This past spring, the Computing Research Association (CRA) and its Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announced funding for a cohort of Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows) for 2021, with strong support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program sponsors two-year postdoctoral research positions in computing, as well as career development and cohort building activities, to provide a career-enhancing bridge experience for recent Ph.D. graduates. The program aims to address the continued disruption in hiring practices at academic institutions due to COVID-19. This effort was inspired by the CRA/CCC’s NSF-funded Computing Innovation Fellows Programs with cohorts starting 2009, 2010, and 2011, CRA’s Best Practices Memo on Computer Science Postdocs, and the Computing Innovation Fellows 2020 Project.
Many thanks to all the people that invested their time and talents to make the CIFellows 2021 program possible including reviewers, staff, and committee members; and a special thank you to the selection committee: Elizabeth Bradley (CCC Chair and University of Colorado, Boulder), Emery Berger (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Azer Bestavros (Boston University), Randal Bryant (Carnegie Mellon University), Ken Calvert (University of Kentucky), Marie desJardins (Simmons University), Jessica Hodgins (Carnegie Mellon University), Ben Kuipers (University of Michigan), Daniel Lopresti (Lehigh University), Ray Mooney (University of Texas Austin), Sean Munson (University of Washington), Jelani Nelson (University of California, Berkeley), Katie Siek (Indiana University) and Ellen Zegura (former CRA Board Chair and Georgia Tech). We received 238 applications covering a wide variety of research areas and over 108 universities. After 476 reviews by 102 community members, the selection committee chose 69 new CIFellows. 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 2021! This cohort is comprised of 69 diverse researchers covering a broad range of areas in computing. The 2021 class of CIFellows is 52% women, come from 49 universities, and will be beginning their CIFellowships at 48 different universities. Below is a listing of the 2021 CIFellows. You can find out more about each CIFellow 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 CIFellows in supportive environments to foster the talent of the future computing research community. Please join us in congratulating the new CIFellows!
| CIFellow | Primary Affiliation | Host Institution | Mentor |
| Sara Abdali | University of California, Riverside | Georgia Institute of Technology | Srijan Kumar |
| Ben Abramowitz | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Tulane University | Nicholas Mattei |
| Taslima Akter | Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing | University of California, Irvine | Anne Marie Piper |
| Kevin Bello | Purdue University | University of Chicago | Bryon Aragam |
| Prajakta Belsare | University of Alabama, Birmingham | Dartmouth College | Temiloluwa O. Prioleau |
| Jasmine Berry | University of Southern California | University of Michigan | Odest Chadwicke Jenkins |
| Alexis Block | ETH Zurich | University of California, Los Angeles | Veronica Santos |
| Kiante Brantley | University of Maryland | Cornell University | Thorsten Joachims |
| Ceara Byrne | Georgia Institute of Technology | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Giovanni Traverso |
| Francisco Castro | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | New York University | Kayla DesPortes |
| Janelle Clark | Rice University | University of Massachusetts, Lowell | Holly Yanco |
| Michael Craige | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Antonina Mitrofanova |
| Mallesham Dasari | Stony Brook University, SUNY | University of Minnesota | Feng Qian |
| Sami Davies | University of Washington | Northwestern University | Samir Khuller |
| Matthew Drescher | Université libre de Bruxelles | University of California, Davis | John Owens |
| Kuan Fang | Stanford University | University of California, Berkeley | Sergey Levine |
| Rebecca Faust | University of Arizona | Virginia Tech | Chris North |
| Adriane Fernandes Minori | University of California, San Diego | Carnegie Mellon University | Lining Yao |
| Sainyam Galhotra | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | University of Chicago | Raul Castro Fernandez |
| Ali Ghanbari | University of Texas, Dallas | Iowa State University | Hridesh Rajan |
| Anitha Gollamudi | Harvard University | Yale University | Zhong Shao |
