College of Computing & Artificial Intelligence
On May 8, 2026, graduating PhD students walked across the floor in the Hello, World classroom in Morgridge Hall and received their hoods as the culmination of their graduate careers. Now they are alumni and headed to careers in fields that vary from industry to academia.
University of Wisconsin–Madison Computer Sciences professor Ilias Diakonikolas has received the 2026 Gödel Prize, one of the highest honors in theoretical computer science, for transformational work in robust high-dimensional learning – the study of how algorithms can learn reliably from large, complex datasets even when some of the data has been corrupted.
Steve Wright, Professor of Computer Sciences and former chair of Computer Sciences, has received two recent honors: He will give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia in July 2026, and he has been named a Vilas Research Professor by UW–Madison.
After more than two decades in the classroom, Teaching Professor Debra Deppeler is retiring from the Department of Computer Sciences, leaving behind a legacy measured not just in years but in students. Deb earned an MS at UW-Madison in Computer Sciences in 2000 and joined the department in 2001. In her 25 years with the department, Deb has taught a staggering 15,000 undergraduates.
$100 million in philanthropic support and a significant campus investment, including 50 new faculty positions, will support research, education and innovation
Congratulations, graduates! The Computer Sciences Department will be holding in-person graduation ceremonies . . .
University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Harshet Anand is revolutionizing the housing market with his brand new approach to apartment hunting. Meant to simplify the difficult and time consuming apartment hunting process, Rentle works like a free dating app.
For Daniel Killough, accessible technology is personal. After his own unexpected health challenges and watching his father struggle with everyday software, he became driven to ensure that emerging devices like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets are built for everyone. (In Their Own Words is a series featuring UW-Madison Computer Sciences graduate students sharing their research and offering a firsthand look at how their work connects to real-world challenges and the Wisconsin Idea.)
The Department of Computer Sciences is proud to announce that Hangdong Zhao PhD ’25, advised by Professor Paris Koutris, has been selected as a winner of the 2026 ACM SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation Advancing Join Algorithms for Real-world Queries. This marks the first time a graduate of UW–Madison has received …
Professor Ilias Diakonikolas of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Computer Sciences has been named a Guggenheim Fellow by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The board appointed the 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, including 223 distinguished individuals working across 55 disciplines. Chosen through a rigorous application and peer review …