Physics major Dominic Mashak ’27, along with Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum and Professor of Physics Steven Alexander, had their research, “Multi-Objective Evolutionary Design of Molecules with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical Properties,” accepted to the 2026 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), taking place July 13–17 in San José, Costa Rica. The peer-reviewed research will be presented as a poster at the conference, and a four-page extended abstract will be published in the companion to the proceedings.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the LEVEL UP AI Workshop in Phoenix, AZ on January 7 and 8, which stands for Launching an Educational Vision to Expand Leadership, Understanding and Progress in Artificial Intelligence. The workshop, supported by the National Science Foundation and organized by the Computing Research Association, focused on ways to enhance and expand undergraduate Artificial Intelligence education to help create an AI-ready workforce.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum attended the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) conference with SURF research student Olivia Kilday ’28 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada from November 12–14, to present their peer-reviewed research paper, “Text-to-Level Diffusion Models With Various Text Encoders for Super Mario Bros.” Computer science majors Emilio Salas ’26, Bess Hagan ’25, and Reid Williams ’26 were also co-authors on the paper, and the oral presentation was given by Olivia. The research details the creation of software models that create levels for the original Super Mario Bros. based on text descriptions. The AIIDE conference is a prestigious conference with an acceptance rate under 25%, which is sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

Computer science and theatre double major Aidan Balakrishnan ’26, computer science and mathematics double major Tanner Klein ’26, and computer science major Matthew Volkin ’26 participated in the Association of Computing Machinery’s South Central USA Regional Programming Contest on November 8, solving seven out of 13 problems. Their team, the pi-rates, placed 4th among the 20 teams in the South Central USA Division. They participated in the competition at the University of Texas at Austin site, but were in competition with teams at other sites throughout the South Central USA Region. Teams in the Mid-Atlantic USA Region and Southeast USA Region competed on the same day, and across the entire conference, the pi-rates placed 17th out of 94 teams. The team was coached by Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum ’06 had his peer-reviewed article, “Text-to-Level Diffusion Models With Various Text Encoders for Super Mario Bros,” accepted for publication and oral presentation at the 21st Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2025), to take place in November 2025. The article is co-authored with Dr. Schrum’s SURF students Olivia Kilday ’28, Emilio Salas ’26, Bess Hagan ’25, and Reid Williams ’26. AIIDE is a highly selective venue with an acceptance rate under 25%. Videos and other content associated with the publication are available online here, and a pre-print of the accepted article is on arXiv here.