UCSB CE and CS Undergraduate Advising, Spring 2026.

Jonathan Balkind Jonathan Balkind is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UCSB. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University. His research interests lie at the intersection of Computer Architecture, Programming Languages, and Operating Systems. He is the Lead Architect of OpenPiton and its heterogeneous-ISA descendent, BYOC, which are productive research platforms with thousands of downloads from over 70 countries worldwide. Email: jbalkind at ucsb.edu		Tim Sherwood Tim Sherwood is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Dean of the College of Creative Studies. Professor Sherwood joined the CS Department in 2003. He is a co-founder of Tortuga Logic. Professor Sherwood works on all manner of computer science and engineering problems from the perspective of how to better "shape" computers to address our needs (e.g. to be more secure or amenable to machine learning). Email: sherwood at cs.ucsb.edu
Richert Wang Richert Wang is a joint Associate Teaching Professor between the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Computing in the College of Creative Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine in 2011. Professor Wang works on computer science pedagogy topics including interdisciplinary approaches to teach applications of computer science to students with various backgrounds. Professor Wang is the current faculty advisor for UCSB's Game Development Club. Email: richert at cs.ucsb.edu		Xifeng Yan Xifeng Yan is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Professor Yan joined the Department in 2008. His PhD is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include: data mining, data management, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Email: xyan at cs.ucsb.edu
Maryam Majedi Dr. Maryam Majedi joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as an Assistant Teaching Professor in 2023. Dr. Majedi's research primarily revolves around Embedded Ethics and Data Privacy. She explores the intersection of computer science and ethical considerations, aiming to develop modules that facilitate the integration of ethics and data privacy principles into computer science education. Email: majedi at ucsb.edu		Ziad Matni Ziad Matni is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Computer Science. He received his PhD in Information Science from Rutgers University, where he also taught as an adjunct faculty member before joining UCSB. Before his work in academia, he held multiple engineering and management positions in the semiconductor, computer systems, and data communication industry for over a decade. He engages in research in CS education, computational social science, and in data & information science. Email: zmatni at ucsb.edu

UCSB CE and CS Undergraduate Advising, Spring 2026 (continued)

Nabeel Nasir Dr. Nabeel Nasir is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Virginia in 2024. Before his PhD, he worked as an Android Developer at Adobe for the Lightroom and Photoshop Mix teams. He also worked as a Software Developer for an IoT startup, EnLite Research, developing solutions to reduce energy consumption in office spaces. He is passionate about teaching and broadening participation in Computer Science, and supporting undergraduate research in Cyber Physical Systems and CS Education. Email: nabeeln at ucsb.edu		Phillip Conrad Phill Conrad joined the faculty of the CS Department in January 2008, and in July 2012 was promoted to Lecturer (SOE), a career-oriented position focusing on undergraduate education. Dr. Conrad's focus is the lower-division curriculum, however he often teaches CS156, the project-oriented course in Java and Javascript. Email: pconrad at engineering.ucsb.edu
Yogananda Isukapalli Yogananda Isukapalli is a Teaching Professor in the ECE department. He joined the department in 2017 and has several years of experience as a staff scientist in the Wi-Fi division at Broadcom. He runs the CE Capstone program, offering students real-world experience in developing embedded systems that have significant hardware, software, and in some cases, mechanical components. Email: yoga at ucsb.edu		Dmitri Strukov Dmitri Strukov is a Professor and Distinguished Lecturer in the ECE department at UCSB. He directs the Strukov Research Group, which aims to develop novel computation methods. He pursues highly interdisciplinary research, which spans material science, electrical engineering, and computer science. Email: strukov at ece.ucsb.edu
Diba Mirza Diba Mirza is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the UC San Diego and joined the Computer Science department at UCSB in 2017. She worked as a post-doc on interdiscplinary projects in the department of Computer Science and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, where she developed underwater robotic swarms that can help scientists learn more about the ocean. She directs the Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) which is designed to support students in their first research experience and co-directs the CS Undergraduate Learning Assistant Program. Email: dimirza at cs.ucsb.edu		Kaustav Banerjee Banerjee is one of the world's leading innovators in the field of nanoelectronics. His current research focuses on the physics, technology, and applications of two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene, for designing next-generation energy-efficient electronics, photonics, and bioelectronics. His pioneering contributions to nanoscale interconnect design and their energy-efficient solutions, particularly 3D integrated circuits, have been widely adopted and commercialized by the IC industry. His pathbreaking innovations with 2D van der Waals materials and heterostructures are setting the stage for next-generation electronics. This includes the invention of the Kinetic Inductor that overcame a 200-year old Faraday-limit of the inductance density of conventional materials. Email: kaustav at ece.ucsb.edu

