Research News

DATA SCIENCE — Tasked with helping low-income residents find better employment, the Lane County Workforce Partnership turned to a team of four students at the University of Oregon who were motivated to use their skills and knowledge to impact the community.

COMPUTER SCIENCE, EARTH SCIENCES — Brittany Erickson, associate professor of computer science and earth sciences, and Reza Rejaie, professor of computer science, were awarded Fulbrights to conduct research and act as cultural ambassadors while abroad in Iceland and Finland, respectively.

DATA SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY — When Hunter Everton BS '25 (sociology), BS '25 (data science) arrived at the University of Oregon, he had little idea where his undergraduate education, let alone his career, would take him. Four years later, he is preparing to begin a master’s degree at Oregon Health and Science University in epidemiology.

CYBERSECURITY, DATA SCIENCE — Employers have made their needs clear, and the School of Computer and Data Sciences (SCDS) is meeting the demand. Starting fall term 2026, new students will kick off the first-ever cohort in two brand new master’s programs at University of Oregon.

CYBERSECURITY, COMPUTER SCIENCE — The cybersecurity program in the School of Computer and Data Science once again became a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research, awarded by the National Security Agency to universities that go above and beyond in their research. With the addition of the master’s program in fall 2026, the cybersecurity program will be continuing important research and development in the upcoming academic year.

DATA SCIENCE — Data science is a growing field in large part because of its potential application to a wide variety of other fields. The College of Arts and Sciences data science program is supporting researchers like Jake Searcy in leading the way, using AI and machine learning to solve some of the biggest problems facing our world.

COMPUTER SCIENCE — Computer science professor Yu Wang has received two major honors in the past few months. First, a team he has been leading won a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Second, his dissertation, which investigates ways to improve limited data sets to promote equity in data science, was awarded an honorable mention.

COMPUTER SCIENCE — With the help of the UO resources and research assistants, Assistant Professor Yu Wang’s research is helping us move toward a world where the accurate information we need to solve nearly any problem is right at our fingertips. The potential applications of Wang and his team’s efforts to mitigate this gap are nearly limitless.

Researchers and tech professionals from around the world gathered on campus for a hands-on programming workshop with Advanced Micro Devices, an industry leader in high-performance computing. Research teams from universities such as MIT, Stanford, and more traveled to the School of Computer and Data Sciences for the three-day hackathon, the first of its kind in North America.

In Applied Data Science for Social Justice, a new course developed by Associate Professor Rori Rohlfs in the School of Computer and Data Sciences, students partnered with the city-funded program CAHOOTS to help its organizers analyze data for insights on how they can improve their services.

Four University of Oregon researchers have received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty members in the past year. Of the winners is Brittany Erickson, assistant professor of computer science and earth sciences, who studies why some faults slip suddenly and cause big earthquakes, while others move steadily or produce smaller, more frequent tremors.

COMPUTER SCIENCE - Assistant Professor Brittany Erickson, a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, had her first encounter with an earthquake in 1989. She was an 8-year-old, playing outside when Loma Prieta violently shook California’s Central Coast at a magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX. The event was terrifying and memorable.

COMPUTER SCIENCE - When Ramakrishnan (Ram) Durairajan, associate professor and Ripple Fellow in the School of Computer and Data Science, decided it was time to take on the beast that is the internet, he came prepared. Durairajan’s team is developing a new, more agile defense framework that can be programmed to control network infrastructure and forward behavior.

COMPUTER SCIENCE - Funded by a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer science researchers at the College of Arts and Sciences are partnering with Rutgers University to answer that question while shoring up the region’s network of earthquake sensors and wildfire cameras.