Computer Science and Engineering, UT Arlington

09/03/2026

🤖 Could AI help researchers discover the next generation of effective drug combinations?

We are proud to celebrate Professor Junzhou Huang on receiving a new 3 million dollar NIH R01 award for his project, “Towards Rational Discovery of Combination Therapies: LLM Enhanced Gene Function Mapping to Explainable Drug Synergy Prediction.”

Serving as the Contact PI, Professor Huang, together with MPI Professor Xinlei Wang from the College of Science and Subcontract PI Professor Lin Xu at UT Southwestern Medical Center, will lead research exploring how artificial intelligence can help researchers understand why certain combinations of genes and drugs work better together.

The project will develop computational methods to identify these relationships and predict which drug combinations may have stronger therapeutic effects. This research aims to help scientists better understand which treatments could work well together, supporting more informed approaches to combination therapy and advancing the use of AI in precision medicine.

This achievement marks Professor Huang’s second NIH R01 award, highlighting his continued contributions to AI and biomedical research at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Congratulations to Professor Huang on this outstanding achievement and continued research impact!

09/01/2026

💻⚔️ Think you’ve got what it takes to win the Clash?
Grab your favorite coding partner, pick your language, and get ready to battle it out for some awesome prizes!

Whether you code in C, C++, Java, or Python, come show off your skills and see how you stack up! Don’t have a laptop? No problem! Laptops will be provided, and we’ll have pizza and drinks to keep you fueled while you compete. 🍕🥤🏆
📅 September 19
⏰ 12 to 4 p.m.
📍 SWSH 104/105
👥 Teams of 2

Grab your favorite coding partner, pick your language, and get ready to battle it out for some awesome prizes!! 👀💻

Sign up here:https://linktr.ee/cse_uta

08/31/2026

💧 The conversation around data centers starts with understanding the facts.

As data centers continue to grow across North Texas, UTA Assistant Professor Mohammad Atiqul Islam is helping bring clarity to the conversation.

In a recent panel discussion Dr. Islam encouraged greater transparency around how data centers use water and energy, while highlighting new cooling technologies that could significantly reduce water use. His work and expertise can help communities, policymakers and industry leaders better understand the real impacts of data center growth.

As North Texas continues to evolve, informed conversations are essential to building a future that works for both innovation and our communities.

🔗 Click the link to learn more about Dr. Islam’s insights on data centers, water use and the future of sustainable technology: https://tinyurl.com/ycxsmskr

UTA expert separates fact from fiction on water use, cooling technology and community concerns

08/27/2026

🚗 Smarter cars start with better connections.

Assistant Professor Xiaojun Shang expounds on this concept through a newly funded National Science Foundation project, “Excellence in Research: Advancing Scalability of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles via Bottom up Hardware Software Co design.” In this project, Shang will contribute to research focused on helping connected and autonomous vehicles communicate and process information more efficiently.

Individual vehicles can only see so much. By connecting vehicles, they can share information with one another and use nearby computing systems to better understand their surroundings. However, as more vehicles become connected, networks and computing systems can become overwhelmed.

Shang’s research will explore how vehicles, software, and hardware can work together more efficiently without relying on costly infrastructure everywhere.
This work could help make autonomous transportation more reliable, scalable, and accessible while supporting student research and education.

Congratulations, Assistant Professor Shang on this achievement and his contributions to the future of connected transportation!

08/26/2026

🚗 Smarter AI could help shape the future of autonomous transportation.

Assistant Professor Sihong He of the UTA Department of Computer Science and Engineering is leading research that could help make autonomous vehicles more reliable, efficient and adaptable in the real world.

Working with researchers at the University of Central Florida, Dr. He is exploring how multiple AI systems can work together to make better decisions in unpredictable environments. The goal is to help autonomous vehicles decide where to go, when to recharge and how to manage energy more efficiently, even as conditions change.

This research could help create smarter transportation systems that reduce wasted energy, improve efficiency and support fairer decisions for communities.

🔗 Click the link to read more about Dr. He’s research and its potential impact: https://tinyurl.com/mt4feaz2

Research aims to help autonomous vehicles make better decisions in unpredictable environments

08/25/2026

🎉 We’re thrilled to welcome a new face to our CSE family!

