Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

The UMBC Linux Users Group (LUG) will meet during the Fall 2013 semester on Wednesdays starting on September 11 from Noon to 1:00pm in ITE 234. If you are interested in becoming a member, please come to a few meetings and check it out.

The UMBC LUG was established in 1997 as an organization of and for people interested in the Linux operating system.  This includes people who want to learn how to install and use it on their personal computers as well as those who use it regularly and want to expand and deepen their knowledge about it.

The LUG also helps members and non-members install, update and use Linux Operating System and software during its periodic Installfests.

UMBC-LUG members come from all walks of life and courses of study. You'll find among its ranks faculty, staff and students from Information Systems, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Math, Visual Arts, Sociology, Music, Social Work, and yes, even Computer Science, all bound together by a common love of Linux. Membership is not limited to UMBC students and attendance by non-members and prospective members is always welcome.

The first meeting of the UMBC Game Developers Club (GDC) will be held at Noon on Wednesday September 11 in Engineering 005a. Potential new members and people curious about the process behind video games are welcome. In the first meeting, club president Paul Tschirgi will review the club purpose, organization and activities and describe the guidelines for the game idea selection process. Information on last year's projects can be found on the GDC project page.

The GDC was originally formed in 2005 with the goal of giving students from varied backgrounds a chance to work together and make games. The GDC accepts members from any major or background, including computer science, digital art, computer modeling, information systems, and music. If you would like to know more about the organization, feel free to visit our forums or come to one of our meetings. Currently, the GDC meets every Wednesday from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm in the the GAIM Lab (ENGR 005A). Dates for meeting, workshops and other GDC related events are posted on the GDC Google Calendar.

CSEE Professor Tim Finin was one of eight researchers elected this year as a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). His election citation reads

The new fellows were inducted at the annual AAAI fellows dinner at the 2103 AAAI conference in Seattle Washington in July.

Finin's research interests have ranged widely over a the field of Artificial Intelligence during his professional career and have included computer vision, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, expert systems and multiagent systems. His current research is focused on extracting useful information from text and semistructured data and using Semantic Web technologies to enable people and computers to effectively model, share and integrate both knowledge and data. He is working with UMBC faculty and students on applying these ideas to help solve problems in security, privacy, mobile computing and social computing environments.

AAAI was founded in 1979 as an international scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines. It's fellow program started in 1990 to recognize individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions, usually over at least a ten-year period, to the field of artificial intelligence.

The UMBC ACM student chapter is glad to announce the first meetup of Baltimore Software Craftsmanship User Group. This meetup is for the students and software developers in the Baltimore, MD area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

Please RSVP for the event by completing the form. More details can be read on the form or below.

Note: Registration for this initial meetup is limited to only twelve people from the UMBC community. If you are UMBC Student or Faculty please don't RSVP on the meetup site. Use the above form only.

Event Details

This is a HANDS-ON coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your LAPTOP equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don't have a laptop COME ANYWAY, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

The event is open to all UMBC students, however programming ability is REQUIRED. Interested Faculty members can join in too! This can also be a good opportunity to network with professionals from various companies and get yourself noticed for any job opportunities that exist.

Questions or Suggestions? Send email to Primal Pappachan (primal1 at umbc.edu) or Vladimir Korolev (vkorol1 at umbc.edu).

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. UMBC has an active ACM student chapter that is open to all UMBC undergraduate and graduate students of any major.

This year the chapter is planning to organize various events where faculty members, ACM distinguished speakers, and local tech companies will talk about various interesting topics. The first event of the year is the Welcome Back Picnic which be held from 11:30am to 1:30pm on September 18th in the Engineering Atrium. Other activities like Hi-Tea competitions, Code Craftsmanship, Reading groups and Peer mentorship are also in the works. Suggestions on speakers or other events are welcome and can be sent to .

While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

Please stop by for these events for which we will send out detail as they get confirmed. Sign up for the UMBC ACM mailing list to become a part of the local chapter and receive updates and news of its activities and events. You can also follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to keep track of chapter’s events.

