The Department of Commuter Science recognized students, faculty, and staff for their accomplishments and dedication to the department during the graduate student orientation in August 2016. (Follow this link to the photo album.)

Faculty Awards 

The most notable faculty awards were presented to Professors Michael Ferdman and Michael Bender. Ferdman received the David R. Smith Young Scholar in Computer Science for 2016-2020. The David Smith Leading Scholar in Computer Science went to Michael Bender for the years 2016-2020.  These awards were named in honor of former Chair, David R. Smith who passed away in August 2015. David with critical to establishing the CS department at Stony Brook University in 1970 and he continued to be actively involved with the department until the year of his death.

Faculty member Paul Fodor received the Outstanding Undergraduate Education Award in recognition of his tireless work with students. The Major Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching Award was presented to Jennifer Wong and the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award went to Nikolaos Nikiforakis. 

Professor Annie Liu received the Excellence in Research Award in recognition for her outstanding research contributions and funding. Professor Jie Gao won the Excellence in Research and Graduate Teaching. 

In recognition of his services to the department and for his outstanding contributions as SUNY Korea inaugural Chair, Klaus Mueller won the Faculty Service Award. 

Student

Ari Kaufman, Chair of the department, presented five different types of student awards.  Santiago Vargas won the Tuner Fellowship, Excellence Award, and DDF in STEM. Ubaid ullah Hafeez and Sergy Madaminov won Graduate Fellowships. Shubhrca Aich, Bhavya Ghai, Nguyen Phong Hoang, and Prahnjal Sahu won the Chairman’s Fellowships. Mina Abbasi Dinani, Seyed Arian Akhavan Niaki, Hamidreza Asaadi, Hae-na Lee, Xiao Liang, Hamed Rezanejad Asl-Bonab, Arshdeep Sekhon, Burak Velioglu, Noah Weber, and Timothy Zhang won University Fellowships.

Staff Awards

Staff awards this year included Kathy Germana and Ken Gladky who received the New Computer Science Building Recognition Award as testament to their incredible work opening and maintaining the New Computer Science building. The Administrative Staff Service Award was given Christine Cesaria for her outstanding service as Director of Communications and Grants. David Cajigas was recognized for outstanding IT support service for computer science with the Systems Staff Service Award. Finally, a Certificate of Appreciation was given to Brian Tria for the department’s appreciation of his work supporting research labs and establishing the new Systems Lab.

The Department of Computer Science is happy to acknowledge the work of these individuals as we continue to go #FarAbove.