RESEARCH
Duke Computer Science uses a dual approach
to combine research and education. Bringing
research into the curriculum is the best way to learn about the most advanced technology and disseminate the latest developments
of computing technology.
The Theory of Deep Learning
Explore deep learning research projects with Assistant Professor Rong Ge. He introduces the topic with an overview on why deep learning works. His recent research projects include the definition of a new class of functions that are easy to optimize, and generating an algorithm of learning representations to improve reinforcement learning algorithms.
accelerating NLP for Drug Discovery
Lisa Wu Wills, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science and
Issac Robson, UC Berkeley CompBio PhD candidate
Developed for Lisa Wu Wills’ Facebook Research Award, this video opens with an example of a language model and explores the exciting potential of using natural language processing techniques and a protein “language” constructed using amino acid representations to expedite drug discovery. The model takes a sequence of tokens as input, a downstream task such as protein binding affinity, along with the data from the Protein Data Bank to predict the binding affinity of a possible drug candidate. Leveraging AI to predict promising drug candidates and off-target effects can dramatically improve the quality of the possible drug candidates and provide orders of magnitude faster predictions than traditional computational algorithms or wet lab experiments alone. With combined software and hardware acceleration techniques, we can increase the speed of drug discovery and expand our search radius for viable drug candidates.
Intro to Prediction Analysis Lab
The Prediction Analysis Lab focuses on Interpretable Machine Learning. Here is a brief description to the field and some of some of our projects with Professor Cynthia Rudin.
Danyang Zhuo’s Research
Assistant Professor Danyang Zhuo ‘s research areas of interest include computer systems, operating systems, distribution systems, and computer networking. His recent focus has been on building a computer system to support data-intensive workloads, such as deep learning, extreme processing, packet processing or data analytics in the cloud. Current projects include exploring how to provide a virtualized environment for distributed apps in the cloud in an efficient way, and more. Please feel free to contact Dr. Zhuo if you’re interested in his research areas.
CS Education and Research with Susan Rodger
Susan Rodger, Professor of the Practice of Computer Science discusses her teaching and research experience, like developing JFLAP software to help people learn computer science concepts. She can provide support to you when evaluating careers after graduate school. Opportunities include working in industry or government labs, becoming a tenure-track professor, or becoming a teaching track professor. Interested in pursuing a Computer Science education career? If so, Susan looks forward to meeting with you.
Matt Lentz: Research at the Intersection of
Systems Networking & Security
Assistant Professor Matt Lentz’s research interests are at the intersection of Systems Networking and Security, and he enjoys exploring new modes of communication for users. His projects include determining how to enable communications that can be addressed to encounters, which represent periods of colocation between two users and their devices. The key challenge in this work is to enable a privacy-preserving encounter protocol that enables secure communication between users that is also energy-efficient. Dr. Lentz is currently working with Duke colleagues to build a privacy-preserving system to enable more proactive steps to prevent the spread of disease through actionable information for both individual users and decision-makers. Another project examines how trusted hardware and formal verification can be leveraged to improve user privacy and build more secure, trustworthy systems.
Kartik Nayak’s Research on Blockchains and Applied Cryptography
Assistant Professor Kartik Nayak discusses his current research projects on two research thrusts: Security and Efficiency of Blockchains and Privacy-Preserving Computation. Some ongoing projects on blockchains include consensus with weak network synchrony, consensus with small trusted hardware, BFT protocol forensics, the design of randomness beacons, and anonymity in blockchains. In privacy-preserving computation, he is working on Poirot, a project on private contact summary aggregation and secure transactional databases.
Fan Zhang explores Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography
Duke CS Professor Fan Zhang’s research focuses on the security and scalability of decentralized systems, such as blockchains, peer-to-peer messaging systems, etc. His thesis explored how to improve blockchains’ scalability and privacy guarantees with off-chain protocols, from which several contributions are now used by industry. Fan’s ongoing projects include designing energy-efficient and storage-efficient blockchains, improving anonymous communication using trusted hardware, formally understanding the security of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and more. Fan looks forward to continuing his research at Duke and working with you – prospective students.
CS-Ed Podcast
The popular CS-Ed Podcast series focuses on the best teaching practices for computer science, featuring engaging and compelling discussions on teaching with computer science educators as guests. Hosted by Dr. Kristin Stephens-Martinez at Duke Computer Science, season 3 launched at the end of 2021. The current season focuses on how we’ve rethought our teaching with the pandemic, using alternative grading practices for example.
The Phitonex Journey
Want to participate in or found an innovative startup at Duke CS? In this new video, Duke Computer Science Professor Alvin Lebeck answers questions about the startup company he co-founded, Phitonex. Pioneering a spectral dye platform for high-resolution biology applications to accelerate research and development in cell therapy, immuno-oncology and immunology research, Phitonex was recently acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Duke & UNC: Teamwork in Science
Check out Duke-UNC collaborative research projects! Duke Computer Science researchers in this video include ECE/CS Professor Missy Cummings and graduate student Ben Bauchwitz testing advanced driver assist systems, plus Duke CS/Biochem/ECE Associate Professor Alberto Bartesaghi and postdoctoral associate Ye Zhou researching single-particle cryo-EM technology.