Congratulations to Lynn Dombrowski on advancing to Ph.D. candidacy on May 15, 2013. Lynn presented her work the role of intermediaries in enabling access to e-Government services related to the use of government nutrition assistance programs.

Lynn’s committee was comprised of Drs. Gillian Hayes, Melissa Mazmanian, Paul Dourish, Geoffrey Bowker, Bill Tomlinson, and Michael Montoya.

Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce that Rachel Ulgado has been selected as an Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Female) 2013!

A list of the other winners, runners-up, finalists, and honorable mentions will appear on www.cra.org.

Ulgado is a recent STAR alumni who will be attending the University of Washington in the fall as a PhD student.

Congratulations!

I am pleased to announce that Jed Brubaker was selected as a recipient by the Academic Senate Council’s award for Most Promising Future Faculty Member.

This award in Excellence in Undergraduate Education was presented at the 20th Annual Celebration of Teaching, held on Friday, April 12, 2013.

According to the Academic Senate Council:

“The recipients were competitively selected by the Academic Senate Council on Student Experience based on nominations made by faculty and students. Monetary awards are provided by the Dean of the Division of Undergraduate Education (Professor & Lecturer of the Year Awards); the Teaching, Learning & Technology Center (TA Development Award); Graduate Division (Most Promising Future Faculty Awards); and the Office of Information Technology (Instructional Technology Innovation Awards). The Teaching, Learning & Technology Center provides recipients of all awards with engraved plaques and hosts the reception.”

Congratulations, Jed!

Jed’s most promising future faculty award

The STAR students would like to congratulate Dr. Gillian Hayes on earning tenure!

Best,

Jed, Lynn, Sen, Kerri, and the other students of STAR.

On March 8th and 9th, STAR is hosted the 4th Workshop for Uniting the Californias at UCI.

The aim of the WUC workshops is to foster transnational research collaborations in human-centered computing, human computer interaction, and ubiquitous computing. The workshop provides an informal, relaxing, and fun opportunity for researchers from Southern California and northern Baja California to to get to know one another and one another’s work. It is an excellent opportunity to receive feedback on research, meet potential collaborators, and build cross-institutional and international connections.

STAR alum David Nguyen returns to give feedback to an international group of doctoral students on their projects.

Nithin Jilla, a Star undergraduate research, was featured in the latest UC Irvine Magazine. The magazine showcases Jilla’s work with “Kenya Dream” — a program that fosters secondary education programs in Kenya by assisting with the creation and maintenance of educational infrastructure and resources.

“I got involved in Kenya Dream at Cupertino High School. When I came to UCI, I wanted to take it to the next level. So I went out there and tapped into the campus resources,” Jilla says. “I met with other student leaders, my hallmates and administrators in different departments, such as Student Affairs and dining, for help with organizing our events. The more I told people about Kenya Dream, the more they were in on it.”

To read more: http://communications.uci.edu/magazine/2013winter.pdf

Prof. Hayes quoted on the Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders of Southern California.

“This new center is really amazing in what it can accomplish for families living with ASD and researchers, clinicians and educators working in this area,” Gillian Hayes, the director of technology research for the center, said. “This is one of only a handful of places that supports integrated care across a variety of disorders from birth through adulthood.”

The ICS Dean’s awards have been announced, and Gillian has won the undegraduate teaching award in recognition of the awesome undergraduate research that the STAR group is doing!

Dean’s Award for Research: Nikil Dutt For his contributions in the area of embedded computing

Dean’s Mid-Career Award for Research: Deva Ramanan for his contributions in the area of computer vision

Dean’s Award for Service: Dan Gillen for his service to ICS, to the UCI Academic Senate, and to the United States Food and Drug Administration

Dean’s Award for Graduate Student Mentoring: Ramesh Jain for his mentoring of a large and strong research group developing next generation social networks

Dean’s Award for Undergraduate Teaching: Gillian Hayes for her undergraduate course development and supervision of undergraduate research

Kevin Mori – $500 in support of “Navigating Multiple Identities Through Offline and Online Spaces”

Minh Vo and Victor Lelas – $750 in support of “Technologies for Assisting with Food Insecurity: Strengthening Community Based Organizations”

Joe Trevino and Ian Merion – $750 in support of “Understanding Users’ Needs for a Mental Health Smartphone Application”

Kathy Nguyen, Rachel Rose Ulgado, & Erick Custodio – $750 in support of “Video Modeling for Autism”

STAR undegraduates have consistently been many of the best researchers in the school, and we are happy to continue to support them. Thanks also to their excellent graduate student and research scientist mentors: Jed Brubaker, Karen Cheng, Lynn Dombrowski, Sen Hirano, and Kerri McCanna!

Many members of the STAR group (and our alumni and friends) demonstrated some awesome technologies at the Beckman Center on Saturday to nearly 150 members of the community, including parents, clinicians, teachers, therapists, other researchers, and more. The event was a great success with nearly every attendee demanding more in the future! We are looking forward to following up with the autism app jam in April.

Click here for coverage from the OC Register:

http://www.ocregister.com/news/apps-379904-autism-technologies.html

Here is the original announcement on the Bren School of ICS home page:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/community/events/autismtechshowcase/

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
An opening session featuring Dean Ralph Clayman of the UCI Medical School, Dean Hal Stern from the Bren School of ICS, and Joe Donnelly, Director of For OC Kids.
Showcase of technologies developed by Bren School students, faculty, researchers, alumni, and collaborators, including the demonstrations listed below.
A closing reception that gives all attendees an opportunity to network with researchers, developers, and other attendees as well as to brainstorm and generate ideas for an Autism App Jam to be held during Autism Awareness Month in April 2013.