Professor Marie desJardins has created a new my.umbc.edu group for Computer Science Education for UMBC students, faculty, and staff who are interested in any or all aspects of computer science education and computing education generally, including information systems, computer engineering, cybersecurity, bioinformatics, etc.

She especially encourage students who are planning to or considering a career in teaching at the K-12 level to join — but anyone who is interested in educational issues in computing (e.g., teaching pedagogies, curriculum, access to CS classes in K-12 schools, teacher certification and training, and gender/minority underrepresentation in CS classes) is welcome.

In addition to sharing ideas, events, and information about computing education, the group will be used to plan events, which could include social gatherings, seminars on topics of interest (e.g., teacher certification, pedagogical innovations, MOOCs, etc.), round table discussions, and visits by invited speakers. The group will hold some initial breakfast or lunchtime meetings to meet one another and talk about what people would like to get out of such a group.

Members of the UMBC community can join the group by visiting http://my.umbc.edu/groups/cs-ed/.

CSEE's Dr. Richard Forno, Cybersecurity GPD and Assistant Director of UMBC's Center for Cybersecurity, talked with the Baltimore Sun's Scott Dance about international hacktivism following the defacement of a local area website and the recent attack on the New York Times website.

This week the website of the Canton Kayak Club was hacked and the landing page changed to show the image of a man on a horse with a spear and the messages "NO WAR!" and "All Hail the Islamic world, we're here!".

"We have no idea who did it nor why someone would hack our site," club Vice President Cliff Charland said. "It is obviously something we’re not happy about."

The website had been restored to normal as of 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Charland said the club's webmaster was looking to determine how the hack occurred and how it could be prevented in the future. The club has about 500 members, many of whom use the site frequently for information on club events, he said." source

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently accepting applications for its Spring 2014 Internship Program. The application deadline is 11:59pm Friday, October 4, 2013. Students who are U.S. citizens and who will be actively enrolled during the Spring 2014 semester are welcome to apply. 

About OSTP. The Office of Science and Technology Policy advises the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The office serves as a source of scientific and technological analysis and judgment for the President with respect to major policies, plans and programs of the Federal Government.

About the Internship Program. Interns are accepted for one of three annual terms (Spring, Summer, or Fall), which each last no more than 90 days. While these positions are without compensation, the assignments provide educational enrichment, practical work experience, and network opportunities with other individuals in the science and technology policy arena.

More information about the OSTP Internship Program is available online.  For questions, contact Rebecca Grimm rgrimm at ostp.eop.gov.

Professor Curtis R. Menyuk of the UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department has been awarded the 2013 IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. The award recongnizes Dr. Menyuk

"For seminal advances in the fundamental understanding and mitigation of polarization effects in high-performance optical fiber communication systems."

He will receive the award at presentation during the awards Ceremony at the 2013 IEEE Photonics Conference at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue, Bellevue, Washington in September.

The William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award is given to recognize an exceptional single scientific contribution which has had a significant impact in the field of lasers and electro-optics in the past 10 years. The award is given for a relatively recent, single contribution, which has had a major impact on the Photonics Society research community. It may be given to an individual or a group for a single contribution of significant work in the field.

Professor Curtis Menyuk was born March 26, 1954. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in 1976 and the Ph.D. from UCLA in 1981. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, VA. In 1986 he became an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and he was the founding member of this department. In 1993, he was promoted to Professor. He was on partial leave from UMBC from Fall, 1996 until Fall, 2002. From 1996 – 2001, he worked part-time for the Department of Defense, co-directing the Optical Networking program at the DoD Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences in Adelphi, MD from 1999 – 2001. In 2001 – 2002, he was Chief Scientist at PhotonEx Corporation. In 2008 – 2009, he was a JILA Visiting Fellow at the University of Colorado.

For the last 25 years, his primary research area has been theoretical and computational studies of lasers, nonlinear optics, and fiber optic communications. He has authored or co-authored more than 230 archival journal publications as well as numerous other publications and presentations, and he is a co-inventor of 5 patents. He has also edited three books. The equations and algorithms that he and his research group at UMBC have developed to model optical fiber systems are used extensively in the telecommunications and photonics industry. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.