Brown CS

VLDB 2026 (https://vldb.org/2026) will include a memorial session for Stan Zdonik on Wednesday, September 2, from 3:45–5:15 PM, at the Westin Boston Seaport District.
We have set up a memorial page with the session details at https://database.cs.brown.edu/stan-memorial.

The session is open to people who are not registered for VLDB. If you are planning to attend, please fill out the attendance form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdoL0rW7oRP6hfa3J7J6xNpcBx0K3vAZmmM6gmUC_eyexoxQQ/viewform. The form is also linked from the memorial page. This will help us get a sense of expected attendance and coordinate access to the session.

Michael Littman Discusses Transcending AI's Boundaries In The Brown+Beyond Event Series

Brown alums and parents in the Bay Area recently came together for an event, “Transcending Boundaries: AI + Science,” in San Francisco. The evening was part of the Brown+Beyond event series, which offers exclusive opportunities to learn more about the expertise and impact of Brown’s faculty, research, and leadership.

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://blog.cs.brown.edu/2026/08/11/michael-littman-discusses-transcending-ais-boundaries-in-the-brownbeyond-event-series

Brown CS Master's Student Ankit “Patrick” Verma And Undergraduate Student Lyndee Sklute Earn Honors At The SharkNinja Jailbreak EDU AI Hackathon

Sponsored by household appliance company SharkNinja, the SharkNinja Jailbreak EDU AI Hackathon is a two-day hackathon where thirty-five students from thirteen universities team up with SharkNinja mentors to tackle real business challenges and push ideas further, faster. This year’s event was held in Needham, Massachusetts, and Brown CS Master’s student Ankit “Patrick” Verma and Brown CS undergraduate student Lyndee Sklute, a concentrator in Mathematics and Computer Science, received some of the competition’s highest honors.

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/08/05/brown-cs-masters-student-ankit-patrick-verma-and-undergraduate-student-lyndee-sklute-earn-honors-at-the-sharkninja-jailbreak-edu-ai-hackathon

Serena Booth Has Been Appointed to Microsoft's AI Economy Institute

Brown CS faculty member Serena Booth has joined the third cohort of researchers for Microsoft's AI Economy Institute, whose mission is to understand the adoption of artificial intelligence across economies, industries, and communities.

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/07/29/serena-booth-has-been-appointed-to-microsofts-ai-economy-institute

Harini Suresh And Collaborators Host A Workshop On Collective Governance Of AI In Newsrooms

On April 30, 2026, Brown CS faculty member Harini Suresh and collaborators Emily Tseng (University of Washington), Marianne Aubin Le Quéré (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), and Aimee Rinehart (Frontier Collective) brought together around 40 journalists, researchers, technologists, and organizers at Brown for a day-long workshop centered around a key question: what would it look like for newsrooms to use AI on their own terms?

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/07/23/harini-suresh-and-collaborators-host-a-workshop-on-collective-governance-of-ai-in-newsrooms

Strong Representation At OSDI, Including Three Honors, Shows The Impact Of Brown Systems

This year, the Brown Systems research group has broken their own record with four accepted papers. One of these (“Controlling Opaque-Component Effects with Semisolates and Try”) won both a Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award (one of three awarded out of 136 accepted papers) and a Best Artifact Award (one of three awarded out of 136 papers), and another (“RT: Regular Types for the Streaming Shell”) was a Best Paper Award Runner-Up (one of nine). Brown Systems students also presented six posters (25% of the total 24) at the OSDI poster session.

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/07/16/strong-representation-at-osdi-including-three-honors-shows-the-impact-of-brown-systems

Diana Freed Co-Founds The Inaugural AI & Gender-Based Harms: Implications For Policy And Practice Conference

On June 15, 2026, the conference examined the impact of AI-facilitated gender-based harms and response policies with an interdisciplinary roster of researchers, clinicians, advocates, policymakers, and practitioners. Brown CS and Data Science Institute faculty member Diana Freed co-founded and co-chaired the conference with colleagues from Fordham University, the NYC Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, and Weill Cornell Medicine.

Read the full article at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/07/14/diana-freed-co-founds-the-inaugural-ai-gender-based-harms-implications-for-policy-and-practice-conference/

Ellis Hershkowitz Wins An NSF CAREER Award For New Graph Algorithms For Faster Networks

His project aims to advance graph algorithms by way of a new theory of “length-constrained” graph algorithms. CAREER Awards are given in support of outstanding junior faculty teacher-scholars who excel at research, education, and integration of the two within the context of an organizational mission.

Learn more at Brown CS News: https://cs.brown.edu/news/2026/07/13/ellis-hershkowitz-wins-an-nsf-career-award-for-new-graph-algorithms-for-faster-networks