Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Bmore has a short video report on the UMBC GAIM programs that features CSEE Professor Marc Olano, VART Professor Neal McDonald and several GAIM students.

“The video game industry may not be Maryland’s equivalent of film in Los Angeles or country music in Nashville, but it is a force. Companies such as Zynga, Firaxis, Big Huge Games, and Day 1 Studios are all based here and are responsible for some of the industry’s most interesting titles. We’re also lucky to have a robust gaming program at UMBC, where students on the creative and technical ends of the game creation process learn side-by-side how to conceptualize and create the games of tomorrow.”

Just in time for the 2011 UMBC Digital Entertainment Conference.

The Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference site is up and student teams can now register for the competition, with the first qualifying round early in September. It is a chance to demonstrate your ability to work in a team and your cybersecurity and problem solving skills.

MDC3 is a joint effort between SAIC, UMBC, DBED, TCM and NCSA to bring people together to promote Maryland's commitment to cybersecurity and STEM education. The competition includes three levels: high school, collegiate and professionals from industry/government, providing opportunities to network with cybersecurity professionals, researchers, and scholars.

There will be orientation sessions at the UMBC Technology Center (1450 South Rolling Rd., 21224) on May 2, May 18 and June 21 at 4:30pm for professionals and 6:00pm for students.

The CSEE Department at UMBC has IT job positions available.  The positions include a Web Administrator and System Administrator.  Full descriptions for each position below.  Details include how to apply and what information is expected to be provided.

Student Web Administrator position.

Duties:

• Engineer solutions to Web-related problems in a UNIX environment.
• Manage Web applications and be able to extend functionality by writing new code.
• Support the users of Web sites/portals.
• Assist in ongoing projects.
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements:

• Experience with a Linux/UNIX system.
• Program UNIX shell scripts, C/C++, PERL, Python, and/or PHP.
• Understand HTML, CSS, and modern Web technologies.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills.
• Able to quickly learn new skills.
• Able to work well in a group.
• Available to work up to 20 hours/week.
• Active UMBC student.

Desired (will train as needed):

• Major in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Exposed to content management system and revision control system.
• Manage databases and write SQL queries.

Please submit resumes by email to cseeit-jobs AT cs DOT umbc DOT edu . Resumes accepted until the position is filled.  Also provide an example of something cool that you have done with a Web site.

UNIX Student System Administrator position.

This position will provide computer hardware, software, and network support for the operational needs of the CSEE department at UMBC.  The CSEE computer infrastructure is extremely diverse, dynamic, and challenging. This position will be part of a technical team of experts, who support over 700 user accounts and over 600 Linux, Solaris, Windows, and MacOS machines in office, data center, and research environments.  The computers range from individual desktops to production servers which run 24 hours per day (such as Web portals, email, and database servers).

Are you the resource who people come to when they have a computer problem? Do you find fixing computers easy?  Do you run your own server?  Do you like learning new skills, making people happy, and gaining a sense of accomplishment?  If you relate to these attributes, this is a great opportunity for you.

Duties:

• Engineer solutions to problems in a UNIX environment.
• Support desktop and server computers for end-users (operational staff, graduate students, and faculty) and networking needs through the installation and configuration of computer hardware and software.
• Support the daily operations and maintenance of the CSEE computing and networking facilities (such as accounts, printers, applications, etc.).
• Support real/virtual server environment and real/virtual disk storage systems
• Assist in ongoing projects.
• Other duties as assigned.

Requirements:

• Experience with one or more types of Linux/UNIX system.
• Program UNIX shell scripts, C/C++, PERL, Python, and/or PHP.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills.
• Able to quickly learn new skills.
• Able to work well in a group.
• Available to work up to 20 hours/week (up to 40 during summer or breaks).
• Active UMBC student.

Desired (will train as needed):

• Major in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Familiar with the CSEE Department's computing environment.
• A working knowledge of Sun/Oracle Solaris/OpenSolaris operating system and/or Windows.

Please submit resumes by email to cseeit-jobs AT cs DOT umbc DOT edu . Resumes accepted until the positions are filled.  Also provide an example of something cool that you have done with UNIX/Linux.

