Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

This weekend, CSEE Professor Alan Sherman will watch as the UMBC chess team he directs plays in the Final Four of College Chess. The UMBC team will battle against teams from Webster University, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the four best of the 44 teams that competed in the 2012 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship. In fact, it was a four-way tie for first place.

Professor Sherman has served as the faculty advisor to the chess team since 1991 and helped build UMBC's reputation as the collegiate powerhouse of chess. UMBC has played in the President's Cup (the official name) every year since it was established in 2001 and has won six out of the twelve matches. Although Sherman's team is one of the best in the Americas, he acknowledged in an article in today's Washington Post that Webster is the odds on favorite to win this weekend.

"Anything can happen because it’s a competition," said Alan Sherman, UMBC’s chess director. "But I’m predicting Webster will be the clear winner."

The games start at 10:00am on Saturday at Booz Allen Hamilton in Rockville MD with the last match beginning at 9:00am on Sunday. Anyone can follow moves live on the Internet at Moroni.com.

Google announced awards for the 2013 Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) program and UMBC was again among the sites selected. The program is an initiative sponsored by Google to promote Computer Science and Computational Thinking in high school and middle school curricula. UMBC Professor Marie desJardins put together successful CS4HS workshops in 2011 and 2012 that were attended by 35 Maryland high school and middle school computer science teachers and administrators in each year.

The 2013 CS4HS Workshop will be held from 4-7 August 2013 on the UMBC campus. Dormatory accommodations and all meals will be provided, as well as a $50 stipend for each teacher who attends the entire workshop. The workshop will feature a mix of panels and presentations on a wide range of scheduled topics.  It will give both highly experienced and less experienced teachers an unparalleled opportunity to meet other Maryland CS teachers and to share ideas and innovations. Space is limited to 25 participants and registration is required by 4 July 2013.

The first workshop in 2011 led to the formation of the Maryland chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association and was the seed for the NSF-funded "CE21-Maryland" initiative that will culminate in a statewide Maryland Summit for Computing Education for educators and others interested in CS education on 17 May 2013.

Tresys Technology, a provider of technology and engineering services for customers with high-security requirements, announced the "Tresys Technology Scholarship" for UMBC students. The merit-based scholarship is intended to support incoming sophomore or junior computer science majors at UMBC with demonstrated financial need and who have obtained or transferred a grade point average of 3.0 or greater. There is a preference given to students interested in computer security. The scholarship, managed by the UMBC Foundation, may be renewed for a second year, contingent on the student’s academic performance and continued financial need. Scholarship recipients are also invited to apply for paid internship positions at Tresys.

Tresys also announced the first two recipients: UMBC Computer Science juniors Sven Rivera and Sean Hoover, who both received scholarship awards of $2,500. Sven transfered to UMBC after attending Carrol Community College and Howard Community College and Sean came to UMBC as a transfer student from New Mexico State University.

For more information or to apply for future awards of the Tresys Technology Scholarship scholarship, visit the COEIT scholarship page.

The Fourth Trusted Infrastructure Workshop (TIW 2013) will be held at Penn State University in University Park, PA from Sunday afternoon, June 2 to Thursday, June 6.

TIW 2013 is a free premier educational meeting for graduate students with a focus on computer systems security research and research that builds on trusted computing foundations. TIW 2013 will consist of lectures and hands-on labs, enabling the students to learn concepts and apply them in practice. Speakers include world-class experts in their respective fields from industry, government, and academia. See the preliminary program for more information.

The workshop is designed for graduate students with a research interest in computer security. Although the workshop is free for students, students must apply to be selected for TIW 2013. Applications received by April 25 will also receive full consideration for travel support. Applications will continue to be received until May 20 based on space and funds. The workshop may have space for a small number of other attendees, but a fee will be required for other attendees.

The UMBC Center for Women in Technology will hold its 3rd Annual CWIT Spring into Leadership event on Thursday evening, April 11, 2013 in the University Center Ballroom at UMBC. Space is limited and registration is required. Register online by Monday, April 8.

Schedule
   6:15-6:30 Check-in and Refreshments, UC 3rd floor
   6:30-7:00 Networking Activity, Dessert will be served!
   7:10-7:30 Keynote Speaker's Story: Tina Kuhn, Northrop Grumman Corporation
   7:30-7:45 Discussion Activity and Q&A with Ms. Kuhn
   7:45-8:00 Wrap-Up & Evaluations

Keynote Speaker:

Ms. Tina Kuhn
Vice President, Security and Information Operations
Cyber Intelligence Division
Northrop Grumman Information Systems

Ms. Kuhn will share information about her career path and offer advice and wisdom based on her personal experiences as a successful technical leader.

