COVID shaped 2020 at Luddy, but there was plenty of success.
When faced with challenges, students and faculty at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering turn to technology to find the answers.
This past year has been no different, but boy, there were a lot of challenges.
The COVID-19 pandemic dominated everything in our collective lives throughout 2020. You know that. You’ve lived through it. At the Luddy School, it changed the way students learned. Professors were forced to adapt on the fly.
Buildings once buzzing with activity suddenly became ghost towns. The close, collaborative interactions that have been the foundations of Luddy moved to the virtual realm. The spring semester moved online. Most of the fall semester did, too.
But through it all, Luddy students and researchers have maintained their focus on improving society and using computing to sort through the disruptive noise of a chaotic world.
The year was unique, but the Luddy School was still filled with successes. The first cohort of Intelligent Systems Engineers earned their bachelor’s degrees, ground was broken on the Luddy Center for Artificial Intelligence, both graduate and undergraduate students earned major awards, Luddy faculty jumped into the mix to fight COVID, and so much more.
What follows is a look back at some of the biggest stories at the Luddy School during 2020, based on interest measured by social media views.
Luddy 2020 Year in Review
(Top news stories based on interest measured by social media clicks, listed chronologically)
School-wide News
- Spring Career Fair provides opportunity for Luddy students to shine
- Ceremony celebrates groundbreaking of $22.8 million Luddy Center for Artificial Intelligence
- Dennis Groth named interim dean of the Luddy School
- Indiana University to suspend classroom teaching for two weeks after spring break
- Stay updated on the Luddy School's response to the COVID-19 outbreak
- Luddy makerspaces, FAMES Lab step up efforts to create personal protective equipment for health professionals fighting COVID-19
- Crisis Technologies Innovation Lab aiding COVID-19 response for multiple partners
- Luddy Virtual Career Fair helps students take step into tomorrow
- Luddy School hosts virtual celebration of the Class of 2020
- First-class engineers
Student Success Stories
- Luddy students widen perspectives with trip to India
- Luddy students learn about technological magic and its impact at Disney World
- Innovations in prosthetics, Alzheimer's care win annual Cheng Wu Challenge
- ISE senior earns Kate Hevner Mueller Award
- ISE students part of Global Hack to battle COVID-19
- Luddy team takes home top honors in IEEE ISBI Memento Challenge
- Guest, Ye earn Distinguished Senior Thesis award
- Shoemaker Scholars lead new initiatives for IUB student creators, innovators and entrepreneurs in the 2020-21 year
- Pioneers and scholars: The Luddy Scholars blaze a new path
- Luddy researchers develop framework to study brain connectivity in living organisms
Faculty Research and Honors
- Xing earns Facebook award following security discovery that impacted 9.5 million users
- Menczer appointed to rank of Distinguished Professor
- Kapadia, Crandall earn prestigious Google Faculty Research Award
- Macklin leading international effort to build SARS-CoV-2 tissue simulator
- Plale honored with Michael A. McRobbie and Laurie Burns McRobbie Bicentennial Professorship in Computer Engineering
- Ahn's interactive data visualization showcase insights into growth rate and case-fatality rate of COVID-19
- Luddy faculty named to AI 2000 Most Influential Scholars list
- Gray named 2020 MacArthur Fellow, receives $625,000 'genius grant'
- Luddy researchers earn $500,000 NSF grant to plan AI Institute for Rural Health, Wellness, and Resilience
- Chung, Guo named Luddy Faculty Fellows