Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Professor Nilanjan Banerjee's Introduction to Mobile Computing class will hold a poster and demonstration session showcasing student class projects from 12:30 to 2:00 on Tuesday, May 14 in room 210 of the ITE building. The projects inlcude mobile apps, games, and systems that have built during the semester.  Pizza will be served.

The course was partially sponsored this year by Microsoft Research's Hawaii Initiative, which provided students with hardware and access to cloud services for storage, computing and data.

Anyone who is interested in mobile technology is welcome to attend and intereact with Professor Banerjee and the students, who include both upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. See the event flyer for more information.

Here are the systems that will be demonstrated:

• Food Life-cycle Manager: Reduce food waste, Save your money
• Home Guard: The easiest way to protect your home from anywhere without compromise
• JUMP: Keep Jumping up
• DIY Picture Dictionary: making learning Fun Multiple Places Near you Trackit: Anytime anywhere
• SpotOrNot: A crowdsourced parking app for UMBC
• Build-A-Bill: An easy to use bill splitting app (even after you've had a few drinks)
• Pocket Philosopher: What would YOU do?
• Golf score browser
• Math Path
• Community: Share whats on your mind 
• System Android Powered Telepresence: Accessible and Low-cost Telepresence with Android
• Beat Box: tap and mix your musical mind
• PillNote: Capturing user's interaction with medication
• YASLA (Yet Another Shopping List App): app that saves the day by saving your lists and suggesting stores.

For more information, contact Prof. Banerjee at nilanb at umbc.edu.

UMBC's cyber defense team, the Cyber Dawgs, will host an interdisciplinary talk and screening of the film Game of Pawns at 7:00pm on Tuesday, April 30, 2013 in room 102 of the ITE building (LH8). The film is a true story of an American student who was recruited by the Chinese government to infiltrate a U.S. intelligence agency.

The event is sponsored and run by InfraGuard, an organization that acts as a partnership mediator between the FBI and US businesses. The talk will be nontechnical and will present an overview of the dangers that might arise when dealing with foreign businesses or representatives. It should be of interest to students considering studying abroad, pursuing international relations or business, or anticipating working for a government agency.

Every year, the UMBC Game Developers Club organizes a Digital Entertainment Conference (DEC) with a day of games industry veterans speaking on a variety of topics. This year's is on Saturday, April 27th, starting at 10am in the Engineering Building lecture hall on the UMBC campus.

The DEC is free, open to anyone, and features speakers from Firaxis Games, Zenimax, Pure Bang Games, Bioware Mythic, and Mindgrub. Whether you are a High School student, go to UMBC or another University, or are already working in a different industry, you are sure find interesting information about how the games industry works, how some current developers got started, and what they do. If you are a game developer, you are sure to find High School students, UMBC students and students from other Universities who are interested in jobs in the games industry.

Schedule:

CE21-Maryland is a planning project with the goal of increasing high school computer science expertise and statewide support in Maryland for computing education. It will host a Summit for Computing Education at UMBC on Friday, May 17, 2013 for teachers, administrators, legislators, industry leaders, and others who have an interest in expanding computer science in high school or middle school. Space is limited to 150 people. There is no charge for participating in the summit, but registration is required and closes on Friday, April 26, 2013.

At the 2013 summit, attendees will:

• Learn more about computer science high school education across the state of Maryland
• Network with others with an interest in computer science education
• Exchange strategies with other education professionals
• Plan with others to help expand student interest and to increase the number and diversity of students studying computer science in Maryland

For more information, please contact .

In August, UMBC will also host four day CS4HS workshop sponsored by Google for Maryland high school and middle school computer science teachers.

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.

The UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department will hold its annual day-long research review from 9:00am to 4:00pm on Friday April 12, 2013 in University Center Ballroom.  Faculty, research staff and students will present their latest research results in talks, posters and demonstrations. Refreshments and a free buffet lunch are provided.  Submit poster and talk abstracts by April 8.  The public is welcome. 

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 .

UMBC will host a free two-day workshop April 11-12 for faculty, researchers, and students from all disciplines who are interested in learning how to incorporate high performance computing, advanced data analysis, modeling and simulation and data visualization into their teaching and research.

The workshop will be given by representatives from XSEDE, an NSF-sponsored distributed resource for high performance computing and data storage that is available for UMBC faculty and students to use for their research. The workshop will be held in room 120 of the Meyerhoff Building on the UMBC campus, starting at Noon on Thursday April 11 and ending at 4:00pm on Friday, April 12.

Workshop participants get information on gaining access to XSEDE resources and hands on training one a topics including computational thinking, parallel computing, scientific visualization, research data management, using Unix and adding computational science to curricula. The XSEDE resources are a natural "next step" for applications that have outgrown the cluster computing facilities available at UMBC, such as HPCF and MC2.

While the workshop is free, you must pre-register online — start by creating an account via the SIGN IN link. Registration closes on March 25 and space is limited, so if you are interested, register as soon as possible.

For more information about the workshop and XSEDE, see the workshop flier or contact Andrew Raim (), Linda Akli () or Prof. Ian Thorpe ().

One the hottest topics in computing today is data science — how we can exploit the massive amounts of data now available to discover knowledge and solve problems. Data science touches on many computing areas (e.g., databases, machine learning, high performance computing, visualization, cloud computing, text analysis and graph analytics) and has many applications.

If you are interested in this, you might consider joining the new Mid-Maryland Data Science Meetup.

"The Mid-Maryland Data Science group is intended to be a gathering of professionals, students, and enthusiasts in the area to discuss diverse topics related to data science. We aim to have frank discussions on all topics related to the field of data analytics. No subject is too big or too small, as we believe analytics can operate on any scale. We plan to mix education with practical examples, helping users make the most of their time."

An initial meeting will be held next Tuesday (January 29) from 6:00-8:00pm at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. You can find out more about the event and reserve a spot on the meetup site. You can expect the meetings to be held about once a month in the early evening at various sites, feature one or more speakers, and provide some refreshments (e.g., pizza, soda).

These meetup events are a great way to learn about emerging technologies as well as connect with people and organizations working with them. Attending such meetings can also lead to opportunities for internships and full time jobs.