computer science phd ucla

Artificial Intelligence

The computational study of intelligent behavior. This includes research in logical and probabilistic reasoning, machine learning, causality, heuristic search and combinatorial optimization, and natural language processing.

Kai-Wei Chang Adnan Darwiche Alyson Fletcher Saadia Gabriel Aditya Grover Quanquan Gu Cho-Jui Hsieh Richard Korf Baharan Mirzasoleiman Judea Pearl Nanyun Peng Guy Van den Broeck

Computer System Architecture & CAD

The study of the structure and behavior of computer systems; development of new algorithms and computing structures to be implemented in hardware, firmware, and software; development of tools to enable system designers to describe, model, fabricate and test highly complex computer systems.

Jason (Jinsheng) Cong Tony Nowatzki Miodrag Potkonjak Glenn Reinman Majid Sarrafzadeh Yuval Tamir Blaise-Pascal Tine

Computational Systems Biology

An integrative approach to understanding biological systems, with research areas that span systems biology, bioinformatics, genomics, computational biology, and biomedical engineering.

Joseph DiStefano Jason Ernst Eleazar Eskin Eran Halperin Sriram Sankararaman

Graphics & Vision

The synthesis and analysis of images by computer. Graphics — rendering, motion capture, and geometric, physics-based and artificial life modeling/animation for the movie and game industries. Vision — texture, shape, motion and illumination, 3D reconstruction from images, object recognition, real-time vision/control for autonomous vehicles, visual sensor networks and surveillance, and medical image analysis.

Achuta Kadambi Stefano Soatto Demetri Terzopoulos Bolei Zhou

Human Computer Interaction

A multi-disciplinary approach to study, design, and build interactive systems for diverse users (e.g., scientists, artists, journalists, students) working on a broad range of applications (e.g., research, policy, fabrication, software, AI). The goal of HCI is to empower more people to use technology to live according to their values.

Xiang Anthony Chen Eunice Jun

Information & Data Management

The development of models, techniques and tools to improve the functionality, performance and usability of database management and Web systems that provide enabling technology for our information society — including Web search engines, digital libraries, big data, data mining, distributed databases, data stream management systems, and information systems for medicine and science.

Junghoo (John) Cho Yizhou Sun Remy Wang Wei Wang

Network Systems

The study and design of distributed and often mobile systems — including computers, vehicles, people, and sensors interconnected by a communications network. This includes the development of novel applications that run on these systems, new protocols that enable various network components to work together, and techniques to optimize performance and to ensure reliability.

Omid Abari Leonard Kleinrock Songwu Lu Mani Srivastava George Varghese Lixia Zhang

Software Systems

A broad array of ongoing research that spans the entire spectrum of software systems — including programing language design and implementation, software engineering, software verification, operating systems, and embedded systems.

Miryung Kim Sam Kumar Todd Millstein Jens Palsberg Yuan Tian  Harry Xu

Computer Science Theory

The use of simple and concise mathematical models to investigate computational questions and issues — including research in centralized, parallel and distributed models of computation; optimal approximate and randomized online algorithms; complexity, cryptography, games, auctions and mechanism design theory.

Eliezer Gafni Raghu Meka Rafail Ostrovsky Amit Sahai Alexander Sherstov

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2021-2022 Computer Science Overview

Computer science is concerned with the design, modeling, analysis, and applications of computer systems. Its study at UCLA provides education at the undergraduate and graduate levels necessary to understand, design, implement, and use the software and hardware of digital computers and digital systems. The programs offer comprehensive and integrated studies of subjects in computer system architecture, computer networks, distributed computer systems, programming languages and software systems, information and data management, artificial intelligence, computer science theory, computational systems biology and bioinformatics, and computer vision and graphics.

The undergraduate and graduate studies and research projects in the Department of Computer Science are supported by significant computing resources. In addition to the departmental computing facility, there are over a dozen research laboratories specializing in areas such as distributed systems, multimedia computer communications, distributed sensor networks, VLSI systems, VLSI CAD, embedded and reconfigurable systems, computer graphics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence. Also, the Cognitive Systems Laboratory is engaged in studying computer systems that emulate or support human reasoning. The Biocybernetics Laboratory is devoted to multidisciplinary research involving the application of engineering and computer science methods to problems in biology and medicine.

The BS degree may be attained through the Computer Science and Engineering major, the Computer Science major, or the Computer Engineering major described below.

