CSE Associate Professor James Caverlee was named as the recipient of the 2013-14 Caterpillar Teaching Excellence Award by the Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. The award is funded by the Caterpillar Foundation and is given to a faculty member who has proven excellence in "engaging students in the enterprise of learning so that they are empowered to become active participants and self-learners."
In 2007 Dr. Caverlee joined the computer science and engineering faculty at Texas A&M after receiving his Ph.D. in Computer Science form the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the director of Infolab, which is a research lab that focuses on Web and distributed information management. Recent student projects are aimed at detecting, analyzing, modeling, and predicting strategic manipulation and adversarial propaganda in social media.
Among his many honors are the NSF Faculty Early CAREER award in 2012, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research-Young Investigator Program (AFOSR-YIP) grant (2012), the Center for Teaching Excellence Montague-CTE Scholar award (2011), the 2010 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award (DARPA YFA), two Google Research Awards (2008 and 2010), and the Graduate Faculty Teaching Excellence Award (2009 and 2010).
The Look College of Engineering Teaching, Service and Contribution Award Recipients for 2013-14 will be honored with a monetary gift and an award plaque at the annual awards banquet planned for May 1 this year.