Anderson Named SU's 2021 Outstanding Research Mentor

SALISBURY, MD---Dr. Joseph Anderson, Salisbury University assistant professor of computer science, has earned SU’s 2021 Outstanding Research Mentor Award.

Presented at the 19th annual SU Student Research Conference (SUSRC), the honor celebrates faculty who are excellent supervisors of student research or creative work.

Anderson was nominated by Dr. Sophie Wang, faculty mentor and professor of computer science, and student mentee and computer science major Blaine Mason, who called him “a prolific researcher” whose “dedication to his students inspires them to continue their education and research beyond SU.” 

 “Dr. Anderson is more than qualified for this award, simply because his mentorship is beyond outstanding,” said Mason. “His impact on past, present and future students is indescribable, and SU is fortunate to have him.”

Wang added: “A professor with the gift of teaching and mentoring students with inspiration is rare. … In SU’s Mathematics and Computer Science Department, we are blessed to have such a gift – Dr. Anderson.”

Mason called Anderson inviting students to assist with his independent research “selfless” and a testament to “his interest in the success of his students”. 

“Dr. Anderson gave me more than just knowledge, but many life lessons along the way,” said Mason. “He always iterated ‘making mistakes is encouraged,’ and failure was defined by him as ‘character building’ rather than a reason to be disappointed.”

“This is a tremendous dedication and effort from Dr. Anderson’s part since he always teaches a full load each semester, including developing new courses for data science majors, and has been involved in many service activities at the departmental, University, and community levels,” said Wang. 

Since arriving at SU in 2017, Anderson has mentored over 20 students who have presented more than 12 research projects at conferences including at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research. Last year, he received a $174,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue independent research on exploiting geometry in robust signal processing and feature extraction.

He has presented at prominent research conferences such as the Association for Computing Machinery-Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ACM-SIAM) Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2020) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Nearly all his research mentees have gone on to prestigious graduate schools to expand their research or accepted internships at top-level data science and machine learning programs.

Anderson earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from Ohio State University. His research expertise is in machine learning, convex geometry, optimization, discrete algorithms and computational geometry. 

For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website.