In addition, UCLA Samueli offers MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science, as well as minor fields for graduate students seeking engineering degrees. In cooperation with the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management, the Computer Science Department offers a concurrent degree program that enables students to obtain the MS in Computer Science and the MBA (Master of Business Administration).

Department Mission

The Computer Science Department strives for excellence in creating, applying, and imparting knowledge in computer science and engineering through comprehensive educational programs, research in collaboration with industry and government, dissemination through scholarly publications, and service to professional societies, the community, state, and nation.

At an Upsilon Pi Epsilon industry event, Computer Science alumni talk about what it’s like to build technology for Google.

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Full-text UC dissertations since 1996 are available from  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses . 

As of March 13, 2012, UCLA's  Graduate Division  only accepts electronic filing of theses and dissertations. Theses and dissertations filed after this date will only be accessible electronically. They can be found by searching the  UCLA Library Catalog ,  ProQuest Digital Dissertations and Theses , or  eScholarship . Authors may embargo theses or dissertations for up to two years, so the full text of recent theses and dissertations may not be available.

Non-UCLA users can obtain UCLA dissertations through  ProQuest UMI . The UCLA Library does not provide interlibrary loan service to individuals unaffiliated with UCLA. However, dissertations can be lent to institutions; see  information for borrowing institutions .

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Omid Abari Assistant Professor, Computer Science UCLA Email: [email protected] Office: ENG VI - Room 497B

I am an Assistant Professor in the department of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where I lead Intelligent Connectivity (ICON) research group. I received my PhD in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018. My research supervisors were Professor Dina Katabi and Professor Anantha Chandrakasan . I received my Master's degree from MIT and my Bachelor's degree from Carleton University, Canada.

My research interests are in all aspects of Internet of Things (IoT) networks and systems, from the physical layer to the application layer. My research group develops software-hardware systems that deliver ubiquitous sensing, efficient computing, and wireless communication at scale. We borrow techniques from diverse areas including computer networks, machine learning, signal processing, hardware design, RF circuits, and HCI. Our current research projects mainly focus on "mmWave networks for IoT" and "ubiquitous sensing with RFID".

2023 : NSF CAREER Award 2022 : UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows Award 2017 : ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) Grand Finals Winner 2016 : ACM MobiCom Student Research Competition Winner, Gold Medal 2016 : Boston Is The Smartest City (BITS) Competition Winner 2015 : ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) Grand Finals Winner 2014 : ACM MobiCom Student Research Competition Winner, Gold Medal 2013 : NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship 2011 : Merrill Lynch Fellowship 2010 : Senate Medal for Outstanding Academic Achievement

Haofan Lu Haochen Zhao Christopher Vattheuer Jian-Tiang Ko

Tianxiang Li Antony Irudayaraj Mohammad Mazaheri Ju Wang Ali Abedi

UCLA Institute for Carbon Management and Equatic to Build the World’s Largest Ocean-Based Carbon Removal Plant in Singapore

The $20 million system will be capable of removing 3,650 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year while producing 105 metric tons of carbon-negative hydrogen                     

Charles Grace Rendering of an ocean-based carbon dioxide-removal demonstration plant in Singapore

Feb 27, 2024

Following the successful launch and operation of two pilots in Los Angeles and Singapore last spring, UCLA and its startup Equatic are scaling up for the next phase: a $20 million full-scale demonstration plant (“Equatic-1”) supported by Singapore’s national water agency PUB; the National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore; and UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management (ICM) .

Over the next 18 months, a multi-disciplinary team comprising researchers and technology-scaling experts from ICM and Equatic will set out to build the world’s largest ocean-based carbon dioxide-removal plant at PUB’s research and development facility in Tuas, located in western Singapore. 

Equatic’s existing plant in Singapore, piloted at 0.1 metric ton (220 pounds) of carbon dioxide removal per day, has proven successful. Equatic-1 will be constructed over two phases, with the first phase beginning in March and designed to remove 1 metric ton (approximately 2,205 pounds) of carbon dioxide per day by late 2024. Nine additional modules will be installed in early 2025 to complete Phase 2. With all 10 modules, Equatic-1 will be able to remove 10 metric tons of CO 2 per day from seawater and the atmosphere — 100 times more than the amount removed by the pilot. The pioneering technology could allow for the greenhouse gas to be removed and durably stored while simultaneously producing nearly 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of carbon-negative hydrogen daily. Once this facility has successfully fulfilled its technical demonstration objectives, Equatic will scale and commercialize the technology globally.

