What are some of the benefits of UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS)? Aside from the fact that it’s the only computing-focused school in the UC system and happens to sit in the middle of “Silicon Beach,” it also offers capstone courses that provide hands-on experience in a practical, real-world environment. The strength and importance of such programs was reiterated June 6-8, 2022, when ICS faculty, students and staff attended the National Capstone Design Conference in Dallas, Texas.

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The UCI Machine Learning (ML) Repository hosted the 2022 Machine Learning Hackathon from May 18 to May 29. Throughout the hackathon, participants engaged with members of the UCI ML Repository and its datasets to build creative and meaningful projects. On June 3, hackathon organizers held an awards ceremony to review project submissions and recognize four winning hacks.

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On June 7, 2022, the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) resumed its annual ICS Awards Celebration luncheon, paused during the pandemic, as faculty and staff spent an afternoon reconnecting and socializing. Dean Marios Papaefthymiou welcomed new staff, announced the recipient of the Jim McKenzie Staff Leadership Award, presented the Dean’s Faculty Awards, and recognized a variety of faculty members for recent honors and accomplishments.

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More than 250 students from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) showcased their talent and mingled with industry professionals on June 1, 2022, at the Second Annual ICS Project Expo. Held in the new state-of-the-art Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB), the event was a culmination of months of hard work, offering the students the opportunity to present projects completed for undergraduate capstone courses in informatics, computer science and data science, as well as for the Butterworth Product Development Competition. Project sponsors and students alike look forward to this annual opportunity to highlight projects they’ve labored over throughout the year.

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What is the best way to recruit participants to join a clinical studies registry, and can such registries help better diversify clinical research samples? These are two critical questions that UCI researchers are tackling with a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, “Recruiting and Retaining Participants from Disadvantaged Neighborhoods in Registries.” The work will be led by Joshua Grill, professor of psychiatry and human behavior in UCI’s School of Medicine (SOM) and of neurobiology and behavior in UCI’s School of Biological Sciences (Bio Sci), and by Daniel Gillen, Chancellor’s Professor and chair of the Statistics Department in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS).

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Chancellor’s Professor of Statistics Annie Qu has been named an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). Established in 1885, the ISI is a professional society with more than 4,500 individual and institutional members in over 150 countries. Its objective is to promote the understanding, development and good practice of statistics worldwide. An ISI Elected Membership is open to individuals who are established in their careers and have made significant contributions to the statistical profession. Qu’s research focuses on solving fundamental issues regarding unstructured large-scale data and developing cutting-edge statistical methods and theory in machine learning.

The UCI Master of Data Science (MDS) program held a Q&A-style panel discussion on April 21 with industry leaders in data science. This discussion was held in collaboration with the Southern California R Users Group (SoCal RUG), a local forum of people who use the statistical programming language R.

Bella Feng, Sep Dadsetan and John Preach were the featured panelists. Along with Ryan Benz, the three of them shared their experiences working in the data science industry, focusing on their career development over the years.

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Discussing everything from chocolate milk to dating apps, and referencing shows like “Parks and Recreation” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” an open access book co-authored by Mine Dogucu removes barriers to learning Bayesian statistics and finds new ways to engage readers.

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Two faculty members from UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) were recently named fellows of the American Statistical Association (ASA): Veronica Berrocal and Babak Shahbaba.

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The Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) named Annie Qu, Chancellor’s Professor of statistics, as one of the 2024 IMS Medallion Awards and Lectures. Each year, eight Medallion Lecturers are chosen across all areas of statistics and probability by the IMS Committee on Special Lectures. The Medallion nomination is an honor and an acknowledgment of a significant research contribution to one or more research areas. Each Medallion Awardee and Lecturer will receive a medallion in a ceremony preceding the lecture. Professor Qu will deliver her Medallion Lecture at the 2024 Joint Statistical Meeting in Portland, Oregon.