As part of Google’s ongoing commitment to encouraging students of underrepresented backgrounds in technology to pursue graduate study, the company will host the 2012 Google Graduate Researchers in Academia of Diverse backgrounds (GRAD) CS Forum. This forum will bring together students who are historically underrepresented in the field to connect with one another and with Google.

Up to 75 computer scientists will be invited to an all-expenses paid forum that will run Wednesday evening through Friday afternoon on January 18–20 at Google’s offices in Mountain View, CA and San Francisco, CA.

The Google GRAD CS Forum will include technical talks from established researchers – both from Google and universities – and a unique occasion to build and strengthen networks with other emerging researchers. Students will also enjoy tours of the Googleplex, have the opportunity to meet with Google engineers in their focus areas, and have fun exploring the San Francisco Bay Area.

Eligibility Requirements. Applicants must

• be a computer science (or related technical discipline) graduate student currently enrolled in a Masters or PhD program at a university in North America
• demonstrate academic excellence and leadership in the computing field maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.3 on a 4.0 scale or 4.3 on a 5.0 scale or equivalent in their current program

How To Apply. Applicants will be asked to provide:

• a current copy of your resume
• unofficial or official copies of your transcripts from both your undergraduate and graduate degree-granting institutions
• a brief thesis abstract or description of your current research (500 words or less)

Please note that recommendation letters are not required.

The forum is open to all qualified graduate students, and is committed to addressing diversity in our company and in the technology industry. Students who are a member of a group that is historically under-represented in the technology industry are encouraged to apply, including women, Native American, African American and Hispanic students as well as students with disabilities. Please send any questions directly to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. They look forward to reviewing your applications! Apply online by Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 11:59 p.m. PST.

Chitra Gadwal is a Sophomore majoring in Computer Science. This year, Chitra became involved with a research project dealing with Human Computer Interaction. To learn more about Chitra's research pursuits, read her research profile.

Chitra Gadwal is a Sophomore majoring in Computer Science. This year, Chitra became involved with a research project dealing with Human Computer Interaction. To learn more about Chitra's research pursuits, read her research profile.

Photo Courtesy University of Michigan, EECS Department

Johnson's company, MEMStim, is dedicated to developing customizable micro-fabricated stimulators. According to an article from Xconomy Detroit, this technology, which Johnson has been working on for several years, is “a platform for creating electrode leads…that can be easily integrated into devices that shoot electric pulses into a patient’s nervous system.” The platform would allow for the creation of multiple leads at a time, contrary to the current process that is expensive and slow, the article adds. This means more effective and more affordable care for those who could benefit from the technology—like patients with Parkinson’s disease.

A Meyerhoff scholar, Ms. Johnson graduated from UMBC in 2005 with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a B.A. in Mathematics. After receiving her undergraduate degrees, Ms. Johnson attended the University of Michigan to pursue her Masters and subsequently a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. Ms. Johnson speaks fondly about her experience at UMBC and with the Meyerhoff Scholars program here.

Google is sponsoring another AI Challenge Competition run by an independent group of volunteers that grew out of the Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo. The competition opens today and invites submissions of programs designed to control ants a simulated colony in competition with other colonies.

Ants is a multi-player strategy game set on a plot of dirt with water for obstacles and food that randomly drops. Each player has one or more hills where ants will spawn. The objective is for players to seek and destroy the most enemy ant hills while defending their own hills. Players must also gather food to spawn more ants, however, if all of a player's hills are destroyed they can't spawn any more ants.

The objective is to create a computer program (a bot) that plays the game of Ants as intelligently as possible. It is recommended that you use one of the starter packages as a starting point. If you are looking to get up and running as quickly as possible, check out the Five Minute Quickstart Guide. For more details about Ants beyond this introductory document, see the Game Specification.

The site has documentation, a tutorial and starter packages for windows and Linux in a variety of programming languages. Each package contains a simple working entry to use as a starting point, tools that allow you to run your bot and watch it play graphically, sample opponents that you can test your bot against, and maps you can use for testing. Once you've developed your bot, you can enter it at the website and watch your ant colony fight for domination against colonies created by other people from around the world.

The behavior of ants is a classic example of how the local interactions among individuals in a collection can give rise to interesting emergent behavior. This concept is important in the study of complex systems and was the subject of a recent special topics course taught by Professor Marie desJardins, Computation, Complexity, and Emergence.

Google is sponsoring another AI Challenge Competition run by an independent group of volunteers that grew out of the Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo. The competition opens today and invites submissions of programs designed to control ants a simulated colony in competition with other colonies.

Ants is a multi-player strategy game set on a plot of dirt with water for obstacles and food that randomly drops. Each player has one or more hills where ants will spawn. The objective is for players to seek and destroy the most enemy ant hills while defending their own hills. Players must also gather food to spawn more ants, however, if all of a player's hills are destroyed they can't spawn any more ants.

The objective is to create a computer program (a bot) that plays the game of Ants as intelligently as possible. It is recommended that you use one of the starter packages as a starting point. If you are looking to get up and running as quickly as possible, check out the Five Minute Quickstart Guide. For more details about Ants beyond this introductory document, see the Game Specification.

