Awards and Scholarships in the Department of Computer Science
05-01-2025
Every spring, the Department of Computer Science honors students, faculty, and staff who have been chosen to receive fellowships, awards, and scholarships.
We offer our congratulations to this year's winners. We are proud of your accomplishments and look forward to your future contributions.
Photos of the event are available here.
Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Award
Professor Maurice H. Halstead joined the computer science faculty in 1967. He was a pioneer in software engineering, and wrote some of the first books on compiling and decompiling of software. He is generally considered as the "father" of code decompilation. Professor Halstead is perhaps best known as the founder of the approach to defining and measuring software products and processes known as Software Science. Many people believe that his work, and that of former Professor Samuel Conte, was the true foundation for software metrics and software engineering. Following Professor Halstead's death, a memorial fund was established in 1979 by his students, family, and colleagues to recognize a Purdue student who has made exemplary contributions to software engineering research. The winner is selected by the CS Awards Committee based on nominations submitted by the faculty and presented with an engraved plaque. The recipient receives a $5,000 monetary award and a plaque.
This year, Zhe Zhou is the recipient of the 2025 Halstead Award. Zhou was nominated by Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science Suresh Jagannathan for his excellence as a student and a researcher. He excels in areas such as program verification, type systems and symbolic execution, and his work has been recognized at top conferences. "Zhe's innovative research, particularly in testing frameworks and type-based specifications, has made significant contributions to both theoretical and practical aspects of software engineering. He is a skilled collaborator, mentor, and one of the brightest students I have had the privilege to advise," said Professor Jagannathan.
Zhe Zhou is the recipient of the Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Award
Raymond Boyce Graduate Teaching Award
The Raymond Boyce Graduate Teaching Award was established in 1975 by Sandy Boyce and friends in memory of Raymond Boyce who received his PhD in computer science in 1972 with high honors. Raymond passed away unexpectedly on June 18, 1974. This year the Boyce Graduate Teacher Award was awarded to Sripath Mishra for the fall of 2024 and Ethan Dickey for the spring of 2025. Their names will be inscribed on a permanent plaque in the display case by Room 3102 in Lawson Computer Science Building.
Ethan Dickey, winner of the Boyce Graduate Teacher Award for the spring of 2025.
Emil Stefanov Memorial Partial Fellowship
Brandon Lee won the Emil Stefanov Memorial Partial Fellowship. The fellowship was created in memory of Emil Stefanov, who earned his BS from Purdue in 2009 and passed away in 2014. This award is given to a domestic graduate student specializing in security who shows originality and creative thinking in research. Assistant Professor Berkay Celik nominated Lee for the fellowship.
John R. Rice Partial Fellowship in Scientific Computing
John R. Rice, the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Purdue, was one of the earliest faculty members of Purdue’s first-in-the-nation computer science program. This year, the John R. Rice Partial Fellowship in Scientific Computing was awarded to Jae Joong Lee. Lee was nominated by Associate Department Head Bedrich Benes.
Dr. Marcel F. Neuts Memorial Award
This award was created in memory of Dr. Marcel F. Neuts, a Belgian-American mathematician and probability theorist. This award goes to a domestic, 2nd year or later graduate student who has passed PhD core course requirements and made significant contributions in the area of AI, Deep Learning, Physical AI, Quantum or Healthcare. This year’s award recipient is Maxwell Jacobson. Jacobson was nominated by Professor Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera
Maxwell Jacobson won the Dr. Marcel F. Neuts Memorial Award.
Herbald Scholars
Ethan Mader
Nikolas Papagiannis
Apoorva Vashisth
Justin Zhang
Anh Nguyen
Zhizhen Yuan
Arnav Burudgunte
The Faculty Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award
The Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award honors an undergraduate student for their work as a teaching assistant. This award is given to an undergraduate student who serves as a teaching assistant, faculty members nominate students they believe are deserving of special recognition. This year’s recipient, Daniel Schwab, was nominated by Professors H.M. Dunsmore. Schwab assists with Walkthrough and Debugging, but, the role for which he is most valuable in CS 18000 is managing Ed Discussion. A 24 hour a day, 7 day a week discussion forum where students post questions about their homework and projects. "Daniel is not required to monitor this forum 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,but, he basically does," says Dunsmore. "He answers nearly every question and his answers are always succinct and easily understandable to students in CS 18000."
Outstanding Service to the Department by a Student
The Outstanding Service to the Department by a Student Award is determined by votes of computer science, data science, and artificial intelligence students. This year, Kian Kasad won the award.
Kian Kasad won the Outstanding Service to the Department by a Student Award.
