CS PhD student Alissa Yurovsky has received a Computing Innovations Fellowship Award from the CIFellows 2020 program. Yurovsky will complete her PhD at Stony Brook University in December.

In May, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the CIFellows 2020 program, with support from the National Science Foundation. The program aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be computing PhD graduates to combat hiring disruptions due to COVID-19. The 2020 CIFellows class is 59 researchers, 52% of whom are women, covering a wide variety of research areas. CRA and CCC are working with the computing community to ensure that this program facilitates career and skill growth for the Fellows in supportive environments to foster the talent of the future computing research community.

Yurovsky’s research is in the area of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, focusing on new methods and algorithms to improve the understanding of translation and genetic encoding biases, as well algorithms to improve the annotation on genome and single cell levels. As a CIFellow starting in January 2021, Alisa will work with Richard Moffitt at the Stony Brook University’s Department of Bioinformatics on bioinformatic approaches to improve scientific understanding and patient care in cancer. Specifically, she will work on algorithms and models for precise compartment deconvolution and weight estimation of mixed tissue samples.