Research Excellence Awards
Research Excellence Awards are given to a Ph.D. and M.Sc. student who have recently defended and have shown outstanding research performance at the Ph.D. and M.Sc. Level.
The recipient of the Ph.D. Research Excellence Award is Martin Dechant. Martin's dissertation is titled "Socially Anxious Play: Design, Development, and Evaluation of Game-Based Digital Behavioural Markers for the Assessment of Social Anxiety" and was completed under supervision of Dr. Regan Mandryk.
Martin's work looks at the relationship between social anxiety and digital games from the lens of assessment and analyzes whether we can use digital behavioural markers embedded in a gaming task to assess the severity of social anxiety.
The results of this work provide new insights about the relationship between social anxiety and its manifestation in-game, the influence of game mechanics on the experience of social stress, and how social anxiety as well as psychopathic traits may affect in-game behaviours, opening the way towards digital behavioural markers for the assessment of social anxiety.
The recipient of the M.Sc. Research Excellence Award is Avijit Bhattacharjee. Avijit completed his M.Sc. entitled HCPC: Human Centric Program Comprehension by Grouping Static Execution Scenarios under the supervision of Dr. Banani Roy and Dr. Kevin A. Schneider.
Avijit's research aims to build a tool for more efficient software coding using natural language processing techniques. His project has been featured in the Young Innovators series in the Star Phoenix.
Citizenship Award
The Ph.D. and M.Sc. Citizenship Award are given to current Ph.D. and M.Sc. students who have actively participated/volunteered in activities and events on campus, or whose actions and contributions have added to the quality and reputation of our department.
This year's Ph.D. Citizenship Award recipient is Saikat Mondal. Saikat is working on his Ph.D. under Dr. Chanchal Roy. He is the current President of the Computer Science Graduate Council (CSGC) and was a GSA representative on the CSGC in the 2020-2021 academic year.
Saikat has won several awards during his time at USask, including the 2022 Graduate Students' Association Research Excellence in STEM Award, 2021 M.Sc. Research Excellence Award, 2021 Graduate Thesis Award (Master's) in the Physical and Engineering Sciences, and the 2020 Geddes Award.
This year's M.Sc. Citizenship Award recipient is Pujitha Macha. Pujitha is a Research Assistant at the Plant Phenotyping and Imaging Research Centre, working under the supervision of Dr. Mark Eramian and Dr. Leon Kochian. She is working on the extraction of plant root phenotypes using Image Processing and Deep Learning techniques. She is also serving as GSA Representative at Computer Science Graduate Council.
Geddes Awards
The Geddes Awards are given to a Ph.D. and M.Sc. student currently in their graduate program. This award is based on high academic standing and research productivity.
This year's Ph.D. Geddes Award recipient is Sristy Nath. Sristy is working on her Ph.D. entitled Generating Automated Human-centric Release Notes for Improving Software Release Process under the supervision of Dr. Banani Roy.
Sristy's research focuses on improving the usability of software documentation, e.g., release notes, for different stakeholders, such as developers, testers, and end-users in the software system maintenance phase using Software Analytics. The main goal of the research is to propose a human-centric and AI-based technique for release notes generation according to users’ roles-specific requirements.
This year's M.Sc. Geddes Award recipient is Shamse Cynthia. Shamse is currently working on her M.Sc. under the supervision of Dr. Banani Roy. Her research focuses on modelling adaptive user interfaces in Scientific Workflow Management Systems and investigating how preferences affect modelling in different environments, including graphical, textual, and visually guided scripting editors.
Carl McCrosky Innovation Scholarship for Graduate Studies in Computer Science
The Carl McCrosky Innovation Scholarship for Graduate Studies in Computer Science recognizes the academic achievement and innovative problem solving of students pursuing a MSc or PhD in Computer Science.
This is the inaugural year of the award, which was established in honour of Professor Emeritus Carl McCrosky in appreciation of the guidance and support he provided to Kavita Jain while she was pursuing her MSc degree under his supervision during the 1990s.
The first winner of the Carl McCrosky Innovation Scholarship for Graduate Studies in Computer Science is Martin Dechant.