News Release

UCR computer science graduate student wins ACM Student Research Competition Award

Grant and Award Announcement

University of California - Riverside

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- (www.ucr.edu) -- Jing Li, graduate student in computer science, was one of the winners of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Research Competition (SRC) Grand Final this year.

The ACM Student Research Competition represents a unique forum for ACM student members at both the undergraduate and graduate level to present their original research before a panel of judges as well as before conference attendees. First round presentations take place at a series of poster competitions held at selected ACM Special Interest Group (SIG) Conferences throughout the year. Winners of the first round competitions present their research to conference attendees at a special SRC session.

Undergraduate and graduate winners from all SIG Conference SRC's are automatically entered into the SRC Grand Finals. Grand Finals judging is accomplished via the Web by a panel of evaluators. Winners of the Grand Finals are then recognized at the annual ACM Awards Banquet.

Li received the award on June 7, 2003, at the ACM Awards Banquet in San Diego, Calif. He won first place in the second round of "SIGCSE," or Special Interest Group Computer Science Education, in February, 2003. In the Grand Final, Li won third place.

The title of Li's paper was Efficient Rule-Based Haplotyping Algorithms for Pedigree Data. The paper was published earlier this year in the proceedings of the Seventh Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology held in Berlin, Germany, and examines the inheritance patterns in human pedigrees in order to study the genetic basis of complex diseases. Tao Jiang, professor of computer science, serves as the advisor for his research.

"It is a great honor for me to receive the award," said Li. "Because of the scope of the competition and because the competition attracted students from universities all over the world and encompassed all subjects in computer science, I consider the award to be the most important one I have won. I would like to thank Prof. Tao Jiang, without whose guidance and support, I could not finish the work I put into the paper for the competition."

Li is concentrating on bioinformatics/algorithms for his Ph.D. dissertation. He received his M.S. in statistical genetics from Creighton University and his B.S. in statistics from Peking University, China. He believes that his background in statistical genetics enables him to independently identify biologically important problems. He thinks, too, that his training in computer science and statistics provides him with the basic tools to solve these problems.

Li has won several awards already. Some of these are: First Annual Graduate Student Research Award, UC Riverside, March '03; First place in ACM CSE International Student Research Competition, February '03; I/O Software Research Innovation Scholarship, November, '02; and the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellowship, UC Riverside, Fall, '02.

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The Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE) at UC Riverside is well known for its research in embedded systems and networking in computer science, for environmental sciences (e.g., low emission vehicles, air pollution research), nanotechnology and research in intelligent systems. BCOE includes four departments: chemical & environmental engineering, computer science & engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering.

The University of California, Riverside offers undergraduate and graduate education to nearly 16,000 students and has a projected enrollment of 21,000 students by 2010. It is the fastest growing and most ethnically diverse campus of the preeminent ten-campus University of California system, the largest public research university system in the world. The picturesque 1,200-acre campus is located at the foot of the Box Springs Mountains near downtown Riverside in Southern California. More information about UC Riverside is available at www.ucr.edu or by calling 909-787-5185. For a listing of faculty experts on a variety of topics, please visit http://mmr.ucr.edu/experts/.


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