2/10/2025 Rudy San Miguel
Four undergraduates were nominated by the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science for the 2025 Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. All four earned either finalist or honorable mention in the competition.
Written by Rudy San Miguel
Four undergraduates were nominated by the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for the 2025 Computing Research Association (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. All four earned either finalist or honorable mention in the competition.
Jizheng (Daniel) He (CS) was named finalist. CS students Daniel Feng, Jash Parekh, and Yanzhen Shen all received honorable mention. Another Grainger Engineer, Ben Kim (ECE) was also named finalist.
Feng sees his commendation as recognition of the culmination of years of hard work at Illinois as well as the support he received at computer science. “It reflects positively on the mentorship and hard work of my amazing research advisors. Their investment of experience and time in me over the last four years has been extremely generous and effective.”
Feng’s research has been in computational biology and biological modeling, specifically neuromorphic computing models, as part of the NSF’s Mind In Vitro project, and in stroke recovery by researching the development of biologically plausible models of the brain to gain insight into the brain’s use of physical therapy in learning tasks and recovery. Feng’s time at Illinois has also allowed for study in cancer research, namely viewing cancer data from an algorithmic lens, community detection among large network databases, and probabilistic computational analyses for the high-resolution detection of small cancer clones from next generation genomic sequencing data.
For Feng, it’s the extent of computer science research offerings as well as campus-wide networks that have made his time at Illinois so productive. “I particularly enjoy the wide range of research and interests captured by the many faculty and their respective labs across campus.”
Kim, whose work has been in domains of information theory and security over five different projects, echoes Feng’s admiration for the expansive Illinois network: “My favorite part about being a student here at [Illinois] is the community of devoted professors and students, as well as the rigorous curriculum.”
According to the CRA website, the award “recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.” Originally formed as the Computer Science Board (CSB) in 1972, the CRA’s goal is to join industry, government, and academia with the purpose of accelerating computing research.