Stony Brook, NY, August 15, 2024 - Stony Brook University’s Computer Science Department is pleased to announce the hiring of two exceptional faculty members: Tuhin Chakrabarty and Paola Cascante-Bonilla.
As Stony Brook University continues to make strides in developing and integrating AI in education, and providing students with the knowledge needed to take advantage of the most powerful tools available today, the university’s AI Institute will be welcoming two new faculty members next Fall.
Paola Cascante-Bonilla, a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), working on developing methods and metrics related to trustworthy machine learning, will be joining Stony Brook University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Fall of 2025.
Prof. Paola Cascante-Bonilla
Professor Cascante-Bonilla received her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Rice University in 2024, advised by Professor Vicente Ordóñez Román. She is the recipient of the Ken Kennedy Institute SLB Graduate Fellowship (2022/23). She was selected as a Future Faculty Fellow by Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering (2023) and as a Rising Star in EECS (2023). She received a Master of Computer Science at the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Engineering at the Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Previously, she interned at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) and twice at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. Before that, she spent 10 years working as a Software Engineer at various tech companies.
Her research topics include Vision and Language & Multi-modal Learning, Synthetic Data Generation for Compositionality and Privacy Protection, and Dynamic Evaluations and Real-world Applications.
“I am thrilled to join the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University as a professor and continue my work on multi-modal learning. My group will strive to advance the core principles of AI while developing practical applications in visual and linguistic tasks, including compositional reasoning and embodied artificial intelligence. The university's AI Institute provides an exceptional platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling academic researchers to make a real-world impact. With the vibrant community that Stony Brook offers, I look forward to teaching and mentoring students, sharing my passion for AI, and preparing the next generation of researchers in this exciting field,” Professor Cascante-Bonilla commented.
Tuhin Chakrabarty, whose work has been discussed in MIT Technology Review, Washington Post, and The Hollywood Reporter, will be joining Stony Brook University’s faculty in the Fall of 2025 as Assistant Professor of Computer Science.
Prof. Tuhin Chakrabarty
Professor Chakrabarty obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University, where he was part of the Natural Language Processing group. His research was supported by the Columbia Center of Artificial Intelligence & Technology (CAIT) & Amazon Science Ph.D. Fellowship. He has also worked as a Computational Journalism fellow at NYTimes R&D (2021-2022).
His research interests are broadly in Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning and his goal is to design and build reliable AI systems that can handle both implicature and ambiguity and are aligned with the requirements humans have from technology. Some of the research directions he is excited about include Long Form Text Generation Evaluation, Benchmarks for Reasoning and Explainability, and Human AI Collaboration.
When asked about his plans for the term, Chakrabarty said, “Having spent most of my academic life in New York City, I am grateful to find my next academic home at Stony Brook University. There’s an unprecedented amount of excitement in AI, and so it's the best time to be a professor. We have to teach young students the fundamentals as well as the best practices in AI research. The goal of building reliable and useful AI, one that is aligned with humans, hinges on careful inspection of data quality and maintaining higher standards for evaluation. At Stony Brook, I want to build a group that prioritizes these values while pushing the boundaries for human-centered AI.”
Director Steven Skiena of Stony Brook’s Institute of AI-driven Discovery and Technology, welcoming the faculty, said, “We are grateful to Provost Carl Lejuez for his supervision and support in expanding AI research, and are glad to see Professors Paola Cascante-Bonilla and Tuhin Chakrabarty joining Stony Brook faculty to provide unparalleled guidance and opportunities to our students.”
Communications Assistant
Ankita Nagpal