My Computer Science and Engineering Department

For the second year in a row, iCAS Lab has won the First Place Award in the University Demonstration competition at the DAC, The Chips to Systems Conference, recognized as the premier global event for chips to systems!

This year’s award-winning project was "PiCASo: Pi-Integrated Conversational AI for Social-Robot with. Optimized LLMS" led by Mahsa Ardakani and co-presented by herself and Jinendra Malekar, with contributions from Peyton Chandarana — all PhD students at the iCAS Lab directed by Dr. Ramtin Zand.

PiCASo is a fully integrated, voice-to-voice Conversational AI system that runs 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 on a Raspberry Pi 5. It combines:

• Whisper for speech recognition
• Quantized LLMs for question-answering
• Piper for text-to-speech synthesis

Mahsa and Jinendra applied various post-training quantization (PTQ) strategies — including W2A8, W4A8, W6A8, W8A8 — for Gemma-2B, LLaMA-3B, Phi-3B, and LLaMA-8B, and utilized quantization-aware trained (QAT) BitNet models with Ternary weights and 8-bit activations to enable real-time, offline inference on resource-constrained hardware. This makes PiCASo ideal for education, accessibility, and other embedded AI applications.

Our work on LLM quantization was also presented at the 2025 IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference, and the paper is now available in the CVPR 2025 proceedings. "LLMPi: Optimizing LLMs for High-Throughput on Raspberry Pi". repo

Congratulations to the following CSE recipients of the ASPIRE-AI awards.

• Agostinelli (PI) and Fu (Co-I), "Efficient Quantum Algorithm Compilation with Machine Learning and Heuristic Search"
• Hu (PI), "Generative AI for Data-driven Design of Sulfur Cathode Materials for Next-Generation Batteries"
• Srivastava (PI), "SafeGenChat: A Novel and General Approach for Building Risk-Aware Collaborative Assistants for Trust-sensitive Applications "
• Valafar (Co-I), "AI-Powered Modeling of Cytoplasmic Microviscosity as a Function of RNA Composition"
• Zand and Valafar (Co-I's), "Decoding Alzheimer’s Disease and Advancing AI in Biomedical Research"

In addition, one of our students, Vandana Srivastava, who is now affiliated with the University Libraries, has received funding as the PI.

We congratulate our faculty who received the following research awards:

• Christian O'Reilly, "Neonatal autonomic nervous system dysfunction as a predictor of autism spectrum disorder in preterm infants", (NIMH)/NIH, and "Cholinergic regulation of amygdalar circuits in emotional memory", (NIMH)/NIH.
• Biplav Srivastava,  "Demonstrating a Compact Foundation Model for Planning-Like(PL) Tasks for Next Generation Trusted Applications", NSF.

I am excited to share an opportunity for high school students to explore the cutting-edge intersection of artificial intelligence and scientific discovery at the 2025 South Carolina AI4Science Summer Camp, hosted by the University of South Carolina’s Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing. Following the resounding success of last year’s camp, we are thrilled to invite your talented students to join us for an inspiring and transformative experience.

• Dates: July 21–August 1, 2025 (2 weeks)
• Format: Hybrid, with the first day (July 21) and last day (August 1) onsite at USC’s Columbia campus, and 10 days of engaging online tutorials and project assistance via Zoom.
• Target Audience: South Carolina high school students eager to explore AI and its applications in science.
• Organizers: Led by Professors Jianjun Hu (Computer Science), Ming Hu (Mechanical Engineering), Sophya Garashchuk (Chemistry), Paul Sagona (Research Computing), and Krystal Dubose (Director of Enrollment Management, CEC).

Last year’s camp, supported by the National Science Foundation and USC, was a tremendous success, empowering students with hands-on AI skills and sparking enthusiasm for STEM careers. Participants engaged in interactive workshops, developed AI-driven projects, and connected with USC faculty and peers, all while exploring real-world applications like computational chemistry and engineering design.

• Innovative Learning: Students will learn AI fundamentals and apply them to scientific challenges, gaining skills in coding, data analysis, and machine learning.
• Career Exploration: Exposure to AI’s role in fields like physics, chemistry, and engineering prepares students for future STEM opportunities.
• USC Experience: Onsite days offer a taste of college life, including campus tours and interactions with faculty and researchers.
• Inclusivity: The camp is designed to broaden participation, welcoming students from diverse backgrounds across South Carolina.

We would like to congratulate graduate student Reza Tavasoli, advised by Sanjib Sur and Srihari Nelakuditi, for winning the SPARC Graduate Research Grant Award.

The following CSE undergraduate students won awards at the Discover USC event.

• Dallas Wade, Computer Science, Sophomore. Effects of Tiered Noise Reduction Techniques on Contour Detection. Under the direction of Dr. Christian O'Reilly, CSE.
• Cayden Scruggs, Computer Science, Senior. Automated Yeast Colony Detection and Classification Using Machine Learning. Under the direction of Dr. Tad Dallas, Department of Biological Sciences.

Ph.D. students, from Dr. Sanjib Sur's lab,  Zhuangzhuang Gu, Hem Regmi, and Reza Tavasoli, and Ryan Titus (USC Med Student, presenter) won the second place award at 2025 Discover USC Medical Scholar poster session.