“We are very grateful for the catalytic support of PUB and NRF, which have helped us create a world-class partnership in our joint efforts to mitigate climate change,” said Equatic co-founder and ICM director Gaurav Sant , who is the Pritzker Professor of Sustainability in the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. “Scaling carbon removal solutions requires technology, bold and committed partners, and a focus on timely and measurable success. We have been very fortunate to create this shared vision with our partners in Singapore to scale Equatic’s solutions to the commercial scale and around the world.” Sant also holds faculty appointments in the departments of civil and environmental engineering and materials science and engineering, as well as the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.      

The Equatic process activates and expands the ocean’s natural ability to store carbon dioxide by removing dissolved CO 2 while enhancing the sea’s capacity to absorb more of the greenhouse gas. Utilizing electrolysis, an electrical current is passed through seawater brought in from the adjacent desalination plants operated by PUB. The process induces a series of chemical reactions that break water into its hydrogen and oxygen constituents while securely storing both dissolved and atmospheric carbon dioxide in the form of solid calcium and magnesium-based materials for at least 10,000 years. 

“Scaling carbon dioxide removal solutions requires technology, bold and committed partners, and a focus on timely and measurable success. We have been very fortunate to create this shared vision with our partners in Singapore to pilot and scale Equatic’s solutions,” Gaurav Sant said.

According to the World Bank, the average global annual carbon emissions per capita in 2020 are about 4.3 metric tons . At full scale, Equatic-1 can remove as much carbon dioxide as what nearly 850 people emit annually. Once the plant meets its projected carbon-removal goal, Equatic plans to launch a commercial plant designed to capture nearly 110,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of more than 25,000 individuals.

PUB has set a target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 with a three-pronged approach to replace, reduce and remove   carbon emissions. Besides replacing fossil fuel sources with renewable solar energy and investing in research and development to reduce energy required in water-treatment processes, capturing and removing carbon released into the atmosphere is a key thrust of PUB’s decarbonization strategy. This collaboration with UCLA and Equatic is part of Singapore’s broader efforts to source novel technologies, such as carbon capture, utilization, storage, which could contribute to mitigating the impacts of climate change.  

“We are pleased to further our collaboration with UCLA and Equatic to develop a solution that has potential synergies with PUB’s desalination plant,” said PUB chief engineering and technology officer Chee Meng Pang. “At PUB, we firmly believe that technological advancements, delivered in partnership with academia and the private sector, hold the key to addressing the complex challenges posted by climate change.” 

Equatic-1 is being built as a modular system, allowing the performance of individual units to be staged and stacked in preparation for systematic and rapid expansion. This approach reduces risks traditionally associated with scaling technology innovation. The system will also employ selective anodes, newly developed with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), to produce oxygen while eliminating the unwanted byproduct of chlorine during seawater electrolysis. This opens a new pathway to carbon dioxide removal at the gigaton scale with the co-production of hydrogen — a clean fuel vital to decarbonizing transportation and industrial applications.

“The pilot plant commissioned in 2023 provided critical performance data to substantiate our carbon dioxide-removal efficiencies, hydrogen-production rates and energy requirements for the process,” said Equatic co-founder Dante Simonetti , an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA Samueli and ICM’s associate director for technology translation. “The findings helped define the pathway for the design and engineering of Equatic-1 based on scaling performance confirmed by the pilot system.” 

In addition to Sant and Simonetti, the project also involves Equatic co-founder and UCLA Samueli civil and environmental engineering professor David Jassby , who serves as ICM’s associate director for knowledge discovery.

The carbon credits from Equatic-1 are allocated to the project’s partners, and Equatic has entered into agreements with companies including Boeing for the purchase of carbon credits from future commercial plants. 

Equatic’s first pilot operations were unveiled at the Port of Los Angeles and Singapore in April 2023, less than two years after creating bench-scale prototypes at UCLA in 2021. The technology has been named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023 and listed among Popular Science’s 50 greatest innovations of 2023 . It has also won the 2021 Liveability Challenge , a global competition backed by Singapore-based nonprofit Temasek Foundation with 450 applicants from more than 60 countries. 

In addition to funding by PUB, the Equatic process (formerly known as Project SeaChange) has been supported by, among others, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the Nicholas Endowment, the Temasek Foundation and Boeing, as well as the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and its Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.      

