Department of Computer Science
Media Coverage

MIT Tech Review : We Could Run Out of Data To Train AI Language Programs

Jan 26, 2023

Swabha Swayamdipta, an assistant professor of computer science, discusses ways to overcome data constraints for large language models.

Quanta : The Computer Scientist Who Finds Life Lessons in Games

Jan 25, 2023

Quanta interviews Shang-Hua Teng, a USC computer science professor who has twice won the Gödel Prize, a top honor in theoretical computer science, but often explores playful applications, like board games.

Toronto Star: These AI images look just like me.

Jan 15, 2023

Wael Abd Almageed was quoted about the future of deepfakes

NBCLA: Does Your Middle-Class Tax Refund Debit Card Have a $0 Balance?

Jan 15, 2023

Cybersecurity expert Cliff Neuman was interviewed about how cards might be compromised

LA Times: Is ChatGPT a marvel or a farce?

Dec 11, 2022

Jesse Thomason was interviewed about the significance of ChatbotGPT

NPR: Today’s interactive Google Doodle honors Jerry Lawson, a pioneer of modern gaming

Dec 04, 2022

The story mentions the USC Games’ Gerald A. Lawson Fund that was set up at USC Games to support the next generation of gamers

Yahoo!: Forget Spotify Wrapped, here’s how to make your own Spotify festival lineup

Dec 04, 2022

Computer Science student Anshay Saboo was featured in various outlets after launching his app Instafest, that went viral.

Google: Using AI to study 12 years of representation in TV

Nov 27, 2022

The latest report from Google, the USC SAIL Lab and Geena Davis Institute on media representation was highlighted.

KTLA: Dark Patterns

Nov 27, 2022

Cliff Neuman was interviewed about dark patterns and what consumers could do to protect themselves against online marketing practices.

AI Hub: Designing Better Voting Systems, With a Little Help From the Animal World

Oct 28, 2022

Taking a cue from the animal world, USC researchers discovered a simple voting rule that optimally reflects voters’ opinions about candidates. Lead author Fatih Kizilkaya, a computer science doctoral student, discusses the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award-winning work.

Indian Express: Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan

Oct 23, 2022

Jon May was featured in a podcast focused on developing tools for more civil online communication

Amazon Science: Amazon and USC name three new ML Fellows

Oct 04, 2022

PhD students will receive fellowship funding and be mentored by Amazon scientists.

Dot.LA: Homophobia Is Easy To Encode in AI

Sep 25, 2022

Research by Katy Felkner to mitigate AI bias towards the LGBTQ+ community was highlighted

LA Times: Student information remains at risk after massive cyberattack on Los Angeles Unified

Sep 11, 2022

Cliff Neuman was quoted on about a recent LAUSD cyber attack and why the district was targeted

CNN: These robot engineers are inspired by cats (and dogs)

Sep 05, 2022

The labs of Francisco Valero-Cuevas and Quan Nguyen were featured in on “Techfor Good” segment on robots and biomimcry

VICE: Privacy Phone Network Intended to Mask Your Identity

Aug 28, 2022

A startup by Barath Raghavan and Paul Schmitt was featured.

Cosmos: Busting homophobic, anti-queer bias in AI language models

Aug 14, 2022

AI research by doctoral student Katy Felkner was highlighted.

CBS: Disneyland Instagram Hacked

Jul 10, 2022

Cliff Neuman explains how the Disneyland hack may have occurred.

Amazon re: MARS: Luminaries – Maja Matarić, Computer Scientist, Roboticist, AI Researcher

Jun 05, 2022

Professor Matarić is one of 6 scientists and engineers featured by Amazon in its MARS “Luminaries” series. Matarić is featured for her work in the field of socially assistive robotics.

IGN: USC Games Expo 2022 to Feature World Premieres of Over 50 Student-Made Games

May 02, 2022

The upcoming USC Games Expo was featured

Study Finds: Are your finances exposed? 2 in 5 Venmo users publicly reveal sensitive information

May 01, 2022

A study about personal information exposed on Venmo was featured

Washington Post: USC scholarship aims to help Black, Indigenous workers enter games industry

Apr 17, 2022

The USC Games Gerald A. Lawson Endowment Fund for Black and Indigenous students was highlighted; The forthcoming Games Expo was highlighted.

