Best Poster/Demo Award at HCOMP 2019

HCOMP 2019 Poster/Demo chairs (left) and Dr. Kurt Luther (center), Sukrit Venkatagiri (second from right), and David Mitchell (right).

The Crowd Lab won the Best Poster/Demo Award at HCOMP 2019! Congratulations to Crowd Lab postdoc and team leader Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Ph.D. student Sukrit Venkatagiri, and undergraduate researchers David Mitchell and Chris Hurt. Their poster/demo was titled, “PairWise: Mitigating political bias in crowdsourced content moderation.”

The Crowd Lab also won the Best Poster/Demo Award at HCOMP 2018.

Received Purdue Outstanding Technology Alumni Award

Dr. Luther (left) with his undergraduate mentor, Prof. Ronald Glotzbach of Purdue University

Dr. Luther was honored with the Outstanding Technology Alumni Award from his alma mater, Purdue Polytechnic Institute (formerly Purdue University’s College of Technology), at an awards event at Purdue University on April 26.

According to the press release, recipients of the Outstanding Technology Alumni Award “have made significant and recognized impacts in their fields, and they remain involved with the Purdue University community.” The university also profiled Dr. Luther’s accomplishments on the college website.

Dr. Luther received his B.S. with highest distinction and departmental honors in computer graphics technology, with a minor in art and design, from Purdue in 2006.

Best Paper Award at IUI 2019

Dr. Kurt Luther (center) receives the IUI 2019 Best Paper Award from PC co-chairs Oliver Brdiczka (left) and Polo Chau (right). Photo courtesy John Wenskovitch.

Our paper, “Photo Sleuth: Combining Human Expertise and Face Recognition to Identify Historical Portraits,” received the Best Paper Award at IUI 2019 in Los Angeles, CA. This award recognized the best paper among 282 submissions. Congratulations to lead author Vikram Mohanty (CS Ph.D. student), David Thames (CS undergraduate), and Sneha Mehta (CS Ph.D. student). A video of the talk (presented by Dr. Luther is embedded below.

Dr. Kurt Luther presents Photo Sleuth at IUI 2019.

Dr. Luther named ACWM Emerging Scholar

Dr. Luther was selected as one of eight Emerging Scholars by the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA. He will give an invited presentation on Civil War Photo Sleuth to audiences at the grand opening of the newly expanded museum on May 4. The goal of the program is to “highlight some of the most interesting work of the next generation of writers, communicators, and thinkers of Civil War era history/public history.”

Sukrit Venkatagiri selected as Rita Allen Misinformation Forum Graduate Fellow

Rita Allen Foundation Logo

Congratulations to Crowd Lab Ph.D. student Sukrit Venkatagiri on his selection as one of 12 Graduate Student Fellows of the Rita Allen Foundation’s Misinformation Solutions Forum, which took place in October 2018 in Washington, DC. As a Graduate Fellow, Sukrit received a travel grant to attend the Forum and co-authored (with Amy Zhang of MIT) an essay that was published in the Forum’s proceedings.

Placed 3rd at 2018 VTURCS symposium

Congratulations to Crowd Lab undergraduate researcher Anne Hoang for winning 3rd place in the Faculty Choice category at the 2018 Virginia Tech Undergraduate Research in Computer Science (VTURCS) Symposium. There were 37 submissions including 22 capstone projects and 15 research projects.

Anne also won 1st place in the Capstone category and 1st place in the Marston Awards (industry pick) category. Amazing!

The Crowd Lab regularly participates in the VTURCS Symposium. Last year, our teams placed 1st and 3rd in the Faculty Choice category.