This year the students in the Senior Capstone course developed 51 apps. There are:

• 32 web applications using technologies such as Django, node, express, Angular, react, Vue, firebase, AWS.
• 14 Android or iOS mobile apps using technologies such as Android Studio, Flutter, React Native, XCode, Firebase.
• 5 desktop games using technologies such as Unity, GameMaker, Godot.

You can view their video demos here. If you want a custom-made app, let us know!

Three computer science and engineering undergraduates have teamed up to create an artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit designed to help students study more efficiently. Junior Arshia Eslami and seniors Julia Grove and Matthew Linder launched the toolkit on their website, JAMAi, in late March. 

These classmates, now also friends, discovered they complemented each other’s talents after working together inside and outside of the classroom. Eslami and Linder met while interning together at Swampfox Technologies in Columbia, while Eslami and Grove met during a hackathon, a programming competition for improving or building new software programs. Eslami introduced Linder and Grove, and the three decided to merge their strengths to create one product that would help their fellow students.

Read the full article here.

What began as a student project in Ramtin Zand’s course in 2022 on neuromorphic computing—an area of computer science that designs artificial intelligence systems inspired by the human brain—has rapidly grown into an award-winning University of South Carolina research initiative with real-world applications in education and AI.

Zand, an assistant professor in the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering and principal investigator of the Intelligent Circuits, Architecture and Systems (iCAS) Lab, calls the journey of this facial expression recognition project a prime example of “classroom to research—and beyond.”

Read the rest of the story here.

While machine learning and artificial intelligence perform repetitive processes and simple tasks, they use an extensive amount of data that causes memory bottleneck issues. This is when a system’s memory resources are insufficient to meet data processing and storage demands. With memory bottleneck, transferring data between processors and memory consumes a significant amount of energy, particularly in large data centers.

Zand plans to address this issue by utilizing in-memory analog computing (IMAC), which reduces the processor-memory bottleneck by performing computations directly where the data resides, saving both time and energy. His team will develop a novel IMAC architecture and a corresponding framework for deploying machine learning workloads to eliminate the need of a separate memory and processor.

Read the full article here. It talks about Dr. Zand and Dr. Bakos research into IMAC architectures.

To provide more real-world experience, Achanti, a member of both the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Department of Integrated Information Technology’s Industrial Advisory boards, collaborated with CSE Chair Homayoun Valafar to develop and teach a two-course certification track to familiarize students with key topics they will encounter in the work environment.

Read the full article here. The classes mentioned in the article are CSCE 590: Topic: Azure Cloud Native Development and CSCE 547: Windows Programming.

Undergraduate students Gavin Hewitt (CS) and Ke’Shunna Morton (CE) have received the 2025 Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing’s Dean’s Award for Outstanding Leadership in recognition of significant contributions to the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing.  Each award recipient has provided outstanding leadership to an MCEC student organization and has positively impacted the college's brand through service to the college. Congratulations!

Each year the Faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) award four Outstanding Senior Awards. This process is never easy given the many excellent and accomplished students in our program. This year, we have decided that the 2024 Computer Science and Engineering Outstanding Senior Awards go to:

CS Outstanding Senior Award

• Matthew Hughes: Computer Science Outstanding Senior Award
• Suprawee Pongpeeradech: Computer Engineering Outstanding Senior Award
• Alexander Anderson-McLeod: Computer Engineering SCSPE Award
• Ryan Malone: Computer Information Systems Outstanding Senior Award

awardees will be honored at the University Awards Day ceremony.

We would like to announce the receipt of the following grants in the new year. Congratulations to everyone!

Pooyan Jamshidi, "Modular Performance Modeling and Analysis for Multi-Component Distributed ML Systems", Carnegie Mellon University/NSF.

Ramtin Zand: "Precision Processing of Autonomous Maritime Perception System Data - Phase III", Office of Naval Research (ONR)/DOD. Also "Advanced Perception for Autonomous Platforms in the Littorals", Office of Naval Research (ONR)/DOD.

Homayoun Valafar,  "South Carolina IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (SC INBRE) - Bioinformatics Core (BIPP) - Year 5 of 5", National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)/NIH. Also "SC IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research (SC INBRE): Increasing Data Science Capacity", National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)/NIH

The iCAS Lab, directed by Dr. Ramtin Zand, has just published an outreach audiobook on the science communication channel, SciPod! 

The audiobook highlights a recently awarded NSF CAREER project: "Heterogeneous Neuromorphic and Edge Computing Systems for Realtime Machine Learning Technologies." Tailored for a general audience, it emphasizes the potential broader impacts of the research, particularly in real-time sign language translation.

The audiobook is available on all major streaming services. We invite you to listen and reach out to Dr. Zand at ramtin@cse.sc.edu if you are interested in collaborating to advance real-time AI and ML technologies for assistive applications and beyond! The iCAS Lab is also looking to recruit undergraduate research assistants for this exciting project!

Link to Audiobook: Dr Ramtin Zand | A Hybrid System for Real-Time Sign Language Translation • scipod.global