NEW BRITAIN — Dr. Stan Kurkovsky, a Central Connecticut State University faculty member, has received a national award that will take him overseas next year.

Kurkovsky, a professor and chair of the Computer Science Department at Central Connecticut State University, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Poland for the 2026–2027 academic year.

The Fulbright Program supports international exchange and aims to build understanding between people in the United States and other countries.

Kurkovsky leads the university’s computer science department and serves on the Master of Science in Software Engineering program’s steering committee. He also oversees the Central Software Engineering Studio, where students work on real-world projects for clients. His work includes more than 90 published studies in software engineering, mobile computing and computer science education.

As part of the award, Kurkovsky will spend the spring 2027 semester at Wrocław University of Science and Technology. There, he will teach and conduct research focused on human-centered software engineering.

“My work is centered on helping students develop technology that not only works but also addresses real societal needs. In collaboration with Polish faculty, I will co-teach courses in software engineering and project management in which student teams work in small groups to design and build software for real clients,” Kurkovsky said.

He will also study how software teams work as artificial intelligence becomes more common.

“By embedding research directly into classroom activities, I will examine how communication, trust and collaboration influence project success and how AI tools change the way developers divide work and make decisions,” he said. “The goal is to develop practical teaching methods and tools that help students use AI effectively while maintaining strong critical thinking and ethical responsibility.”

University officials said Kurkovsky’s research has received more than $8 million in external funding from groups such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Security Agency and the Association for Computing Machinery.