Undergraduate Research and Creative Collaborations

Areen Khalaila '25

Brandeis graduate Areen Khalaila ‘25, wins “Best Paper” Award at International Research Conference 

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            Areen Khalaila '25 and Dylan Cashman, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

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          Areen Khalaila '25 (third from the right) and Dylan Cashman (third from the left)

Research that Dylan Cashman, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, conducted with an undergraduate Brandeis student, Areen Khalaila ‘25 (Computer Science), was accepted to the top Data Visualization conference, IEEE VIS, in Vienna, Austria. Areen’s presentation won the "Best Paper" award of the November 2025 conference. The Best Paper award at IEEE VIS is bestowed upon only five papers yearly out of more than 600 submissions.  It's a career accomplishment for any scientist, and exceptional to receive it as an undergraduate researcher.
Congratulations to Areen on this great accomplishment!

Areen worked with Professor Cashman over her junior and senior years, and was awarded the Jacques Cohen award for undergraduate research in the Computer Science Department. In addition, Areen’s prior conference presentation at the 2024 IEEE VIS was supported by a Provost's Conference Presentation Grant. Areen is currently a student in a  Computer Science PhD program at Tulane University.

Areen’s published first-author paper:
A. Khalaila, L. Harrison, N. W. Kim and D. Cashman, "“They Aren't Built for Me”: an Exploratory Study of Strategies for Measurement of Graphical Primitives in Tactile Graphics," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2025.3633881