The UCF Department of Computer Science welcomes five new faculty for Fall 2023:
- Ser Nam Lim
- Kevin Moran
- John Aedo
- Ramya Akula
- Joshua Lazar
“These hires deepen the department’s nationally recognized expertise in computer vision and cyber security, respectively, while also hallmarking the beginning of UCF’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Initiative,” says department chair Damla Turgut, Ph.D.
Lim joins the department from Meta as a tenured associate professor and the first Artificial Intelligence (AI) Initiative faculty hire. He earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2006. His research focuses on AI for content recommendations, as well as search engines that include the intersection of large language models and computer vision.
Moran joins the department and the Cyber Security and Privacy faculty research cluster as an assistant professor from George Mason University. He earned his doctorate from William and Mary in 2018. His main research interests include software engineering, security, maintenance, and evolution with a focus on mobile platforms.
Aedo joins the department as a lecturer after serving as an adjunct and application development manager at UCF. He is a three-time Knight, having earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at UCF. His doctoral degree is in modeling and simulation, and his teaching and research interests include STEM education, operating systems, web development, programming languages and compilers.
Akula also joins the department as a lecturer after earning her doctoral degree in computer science from UCF in 2022. Her research interests include figurative language and toxic language detection on social media using large language models in natural language processing.
Lazar joins the department as an instructor. He earned both his bachelor’s degree in business administration and management of information systems and master’s in management of information systems from UCF. His teaching interests include the core building blocks of computer science and how to deliver that knowledge to others; the analysis and design of an issue or new idea through the implementation to solve or build it; and providing the tools for students to deliver engaging presentations.