Accomplishments: Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering

Hal Berghel (Computer Science) has published an article titled "A Naive Economics Perspective on Non-Fungible Tokens" in the July 2026 issue of IEEE Computer. In this article, Berghel discusses the technology behind NFTs in the context of the difference between traditional economic theory and meme culture economics.
UNLV has received a $1 million award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of the national Sloan Centers for Systemic Change (SCSC) initiative. Led by the Graduate College in partnership with the colleges of Sciences and Engineering, the four-year initiative will provide fellowship funding for 30+ STEM doctoral students and…
Richard M. Oxborough, Trishan Wickramasinghe, Louisa Messenger (all Environmental and Global Health), Nikita Gopakumar (Mechanical Engineering), Michael Fong (Art), Yafet Tiruha, and Seungman Park (both Mechanical Engineering), along with other researchers from the University of Ghana Anastasia Mosquito Control (Florida) and Imperial College…
Ahmadreza Khatamgooya (Civil and Environmental Engineering) was recently announced as the 2026-2027 Robert E. Lang Memorial Fellow. The Robert E. Lang Memorial Fellowship is awarded annually to an outstanding UNLV Ph.D. student completing a dissertation in metropolitan public policy broadly defined with special consideration given to…
Charlotta Sanders (Mechanical Engineering) published the article “Nuclear Decommissioning as a New Beginning: Evolving Practices, Emerging Opportunities, and the Next Phase of the Nuclear Lifecycle” in Progress in Nuclear Energy. The work reframes decommissioning as an integrated phase of the nuclear lifecycle rather than an end‑state activity,…
Three doctoral degree students, Jhaell Jimenez, Katrina Parsom, and Michelle Buslon (all Computer Science) were invited to present their research at the Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC). The conference, supported by the Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Institute (SVCSI) and taking place in early June, brought together researchers,…
UNLV’s Rebel Recon team recently took first place in the national CISA-recognized Social Engineering Competition (SEC). The team is made up of graduate students Shanzeh Aslam, (Computer Science; Information Systems), Hareign Casaclang, (Computer Science; CyberCorps SFS Scholar), Bianca Ionescu, (Computer Science; Information Systems; CyberCorps…
Team UNLV took first in the nation in the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE) Cyber Games Invitational. This win comes after the competition's regional event which saw 1,100 students from across the nation compete for the opportunity to test their skills at the Invitational. Led by Layer Zero, the team was comprising…
Louis Dumontet and Mingon Kang (both Computer Science) published a paper titled, "Plastic hydrolytic enzyme classification using explainable deep learning," in ACS Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The team developed PEPIC, an explainable AI framework that predicts plastic-degrading enzymes across 9 substrate types. By identifying "hot…
An Huang, Junggab Son, and Zuobin Xiong (all Computer Science) submitted a paper that was accepted as a regular paper at ICML 2026, one of the top-tier conferences in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning: "Watch Your Step: Information Injection in Diffusion Models via Shadow Timestep Embedding."
Kavita Batra, Noehealani Antolin (Medicine), Sara Rosenkranz (Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences), and Jorge Fonseca Cacho (Computer Science) received institutional seed funding through UNLV’s Interdisciplinary Research Development Area (iRDA) in AI and Big Data for their project, “Responsible AI in Survey-Based Research: Developing an Ethical…
CyberCorps SFS scholars Hareign Casaclang (Computer Science) and Bianca Ionescu (Computer Science; Information Systems) recently had their research paper, "Self-Hosted Workflow Automation for AI-Based Cybersecurity Operations," published in the Spring 2026 edition of the Journal of The Colloquium.  The journal is published by the Colloquium…