i Sergiu Dascalu's Home Page


Sergiu Dascalu, PhD

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Mailstop 171
University of Nevada
Reno, NV 89557
Office: SEM-236
Tel: (775) 784-4613
Fax: (775) 784-1877
E-mail: dascalus@unr.edu

Background

I am a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), which I joined in July 2002. I have a PhD degree in Computer Science (2001) from Dalhousie University, Canada and a Master’s degree in Automatic Control and Computers (1982) from the Polytechnic of Bucharest, Romania. At UNR I am also the Director of the Software Engineering Lab (SOELA) and the Co-Director of the Cyberinfrastructure Lab (CIL), which are part of the Data and Software Systems cluster of the CSE Department.

Since joining UNR, I have worked on research projects funded by federal agencies (NSF, NASA, DoD-ONR) as well as the local industry (Bally Tech, GE, PC Doctor). I have advised many PhD, Master, and undergraduate students. I have created several new courses, both graduate and undergraduate, and taught the capstone courses Software Engineering and Senior Projects in CSE. At UNR I received several awards, including the 2005 UNR College of Engineering’s Lemelson Award for Innovation in Teaching and Research, the 2009 Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship’s Faculty Advisor Award, the 2011 UNR Outstanding Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award, the 2011 UNR Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award, the 2014 CoEN Faculty Excellence Award, the 2019 UNR GSA Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, the 2023 CSE Best Faculty Teaching Award (in its first edition), and the 2025 UNR Paul and Judy Bible Teaching Excellence Award.

Many of my students have received awards and recognitions, more recently Gavin Claire (Spring 2022 College of Engineering Senior Scholar), Adam Cassell (2022 Outstanding CSE Master Thesis Award 2022 and Best Student Paper Award at ITNG-2021), Nicole Beaulieu (2022 CSE IWD Award for Inclusive Practices), Youngsook Choi (2023-2024 UNR Graduate Dean Merit Scholarship), Hossein Jamali (2024 UNR Outstanding Graduate Student Advocacy Award and the 2025 UNR GSA Outstanding Graduate Student award), and Vinh Le (2022 and 2023 Outstanding CSE TA Award, Best Student Paper Award at ITNG-2022, UNR 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 Graduate Dean Merit Scholarhip, the 2024 UNR Oustanding Domestic Graduate Student Scholarship and the 2025 UNR GSA Outstanding Graduate Researcher Award).

Further details can be found in my curriculum vitae (February 2025).

Research

My main research interests are in Human-Computer Interaction (interaction design, UX, VR, AR, brain-computer interaction, universal accessibility), Software Engineering (software for scientific and interdisciplinary research, requirements specification, software environments, and software systems) and Data Science (sensor data systems, IoT, data visualization). Other interests include Computer-Aided Education and Collaborative Systems.

The following may provide additional details on my research:

Publications (selection)
Projects
Awards
PhD thesis (2001)

Teaching

In Spring 2026 I teach CS 491/691 Data Visualization (34 students) -- details are available on UNR Web Campus.
Information about other courses that I taught in the past as well as on courses that I will teach next semester can be found here:

Past courses
Future courses

Sample senior projects videos posted on youtube can be accessed via this page.

Graduate students advised

Current students
Alumni

Academic Services (recent)

Member of UNR Sabbatical and Professional Development Leave committee (2025-present)
Co-chair of graduate sub-committee, CoEN Student Success and Enrollment Task Force (SSTF) (2025-2026)
Member of UNR Senate (2020-2023)
Member of UNR University Research Council (2020-2023)
Member of UNR Travel Grants committee (2022-2023)
Member of UNR Board of Regents Awards committee (2022-2023)
Chair of UNR Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher of the Year review panel (2019-2020)
Member of UNR Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher of the Year review panel (2018-2019)
Member of UNR Outstanding Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award committee (2019)
Chair of College of Engineering Personnel and Evaluation committee (2019-2022)
Chair of the Faculty Evaluation committee, CSE Department (2023)
Member of Search committees of the CSE Department (last one in 2019)
Member of the Undergraduate Committee, CSE Department (2017-2020)
Member of the Facilities committee, CSE Department (2020-present)

Other Professional Activities (recent)

Member of technical program committee for the following conferences (2026) :

IISA-2026, Island of Rhodes, Greece, July 2026
ICSOFT-2026, Porto, Portugal, July 2026
ENASE-2026, Benidorm, Spain, May 2026
CSEDU-2026, Benidorm, Spain, May 2026
BIS-2026, Prague, Czech Republic, June 2026
OKIP CAIF-2026, Oklahoma City, OK, April 2026
MODELWARD-2026, Marbella, Spain, March 2026
ERVR-2026, San Francisco, CA, March 2026

Reviewer for journals (selection):

International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
Springer Nature in Computer Science
Multimedia Tools and Applications
ACM Database
Journal of Systems and Software
Future Generation Computer Systems
PeerJ Computer Science

Reviewer/panelist for grant applications (selection)

Reviewer for the NSF CSSI program solicitation, 2023
Reviewer for the NSF GRFP program solicitation, 2021-2022
Reviewer for ARO/DoD US and the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) UK (2020)