News

Two computer science students receive graduate fellowships for 2006-2007

April 10, 2006 - The Graduate Council has selected two Computer Science graduate students to receive special graduate fellowships for the coming school year.  Derek Ruths, a doctoral candidate in the department’s Bioinformatics group, received the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship.  Kostas Bekris, a doctoral candidate in the department’s Physical and Biological Computing group, won the Nettie S. Autrey Fellowship.

The Vaughn Fellowship of $14,000 is given to five graduate students each year, one in Social Sciences, one in Humanities, and three in any discipline.  The award goes to students whose records at Rice show outstanding achievement and promise.

As a member of the Bioinformatics group, Ruths creates computational models of intracellular protein interactions in order to study the growth of cancerous cells.

"My research focuses on computationally predicting the interactions that are involved in cancer pathways,” explained Ruths.  “The systems I am developing combine existing biological knowledge with results from microarray experiments in order to identify new interactions in the cell that may participate in the growth of cancer.”

Assistant Professor Luay Nakhleh, Ruth’s advisor, noted: "Derek works simultaneously on three major projects: detecting horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, hypothesis generation in biological signaling networks, and analyzing genotype/haplotype data in human populations. He plays a central role in all aspects of these projects: mathematical modeling, algorithm design, software development, and data analysis. Derek's skills, efficiency, and desire to both learn the biology of the problem and pursue whatever computational approaches solve it have enabled him to be very successful in this challenging interdisciplinary area."

The Nettie S. Autrey Fellowship awards one graduate student each year with $12,000 to pursue studies in the fields of science and engineering.

Bekris’s research focuses on developing the capability of robots to perform tasks too difficult or hazardous for humans.  Bekris has developed sophisticated algorithms that allow robots to explore unknown environments and reason about their surroundings and behaviors.

As Bekris’s research summary explains, “In his research, he has focused on problems that require robots to autonomously reason about their state, the environment and their actions, while coping with limitations in sensing and mobility stemming from the underlying technology.  Bekris has addressed sensing limitations by implementing location estimation and navigation algorithms given noisy and constrained sensors. He has developed planning algorithms to explore unknown environments using sensor data obtained by a team of robots while respecting complicated dynamic constraints in their motion.”

Professor Lydia Kavraki, Bekris' advisor, noted: "The research work of Kostas extends the capabilities of modern robotic systems in novel ways.  He is showing how to take into account both sensor information and complex constraints in the motion of a robot when planning its actions to achieve a task. Considering all this information from the very beginning is essential for the development of systems that can operate effectively in the physical world. Kostas has demonstrated independence, persistence and enthusiasm in his work. He has been extremely productive as it can be seen from his publications in top rated journals and conferences. I think that his work will change the way sensing and planning is done for many mobile robotic systems in the future."

 

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