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.

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August 2026

August 27, 2026

Naresh Kshetri, lecturer in the Department of Cybersecurity, co-authored Securing AI-generated media with Blockchain technologies. The book addresses the profound challenges of cybersecurity risks, data privacy concerns, intellectual property disputes, missing information, deepfakes proliferation, and legal complexities by exploring the blockchain technology potential as a cornerstone for securing AI-generated content.
August 21, 2026

Justin Pelletier, professor of practice in the Department of Cybersecurity and director of the ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute Cyber Range and Training Center, received an award from the Department of War for continued support of RIT’s Cyber Service Academy program, which is designed to recruit top cyber talent and retain the current cyber workforce to help secure the United States against the threats of information systems and networks.
August 19, 2026

Billy Brumley, O’Sullivan Professor of Cybersecurity, and Ravikumar Selvam, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Cybersecurity, along with Neil Horman of OpenSSL Software Services Inc., are co-PI’s on a new award from the National Science Foundation for their project, Addressing Vulnerabilities in OpenSSL's Providers, Primitives, and Protocols.
August 17, 2026

Christian Newman, associate professor of software engineering and software engineering graduate program director, earned a new award from the National Science Foundation for his project, Preparing Computer Science Students for Artificial Intelligence Assisted Software Development.
August 13, 2026

Nidhi Rastogi, assistant professor of software engineering and researcher in the ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute, earned a new award from the National Science Foundation for Project Nimbus: Promoting Undergraduate Discovery in Cybersecurity for Multi-Cloud Machine Learning Operations.
August 11, 2026

Mohan Kumar, professor of computer science, received a new National Science Foundation (NSF) award for his project, EAGER: Service Composition with LLM-based Services for Pervasive Awareness. Kumar was on assignment to the NSF as a Program Director in the Computer and Network Systems Division of the Computer Information Science and Engineering Directorate from August 2022 to August 2025.
August 7, 2026

José Zagal, director of the School of Interactive Games and Media, presented a keynote on Role-Playing Games in Chile at the tri-lingual 10th International Colloquium on Role-Playing Game Studies, July 29-31 in Newark, N.J.

July 2026

July 21, 2026

Cedric Bone, computing and information sciences Ph.D. student and member of the Computational and Speech Processing Lab, was the first author of “A Multimodal Investigation of Controllability and Cognitive Load in Interactive Machine Learning,” co-authored by Parth Kapur, artificial intelligence MS student, and Cecilia Alm, professor of psychology and artificial intelligence program director.
July 6, 2026

The Computing Organization for Multicultural Students in the College of Computing was the recipient of the 2025-2026 ALANA Collegiate Association (ACA) Community Impact Award. This award is given to an ACA affiliate organization that has made the most significant impact in its community through growth, transformation, or outstanding contributions to students.
July 6, 2026

Richard Lange, assistant professor, and Alexander Ororbia, associate professor, both in the Department of Computer Science, received a new award from the National Science Foundation for their project “Advancing NeuroAI through Biologically-Plausible Self-supervised Learning.” Both faculty members' research bridges neuroscience and AI, with Ororbia leading the Neural Adaptive Computing Laboratory at RIT.