Congratulations to the CSEE undergraduate students and groups who will be presenting posters on their research as part of the Fifteenth Annual UMBC Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day. UCRAD features research, scholarship, and creative work carried out by UMBC undergraduates.

• Natée Johnson, X-Ray Study of Nano-Scale Superlattice Materials, 3:15pm-3:30pm, UC 310, Mentor: Dr. Fow-Sen Choa
   
• Sheriff Jolaoso, Spectrogram Analysis and Evaluation and Brainwave Appreciation of Music, 10:00am-12:30pm UC Ballrooom, Mentor: Dr. Fow-Sen Choa
   
• Morgan Madeira and Rachel Sweeton, Finding Communities through Social Media, 10:00am-12:30pm, Mentor: Dr. Anupam Joshi
   
• Ross Pokorny, 12:30pm-3:00pm, UC Ballroom, TweetCollector: A Framework for Retrieving, Processing, and Storing Live Data from Twitter, Mentors: Dr. Timothy Finin and Dr. Anupam Joshi
   
• David Shyu, Patient Identification and Diagnosis Using Fourier Analysis and Beam Forming of Multi-electrode Brain Wave Signals, 12:30pm-3:00pm, Mentors: Dr. Fow-Sen Choa and Dr. Elliott Hong
   
• UMBC Game Developers Club, Innovations in Computer Game Development, 12:30pm-3:00pm, Mentor: Mr. Neal McDonald

The Baltimore ACM Chapter, the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, and the Emerging Technology Center are hosting a free, public lecture on entrepreneurship by David Turock at 7:00pm, Wednesday 27 April in the ETC Canton facility (2400 Boston St., Baltimore).

David Turock will present a side-by-side comparison of two telecommunications start-ups that he launched: one successful, and one not. He compares and contrasts their funding sources, agility and scalability of their business models, hiring practices, and more. His experience and lessons learned will be valuable for aspiring tech entrepreneurs. He finishes with how his interests have shifted to using technology to promote social and environmental causes.

David Turock is a veteran entrepreneur and currently a Director of Counsel RB Capital. He holds a patent on VoIP, and is an expert on telecommunications technologies and their applications. Mr. Turock began his career working with AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1982 and Bell Communications Research in 1988, and subsequently founded enhanced telephone service provider, Call Sciences. He later formed Interexchange, which designed and operated one of the world's largest debit card systems. Most recently, from 2001 to 2007, Mr. Turock was Chief Technology Officer of Therap Services, a provider of informatics services to disabled patients. Mr. Turock received his B.S. in Experimental Psychology from Syracuse University, his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Cognitive Psychology from Rutgers University, and his M.S.E. in Computer Science from the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Baltimore ACM chapter invites attendees for pizza starting at 6:30pm. There is no charge, but please RSVP to Emil Volcheck at .

The ETC Canton facility is located at the American Can Company complex, 2400 Boston Street in Baltimore. ETC is on the 3rd floor of the building that houses the Austin Grille restaurant and the entrance is next to the Lenscrafters store. There is a 3 hour visitor parking in front of the building on the Boston Street side.

The CRA reports that total enrollments among U.S. computer science undergraduates increased 10% in 2010 based on data from its most recent annual Taulbee Survey. This is the third straight year of increases in total enrollment and indicates that the post “dot-com crash” decline in undergraduate computing program enrollments is over. The Taulbee Survey is conducted annually to document trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in Ph.D-granting departments of computer science, computer engineering and information systems in the United States and Canada. You can find the data in a CRA report on Computing Degree and Enrollement Trends.  The full data from the Taulbee report will be available later in May from the CRA Web site.

The data for UMBC computing majors shows similar increases in the past three years.

We are a group of students who are performing a research study to investigate how students learn and improve their performance at different aspects of Python programming. For the study, we are looking for students who are currently enrolled in CMSC 201 or who took CMSC 201 in the last semester or two and have not yet completed CMSC 202.

In exchange for your participation in the study, we will provide pizza for the participants, and each student will also be entered into a drawing for an 8G iPod Nano, in the color of your choice. One participant, of the 24 to 32 students that we recruit, will win the Nano.  We are currently signing students up for the following three time slots:

• Wed 4/6, 7pm-10pm: free pizza will be available for registered participants at 6:45
• Fri 4/8, 10am-2pm: Show up *any time* between 10am and 2pm — whatever works for you! Pizza will be ordered around noon.
• Mon 4/11, 10:30am-8pm: Show up any time between 10:30am and 8pm! Pizza will be provided around noon and again around 6:30 if there are participants there to eat it!