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UTA is excited to welcome our newest faculty member, Assistant Professor Sophie Stephenson, to the Maverick family!

Assistant Professor Stephenson’s research explores the intersection of security, privacy, and human-computer interaction, examining how technology influences the ways people interact with one another and how those relationships, in turn, can inform the design of safer technologies.

Her work has appeared in leading research venues, including USENIX Security, ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, SOUPS, and IEEE S&P. She received the 2026 Best Dissertation Award in the University of Wisconsin-Madison CS department, as well as a Best Paper Award at ACM CHI and Best Paper Honorable Mention at ACM CSCW. Most recently, she received the John Karat Usable Security and Privacy Student Research Award, further recognizing her contributions to the field.

Beyond her research, Assistant Professor Stephenson spent five years as Director of Operations at the Madison Tech Clinic, providing technology support to survivors of technology facilitated abuse in Wisconsin. At UTA, she will work closely with the MAVS ETA initiative to provide similar services to the DFW community.

We are excited to welcome Assistant Professor Stephenson to UTA CSE and look forward to the research, mentorship, and new perspectives she will bring to our community. 🤠💙🧡

08/19/2026

🫀 What if clearer heart images could lead to better medical insights?

UTA student researcher Shaoming Pan is exploring new possibilities in cardiac imaging through his research, “Cardiac MRI Through Plane Super Resolution Guided by Reference and Memory,” which focuses on improving the quality of cardiac MRI images.

Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Meng Ye, Pan developed a new AI based approach for reconstructing clearer, more detailed 3D views of the heart from lower resolution cardiac MRI images.

Cardiac MRI scans are often designed to balance image quality with practical challenges such as scan time and patient movement. This can result in images that are detailed in some directions but less clear in others.

Pan’s approach uses information from other views of the same patient to fill in missing detail while keeping the reconstructed images consistent across the entire 3D volume. The result could help make cardiac MRI data more useful for 3D analysis and potentially support future advances in cardiac imaging and diagnosis.

This work highlights how student research at UTA is bringing together artificial intelligence, computer vision and medical imaging to address real world challenges.

Read the research and discover how AI is helping shape the future of medical imaging: Cardiac MRI Through-Plane Super-Resolution Guided by Reference

08/18/2026

🧬 What if AI could help researchers predict how cells respond before an experiment begins?

Professor Junzhou Huang is exploring that question through his latest research, supported by a new research award from Johnson & Johnson for his project, “Phenotype Grounded AI Virtual Cell Platform for Adaptive Therapeutic Perturbation Design.”

As the sole principal investigator, Professor Huang will lead research exploring how artificial intelligence can create virtual models of cells and predict how they may respond to different genetic or chemical changes.

His research aims to help researchers better understand what happens inside cells when they are altered. These insights could help guide the evaluation of potential drug targets, assess new compounds, and identify which experiments may be most informative during the early stages of therapeutic discovery.

This work highlights the potential of AI to help make biomedical research more targeted and efficient while advancing new approaches to understanding human biology.

Congratulations to Professor Huang on this exciting achievement and continued contributions to AI and biomedical research at The University of Texas at Arlington!

08/17/2026

💻 A new semester, new ideas, and new possibilities

Today marks the first day of the fall semester, and we are excited to welcome our CSE students, faculty, and staff back to campus.

As our classrooms and labs come back to life, we look forward to a semester filled with learning, innovation, collaboration, and the challenges that help shape the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.

Whether you are writing your first lines of code, beginning a new research project, or taking on your final semester at UTA, we are excited to see what you accomplish.

Here’s to a successful semester and another chapter of growth, discovery, and innovation in UTA CSE. 🤠💙🧡

08/14/2026

🤝 Connecting, collaborating, and catching up!

Our faculty do so much more than teach, mentor, and conduct groundbreaking research. They are also a community of colleagues who support one another, share ideas, and celebrate each other’s successes.

At our recent faculty networking event, members of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering came together to catch up, reconnect, share ideas, and enjoy time with their peers outside of the classroom and research lab.

These moments remind us that a strong department is built not only on innovation and achievement, but also on the relationships we build along the way.

We are grateful to our faculty for the work they do every day to advance research, support our students, and strengthen the UTA CSE community. 💙🧡