Computer Science

Recent news from the department

Simone Ludwig, Professor and Department Chair

NDSU spotlights Simone Ludwig, professor and chair of the department

11/18/2024
Simone Ludwig is passionate about the rapidly evolving software industry and ensuring students are provided the skills they need to enter an in-demand career.

That passion is noticeable to faculty in the department, the College of Engineering, as well as students who have had Ludwig as a professor.

The path to teaching wasn’t straightforward for Ludwig. After earning a bachelor’s in engineering, she worked as a software developer for several years. Ludwig’s desire for learning and research prompted her to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in computer science. Pursuing a career in teaching afterwards was a path she has enjoyed taking.

“I really wanted to become a faculty member because I think it’s nice that you can teach students and we all learn. I really like this aspect of forever learning,” Ludwig said. “And then I love doing research, too, and there is this opportunity to continue doing research.”

In her 15th year of teaching at NDSU, Ludwig said the most rewarding part of her job is engaging with students in the classroom. Read more

Jeremy Straub receives funding to help pharmacies combat opioid addiction

10/24/2024
A research team at North Dakota State University has received an award of $295,876 from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.

Led by principal investigator Jayme Steig, Assistant Professor of Practice at NDSU, and co-principal investigator Jeremy Straub, Associate Professor of Computer Science at NDSU, and in collaboration with pharmaceutical group company OpREMS, LLC, the opioid overdose data prevention project will research improving digital platforms and using AI to analyze data for the NDSU Opioid and Naloxone Education (ONE) program.

The STTR program is part of the NIH Small Business Programs, which are also known as America’s Seed Fund. STTR’s goal is to “foster technology transfer through cooperative R&D between small businesses and research institutions.” NDSU has received STTR awards in the past, dating back to 2002. Read more

CS graduate students, along with Dr. Juan Li, publish article on secure and decentralized diabetes prediction framework

09/23/2024
Computer science graduate students Md Rakibul Hasan, Qingrui Li, and Utsha Saha published an article in MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) with Dr. Juan Li. The paper "Decentralized and Secure Collaborative Framework for Personalized Diabetes Prediction" presents a groundbreaking solution for improving diabetes prediction while safeguarding patient privacy. The framework integrates blockchain technology with federated learning to enhance security, decentralization, and data diversity. By utilizing these technologies, healthcare institutions can train predictive models on distributed datasets without compromising individual privacy. Extensive evaluations show that this approach not only improves prediction accuracy but also significantly strengthens privacy and security compared to traditional centralized models. This innovative solution offers a promising direction for ethically managing healthcare data in the fight against diabetes.

MDPI is a publisher of open-access scientific journals. It publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open access journals. It is among the largest publishers in the world in terms of journal article output, and is the largest publisher of open access articles. Go to article.

Dr. Changhui Yan awarded NIH grant for research on nickel catalysts

09/20/2024
Dr. Changhui Yan, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been awarded a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the project titled "Rational Design of Nickel Catalysts for Directing Group-Assisted Alkyne Hydrofunctionalization." Dr. Yan will serve as Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI), collaborating with Dr. Pinjing Zhao from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who will lead the project as Principal Investigator (PI). The grant totals $431,400 and spans the period from September 1, 2024, to August 31, 2027.

Dr. Yan's research interests include bioinformatics, computational biology, genomics, machine learning, data mining, big data, and cloud computing. His interdisciplinary expertise continues to drive innovation at the intersection of computational science and chemistry.

NDSU Computer Science Faculty and Students Publish Research in IEEE Access

01/07/2025
The Department of Computer Science at North Dakota State University is pleased to share a new research article published in the IEEE Access journal. The article, titled "QuIM-RAG: Advancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation With Inverted Question Matching for Enhanced QA Performance", highlights collaborative work by NDSU researchers and alumni.

The research was led by Binita Saha, a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at NDSU, under the guidance of Dr. Muhammad Zubair Malik, Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Co-author Utsha Saha, a former Computer Science graduate from NDSU, now works at the university as a software engineer.

Congratulations to Binita, Dr. Malik, and Utsha on this accomplishment! For more details, read the full article on IEEE Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10781379.

Computer science doctoral student Terry Traylor selected for prestigious fellowship

10/30/2024
Terry Traylor, a Marine Corps veteran and NDSU doctoral student studying software and security engineering, was recently selected for the 2024/2025 Veterans of Foreign Wars - Student Veterans of America Legislative Fellowship.

Held annually since 2014, the VFW-SVA Legislative Fellowship provides student veteran fellows invaluable experience advocating in their communities and on Capitol Hill for solutions to pressing veterans’ issues. The fellowship is a roughly semester-long immersive experience for fellows to receive advocacy training and mentorship from each organizations’ professional staff, create community outreach plans and actively engage community and national leaders on a shared VFW and SVA policy priority.

"Being selected to participate in the VFW-SVA 2024 Legislative Fellowship is a tremendous opportunity to continue to serve in a program that helps others,” Traylor said. “While in the fellowship I will learn how to advocate at the national level for resources that benefit the state of North Dakota and NDSU students. Our specific project this year is the National Guard and Reserve GI Bill Parity Act — an initiative that will directly impact NDSU student veterans.” Read more

NDSU computer science team wins academic division at 2024 Cyber Cup

09/25/2024
A team of four talented students from North Dakota State University’s Computer Science Department—Anthony DeFoe, Gavin Kestner, Joshua Heeren, and Colum Sandford—has achieved victory in the academic division of the prestigious Cyber Cup competition at the 2024 National Cyber Summit.

The Cyber Cup is a prominent cybersecurity competition that brings together top minds from across the country to solve complex challenges involving real-world cybersecurity scenarios. NDSU’s team showcased their skills in network defense, vulnerability analysis, and ethical hacking, competing against other leading academic institutions.

Their impressive teamwork, technical expertise, and problem-solving ability earned them first place in the academic division, a testament to the strength of NDSU’s computer science program and its commitment to excellence in cybersecurity education. The team's success at the National Cyber Summit demonstrates the high caliber of students emerging from NDSU's computer science department, solidifying the university’s reputation as a leader in cybersecurity education and innovation.

Congratulations to Anthony DeFoe, Gavin Kestner, Joshua Heeren, and Colum Sandford for their outstanding achievement!

CS alum Kaylee Swenson, talks about her NDSU experience