Argonne National Lab: Ancient art meets AI for better materials design

Apr 07, 2022

Inspired by a type of origami, Viterbi researchers apply autonomous reinforcement learning to develop materials for wearable electronics.

CNET: Extinct Ice Age Animals Will Be Digitally Resurrected In the Metaverse

Mar 13, 2022

A collaboration among the La Brea Tar Pits, NHLA and USC to apply AR as educational tools was highlighted.

San Bernadino Sun: Cyberthreats from Russia

Mar 13, 2022

Cliff Neuman was interviewed about how the challenges of cyberwarfare and cyber defense

News 18 : USC Viterbi Launches Center for Autonomy and AI

Mar 11, 2022

New research Center led Rahul Jain and Jyo Deshmukh was highlighted

21 Questions with Cheyenne Gaima

Feb 28, 2022

Day in the Life of a Skateboarder, Piercer, Poet and Coder

Science: Dream Machine

Feb 16, 2022

Maja Matarić discusses how robots can be used in school to increase social interaction and engagement.

National Academy of Sciences: Our Future Robot Companions

Feb 13, 2022

Maja Matarić gave a virtual talk at the National Academy of Sciences Science & Entertainment Exchange

Dot LA: USC Expands AI Education With New Research Center, Amazon Partnership

Feb 13, 2022

DotLA covered two pieces of Viterbi news this week, Dean Yortsos was interviewed adding, “some sort of a digital literacy will become as important as other general education requirements”

WIRED: Maybe Green Energy Needs Information Batteries Too

Feb 06, 2022

New research by Barath Raghavan was featured

Analytics India Magazine: Can You Express Your Feelings Through A Haptic Armband, Just Like A Hug?

Jan 09, 2022

Professor Culbertson’s research on virtual touch was featured.

Psychology Today: New Synthetic AI Data May Improve Brain-Computer Interfaces

Dec 05, 2021

Research by Laurent Itti that applies the same method that is used to create deep fakes for the benefit of brain- machine interfaces for individuals with disabilities, was featured

CIFellows 2021: CIFellowships Support Post-Doctoral Research

Nov 29, 2021

Emmanuel Johnson and Jasmine Berry have received 2021 Computing Innovation (CI) Fellowships, which help recent and soon-to-be Ph.D. graduates launch their careers in uncertain economic times.

Washington Post: “We are still here”

Nov 21, 2021

The Washington Post wrote about CS PhD student Lina Brixey’s efforts to use computer science to preserve the Choctaw language.

AI in Healthcare: Behavioral health AI predicts effectiveness of talk therapy

Nov 14, 2021

Research by the SAIL lab was featured

USC Viterbi Magazine : More Than Words – Lina Brixey Uses AI to Preserve the Choctaw Language

Oct 11, 2021

Every two weeks a language dies. Lina Brixey, a member of the Choctaw Nation and a USC Viterbi Ph.D. candidate, is determined hers will not be next.

The Hollywood Reporter: Geena Davis Institute Expands Spellcheck for Bias Partnership with NBCU to Analyze Black and AAPI Representation

Oct 10, 2021

The SAIL Lab was mentioned for its collaboration with GDI to identify bias in movie scripts via development of Spellcheck for Bias

USC News: Are women worse than men at salary negotiation?

Oct 06, 2021

USC researchers say this is a fallacy as their new study points to systemic bias on behalf of recruiters in salary negotiations.

Dot LA: Researchers have begun to study the use of AI to help firefighters strategize controlled burns

Oct 03, 2021

Dot.LA featured research that Yolanda Gil, Bistra Dilkina and Michael Pazzani will work on with the San Diego Supercomputer Center to fight wildfires

USC News : USC Computer Science Students Place Second in Capital One College Bowl Championship

Sep 08, 2021

After 10 weeks of competition, a USC team, including two computer science students, finished second to a trio from Columbia University in the final showdown.