Tina Kuhn is vice president of Security and Information Operations (S&IO) in the Cyber Solutions division of Northrop Grumman’s Information Systems sector. The S&IO business unit provides intelligence-related systems and services to U.S. government and international security customers. The organization’s focus is on full-spectrum cyber solutions that protect critical national systems and support the nation’s information dominance. S&IO also is a premier supplier and integrator of net-centric, next-generation signal processing solutions for specialized customers. Ms. Kuhn brings more than 25 years of management experience to her current position. She joined Northrop Grumman from General Dynamics, where she served as vice president of its Intelligence Systems line of business, leading three business units that addressed the cyber and intelligence communities. Prior to that, she was the vice president/director of programs for the Intelligence and Information Solutions business unit for SAIC in Columbia MD. Ms. Kuhn began her career at General Electric and also held positions at GTE Corp. Ms. Kuhn has a bachelor’s degree in information systems management from the University of Maryland and also is a certified Program Management Professional.

The event is co-hosted by the Center for Women in Technology, CWIT Student Council, IS Council of Majors, SWE, ASME, and the WISE graduate student organization. Contact Dr. Susan Martin, Associate CWIT Director as susan at umbc.edu if you have any questions about the event or registering online.

The UMBC Council of Computing Majors (CCM) will hold a general meeting from 3:00pm to 4:00pm this Wednesday, April 27, in the CSEE Department conference room, ITE 325b.

Come discuss service opportunities, CSEE speakers, and upcoming CCM events.  Several professors have generously agreed to lecture on tools and topics in computer science.  Dates and details will be announced at the meeting.

The Council of Computing Majors is a student organization for CMSC and CMPE majors and other students interested in computing.  Come if you are interested in joining or just finding out more about the CCM.

For questions of more information, send email to .

The CSEE Department will hold a CMPE Undergraduate Townhall Meeting on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 from 11:30am to 1:00pm in the University Center Ballroom Lounge. All CMPE majors and other interested students are welcome.

We will discuss recent important changes to the CMPE program, course scheduling, current Capstone projects, the BS/MS program, guidance about undergraduate research opportunities, and more. There will also be ample time for questions and discussion.

Please sign up in your CMPE classes by Friday, March 29. If you have any questions, please contact Professor Chintan Patel at .

Rick Forno, Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, was quoted in an article in the Louisville KY Courier-Journal about a compromised online poll the paper ran about Internet voting. The paper's March 20th poll was prompted by a Kentucky initiative to make voting easier for overseas personnel and asked "Should overseas U.S. military personnel be allowed to vote via the Internet?".

University of South Carolina computer science professor Duncan Buell and his students cast tens of thousands of votes for the "No, the possibility of fraud is just too great" response to highlight the potential risks of online voting.  Before the poll was shut down, more than 91% of the votes cast were negative and only 7% were positive ("Yes, it can be made just as secure as any balloting system").

In the Courier-Journal article, Forno pointed commented on relatively low security for most online polls.

But the difference between an online newspaper poll and state-run online election balloting is “night and day,” said Richard Forno, director of the Graduate Cybersecurity Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and assistant director of the university’s Center for Cybersecurity. “I’m not saying it’s impossible to hack some online voting for a state election, but it’s much more difficult to do it there” than with the newspaper’s poll, Forno said. A state election system “would have far more security features built in,” he said.  …   Forno said hacking generally is on the increase in the United States. “We’re seeing more and more cyber-related incidents” of all kinds, ranging from foreign theft of the intellectual property of U.S. companies to theft of personal information and webpage defacement, he said.

The security of voting systems is a specialty of UMBC Professor Alan Sherman, whose Center for Information Security and Assurance has worked on secure voting systems for more than ten years. In 2009, Sherman and his students helped the city of Takoma Park, Maryland use the Scantegrity voting system — the first time any end-to-end cryptographic system will be used in a binding governmental election.

As more corporate and personal data moves online, Assistant Director at the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity Richard Forno provides tips on protecting financial information before a cyberattack hits.

In this video, Mariko Sanchanta of the Wall Stree Journal Digital Network interviews Dr. Rick Forno on the risks of cyberattacks on banks and other financial insititutions.

"Shafi Goldwasser of MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science and Silvio Micali of MIT were names as the winners of the 2012 ACM A.M. Turing Award. Working together, they pioneered the field of provable security, which laid the mathematical foundations that made modern cryptography possible. By formalizing the concept that cryptographic security had to be computational rather than absolute, they created mathematical structures that turned cryptography from an art into a science.

Their work addresses important practical problems such as the protection of data from being viewed or modified, providing a secure means of communications and transactions over the Internet. Their advances led to the notion of interactive and probabilistic proofs and had a profound impact on computational complexity, an area that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty.

The ACM Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing," carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc."

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