| Leah Horgan | University of California, Irvine | Northeastern University | Sara Wylie |
| Layne Hubbard | University of Colorado, Boulder | University of California, Irvine | Mark Warschauer |
| Andrew Hundt | Johns Hopkins University | Georgia Institute of Technology | Matthew Gombolay |
| Umar Iqbal | University of Iowa | University of Washington | Franziska Roesner |
| Shweta Jain | University of California, Santa Cruz | University of Utah | Blair Sullivan |
| Gayithri Jayathirtha | University of Pennsylvania | University of Oregon | Joanne Goode |
| Emmanuel Johnson | University of Southern California | University of Southern California | Yolanda Gil |
| Anne Jonas | University of California, Berkeley | Michigan State University | Jean Hardy |
| Swapna Joshi | Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | Narges Mahyar |
| Sushrut Karmalkar | University of Texas, Austin | University of Wisconsin, Madison | Ilias Diakonikolas |
| Saba Kawas | University of Washington | University of Minnesota | Lana Yarosh |
| Sualeh Khurshid | Texas A&M University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Themistoklis Sapsis |
| Nurit Kirshenbaum | University of Hawaii | University of Hawaii | Jason Leigh |
| Tiffany Knearem | Pennsylvania State University | University of California, San Diego | Elizabeth Eikey |
| Adam Li | Johns Hopkins University | Columbia University | Elias Bareinboim |
| Yun Li | George Mason University | Emory University | Liang Zhao |
| Tianyu Liu | University of Wisconsin, Madison | Stanford University | Nima Anari |
| Zoey Liu | University of California, Davis | Boston College | Emily Prud’hommeaux |
| Samiha Marwan | North Carolina State University | University of Nebraska at Omaha | Briana Morrison |
| Stephen McAleer | University of California, Irvine | Carnegie Mellon University | Tuomas Sandholm |
| Mehran Mirramezani | University of California, Berkeley | Princeton University | Ryan P. Adams |
| Kenneth Boyenah Nimley | Drexel University | George Mason University | Aditya Johri |
| Tapti Palit | Stony Brook University, SUNY | Purdue University | Pedro Fonseca |
| Sunoo Park | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cornell University | Helen Nissenbaum |
| Denis Peskov | University of Maryland | Princeton University | Brandon Stewart |
| Vincent Peta | South Dakota State University | University of South Dakota | Etienne Gnimpieba |
| Lauren Pick | Princeton University | University of Wisconsin, Madison | Aws Albarghouthi |
| Raghavendra Pradyumna Pothukuchi | University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign | Yale University | Abhishek Bhattacharjee (and Jonathan Cohen) |
| Ghulam Jilani Quadri | University of South Florida | University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill | Danielle Albers Szafir |
| Lana Ramjit | University of California, Los Angeles | Cornell Tech | Nicola Dell |
| Tatiana Ringenberg | Purdue University | Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing | Jean Camp |
| Michael Rivera | Carnegie Mellon University | University of Colorado, Boulder | Laura Devendorf |
| Amrita Roy Chowdhury | University of Wisconsin, Madison | University of California, San Diego | Kamalika Chaudhuri |
| Gourav Saha | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | Purdue University | Xiaojun Lin |
| Jean Salac | University of Chicago | University of Washington | Amy J Ko |
| Shruti Sannon | Cornell University | University of Michigan | Tawanna Dillahunt |
| Joseph Seering | Carnegie Mellon University | Stanford University | Michael Bernstein |
| Nasim Sonboli | University of Colorado, Boulder | Tufts University | Bert Huang |
| David Tench | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Martin Farach-Colton |
| Jerald Thomas | University of Minnesota | Virginia Tech | Doug Bowman |
| Wil Thomason | Cornell University | Rice University | Lydia Kavraki |
| Jesus del Carmen Valdiviezo Mora | Duke University | University of California, Berkeley | Teresa L. Head-Gordon |
| Jessica Vandenberg | North Carolina State University | North Carolina State University | Bradford Mott |
| Troi Williams | University of South Florida | University of Maryland | Pratap Tokekar |
| Le Xu | University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign | University of Texas, Austin | Aditya Akella |
| Fumeng Yang | Brown University | Northwestern University | Matthew Kay |
| Wanrong Zhang | Georgia Institute of Technology | Harvard University | Salil Vadhan |
| Jieyu Zhao | University of California, Los Angeles | University of Maryland | Hal Daumé III |
