is a significant concern to these communities because it prevents them from receiving the benefits of a larger talent pool and of team diversity. The problem is perpetuated when women developers miss the learning and professional growth opportunities that open source software projects provide, and are overlooked when open source contributions are used to make hiring decisions. Our work will help break down these gender-bias barriers in tools and technology used in open source software.

More information is on the NSF website.

OSU EECS News

News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Tag Archives: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Distinguished Professor to advise government agency

Computer architecture researcher inducted into select group

Two undergraduates recognized as outstanding learning assistants

Groundbreaking dissertation on cryptography wins award

Researchers win award for paper on improving software for data scientists

Over 500 students make the Dean’s list

Researchers win award for paper on deep learning

Professor recognized for promoting inclusive software design

Temes named fellow by National Academy of Inventors

New grant: Gender-inclusive open source through gender-inclusive tools

Principal investigators:

Agency:

Award amount:

Research objectives:

Broader impacts:

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