Outstanding Research Effort by an Undergraduate Student
The Outstanding Research Effort by an Undergraduate Student went to Peter Jin, who was nominated by Assistant Professor Kent Quanrud. Jin worked with a graduate student and Quanrud on the shortest path problem with real-valued, potentially negative weights. This problem has a classical dynamic algorithm from the 1950’s due independently to Bellman, Ford, Shimbel, and Moore, which is taught in every undergraduate algorithms class. The problem is so basic and fundamental that everyone assumed it was solved, but the team started working on this problem last summer and, building on Fineman’s techniques, reduced the running time further to $O~(mn^{4/5})$. It was accepted to SODA 2025, where Jin presented the result. It remains the best algorithm for the problem.
Peter Jin won the Outstanding Research Effort by an Undergraduate Student
Outstanding Student Awards
The department chooses students from each year in the computer science and data science majors to honor the exceptional work they have contributed. The students are awarded Outstanding Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior awards.
Outstanding Students in the Computer Science Major
Yikai "Kai" Liu (Outstanding Freshman)
Sreekar Gudipati (Outstanding Sophomore)
Soham Jog (Outstanding Junior)
Anish Kambhampati (Outstanding Senior)
Outstanding Students in the Data Science Major
Hari Sai Harish (Outstanding Freshman)
Ramya Rajaram (Outstanding Sophomore)
Olivia Lund (Outstanding Junior)
Shrinivas VenKatesan (Outstanding Senior)
Outstanding Students in the Artificial Intelligence Major (new in fall 2023)
Vijay Vemulapalli (Outstanding Freshman)
Zheng Hua "Louis" Tan (Outstanding Sophomore)
Outstanding Staff Member
The award for Outstanding Staff Member is selected from staff nominations. This year's winner is Jamie Richards.
Outstanding Staff Member Jamie Richards.
Purdue's Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Chapter Awards
The Purdue CS Student Chapter of the ACM provides awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching assistant plus a faculty award. This years winners are; Nidarshan Siddegowda for the ACM Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, Associate Teaching Professor Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera for the ACM Faculty Award, and a three way tie between Changxiang Gao, Aakash Patel and Kian Kasad for the ACM Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award.
Associate Teaching Professor Gustavo Rodriguez-Rivera won the ACM Faculty Award
Nidarshan Siddegowda won the ACM Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Changxiang Gao, Aakash Patel and Kian Kasad won the ACM Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award
Graduate Student Association's Awards
Ethan Dickey,vice president of the Graduate Student Association present awards that were selected by graduate students. For the Most Influential Professor Award, Professor Elisa Bertino was selected.
Professors Elisa Bertino and won the Most Influential Professor Award by the Graduate Student Association.
Scholarship Name |
Recipient(s) |
|---|---|
|
Boeing Student Organization Scholarships |
Akshitha Kartigueyan Selina Lin |
|
Boeing Corporate Scholarships |
Alan Yi Anna Pokrovskaya Tanay Gondil |
|
Computer Science Scholarships |
Jack Roscoe Aneeq Chowdhury Daniel Wong |
|
Corporate Partner Scholarships |
Mridu Prashanth Reagan Becker Diya Singh Phillip Liu Kevin Hung Joon Hong Park Rishit Agrawal Segyul Park |
|
Computer Science Endowed Scholarships |
Daniyal Bekinalkar Brian Gan Divij Agarwal Peter Kurto Neil Lapsia Mukund Venkatesh
|
|
David & Darla Dodson Endowment Scholarship |
Karthik Thyagarajan |
|
Ford Motor Company Scholarships |
Shrung Patel Huiseong "Jayden" Lee |
|
Kunze Scholarships Sponsored by: Aaron and Morgan Kunze |
Soham Jog Ian Hornblower |
|
L3Harris Technologies Scholarships |
Noah Trupin Shannon Cheng Ryan Kwong Linda Xu Ethan Ling |
|
Mary-Ann Neel Computer Science Scholarships |
Sarthak Mangla Gaurav Singh Thomas Ashcraft Yixun Lu Pranav Chitiveli Rohit Karthik |
|
Gene H. & Margueritte Kin Endowment Scholarships |
Dev Patel Michael Lumbera |
|
Grace Hopper Scholarships Sponsored by: David Spellmeyer |
Julia Kang Hiya Samanta |
| Michael E & Jerralie M Petersen Endowment Scholarships |
Prisha Bangera Michael Bezick |
| William C. Nylin Jr Endowment Scholarships |
Shruti Sharma Sriharshita Varanasi |
|
Jason Yu Memorial Scholarship |
Christopher Gou |
|
Raytheon Endowed Sholarships |
Ruien Luo Jeremy Moon |
The Department of Computer Science congratulates all winners and thanks our corporate and scholarship sponsors.