The site has documentation, a tutorial and starter packages for windows and Linux in a variety of programming languages. Each package contains a simple working entry to use as a starting point, tools that allow you to run your bot and watch it play graphically, sample opponents that you can test your bot against, and maps you can use for testing. Once you've developed your bot, you can enter it at the website and watch your ant colony fight for domination against colonies created by other people from around the world.

The behavior of ants is a classic example of how the local interactions among individuals in a collection can give rise to interesting emergent behavior. This concept is important in the study of complex systems and was the subject of a recent special topics course taught by Professor Marie desJardins, Computation, Complexity, and Emergence.

Adapt3D: A Framework for Supporting CFD and MHD Modeling

Professor John E. Dorband
Research Associate Professor and MCC Chief Scientist
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

1:00pm Friday 21 October 2011, ITE227

Adapt3D is a software framework that supports 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) modeling on an unstructured mesh. It facilitates adaptive refinement and execution in a parallel computing environment, either on shared memory or distributed memory computer architectures. The framework was designed primarily to support parallel computing of simulations on a continuum expressed by an adaptively refined unstructured mesh. It was designed to cleanly differentiate the code that manages an unstructured mesh on a parallel computer and the code that performs the numerics on the components of the mesh. The intent is to ease the burden of the engineer or scientist when it come to understanding parallel computing or adaptive refinement, allowing him to spend his time understanding the computational science rather than the computer science.

Dr. John Dorband received a BA in Math and Physics from Northwest Nazarene University in 1972 and a PhD in Computer Science from The Pennsylvania State University in 1985. He work for NASA for 21 years doing research in parallel and high performance hardware architectures and software. He has developed parallel compilers, algorithms and applications. He was a member of the group that developed the concept of developing high performance computing architectures from commodity components (the Beowulf project).

Host: Yelena Yesha

Sheriff Jolaoso is a Senior majoring in Computer Engineering. His research involves analyzing electroencephalographical (EEG) data in order to find and establish trends between humans under specific testing conditions. To learn more about Sheriff's resarch pursuits, read his research profile.

EE Graduate Seminar

Detection and Classification of Chemical, Biological, and Explosive
Materials: A Brief Overview of Several Cutting-Edge Problem Areas

Darren Emge
PI and Deputy Branch Chief
Laser Standoff Detection Branch
US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center

11:30am-12:45pm Friday, 21 October 11, ITE 231

The detection and classification of chemical, biological, and explosive (CBE) materials is an area of extremely active research. With the advent of new sensor technologies and sensing methods there is the rapidly growing need for timely robust detection and classification algorithms. Several factors associated with emerging sensors offer novel challenges for the signal processing community. As sensor platforms become more mobile the added complexities of "on the move" standoff detection requires the use of non-stationary and adaptive methods. Ever increasing overall sensitivity introduces variations in signal response and many methods currently lack adequate performance models or ground truth. Reduction in size, weight, and power, along with real time performance, further limit approaches that can be used in addressing these issues. This presentation will provide a brief overview of several of these cutting edge problem areas and offer a glimpse into this challenging problem space.

Mr. Darren Emge earned a BS in Physics from UMBC in 1992. He then went to work for the University of Maryland Medical System, Department of Neurology. During his time at University Medical System, he developed analysis algorithms for evoked response potentials (ERP), functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), or neuronal mapping. He also supported the cognitive psychology group in the development of a pupil motion tracking system in the study of dyslexia. Mr. Emge earned the MSEE from UMBC/CSEE Dept in 2000. In 2001 He joined the US Army ECBC passive detection team investigating advanced mathematical techniques for the detection of chemical vapors based on Fourier transform infrared (FTRI) imaging. In 2003 Mr. Emge was promoted to a Principal Investigator (PI) in the laser standoff detection branch, where he currently serves as PI and Deputy Branch Chief. His current work is in the areas of the detection of small signals, detection of non-stationary signals, and the application of non-linear signal processing methods for the detection of biological and trace chemical/explosive materials.

Seminar Host: Prof. Joel M. Morris

CSEE processor Samuel J. Lomonaco is giving a talk on his research on quantum computing as part of the Joint Quantum Institute seminar series sponsored by UMCP and NIST. The talk will be given at 12:30pm Monday 17 October, in room 1201 in the Physics building at College Park.

Quantum knots and quantum braids: Their possible application to superfluid vortices and to topological quantum computing in optical lattices.

In this talk, we show how to reconstruct knot theory in such a way that it is intimately related to quantum physics. In particular, we give a blueprint for creating a quantum system that has the dynamic behavior of a closed knotted piece of rope moving in 3-space. Within this framework, knot invariants become physically measurable quantum observables, knot moves become unitary transformations, with knot dynamics determined by the Schroedinger equation. The same approach can also be applied to the theory of braids. Toward the end of the talk, we look at possible applications to superfluid vortices and to topological quantum computing in optical lattices.

For more information, see the entry on the Joint Quantum Institute calendar.