This past spring, when hiring practices were rapidly changing due to COVID-19, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) launched the CIFellows 2020 program, with strong support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program aims to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent and soon-to-be Ph.D. graduates in computing. This effort was inspired by the CRA/CCC’s NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellows Programs with cohorts starting 2009, 2010, and 2011, which funded a total of 127 fellows after the 2008 recession.
Many people invested their time and talents to our CIFellows 2020 program, including co-principal investigators on the NSF grant that funded the program: Andrew P. Bernat (CRA Executive Director), Elizabeth Bradley (CCC Chair), Ann Schwartz Drobnis (CCC Director), Mark D. Hill (CCC Chair Emeritus and CRA Board Member), and Ellen W. Zegura (PI and CRA Board Chair). Within one month of the program’s announcement, 550 applications were submitted covering a wide variety of research areas and over 140 universities. The applications were reviewed by more than 270 members of the community under a tight two week deadline. Thank you to the entire community for your involvement in promoting, mentoring, and reviewing applications for our recent graduates.
CRA and CCC are extremely excited to announce the CIFellows for 2020! They comprise 59 diverse researchers covering a broad range of research areas in computing. The class of Fellows is 52% women, come from 46 universities, and will be beginning their fellowships at 43 different universities. Below is a listing of the 2020 CIFellows. You can find out more about each fellow and the program here.
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. Please join us in congratulating the new Fellows!
| CIFellow | Primary Affiliation | Fellowship Institution | Mentor |
| Alex Ahmed | Northeastern University | Carnegie Mellon University | Sarah Fox |
| Rika Antonova | KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm | Stanford University | Jeannette Bohg |
| Evangelos Atlidakis | Columbia University | Brown University | Vasileios Kemerlis |
| Ramin Ayanzadeh | University of Maryland, Baltimore County | Georgia Institute of Technology | Moinuddin Qureshi |
| Marshall Ball | Columbia University | University of Washington | Huijia Lin |
| Suguman Bansal | Rice University | University of Pennsylvania | Rajeev Alur |
| Aline Bessa | New York University Tandon School of Engineering | New York University | Christopher Musco |
| Clara Caldeira | University of California, Irvine | Indiana University Bloomington | Katherine Connelly |
| Richard Canevez | Pennsylvania State University | University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa | Jenifer Sunrise Winter |
| Marco Carmosino | University of California, San Diego | Boston University | Mark Bun |
| Kathryn Cunningham | University of Michigan | Northwestern University | Eleanor O’Rourke |
| Wenhan Dai | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | University of Massachusetts Amherst | Donald Towsley |
| Sunipa Dev | University of Utah | University of California, Los Angeles | Kai-Wei Chang |
| Michael Ann DeVito | Northwestern University | University of Colorado Boulder | Jed Brubaker |
| Yi Ding | University of Chicago | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Michael Carbin |
| Houda El mimouni | Drexel University | Indiana University Bloomington | Selma Šabanović |
| Emmanuel Garza | California Institute of Technology | University of Southern California | Constantine Sideris |
| Kari George | University of California, Los Angeles | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Colleen Lewis |
| Amir Ghasemianlangroodi | University of Colorado Boulder | Yale University | Nicholas Christakis |
| Nikolaos Giannarakis | Princeton University | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Loris D’Antoni |
| Shiry Ginosar | University of California, Berkeley | University of California, Berkeley | Jitendra Malik |
| Ben Greenman | Northeastern University | Brown University | Shriram Krishnamurthi |
| Biresh Kumar Joardar | Washington State University | Duke University | Krishnendu Chakrabarty |
| Gabriel Kaptchuk | Johns Hopkins University | Boston University | Ran Canetti |
| Vera Khovanskaya | Cornell University | University of California, San Diego | Lilly Irani |
| Rafal Kocielnik | University of Washington | California Institute of Technology | Anima Anandkumar |
| Deepak Kumar | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Stanford University | Zakir Durumeric |
| Taisa Kushner | University of Colorado Boulder | Oregon Health & Science University | Peter Jacobs |
| Qi Lei | University of Texas at Austin | Princeton University | Jason Lee |
| Szu-Yu Liu | Indiana University Bloomington | University of California, Irvine | Paul Dourish |
| Byron Lowens | Clemson University | University of Michigan | Florian Schaub |
| Nicholas Lytle | North Carolina State University | University of Florida | Kristy Boyer |
| Naja Mack | University of Florida | Morehouse College | Kinnis Gosha |
| Lara Martin | Georgia Institute of Technology | University of Pennsylvania | Chris Callison-Burch |
| David Narváez | Rochester Institute of Technology | University of Rochester | Lane A. Hemaspaandra |
| Sabrina Neuman | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Harvard University | Vijay Janapa Reddi |
| Minh (Tan) Nguyen | Rice University | University of California, Los Angeles | Stan Osher |
| Marziyeh Nourian | North Carolina State University | University of Chicago | Andrew Chien |
| Ellen Novoseller | California Institute of Technology | University of California, Berkeley | Ken Goldberg |
| Michael O’Neill | University of Wisconsin- Madison | Lehigh University | Frank Curtis |
| Zoe Paraskevopoulou | Princeton University | Northeastern University | Amal Ahmed |
| Beatrice Perez | University College London | Dartmouth College | David Kotz |
| Brianna Posadas | University of Florida | Virginia Tech | Kim Niewolny |
| Marlen Promann | Purdue University | University of Texas at Austin | James Howison |
| Gokul Subramanian Ravi | University of Wisconsin- Madison | University of Chicago | Frederic Chong |
| Ibrahim Sabek | University of Minnesota | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Michael Cafarella |
| Soheil Salehi Mobarakeh | University of Central Florida | University of California, Davis | Houman Homayoun |
| Sebastian Schuster | Stanford University | New York University | Tal Linzen |
| Amirbehshad Shahrasbi | Carnegie Mellon University | Harvard University | Madhu Sudan |
| Abigale Stangl | University of Texas at Austin | University of Washington | Leah Findlater |
| Minka Stoyanova | City University of Hong Kong | University of Colorado Boulder | Reece Auguiste |
| Morgan Turner | Brown University | University of Minnesota | Daniel Keefe |
| Yu-Chun Yen | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | University of California, San Diego | Steven Dow |
| Justin Yim | University of California, Berkeley | Carnegie Mellon University | Aaron Johnson |
| Kianoosh Yousefi | University of Delaware | Columbia University | Marco Giometto |
| Alisa Yurovsky | Stony Brook University | Stony Brook University | Richard Moffitt |
| Yixue Zhao | University of Southern California | University of Massachusetts | Yuriy Brun |
| Pengfei Zheng | Duke University | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Aditya Akella |
| Tara Zimmerman | University of North Texas | University of Texas | Kenneth Fleischmann |
