Graduate Programs

Turner Dissertation Award

In recognition of Professor Jonathan S. Turner's many achievements and research contributions, the Department of Computer Science & Engineering established the Turner Dissertation Award upon his retirement in 2014. Through the generous support of alumni, faculty, staff, and friends, the award will be presented annually to the author of the best doctoral dissertation. A committee selects awardees based on dissertation nominations from the previous calendar year.

2023 Award

Xingyi Du

Title: Injective Mapping under Constraints

"The 2023 Turner Dissertation Award was awarded to Xingyi Du. Du's dissertation contributed a new and highly successful approach to a classic problem in computer graphics: mapping between two domains, such as between a 3D model and a texture. Du's algorithm improved the state of the art in locally injective mapping success from 6% to 90%. He then developed techniques that better support group fairness. He has published this work in a series of three papers at Siggraph and Siggraph Asia, both top-tier conferences. Additionally, Du contributed to work on using implicit modeling to model shapes with sharp features. This work is described in a series of two additional Siggraph papers."

2022 Award

Yu Sun

Title: Integrating Physical Models and Deep Priors for Computational Imaging

"The 2022 Turner Dissertation Award was awarded to Yu Sun for his significant contributions to the fields of computational imaging, computer vision, and machine learning. Yu studies how modern deep

learning methods can be integrated with traditional model-based approaches to improve computational imaging solutions. His thesis proposed a unified theory, methods for scalability, and applications to real-world problems such as biomedical image restoration and reconstruction. The impact of Yu’s work is evident in his numerous publications in highly selective conferences (NeurIPS, ICLR, ECCV) and journals (IEEE TCI, IEEE TMI, IEEE JSTSP)."

2021 Award

Liang Tong

Title: Toward Deploying Robust Machine Learning Systems

"The 2021 Turner Dissertation Award was awarded to Liang Tong for his significant contributions to the fields of artificial intelligence and computer security. Liang studies the design and implementation of robust machine learning systems under adversarial environments. His thesis proposed theoretical models and algorithms that address four research questions, namely adversarial evaluation, robust learning against decision-time attacks, robust alert prioritization, and robust decentralized learning. Liang’s work not only is well recognized in the research community, as evident in his publication in top AI and security venues such as AAAI, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, INFOCOM and USENIX Security, but also has made an impact in industry through his collaboration with NEC Labs."

Jonathan S. Turner Biography

Professor Turner was one of WashU's first students to earn a 3-2 dual degree in both computer science and electrical engineering in 1977, and continued his education to earn his MS and PhD in computer science from Northwestern University in 1979 and 1982. He returned to WashU in 1983 as an assistant professor, and served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering from 1992-1997 and again from 2007-2008. He established the Advanced Networks Group and co-founded the WashU Applied Research Laboratory. The lab's research led to the development of the start-up company Growth Networks, which was acquired by Cisco System in 2000.

Professor Turner has been awarded 30 patents for his work on switching systems and has many widely-cited publications. In 2007, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) as well as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1994, he was awarded the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award, and in 2000, the IEEE Millennium Medal. Washington University has awarded him two of its highest honors: the Founder's Day Distinguished Faculty Award, and the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award. Professor Turner has also received two Engineering Alumni Achievement Awards from the School of Engineering & Applied Science. Professor Turner retired from the full-time faculty in 2014, but continues to work on selected research projects.