Washington Post: Racism and Automated Decision-Making

Aug 22, 2021

An opinion piece cited research by Aleksandra Korolova that concluded that Facebook served different ads to men and women

WIRED: A simple software fix could limit location data sharing

Aug 22, 2021

Research by Barath Raghavan regarding limiting location data sharing was featured

Venture Beat: Is DeepMind’s new reinforcement learning system a step toward general AI?

Aug 22, 2021

VentureBeat quoted Saty Raghavachary on scientists who claim to be able to train an AI system to play games without human interaction data.

USC : Microsoft Contributes to Gerald A. Lawson Fund

Aug 09, 2021

Microsoft’s X-Box Studios announced today that it will make a significant contribution to USC Games’ Gerald A. Lawson Endowment Fund for Black and Indigenous Students.

Mashable: IKEA furniture instructions just got easier, thanks to this robot

Aug 01, 2021

Research by Stefanos Nikolaidis and the ICARUS lab was featured.

ACM News : Computer Science Professor Wins ‘Test of Time’ Award for Influential Paper

Jul 27, 2021

Shang-Hua Teng co-authored a paper on smoothed analysis of algorithms, which offers a more realistic comprehension of algorithmic performance.

CTV News : Researchers create artificial intelligence to ‘imagine’ unseen objects

Jul 27, 2021

A research team at the University of Southern California has developed a new artificial intelligence system that uses human-like abilities to imagine never-before-seen objects.

Mashable: Robots suck at chopping stuff, but this research could change that

Jul 19, 2021

Researchers from NVIDIA and USC teamed up to make a simulation engine that could help autonomous robots with their cutting ability.

WIRED: Why Scientists Love Making Robots Build Ikea Furniture

Jul 18, 2021

Wired featured research by Stefanos Nikolaidis’a ICAROA lab that trains robots to build Ikea furniture.

KNBC-TV : USC Study: Political Discourse on Twitter Helped Predict COVID-19 Outbreak Sites

Jun 27, 2021

KNBC-TV featured research by Kristina Lerman that linked political discourse on Twitter to future COVID-19 outbreaks.

Los Angeles Daily News: USC’s Pandemic-Tested 2020, 2021 Classes Graduate In Person

Jun 06, 2021

Radhika Agrawal, a 2021 graduate with a degree in computer engineering and computer science, was interviewed for participating in the In-person ceremony.

News4SA: San Antonio Native Unveils New Video Game Inspired by Latino Heritage

Jun 06, 2021

2021 CS graduate Sterling Rios was interviewed about a brand new video game he co-developed which was inspired by his indigenous Latino heritage.

dot.LA: A Conversation with LA’s Head of IT

Jun 06, 2021

The City’s use of machine learning to automatically spot graffiti –a tool developed by IMSC–was featured .

Los Angeles Business Journal: USC to Build New Computer Science Hub

May 09, 2021

Los Angeles Business Journal interviewed Dean Yortsos regarding the new computer science building

KCBS-TV: Meet A Robotics Engineer

Apr 18, 2021

Stefanos Nikolaidis was featured on the CBS STEAM series for developing robotics for people who have disabilities

The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Algorithm Shows Gender Bias in Job Ads, Study Finds

Apr 11, 2021

The Wall Street Journal featured research by Aleksandra Korolova and John Heidemann, along with doctoral student, Basileal Imana, on how Facebook serves different job ads to men and women.

KPCC: A Totally Bananas Idea? Planting Tropical Fruit Trees To Help Fight CA Wildfires

Feb 28, 2021

Barath Raghavan’s work in computational agroecology to fight CA wildfires was featured

The Register : While text-generating AI can write like humans, it lacks common sense

Jan 25, 2021

AI software may be able to generate text that is grammatically correct and very human-like, but when it comes to common sense they’re still lagging severely behind us humans.

