CSU Department of Computer Science

🎆 Happy July 4th!

📰 Hot off the presses - spring 2025 news digest! All the department news in one place. Read it here: https://col.st/B1SYn

Are AI-powered chatbots safe for your kids? Safety concerns are growing as children interact with them. Assistant Professor Nikhil Krishnaswamy recently talked with Fox31 News and explained how AI-powered chatbots work, their associated risks, and what parents need to know about the content their children may be exposed to when interacting with these AI systems. Watch the interview here: https://col.st/ow1Kc

🇺🇸 Bravery and valor never die. Remembering all those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

🎉 Congratulations to Carine Graff, who won the Best Poster Award at the spring CS793 research poster session! Working with Assistant Professor Bianca Trinkenreich, the winning poster, ‘How Complex is a GitHub Issue? First Steps Towards Labeling,” explores automatic issue classification, using surface metrics and GPT reasoning to identify beginner-friendly tasks. Carine is currently a Ph.D. student in the SIGNAL Lab led by Assistant Professor Nikhil Krishnaswamy.

🎓 Congratulations to our newest alumni who graduated last week! 🐏💚

🎓 Cheers to our computer science ! We’re proud of you! 💚💛🐏

Want to talk mobile health apps, soil salinity, vision models and sarcasm? Our graduate students presented on these topics and more at the spring CS793: Research Seminar poster session.

🎉 Congratulations Professor Shrideep Pallickara who has been honored with the annual Provost’s N. Preston Davis Award for Instructional Innovation and Engagement! Shrideep was recognized for creating RamDesk – a novel tool suite for managing Canvas courses. RamDesk increases instructor efficiency so much that it has already reclaimed over a year (8760+ hours) in productivity gains – a year’s worth of time savings! RamDesk is now available University-wide here: https://col.st/f9SV0

🎓 Senior Sendoff and last-chance regalia pickup for Grad Pack Members, plus on-site purchases for those who did not pre-order:

Smith Alumni Center
Thursday, May 15 - Friday, May 16
8 am – 5 pm each day

Join us for two full days of celebration and fun to welcome you to the alumni life!

Senior Send-Off Activities include:

🥂 A toast to the Class of 2025
🎓 Grad cap decorating, supported by SLICE
📷 Ram Grad-themed photo booth
🐏 CAM the Ram cameo
💨 Gown steaming
🍕 Food trucks and more!

Full events schedule is available here: https://col.st/V9DKX

🏆 CS students take seven awards at the CSU Hackathon! In March, seventy CSU students across multiple majors teamed up with NASA, USDA, USFS, and Amazon Web Services for high-energy, 24-hour hackathon focused on solving real-world challenges.

Twenty teams competed to develop AI-driven solutions for remote road mapping to address public safety and forest management for the USDA, as well as pathfinding algorithms for autonomous rovers in emergency recovery situations for NASA.

Eighteen computer science students participated on teams that won: Top Rover Award, Top Forestry Award, Ingenuity Award, Tenacity Award, Simplicity Award Runner Up, and Ingenuity Award Runner Up.

The hackathon was hosted by the CSU Career Center and the computer science student organization DevNet.

Read more here: https://col.st/ZdHRv

Meet computer science undergrad Caleb Chou, who recently published a research paper with Statistics Assistant Professor Andee Kaplan. Caleb, an avid rock climber, discussed his research on the efficiency of a controversial rockclimbing move and how the blend of climbing disciplines led to a breakthrough in the sport. Click below to read more ⬇⬇⬇

The Tomoa Skip: CSU researchers analyze the new move that revolutionized speed climbing - College of Natural Sciences CSU undergraduate computer science student Caleb Chou and Department of Statistics Assistant Professor Andee Kaplan recently published a paper in CHANCE exploring the efficiency of the Tomoa Skip, a controversial rock climbing shortcut.