January 29, 2025
By Louis DiPietro
The Computing Research Association (CRA) selected eight undergraduates from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science for honorable mentions for the 2024-2025 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award.
CRA’s award recognizes undergraduate students at North American colleges and universities who demonstrate exceptional potential in computing research. This year, CRA fielded hundreds of student nominations from faculty across the continent and chose these young Cornell researchers from the departments of Computer Science and Information Science to be honored for their work:
Computer Science
- James Kim ‘25
- Jason Klein ‘26
- Benny Rubin ‘24
- Deniz Boloni-Turgut ‘26
Information Science
- Muhammad Jee ‘25
- Maaya Kanvar ‘25
- Luis Miguel Sy Malenab ‘25
- Manru (Mary) Zhang ‘24
The selection of these budding researchers from Cornell Bowers highlights the college's dedication to providing opportunities for hands-on experiences and underlines the impact of programs like the Bowers Undergraduate Research Experience, or BURE, which gives undergraduates a taste of research life. Of the above recognized students, the four representing computer science – Kim, Klein, Rubin, and Boloni-Turgut – previously participated in BURE, which began in 2023. The 10-week summer program pairs each participating undergraduate with one of nearly 40 faculty mentors and their doctoral students to tackle a specific research project.
Among other recent honors by BURE participants:
- Andrew Kang ‘27 – a computer science and mathematics major – presented virtually at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Big Data in December.
- A paper from Joyce Yang ‘27 – a computer science major – was accepted at the Human Robot Interaction conference, to be held March 4-6.
- Nam Anh Dang ‘27, a computer science major and Peter He ‘27, an electrical and computer engineering major, both had papers accepted at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, to be held April 26-May 1.
Louis DiPietro is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.