ACM: 2020 ACM Fellows Recognized for Work that Underpins Today’s Computing Innovations

Jan 13, 2021

Maja Matarić, Sven Koenig and Mike Zyda were recognized for “innovations that ushered in significant improvements across many areas of technology, industry and personal life”

KNBC: Tracking LA County’s COVID-19 Cases

Dec 13, 2020

Cyrus Shahabi was interviewed about California’s new contact tracing app.

Wall Street Journal: What Makes People Abuse Robots

Nov 15, 2020

Maja Matarić was quoted as to why people may mistreat robots.

New York Times: Tracking Viral Misinformation About the 2020 Election

Nov 15, 2020

Research by Emilio Ferrara found that during the 2020 Election season 13 percent of all accounts tweeting about conspiracy theories were automated.

Nature: The next-generation bots interfering with the US election

Nov 15, 2020

Research by Emilio Ferrara on how bots were influencing discussions around the upcoming election was featured.

Venture Beat: Study identifies thousands of Twitter bots amplifying conspiracy theories ahead of the U.S. elections

Nov 02, 2020

Research by Emilio Ferrara on how bots are once again influencing discussions around the 2020 election was featured

STAT News: When AI is the Opposite of Sinister

Oct 30, 2020

STAT quoted Yolanda Gil on a new award that recognizes the positive impact of artificial intelligence.

Pasadena Star-News: Digital Contact Tracing Stalls Out Nationwide

Oct 30, 2020

Pasadena Star-News quoted Cyrus Shahabi regarding the concerns around contact tracing apps.

CNN: Wildfire-weary Californians, ‘tired of this being normal”

Oct 30, 2020

CNN featured Bistra Dilkina on how people may consider moving due to the impacts of climate change.

USC: Election 2020 Chatter on Twitter Busy with Bots and Conspiracy Theorists

Oct 28, 2020

New USC study finds that automated accounts and foreign interference are infesting social media conversations about the upcoming election.

Bloomberg: Alexander Spangher Wins Bloomberg Data Science PhD Fellowship

Oct 19, 2020

Spangher, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, will use the fellowship to further his work in NLP and computational journalism.

ABC News: LA arson fires increasing amid COVID-19 pandemic

Sep 24, 2020

KABC-TV featured research by Crosstown, a collaboration between Viterbi and Annenberg, which found that arson fires in Los Angeles are on the rise.

Fox 11: School district halts distance learning after ransomware attack

Sep 24, 2020

KTTV-TV interviewed Cliff Neuman regarding a ransomware attack affected a school district.

CNN: Wildfire-weary Californians, ‘tired of this being normal,’ consider uprooting their lives

Sep 21, 2020

Computer Science Professor Bistra Dilkina, who has modeled migration patterns from sea-level rise, discusses climate-driven pressures as wildfires devastate the West Coast.

Venture Beat : AI Tool Can Plan Collision-Free Paths for 1,000 Warehouse Robots

Aug 21, 2020

USC computer science researchers and Amazon Robotics explored a solution to the problem of lifelong multi-agent path finding (MAPF), where a team of agents must be moved to constantly changing goal locations without collisions.

Digital Trends: Human Moderators Can’t Stop Online Hate Speech Alone. We Need Bots to Help

Jul 20, 2020

USC computer scientists developed a text classifier, which takes social media posts and predicts whether the text contains hate speech by looking at context as well as content.

VentureBeat: How AI can empower communities and strengthen democracy

Jul 20, 2020

Viterbi AI research that tries to help individuals who are homeless as well as robots to identify problems in infrastructure were featured

Crosstown: The day the traffic died in Los Angeles

May 28, 2020

Researchers at USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), including Cyrus Shahabi, IMSC director and computer science professor, worked in partnership with Crosstown, a nonprofit news organization, to examine vehicle volume data across Los Angeles during the COVID-19 shutdown.

Adobe Spark: AthenaHacks 2020

May 21, 2020

AthenaHacks was founded in 2016 by a group of USC seniors, led by computer science student Kelly Lampotang, with the idea of creating a friendly hackathon event to inspire more women coders and engineers to work together.