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UCLA storytellers use Grand Theft Auto as basis for series of original films imagining L.A. in 2050

art & culture, cities & towns, climate change

It’s the year 2050, and the Los Angeles River runs lazily along, sparkling in the sunlight, as the hum of freeway traffic weaves through the idyllic setting. Standing on the riverbank, teenagers Kerstin and Yolanda agree to work together to hunt down a lost electronic toy. Will their mission, and their friendship, survive in spite of their socioeconomic differences

Kerstin and Yolanda are characters in a short film produced by UCLA faculty, students and alumni. But they’re not played by actors; they’re computer-generated avatars. And the landscapes and neighborhoods they’re about to explore weren’t filmed in present-day Los Angeles, but rather produced using a modified, or “modded,” version of the video game Grand Theft Auto V.

It’s all part of a project called “Grand Theft Eco,” a series of three short films created over the past five years by a team led by English professors  Ursula Heise  and  Danny Snelson  under the auspices of UCLA’s  Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies,  or LENS.

The first episode will  premiere on May 20 at 4 p.m. in Kaplan Hall room 193.

A world-building experience

Close to two dozen undergraduates and graduate students collaborated on the effort — writing the scripts, voice-acting the characters and reprogramming the video game’s infrastructure to function as the “sets” for their stories. The series explores questions about Los Angeles’ environmental future and related issues of economic and social justice, and each episode has its own theme: the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, private–public competition over electric power, and urban wildlife.

Producing “Grand Theft Eco” was both a cinematic and world-building endeavor: Even before filming began, the team had to painstakingly mod the environments and settings of Grand Theft Auto to bring to life a new vision of Los Angeles’ environmental future. In Grand Theft Auto, gamers compete as criminals in a fictional city called Los Santos, which is modeled after Los Angeles.

The game has a reputation for violent and misogynistic content, but the UCLA team had other plans for their modded version. The filmmakers worked in the video game’s code to redesign parts of Los Santos, taking into account real-life plans that have been laid out for Los Angeles.

“By using GTA V, we’re defamiliarizing scenes from the game,” Snelson said. “How far can we push a game built for violence and high-speed chases to tell really poignant narratives toward a better real-world Los Angeles? How can we highlight these speculative futures in order to see our present differently?”

Using a modified video game as the shell for narrative storytelling is unusual for a project of this scale, but not an entirely new one: The practice of modifying video games for cinematic productions has been around for decades and the commonly used term for the approach, “machinima,” was coined in 1998.

Expanding perspectives and audiences

“Both films and video games offer important tool sets for environmental narrative,” Heise said. “No one story can encompass the parallel crises the planet is currently undergoing, nor can one narrative capture the wide variety of audiences that environmental communication needs to reach.

“Animated films and video games contribute distinctive media and genres to environmental storytelling at the same time that they help to expand the audiences for the narrative about the future, both for humans and our planet’s other species.”

Beyond their writing, programming and acting contributions, students also lent knowledge drawn from their other academic work.

Chase Niesner, who recently completed his doctorate at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, studies human–coyote relations in Los Angeles. Besides serving as a cinematographer, he contributed research that shaped the third episode ,  which explores questions of belonging for humans and animals, and the ideas of homes and homelessness.

“You can analyze something with one kind of logic, but when you introduce a different kind of poetics into your process, all sorts of strange relations and associations then come from the back of the mind to the forefront,” Niesner said. “In working with the shooting and editing software, I was able to intuitively explore what it might mean to look — with the camera in this case — through other beings’ eyes, and this inspired me to see the webs of the urban ecology as something kind of like the fabric of cinema.”

Angel Tolentino, a former UCLA undergraduate and current affiliate of LENS who modded the game, said the out-of-the-box thinking required to create machinima also lends itself to thinking creatively about the city’s environmental future.

“To build a better world, we must envision one,” Tolentino said. “I think this is a creative step in the right direction.”

The project does not shy away from questions about injustice and inequality, but Heise said it does convey some sense of “optopia” — a term coined by the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson that means the best world possible given existing circumstances.

“The goal is to tell stories about environmental futures that don’t just fall into apocalypse, post-apocalypse or dystopia,” Heise said. “A world that is more just, more fair, not as hard on nonhumans, even one that isn’t perfect, is worth striving for and investing in. We want to steal the future back from pessimistic visions and dare to imagine an urban ecotopia in Los Angeles.”