UCSB CE and CS Undergraduate Advising, Spring 2026 (continued)

Ambuj Singh

Ambuj Singh is a Professor of Computer Science and Biomolecular Science and Engineering. His undergraduate education was at IIT in India. He joined UCSB's computer science department immediately after his PhD. He has written over 180 technical papers in the areas of distributed computing, databases, and bioinformatics. He has worked with numerous students and graduated over 20 PhD and 10 MS students. His students have obtained positions in major research labs as well as domestic and international universities.

Email: ambuj at ucsb.edu

Ben Hardekopf

Ben Hardekopf is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he leads the Programming Languages Research Laboratory. Professor Hardekopf's main research area is Programming Languages, investigating programming language design, analysis, and implementation.

Office: HFH 1109
Email: benh at cs.ucsb.edu

Tao Yang

Dr. Tao Yang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Yang joined the Department of Computer Science at UCSB in 1993. His research has been in the areas of parallel and distributed systems, web search/mining, and high performance computing with over 100 refereed papers and patents. His recent research is in the fields of web data mining and search, and cloud systems.

Email: tyang at cs.ucsb.edu

Jianwen Su

Jianwen Su is a Professor in Computer Science. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California before joining the UCSB CS department in 1990. His research interests include database systems, services computing, and business process management. He is a member of th ACM and IEEE and has served or serves on committees of several conferences and journals.

Email: su at cs.ucsb.edu

Dahlia Malkhi

Dahlia Malkhi is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science of UCSB since 2024. She heads the Foundations of Financial Technology lab. Her research over two decades spans broad aspects of reliability and security of distributed systems, recently with focus on blockchains and advances in financial technology. Her work resulted in over 200 publications as well as a strong impact on computing technology.

Email: dahliamalkhi at ucsb.edu

Tevfik Bultan

Tevfik Bultan is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Professor Bultan joined the Department in 1998. His Ph.D. is from University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests include: dependability and security of web software, automated verification, program analysis, and software engineering. Professor Bultan's research group develops automated verification and analysis techniques that help developers in identifying and eliminating errors in software.

Email: bultan at cs.ucsb.edu

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Yuheng Bu Dr. Bu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He joined the Department of Computer Science at UCSB in 2025. His research lie in the intersection of machine learning, information theory, and signal processing. He leverages the tools from information theory and statistical signal processing to foundational machine-learning problems to develop theoretically justified algorithms for diverse applications, including watermarking generative AI, fair machine learning, uncertainty quantification, and model compression. Email: buyuheng at ucsb.edu		James Preiss James A. Preiss is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. Before joining UCSB, he was a postdoctoral scholar in Computing + Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. James has made contributions to a broad spectrum of topics in robotics, including control, learning, motion planning, and software platforms. Email: preiss at ucsb.edu
Eric Vigoda Eric Vigoda is a Professor in CS. Before coming to UCSB in 2021, he was at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC). Since finishing his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1999, he has also had appointments at Chicago, Edinburgh, Weizmann, and KAIST. His research is in theoretical computer science, especially Markov chain methods and randomized algorithms. Email: vigoda at cs.ucsb.edu		Peng Li Peng Li received the Ph. D. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. He was on the faculty of Texas A&M University from August 2004 to June 2019. Since July 2019, he has been with University of California at Santa Barbara as a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests are in brain-inspired computing, electronic design automation, integrated circuits and systems, robust machine learning, and application of machine learning to IC design. Email: lip at ece.ucsb.edu
Yu Feng Yu Feng is an Associate Professor for the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in computer science at UT Austin. His research to date focuses on developing automated programming techniques that combine program synthesis and program analysis to improve software usability, reliability, and security. For instance, Yu has developed systems for tackling security vulnerabilities (FSE'14, NDSS'17, CCS'17), automating complex programming tasks (PLDI'17, POPL'17, PLDI'18), and challenging the limits of existing program analysis (OOPSLA'15, APLAS'15). Email: yufeng at cs.ucsb.edu