KPCC : Digital Contract Tracing to Contain the Coronavirus

May 21, 2020

As more places across California start to reopen, contact tracing is set to play a crucial role in containing the spread of the coronavirus. Cyrus Shahabi, USC computer science professor, discusses how much of the work could be done through digital contact tracing and how it would work. (Listen ~00:19).

The World According to Namita

May 14, 2020

Namita Prakash is computer science major with a screenwriter minor

Washington Post: Your smartphone as a weapon against Coronavirus

Apr 25, 2020

Cyrus Shahabi was interviewed about a contact tracing app his team is working on to fight the spread of COVID19

Center for Cyber-Physical Systems: CCI Virtual Mini-Workshop on Digital Technologies for COVID-19

Apr 08, 2020

USC Researchers and faculty presented on how digital technologies– mobile applications, internet of things, data science, AI, and machine learning can play a role in understanding, monitoring and combatting COVID-19.

Adobe Spark: 5 Scientific Achievements Accomplished Remotely

Mar 26, 2020

How USC Viterbi researchers innovated, disrupted, and engaged new frontiers from a distance

DEN@Viterbi: Going the Distance: USC Viterbi Provides Distance Education During COVID-19

Mar 19, 2020

What Happens When All Students Become On-Line Students? Look to the Engineers.

Memo from Dean Yortsos: Facing the COVID-19 Challenge

Mar 17, 2020

Please click to view PDF

Student Advising Resources during COVID-19

Mar 17, 2020

Please visit page for more details

Newsweek : Children with Autism Saw Their Learning and Social Skills Boosted After Playing with this AI Robot

Mar 05, 2020

USC computer science researchers who designed an artificially intelligent robot that helped children with autism boost their learning and social skills hope such technology could one day aid others with the developmental disorder.

Robohub: Haptics and Virtual Interactions, Podcast Interview with Heather Culbertson

Mar 02, 2020

In this podcast, Assistant Professor in Computer Science Heather Culbertson discusses haptics research, creating interactions that realistically mimic touch sensations experienced during interactions with the physical world.

Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Updates

Feb 28, 2020

Please visit sites.usc.edu/coronavirus for updates

Deadline: Universal, Geena Davis Institute collaborate w/ USC SAIL to pilot Spellcheck for Bias tool

Feb 19, 2020

Tool will be deployed to support increased authentic Latinx onscreen representation and casting opportunities during the early stages of the development process

USC News: Gift from Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg helps establish new computer science building

Jan 29, 2020

Support from ophthalmologist Allen Ginsburg and his wife, Charlotte, will help computer and data science programs continue their dramatic growth.

Fast Company : This map shows where people on the coasts will flee to once sea levels rise

Jan 24, 2020

New AI-based research, led by Bistra Dilkina, projects migration patterns of people leaving coastal cities due to sea-level rise.

Dow Jones Marketwatch: How AI Could Predict the Next Disaster

Jan 23, 2020

Bistra Dilkina was interviewed about how AI as tool could help with disaster preparation and mitigation

BBC: Robots that Care: Making Tech that is a Force for Good

Jan 23, 2020

Maja Matarić was interviewed about the future for socially assistive robots as companions and coaches

Fortune: Hair-Brushing Robot Shows How Artificial Intelligence May Help the Disabled

Dec 12, 2019

A team of researchers led by assistant professor of computer science Stefanos Nikolaidis have created a robotic arm capable of brushing hair, which is designed to help physically disabled people.

Washington Post : Facebook’s ad tools subsidize partisanship, research shows. And campaigns may not even know it.

Dec 10, 2019

A new study co-authored by Aleksandra Korolova, an assistant professor of computer science at USC, found the technologies Facebook uses to put advertising it deems relevant in front of people may be more responsible for the polarization of American politics than previously understood.

USC NBSE wins major awards at regional conference

Dec 04, 2019

Fresh from its historic win last year when they brought home the trophy for National Chapter of The Year, the USC chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, or NSBE, continues to rake awards and solidify its place as one of the best student-run organizations in the nation

Department of Computer Science Media Coverage

Department of Computer Science

Department of Computer Science
Media Coverage