UBC Computer Science

Last night was our CS Tri-Mentoring Program wrap-up event! Over 200 mentors and student mentees came - they played bingo, shared their mentoring stories, and some even received awards! Thank you to our mentees for participating and to the mentors for volunteering!

Before Nathan Harms went into the sciences, he was an art school dropout. “My art professors said my projects were too analytical and not emotional,” he said. “I was doing projects that were based on scientific things that interested me or inspired me. They were emotional to me because I loved science.” Ultimately, he switched fields — first to physics, where he learned how to code, and then eventually to computer science, where he was fascinated with theory. Art and science can appear to be vastly different fields, but to Dr. Harms, they both involve discovering and creating something new. Now, as an Assistant Professor at UBC’s Computer Science department, he studies algorithms that do computing with limited information. “Sometimes I find better algorithms for some problems, but the more fun part is proving the limitations,” says Dr. Harms. Read more about Dr. Harms in our new article: https://lnkd.in/gcHi8t4Y

The UBC School of Population and Public Health is pleased to present Empowering Indigenous Futures: A Health Research Presentation Series—a four-part series that brings together leading voices in Indigenous health, governance, and public health equity. We welcome faculty, students, staff, and members of Indigenous communities to join us for these engaging and timely conversations: 📅 Monday, April 13, 2026 Pathways to Indigenous Health and Wellness: Addressing Indigenous-Specific Racism in Public Health presented by Jorden Hendry 📅 Monday, April 20, 2026 Rights Holders, Knowledge Holders: Rebuilding Health Systems Through Indigenous Governance presented by Dr. Wayne Clark 📅 Monday, April 27, 2026 Relational Futures for Public Health Equity presented by Dr. Chenoa Cassidy-Matthews 📅 Tuesday, April 28, 2026 Optimizing Indigenous Health and Wellbeing presented by Dr. Jeff Reading ⏰ Time: 9:30–10:30 AM (all sessions) 📍 Location: Hybrid (registration required) We encourage attendees to join all four sessions. 🔗 To learn more about the speakers and access the Zoom link, please visit: https://lnkd.in/gU78mcER We hope you can join us! The University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health UBC Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre

March 31 is International Transgender Day of Visibility, an intentional opportunity to celebrate and recognize the valuable contributions of trans community members – and reflect on how we can all contribute to trans inclusion. Explore more information, events and community resources here: https://bit.ly/3XDPNgm

Congratulations to Drs. Sabrina Leslie, Xin Tang, and their collaborators for receiving funding through the Grants for Catalyzing Research Clusters competition at UBC! This funding will help them launch their new research cluster that brings together advanced imaging and AI technologies for accelerating research. Learn more about the project at: https://lnkd.in/gT9nuybX UBC Science UBC Computer Science

After a historic four-year winning streak, a team of over 30 students and alumni from UBC and Carnegie Mellon University are organizing the next DEF CON “Capture the Flag” cybersecurity competition. The team, now organizing under the name Benevolent Bureau of Birds, will be responsible for creating both the qualifying rounds in May and the final competition in August. “It’s like being asked to host the World Series,” said Dr. Robert Xiao, Associate Professor at UBC’s Department of Computer Science. “It’s an honour to have been granted this opportunity. We’re excited and anxious to see how it will all play out.” While the UBC team has organized virtual Capture the Flag competitions in the past, this will be the first large-scale, in-person challenge they will help host. “We want to emphasize community and the enjoyment of these competitions,” says Jamie Polintan, a UBC alum who is part of the organizing team. “We plan to create technically interesting challenges, but we also want to continue to foster this community that we are part of.” Read more in our new article: https://lnkd.in/gPn6_eYh

“I predict the AI Scientist actually marks the dawn of a new era of rapid scientific advances,” Dr. Jeff Clune of UBC Computer Science claims, imagining humans reduced to curators witnessing AI achieve scientific wonders.

Congrats to UBC’s competitive programming team for qualifying for the ICPC World Finals! Team members Alexander Wen, Charles Ran and Rain Zimin Yang (coached by Xingyu Zhou and Joel Gunawan) solved 8 out of 13 challenging algorithm problems and placed 11th in the North American Championship last weekend in Florida. Good luck to the team at the World Finals!

From generating a project idea and conducting experiments to writing a scientific paper and evaluating its own work, an “AI Scientist” can now carry out a research experiment from beginning to end — all without the assistance of humans. In a new study published in Nature, researchers from UBC Computer Science, Sakana AI, the Vector Institute and the University of Oxford found a way to automate the entire research process, potentially speeding up scientific discovery. “This paper marks the dawn of a new chapter in human history, where scientific progress is radically accelerated by AI scientists that are able to act autonomously,” says UBC Computer Science Professor Jeff Clune, a lead author of the paper. “It’s amazing to see what it has been able to do so far, but even more incredible to consider what lies ahead in the very near future.” "The AI Scientist opens doors to recursive self-improvement in which the AI system doesn't just discover new scientific knowledge, but uses those discoveries to become better at making further discoveries," says Shengran Hu, a PhD student in UBC’s Computer Science department and co-author of the paper. "That's a qualitatively different kind of scientific progress than anything we've seen before." Read more in our new article: https://lnkd.in/gUeF5ziW