05/16/2019 - Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions.
05/10/2019 - Is my code fast? Can it be faster? Scientific computing, machine learning, and data science are about solving problems that are compute intensive. Choosing the right algorithm, extracting parallelism at various levels, and amortizing the cost of data movement are vital to achieving scalable speedup and high performance.
05/06/2019 - Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the Minnie Stevens Piper Teaching Award, which celebrates outstanding postsecondary teaching. Since 1958, the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation, a non-profit, charitable corporation focused on postsecondary education in Texas, has selected excellent educators from four- and two-year institutions from across Texas to be named "Piper Professors" for their superior teaching at the college level. Stone holds the David Bruton, Jr.
04/30/2019 - There is a certain “grow fast or die slow” paradigm in the present-day computing industry. Software and technological innovations are in a period of massive growth and flux—change is so rapid that even today’s laws are lagging behind. Texas Computer Science and Texas Law professors argue that under current circumstances, it is also important to consider the ways in which the legal field is evolving to adapt to these technological changes as well as examine the further ethical implications of computing.
04/19/2019 - Water, sunlight, nutrients—these ingredients are essential for plant growth. However, these basic ingredients don’t always yield the ideal plant. In fact, optimizing these variables is complicated, causing some plants to fall flat on flavor. Machine learning can help.
04/11/2019 - Imagine a world where accessing and interacting with technology doesn’t require keyboard or voice input—just a quick mental command. Imagine “speech prosthesis” technology that would allow people who are unable to communicate verbally to speak without expensive and highly customized interfaces. Imagine a device that could read a users’ mind, and automatically send a message, open a door, or buy a birthday present for a family member.
03/06/2019 - Gene-editing or genome engineering is the altering of DNA within a living organism. Once believed to be far-fetched and unthinkable, it is becoming more and more common due to scientific breakthrough techniques like CRISPR. What most people don’t know though is the use of computing tools in conjunction with CRISPR make gene-editing as efficient and mistake-free as possible—making it a viable cure to deadly genetic diseases.
01/25/2019 - Quantum computers are sophisticated machines that harness the strange laws of quantum physics to solve particular kinds of problems. These machines have been “trending” for quite some time now with popular media calling them “supercomputers” or “supermachines” and implying that they have the power to basically answer any and all currently unsolvable problems. These is, however, a misconception.
12/10/2018 - Lili Qiu, Texas Computer Science Professor, was recently named an Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) fellow. Each year the ACM recognizes the top one percent of ACM members for their accomplishments in computing and information technology, as well as their service to the computing community.
12/04/2018 - When we think of robots, we envision the future. Intelligent mobile robots that can answer questions, give directions, complete tasks, and walk us through an ever-changing world—these robots could one day make more static technologies like Alexa, Siri, and GoogleHome look outdated.