News

Have you heard of Infinity Blade? How about Advent Rising or Fortnite? Geremy Mustard is the co-founder of ChAIR Entertainment, which was acquired by Epic Games in 2008, and through that position has been a collaborator on many of their projects including the blockbuster Infinity Blade. He has served as co-creator of Xbox game Advent Rising and helped to create Fortnite, which changed the gaming industry.

On Thursday, October 13, 2022, the Computer Science department hosted Geremy Mustard for an alumni lecture, and he talked about his career in the industry and in game development. The event was very successful, with every chair filled. Each week, we have a lecture, so check out our events tab for this week's!

Wednesday, November 2nd at 12pm, TMCB 335

Advisor: Dan Ventura

The Realtime Rendering Summit was sponsored by University of Utah, SideFX and Epic, and BYU animation students were invited to present at the weekend event (Sept. 23-24). Located on the campus of the University of Utah, this event was a summit of industry and academia from around the state of Utah and beyond. The 2 day event consisted of case studies, panels, student reel reviews, evening social activities and even a live Houdini / Unreal art battle!

The presenting students were Zach Wood and Anna Hales. They presented their work on Software Agnostic USD usage in a small studio or academic setting, which is a reflection of a part of the work that is being done on this year's Animation Film capstone.

The Computer Science department Kickoff took place on September 8, and had a turn out of approximately 300 current and prospective students. Activities included club booths, Frisbee, J-Dawgs, and a raffle!

Professor Dan Ventura and a team of colleagues from Idaho State (Paul Bodily a BYU CS alumnus, Jon Armstrong, and Claire Smedley-Dye ) recently entered an international AI song contest and found out that they made the finals. Listen to team Pop*'s song here: https://www.aisongcontest.com/the-2022-finalists.

The BYU team consists of Braydon Hunt, Teikn Smith and Lawry Sorenson with Dr Ryan Farrell as their advisor.

She’s a great support to the chair. She’s been willing to take on tasks outside her job description to help the needs of the department.

It's still unofficial how many teams from each region will advance, but our team that came in 2nd place will probably go to the North American Championships in late May to compete against the top teams in the US and Canada (there are some really, really good teams there!).  Sadly, only 1 team per school can go, so even if they allow a 3rd team from our region, we cannot send both of our top teams... which is heartbreaking given how close the two teams were (only 2 mins!).

Friday, April 1st at 1-2:00pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: Dan Ventura

"Their short animated film, “Stowaway” was nominated for a student Emmy for Best Animation, and the winner will be announced next month at the College Television Awards." from https://www.ldsliving.com/this-short-film-directed-written-and-produced-by-latter-day-saints-was-just-nominated-for-a-college-emmy/s/10461

Wednesday, March 16th at 12-2:00pm, on Zoom

Meeting ID: 974 5563 5628

Meeting Passcode: 128976

Advisor: Yui-Kai Ng

Wednesday, March 2nd at 3-4:30pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: Dan Ventura

Wednesday, February 9th at 1pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: Chris Archibald

Wednesday, February 2nd at 2pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: David Wingate

Thursday, January 27th at 3pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: Kevin Seppi

Friday December 17 at 11:00 a.m., 2222 TMCB

Advisor: Sean Warnick

Before joining the BYU CS department, Steve worked for 10 years at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he was the Manager of Machine Translation (MT) and Translation Systems. Prior to working at the Church, he presided over the Brazil São Paulo South Mission with his wife Marianna. Before the mission, he worked for 17 years at Microsoft Research as a Principal Researcher and manager of the MT Group and for 11 years at IBM, including at the TJ Watson Research Center, focusing on natural language processing (NLP).

https://inclusion.cs.byu.edu/

Wednesday, November 17th at 3pm, Summit Room 3346 TMCB

Advisor: Jacob Crandall

If counselors could predict which kids are most likely to commit suicide, they could save lives. Researchers from Brigham Young University, Johns Hopkins and Harvard have come up with an algorithm that predicts suicidal thoughts and behavior among adolescents. Their findings could lead to more effective measures to prevent suicide. (From https://ksltv.com/476011/byu-researchers-create-algorithm-to-predict-suicidal-thoughts-in-adolescents/)

Friday, November 19th at 1pm, 3350 TMCB

Advisor: Nancy Fulda

Brett Decker received a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in 2012. He then was hired full-time at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)---he first started working for SNL as a student intern in 2010. As part of SNL’s Critical Skills Master’s Program, Brett obtained a MS in Computer Science from Brown University in 2015. At SNL, Brett has been a software engineer, architect, and lead on various secure embedded and PC software systems. Brett came to BYU in Fall 2019.

Thursday, October 21st at 3pm, Conference Room

Advisor: Casey Deccio

Thursday, October 21st at 3pm

Advisor: Jacob Crandall

Dr Eric Mercer was the 2021 Amazon Research Awards recipient in AUTOMATED REASONING.

Monday September 13th at 2pm

Advisor: Mark Clement

Friday July 30 at 10am

Advisor: Mark Clement

David is a recent graduate of the University of California Santa Barbara in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His research interests are centered on multiagent systems, game theory, distributed optimization, mechanism design, and security, however, he’s genuinely open to new domains of thinking which may challenge his assumptions or deepen his appreciation of current understanding. Alongside his academic pursuits, he has been able to work in industry for Applied Invention and MIT Lincoln Laboratories, allowing him to apply theory to several industries, including agriculture, national defense, travel, security, and aerospace. He has also been a leading member of Achilles Heel Technologies, a startup company applying systems theory to the security of critical infrastructures.

Thursday, July 8th at 11:00am, 3350 TMCB

Advisor: Kevin Seppi