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Grand Theft Eco: The iBear in the River

• UCLA storytellers use Grand Theft Auto as basis for series of original films imagining L.A. in 2050

Emma Horio | May 16, 2024

It’s the year 2050, and the Los Angeles River runs lazily along, sparkling in the sunlight, as the hum of freeway traffic weaves through the idyllic setting. Standing on the riverbank, teenagers Kerstin and Yolanda agree to work together to hunt down a lost electronic toy. Will their mission, and their friendship, survive in spite of their socioeconomic differences?

Kerstin and Yolanda are characters in a short film produced by UCLA faculty, students and alumni. But they’re not played by actors; they’re computer-generated avatars. And the landscapes and neighborhoods they’re about to explore weren’t filmed in present-day Los Angeles, but rather produced using a modified, or “modded,” version of the video game Grand Theft Auto V.

It’s all part of a project called “Grand Theft Eco,” a series of three short films created over the past five years by a team led by English professors Ursula Heise and Danny Snelson under the auspices of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies, or LENS.

The first episode will premiere on May 20 at 4 p.m. in Kaplan Hall room 193.

A world-building experience

Close to two dozen undergraduates and graduate students collaborated on the effort — writing the scripts, voice-acting the characters and reprogramming the video game’s infrastructure to function as the “sets” for their stories. The series explores questions about Los Angeles’ environmental future and related issues of economic and social justice, and each episode has its own theme: the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, private–public competition over electric power, and urban wildlife.

Producing “Grand Theft Eco” was both a cinematic and world-building endeavor: Even before filming began, the team had to painstakingly mod the environments and settings of Grand Theft Auto to bring to life a new vision of Los Angeles’ environmental future. In Grand Theft Auto, gamers compete as criminals in a fictional city called Los Santos, which is modeled after Los Angeles.

The game has a reputation for violent and misogynistic content, but the UCLA team had other plans for their modded version. The filmmakers worked in the video game’s code to redesign parts of Los Santos, taking into account real-life plans that have been laid out for Los Angeles.

“By using GTA V, we’re defamiliarizing scenes from the game,” Snelson said. “How far can we push a game built for violence and high-speed chases to tell really poignant narratives toward a better real-world Los Angeles? How can we highlight these speculative futures in order to see our present differently?”

Using a modified video game as the shell for narrative storytelling is unusual for a project of this scale, but not an entirely new one: The practice of modifying video games for cinematic productions has been around for decades and the commonly used term for the approach, “machinima,” was coined in 1998.

Expanding perspectives and audiences

“Both films and video games offer important tool sets for environmental narrative,” Heise said. “No one story can encompass the parallel crises the planet is currently undergoing, nor can one narrative capture the wide variety of audiences that environmental communication needs to reach.

“Animated films and video games contribute distinctive media and genres to environmental storytelling at the same time that they help to expand the audiences for the narrative about the future, both for humans and our planet’s other species.”

Beyond their writing, programming and acting contributions, students also lent knowledge drawn from their other academic work.

Chase Niesner, who recently completed his doctorate at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, studies human–coyote relations in Los Angeles. Besides serving as a cinematographer, he contributed research that shaped the third episode , which explores questions of belonging for humans and animals, and the ideas of homes and homelessness.

“You can analyze something with one kind of logic, but when you introduce a different kind of poetics into your process, all sorts of strange relations and associations then come from the back of the mind to the forefront,” Niesner said. “In working with the shooting and editing software, I was able to intuitively explore what it might mean to look — with the camera in this case — through other beings’ eyes, and this inspired me to see the webs of the urban ecology as something kind of like the fabric of cinema.”

Angel Tolentino, a former UCLA undergraduate and current affiliate of LENS who modded the game, said the out-of-the-box thinking required to create machinima also lends itself to thinking creatively about the city’s environmental future.

“To build a better world, we must envision one,” Tolentino said. “I think this is a creative step in the right direction.”

The project does not shy away from questions about injustice and inequality, but Heise said it does convey some sense of “optopia” — a term coined by the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson that means the best world possible given existing circumstances.

“The goal is to tell stories about environmental futures that don’t just fall into apocalypse, post-apocalypse or dystopia,” Heise said. “A world that is more just, more fair, not as hard on nonhumans, even one that isn’t perfect, is worth striving for and investing in. We want to steal the future back from pessimistic visions and dare to imagine an urban ecotopia in Los Angeles.”

The project was funded in part by a 2023 grant from UCLA’s Chancellor’s Arts Initiative, which is administered by the Chancellor’s Council on the Arts and the office of the vice chancellor for research and creative activities, and is intended to advance the arts and arts-related scholarship.

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