Computer Science

05/05/2011 - AUSTIN, Texas—Computer networks that can’t forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found. The researchers used a virtual computer model, or “neural network,” to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.

04/01/2011 - AUSTIN, Texas – Biologist Misha Matz and computer scientist Michael Walfish are among six assistant professors at The University of Texas at Austin who received Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards totaling nearly $3 million from the National Science Foundation. The CAREER awards recognize promising young faculty and supports their research with five years of funding.

03/04/2011 - Artist Sol LeWitt’s concrete block structure Circle with Towers (2005) will grace the entrance to the new Bill & Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex, currently under construction on the east side of Speedway between 21st and 24th streets. The unveiling of the work will coincide with the opening of the computer science complex in September 2012.

02/24/2011 - AUSTIN, Texas — A new computing classroom and learning laboratory in The University of Texas at Austin’s Flawn Academic Center is changing the way that statistics and scientific computing are taught at the university.

12/21/2010 - For all the power that computers have brought to the process of animation, it remains the human eye that’s the best judge of whether animated things moving in space look real. “People intuitively know exactly what to draw to evoke realism,” says Don Fussell, professor of computer science. “Computers don’t have that luxury.”

11/29/2010 - Racial profiling is a “fundamentally flawed” method of catching terrorists, and is no more effective than random sampling techniques, according to a recent study by a UT computer science professor. Read more at the Daily Texan.

11/19/2010 - AUSTIN, Texas–Stop using racial profiling, says Professor William Press. He claims that as well as being politically and ethically questionable, racial profiling does no better in helping law enforcement officials in their task of catching terrorists than standard uniform random sampling techniques. This is the topic of a paper publishing in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association.