UCSB Computer Science Department

Proud to share that Yuheng Bu has received an NSF CAREER Award for foundational research on LLM watermarking. 🏆

What if AI-generated text could carry a reliable, traceable signal? Not just a yes/no flag, but a full attribution pointing to a specific model, system, or authorized use?

That’s the problem Yuheng is solving. Rigorous guarantees. Robust spoofing. Text quality preserved. 💡

The NSF CAREER Award is the most prestigious early-career recognition in the foundation’s portfolio, and we could not be more proud. 💙💛

Full article: https://www.cs.ucsb.edu/happenings/announcement/yuheng-bu-receives-nsf-career-award-research-llm-watermarking

3 UCSB students are heading to the ICPC North America Championship this month after placing 4th out of 75 teams at the Southern California Regional of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) — congrats to the team! 👏

• Ezra Furtado-Tiwari ’28 (CCS Computing; Mathematics)
• Om Mahesh ’28 (CCS Mathematics; CoE Computer Science)
• David Qiao ’26 (CoE Computer Science; L&S Mathematics)

The North America Championship takes place March 19-22, 2026. We wish Ezra, Om, and David best of luck as they represent on the national stage! 💻

Special thanks to for supporting these students.

Full story: https://ccs.ucsb.edu/news/2026/ccs-students-help-lead-ucsb-team-icpc-nationals

Test your cybersecurity skills on a global stage—iCTF is back March 9-13!

International Capture The Flag (iCTF), sponsored by the ACTION AI Institute, is a global cybersecurity competition that tests your security skills while incorporating themes around artificial intelligence and agents.

There’s still time to participate—register your team of up to ten players before the competition kicks off on March 9 at 10 AM. All teams require an associated faculty or lecturer when registering.

For more competition details, visit the link in our bio.

Photo Credit: Copyright © The Regents of the University of California.