Yu Huang, assistant professor of computer science, has received the 2025 ICPC Václav Rajlich Early Career Achievement Award for outstanding contributions in the area of program comprehension as an early career investigator. Specifically, this award recognizes Huang’s work on deepening our fundamental understanding of program comprehension and empowering the design of cutting-edge automated models that streamline programming tasks.
The 33rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC 2025) is the premier venue for work in the area of software program comprehension, an emerging interest area within the software engineering field. Comprehending existing computer code programs by researchers and by technologies enables such activities as bug correction, enhancement, reuse, and documentation.
The award will be presented in April at the ICPC Conference in Ottawa, Canada, and Huang also is invited to present her research as a colloquium speaker at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Václav Rajlich was a professor and former chair of computer science at Wayne State University and the founder and permanent steering committee member of the ACM/IEEE ICPC.
Huang’s research focuses on human factors and human-centered AI for software engineering, including human cognition, AI for software engineering, sustainability for open source software, and computer science education. Her work aims to bridge the divide between human cognition and automated models for programming, spanning over software, hardware, AI, medical imaging (fMRI and fNIRS), eye tracking, and mobile sensing, collaborating with researchers from security, education, psychology and neuroscience.
Contact: brenda.ellis@vanderbilt.edu