Engineering’s Nishanth Kumar ’21 (computer engineering) was named a finalist in the 2021 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher awards by the Computing Research Association (CRA). Kumar had been named an honorable mention winner on the 2020 list.
This award program recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Kumar is a Research Assistant for Professors Stefanie Tellex and George Konidaris within Brown's Computer Science Department. His work has focused on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms for collaborative robots and has led to numerous publications at notable conferences. Kumar won a 'Best Plenary Presenter Award' at the Ivy League Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2019, became a Heidelberg Laureate, and is a Barry Goldwater Scholarship recipient. He was recently inducted into Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, as a result of ranking in the top fifth academically of senior engineers at Brown.
Sarah Bawabe ‘21 (physics), Dylan J. Sam ‘21 (math and computer science), and Homer Walke ‘22 (computer science) also received honorable mention accolades from CRA. Each will receive formal recognition in the mail to commemorate this achievement, and the January 2021 issue of Computing Research News will include an article on the awards.
CRA is supported by Microsoft Research and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) who sponsor the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award program in alternate years. Microsoft Research is the sponsor of this year's awards.