The study will take place in ITE 240. Please sign up in advance if at all possible, and let us know what time you expect to arrive during the open sessions, so that we know how many students to expect and how much pizza to order!

The study involves four stages: first, you will be given a brief tutorial in the Python-based RUR-PLE visual programming environment and be asked to answer some warm-up questions to help familiarize you with the RUR-PLE environment. You will then be given a pretest that asks you to answer some basic multiple-choice programming questions. Next, you will be given a series of problems to solve within RUR-PLE, either by writing Python programs to perform a specified task, or by predicting the output and behavior of a given program. Finally, you will take a posttest that is similar to the pretest. We will record your answers to help us understand how to predict student programming performance and learning, based on their starting knowledge. The length of time to complete these tasks will vary, depending on the student, from one to two hours. Your data will be completely anonymized, and no information about you personally will be stored with the results of the study.

If you have any questions or wish to volunteer for the study, please contact Amy Ciavolino at . Prof. Marie desJardins () is the faculty advisor for this project, and you may also contact her with any questions or concerns.

Amy Ciavolino (), Robert Deloatch (), Eliana Feasley () and David Walser ()

The UMBC Cyber Defense Team, aka the Cyberdawgs, will host a technical briefing on Monday April 4 featuring two guest speakers from the DoD. The topic will be the cyber competitions between the service academies, and other cyber-related topics may come up as well. The meeting will be held in the CSEE conference room, ITE 325b, from Noon to 2:00pm.

The Cyber Defense Team is a SGA recognized student organization whose members share a common interest in computer and network security and participating in cybersecurity competitions and events. It is open to everyone regardless of your major or current knowledge level. If you are interested in joining come to this meeting or any of the weekly meetings held on Monday's from Noon to 2:00pm. You can also subscribe to its mailing list by sending a message to .

Still looking for a summer internship? Check out the Google Summer of Code (GSoC).

This is a is a global program funded by Google that pays undergraduate or graduate students a $5000 stipend to write code for open source projects. GSoC has worked with the open source community to identify and fund exciting projects for the upcoming summer. The FAQ is a good place to find out more.

A set of open source projects (aka mentoring organizations) has been selected. Students apply to work on one of more of these and each mentoring organization ranks the students interested in working with them. Google facilitates the final selection and pairing. The mentoring organization works closely with the student to define tasks, check progress, help solve problems, etc. Typically the thudent works remotely, interacting with his or her mentor via email, chat, skype, etc.

Students can submit applications via the Google Summer of Code 2011 site from March 28 to April 8. Google says that that the best applications they receive are from students who took the time to interact with one of the participating mentoring organizations and discuss their ideas before submitting an application. Check out the information on the Advice for GSoC Students Page which links to a list of the 2011 mentoring organizations.

I have a plug for a particular project: Elgg. "Elgg is an award-winning social networking engine, delivering the building blocks that enable businesses, schools, universities and associations to create their own fully-featured social networks and applications." One of the people involved with Elgg's GSoC effort works at JHU/APL and may do mentoring locally. They are looking for people who know (or are willing to learn) PHP, JavaScript, and basic web development. Send email to to find out more about the ideas the Elgg project has proposed for GSCO 2011.

UMBC will hold the first annual Women in Technology: Spring into Leadership event from 6:30-8:00pm on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 in the University Ballroom. The program will focus on the importance of building relationships and developing one’s inner leader. Ms. Myra Norton, CEO of Community Analytics and a member of the College of Engineering and Information Technology’s Advisory Board, will be the featured speaker and facilitator.

The event is sponsored by the Center for Women and Information Technology, the CWIT Student Council, the UMBC Student Chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, and the Information Systems Council of Majors. All students are welcome and women undergraduate and graduate engineering and IT majors are especially encouraged to attend.

The event is free but space is limited and registration is required by March 30. For more information about the event, contact Dr. Susan Martin, CWIT Associate Director, at 410.455.3109 or susan at @umbc.edu.