Highlights

In Memoriam: David J. Farber (1934–2026)

The Penn Engineering community mourns the passing of David J. Farber, an influential computer scientist, dedicated educator, and public servant whose work helped shape the modern Internet and the academic institutions that supported its development. Dr. Farber passed away on February 7, 2026, at the age of 91, at his home in Tokyo, Japan. His legacy endures through generations of students, colleagues, and policymakers who benefited from his intellect, leadership, and principled vision. Dr. Farber served as a professor in Computer and Information Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, where he played a formative role in the Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

Building Community Through Service: Honoring Stephanie Weirich

Stephanie Weirich was honored with SIGPLAN’s Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her sustained and far-reaching contributions to the programming languages community. This recognition follows another major milestone: Stephanie was also named a 2025 ACM Fellow, honored “for contributions to static type systems and mechanized mathematics of programming languages.” Together, these awards reflect both the scholarly impact of her research and her long-standing commitment to service and community leadership within computer science. “I’m thankful to SIGPLAN for the award and am grateful that I have had the chance to collaborate with many members of the programming languages research community in Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

TIDES – Building a Trusted Integration Data Exchange System

Government agencies, healthcare organizations, and research institutions often need to combine information from different databases to solve important problems like tracking disease outbreaks, improving public services, or conducting medical research. However, these organizations currently cannot share their data because it contains sensitive personal information protected by privacy laws and regulations. This creates a significant barrier to research and policy development that could otherwise improve public health, enhance government services, and advance scientific discovery. This project addresses this challenge by developing a secure system that allows organizations to answer important questions using combined datasets without actually sharing the sensitive information itself. Read more

By Zachary Ives, ago

CIS Welcomes New Faculty for 2025!

As the academic year turns to 2025-26, we’re delighted to welcome a number of new colleagues for the new year! (We will have one additional announcement to share on August 1st.) Jiatao Gu joins us as an Assistant Professor, after spending a number of years at Apple Machine Learning Research (and prior to that, Meta FAIR Labs). His research is on multi-modal generative models and on building AI agents that interact with the physical world. He will continue to maintain a part-time affiliation with Apple. Eva Dyer joins us as an Associate Professor, joint with Bioengineering. Her research interests lie Read more

By Zachary Ives, ago

Real or Fake Text?: Investigating Human Ability to Detect Boundaries Between Human-Written and Machine-Generated Text

This paper investigates how well people can tell if text they’re reading was written by a machine instead of a human, especially when part of the text is human-written and later transitions to machine-generated. The study reveals that while many people find it hard to detect this switch, some perform better than others, and they can improve over time with practice and motivation. The researchers also explore factors like model size and text type to see how these impact detection ability. They collected over 21,000 examples where participants pointed out errors, showing that certain types of text make it easier Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

Rajeev Alur Named 2024 Donald E. Knuth Prize Winner

It is a great honor to receive the Knuth Prize. I feel so grateful to the wonderful support I have received from everyone in CIS and Penn Engineering over the years, and the collaboration with our faculty and students has been incredibly valuable to me. My research is focused on mathematical abstractions and analysis tools that allow designers to reason about correctness of computer systems. As AI becomes a key component of the next generation of computer systems, we are faced with new challenges to ensure that society can trust such systems, and that’s what will motivate my research going Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

Welcome Back! 2024-2025

As we begin the 2024-25 academic year, CIS is thrilled to welcome Joel Ramirez from Stanford to our teaching faculty. He will be contributing to the CIS 2400 and 1100 courses, further enhancing our program’s academic strength. Over the past six years, Penn has made over 25 faculty hires, continuing its incredible growth. This year, we are also excited about the near completion of Amy Gutmann Hall, a new space dedicated to data science and engineering collaboration, which will host key research centers and foster innovation across multiple fields. In addition to new spaces, Penn is launching the Penn Advanced Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

Welcome to the 2024-25 Academic Year!

We welcome all of our students and faculty (back) to campus. As we start the new academic year, many exciting things are happening! New Faculty CIS welcomes Joel Ramirez to our teaching faculty. Joel did his degree at Stanford, where he taught courses in computer systems and in probability. This semester he will be part of the CIS 2400 and 1100 teaching teams. Stay tuned for announcements for two additional faculty who will be starting in Fall 2025! Penn continues to build amazing momentum, with more than 25 faculty hires in the past 6 years! New Spaces and Infrastructure for Read more

By Zachary Ives, ago

The Electron Microscope of AI: Jacob Gardner’s Mission to Supercharge Scientific Research

Jacob Gardner, Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science, first encountered machine learning during a high school internship predicting hurricanes in his native North Carolina. Today, Gardner applies machine learning to scientific research rather than weather prediction. His goal is to develop AI tools that can enhance fields like drug discovery, similar to how the electron microscope transformed science. He aims to create tools that help scientists work faster and more effectively, offering new insights into complex problems. At Penn Engineering, Gardner’s research focuses on using AI to optimize machine learning algorithms for scientific applications. His work has garnered significant Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago

AI Month, NSF Fellowship, & Enhancing Language Models

In celebration of AI Month, we are thrilled to extend our congratulations to Andrew Zhu, under the guidance of Chris Callison-Burch, for his remarkable achievement in receiving the prestigious 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Andrew’s dedication and innovative vision have earned him this esteemed recognition, marking a significant milestone in his academic journey. Andrew’s research endeavors are poised to address a critical challenge in the realm of Language Model Machines or Large Language Models (LLMs), where despite their formidable capabilities, they often grapple with the issue of ‘forgetting’ when confronted with complex inquiries or tasks spanning extensive timelines. Read more

By Ally Moraschi, ago