Rice University’s Department of Computer Science is pleased to welcome six new hires, three of whom will begin in the 2024 fall semester and three in the fall of 2025. Their research experience spans 3D protein models, measuring influence on social networks, flexible intelligent systems, trustworthy AI, parallel programming, and security.
Fall 2024
Anjum Chida, Hanjie Chen, and Xiaoyun Fu begin their appointments in fall 2024.
Hanjie Chen joins Rice as an assistant professor of computer science. Her research interests encompass trustworthy AI, natural language processing (NLP), and interpretable machine learning. Prior to joining Rice, Chen was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Language and Speech Processing at Johns Hopkins University, hosted by Mark Drezde. Advised by Yangfeng Ji, she completed her PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia, where she received the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award and the John A. Stankovic Graduate Research Award.
Chen is dedicated to developing explainable AI techniques for building trustworthy and reliable intelligent systems. She is also affiliated with Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute, an interdisciplinary group comprising more than 250 members that works collaboratively on groundbreaking research in artificial intelligence, data, and computing.
Anjum Chida, who joins Rice CS as a lecturer, will teach a graduate-level introduction to programming course for non–computer science majors and courses in advanced reasoning with computers. She received a master’s and, in 2012, a doctorate in computer science from Georgia State University. Chida comes from the University of Texas at Dallas, where she was an Associate Professor of Instruction.
During her first semester at Rice, Chida plans to acclimate herself to a private university with a smaller class size and concentrate on how to be an exceptional teacher. She employs reflective teaching techniques, which involve critical thinking and reflecting on what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to change in the classroom. Chida is currently involved in Scholarship on Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects that combine her research and teaching experience with the aim of advancing CS education. She also continues to explore how human beings interact with AI and what makes AI “intelligent.”
Xiaoyun Fu joins Rice as a lecturer after being a lecturer in Purdue’s EPICS program, a service-learning design program for their School of Engineering. She completed her PhD in computer science at Iowa State University and will teach Computational Thinking and Reasoning About Algorithms her first semester at Rice. Fu earned a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware and bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Tianjin University in China.
Fu’s PhD research centered on social networks, and how to quantify user influence and attitude, but her main focus has always been teaching–its structure, its challenge, and the opportunity to share knowledge with others. She considers how students experience the classroom and what motivates them, presenting subjects in dynamic, engaging ways and ensuring students are well equipped to excel in computer science.
Fall 2025
Newly hired tenure-track faculty members Yuke Wang, Chen Wei, and Jiarong Xing will begin teaching in fall 2025.
Yuke Wang, an incoming assistant professor of computer science, received his PhD in computer science from the University of California, Santa Barbara, under the supervision of Yufei Ding. Wang earned a BE in software engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
Wang’s research aims to match increasingly diverse and complex deep learning models with advanced hardware to maximize performance gains. He is interested in building intelligent, efficient systems and compilers for deep learning applications such as deep neural networks, graph neural networks, deep learning recommendation models, and large language models. Wang was recognized with a NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship in 2022.
Chen Wei, a computer vision and machine learning researcher, also joins Rice as an assistant professor of computer science. She received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University, advised by Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Alan L. Yuille, and a BS with honors from Peking University.
Wei’s research lies at the intersection of machine learning and computer vision, with the goal of developing flexible and general-purpose intelligent systems. To this end, she focuses on how to encode enormously complex raw visual signals to structured representations that are easier for machines to process and understand; she also aims to connect visual representations to knowledge bases like large language models to achieve higher-order cognition.
Jiarong Xing, who graduated from Rice in 2024 with a PhD in computer science, will start his assistant professor position following a one-year postdoctoral appointment at UC Berkeley's Sky Computing Lab with professor Ion Stoica.
Xing was part of Rice Engineering’s Future Faculty Fellows (FFF) program, which supports PhD students and postdocs in their faculty position application process. Although he already knew he wanted to pursue an academic career before joining FFF, Xing felt the FFF program provided invaluable insight to the academic career path.
Xing’s research encompasses computer systems, networking, and security. He looks forward to an academic career for its flexibility to pursue his own research and collaborate internationally while helping students develop their career paths.