Faculty

Matthew Malensek received his PhD in computer science from Colorado State University. His research interests are centered around systems approaches to data science, with a focus on scalable analytics, storage and management of voluminous data streams, and cloud/edge computing. These projects span domains such as atmospheric science, epidemiology, and geographic information systems.

Professor Benson's research areas include operating systems, parallel computing, and programming languages. He has designed and developed several run-time systems and tools for parallel programming languages and libraries. Specifically, he led the development of USFMPI, a multi-threaded implementation of MPI 1.2 for Linux using either Myrinet or Ethernet. In addition, Professor Benson co-created FlashMob Computing and he implemented much of the software that enabled the harnessing of 700...

David is an associate professor at the University of San Francisco. His research interests are natural language processing, machine learning, and databases — specifically on the personal and cultural/demographic information transmitted during speech and typing. This research may lead to more accurate speech recognition systems.

Prior to joining USF, David was a research assistant in the Speech Lab at Queens College and an instructor at Hunter College. He has previously worked for the City of...

Christopher Brooks is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at USF, with a joint appointment in the Department of Engineering. He joined USF in 2002 after completing a PhD in computer science at the University of Michigan. He also holds an MS in computer science from San Francisco State University, and a BA and JBA in English and journalism, respectively, from the University of Wisconsin.

From 2010-2019, Professor Brooks served as associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences...

Mehmet's research at the intersection of programming languages and software engineering. His focus is on building and using program analyses to understand the behavior of programs automatically.

His current research project focuses on extracting memory and thread safety properties in C programs to make transitioning from C to safer programming languages such as Rust easier. He has also worked on research projects involving dynamic invariant inference, finding similar snippets between programs...

Sophie’s research interests include data visualization and computer science education. She is a co-founder of the Visualization and Graphics Lab (VGL) and on the steering committee for the Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec). She is passionate about supporting diverse learners in the classroom, and integrating one-on-one student/faculty interaction into her courses on software development and data visualization.

https://sjengle.cs.usfca.edu

Alark Joshi works on data visualization projects for improved neurosurgical planning and treatment. His research focuses on developing and evaluating the ability of novel visualization techniques to communicate information for effective decision making and discovery. His work has led to novel visualization techniques in fields as diverse as computational fluid dynamics, atmospheric physics, medical imaging and cell biology. Alark received his PhD from the University of Maryland, was a...

EJ Jung is interested in protecting security and privacy in the Internet. Currently, she's working on countermeasures against phishing, malicious javascript, privacy in healthcare, policy compatibility in grid and cloud computing, and usable security. She is also excited to share her passion in community service with USF members.

Professor Karpenko received her PhD and MS in Computer Science from Brown University, and her BS degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University. Before joining USF, she was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley. Professor Karpenko’s research interests lie in the areas of computer graphics and human-computer interaction. In particular, her thesis focused on sketch-based 3D modeling.

During Phil's career in Silicon Valley, he helped build software and hardware products at Borland, Netscape, Motorola, Apple, and a number of startups. He has served in a variety of software engineering, management, and board roles, in businesses spanning packaged software, web browsers, mobile devices, and Internet services. At USF, Phil teaches courses in the Systems track.

Dr. Pournaghshband is the founder and director of Networks & Security Research Laboratory (Nets Lab). He is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive learning environment in computer science, and consistently develops pedagogies to incorporate cybersecurity into all computer science courses. Dr. Pournaghshband is the recipient of Fulbright Scholar Award in Austria.

Kelsey Urgo earned her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before beginning her PhD program, she worked as a web developer at several institutions, including Wake Forest University and the Renaissance Computing Institute. Her research bridges the fields of information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and human-centered AI, exploring how search environments and generative AI tools can better support complex human tasks involving learning and creativity. She focuses on...

Ellen Veomett is a mathematician and computer scientist whose research has involved metric geometry, graph coloring, and graph isoperimetric inequalities. Recently, her research has focused on mathematical and computational techniques to address gerrymandering, and the geometry of redistricting. She and her collaborators designed the GEO metric, which has garnered national attention in analyzing redistricting maps created since the 2020 census. Dr. Veomett is committed to supporting students...

Professor Wolber’s focuses on empowering artists, designers, kids, women, men, humanity majors, business students — makers of all types — to add coding to their creative arsenals. He designed and teaches USF’s core CS course, Computing, Mobile Apps, and the Web, which allows USF students from all majors to learn coding by building mobile apps.

Wolber runs the sites DragAndDropCode.com and appinventor.org, and is the author of Drag and Drop Code: Create iPhone and Android Apps with Thunkable...

Professor Beste F. Yuksel is the founder and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab which has a high proportion of women and underrepresented minority students as well as military veterans. She has received the National Science Foundation CISE Research Infrastructure Award in 2017. Her research has won a Best Paper Award (first author) and a Honorable Mention Award (as lead professor and conceiver of research) at ACM CHI which is the top publication venue in the field of Human-Computer...

Vera Klimkovsky is an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Francisco.

She brings 20 years of teaching statistics, business analytics, and mathematics. Vera holds a BS in applied mathematics and an MA in mathematics. She has also undergone training at UC Berkeley’s Department of Public Health, and her research focused on simulation studies and implementation of multiple hypothesis testing procedures. Vera's goal is to share her passion for applied statistics and data science to help...

Jon Rahoi is a rare emulsion of software engineer, public speaker (he emcees MMA, boxing, and corporate events, and was in USF's College Players as an actor), entrepreneur (including a few companies with USF Alums) and teacher (in both CS and Public Speaking). 

He loves learning human languages, making, analyzing, and playing games, and telling people what it was like to grow up in central Alaska.

Jags is a passionate tech vigilante. As CTO of Object Edge, he follows how technology changes the landscape for businesses worldwide. He’s motivated by happy, engaged people.  He supports and mentors girls to thrive in technology working with Girls Who Code and teaching at the University of San Francisco.

Professor Pacheco's main research interest is parallel computing. He's been involved in the development of the MPI Standard for message-passing. His book Parallel Programming with MPI is an elementary introduction to programming parallel systems that use the MPI 1 library of extensions to C and Fortran. His book An Introduction to Parallel Programming is designed to teach inexperienced programmers how to program both shared- and distributed-memory parallel systems.

After earning BA and PhD degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities, Professor Johnson worked as a UI designer and implementer, engineer manager, usability tester, and researcher at Cromemco, Xerox, US West, Hewlett-Packard Labs, and Sun Microsystems.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was chair of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He has taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of San Francisco, and in 2006 and 2013 taught HCI as an Erskine Fellow at...