Newsmakers | Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

Highlighting the professional and academic accomplishments of College of Computing and Information Sciences students, faculty, and staff.

Newsmakers are a quick and easy way to acknowledge the professional and academic accomplishments of RIT students, faculty, and staff, such as publishing an article in a scholarly journal, presenting research at a conference, serving on a panel discussion, earning a scholarship, or winning an award. Newsmakers appear in News and Events as well as the "In the News" section on faculty/staff directory profile pages.

Submit a Newsmaker

View our Dean's List

March 2026

March 11, 2026

Muhammed Raees, computing and information sciences Ph.D. student, was recognized by the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026). Raees received an Honorable Mention Award, placing his work in the top 5% of all submissions to the premier international conference. Additionally, Raees had three papers accepted to the CHI 2026 Posters Track and was selected to present his dissertation proposal at the conference's prestigious mentoring roundtable for expert feedback and discussion.
March 11, 2026

Computing and information sciences Ph.D. student Luke Kurlandski, presented his work on "Beyond Raw Bytes: Towards Large Malware Language Models” at NDSS 2026, one of the top conferences in cybersecurity. Kurlandski's work focuses on how ideas from LLMs can be used in the malware analysis domain, and he is co-advised by Yin Pan, professor, and Matthew Wright, Cybersecurity Department Chair and O'Sullivan Professor in Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.
March 4, 2026

Grey Pasiak, GCCIS/Student Success Librarian, wrote a guest post for the academic blog The Scholarly Kitchen.
March 3, 2026

Cooper Fleishman, a second-year game design and development student, will present his talk “Helldivers and the Art of the Living Game: Designing for Community Ownership,” on March 9 at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Fleishman explored what transforms a game from having players into having a true community, using Helldivers 2 as a case study in pro-social design.

February 2026

February 27, 2026

Naresh Kshetri, lecturer in the Department of Cybersecurity, co-authored the book chapter “cyberAItrends: Future Trends in AI for Cyberbullying Prevention” in Combating Cyberbullying With Generative AI. The chapter explores future trends in AI-driven tools designed to reduce online bullying, including various cybercrime across social media platforms, messaging apps, and other digital platforms.
February 12, 2026

Yiqin Zhao, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Games and Media, received a grant from Nvidia for his research project "AI-Driven Interactive Imaging for Low-Cost and Accurate Material Understanding" in December 2025. His research will bring new low-cost solutions for material understanding in engineering, manufacturing, and construction.
February 6, 2026

The AT&T ROC Jr. Game Dev Camp Powered by RIT received the Champions of Change award Feb. 19 from the New York State School Boards Association. The recognition highlights programs that bring positive, meaningful change to the students, communities, and districts of New York. With the award, a new banner will hang in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

January 2026

January 30, 2026

Rajendra K. Raj, professor in the Department of Computer Science, attended a steering committee meeting of the joint task force of the IEEE Digital Privacy Initiative, IEEE Computer Society, Association of Computing Machinery, and the International Federation of Information Processing in Frankfurt, Germany, in December. The task force is developing interdisciplinary and globally relevant graduate-level privacy curricular guidelines.
January 23, 2026

Christopher Schwartz, research scientist in the Department of Cybersecurity; Jessica Bayliss, professor; David Schwartz, director; and Brian Tomaszewski, professor, all in the School of Interactive Games and Media, and A. David Abitbol (Army Transformation and Training Command), published “Access Denied and Sector Down: Introducing Resilience Games for Critical Infrastructure Preparedness” in The Cyber Defense Review, Vol 10, No. 2. The Army Cyber Institute distributes issues throughout the federal government, military, and industry.
January 23, 2026

Professor Emeritus Paul Tymann, in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, has been recognized with the 2026 SIGCSE Award for Distinguished Service to the Computer Science Education Community. Tymann will be recognized at the 2026 SIGCSE Technical Symposium in St. Louis.