Next weekend UMBC will defend its title of best college chess team in the United States at the Final Four of College Chess. The match will be held on 1-3 April at Booz Allen Hamilton's corporate site in Herndon, VA.

Each year, the top four USA schools from the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship are invited to compete for the President's Cup in a match that has come to be known as the "Final Four of College Chess". The winner is considered to be the top US college chess team.

This year, the UMBC team will face three teams from Texas universities: Texas Tech University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Director of the UMBC Chess Program, Professor Alan Sherman, believes that UMBC has the strongest team but says "We are fielding the same team that won the Final Four last year and that placed second in the 2010 Pan-Am in Milwaukee. It will be a close fight in which any of the four teams could possibly win."

UMBC's team consists of International Grandmasters Leonid “Chief” Kritz, Sergey “The Stealth” Erenburg, Giorgi Margvelashvili, International Master Sasha “Plaplan” Kaplan and International Woman Grandmaster Sabina "Sunshine" Foisor (alternate). Supporting the team are UMBC Chess Coach Igor Epshteyn and Associate Chess Director Sam Palatnik.

Update 4/1:  The Final Four program is now available. See the UMBC news item.

The CSEE Department will hold its annual CSEE Research Review day from 9:00am to 4:00pm on Friday, May 6. Faculty, research staff and students from the Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering programs will present and discuss their latest research results via short oral presentations and a poster session. The event is open to the public and is a good way for prospective collaborators and students to find out about the research our department is doing and meet and network with current faculty and students. See pictures from CRR-06, CRR-08, CRR-09 and CRR-10 to get an idea of what goes on at this event.

The 2011 CSEE Research Review (CRR-11) will take place in the large conference room of the UMBC Technology Center's business Incubator and Accelerator building on South Campus. There is ample free parking and refreshments and a free buffet lunch will be provided.

CSEE faculty, staff and students are encouraged to submit papers and posters for possible presentation by the April 11 deadline. See the CRR-11 Call for Submissions for details on how to submit research work. Awards with cash prizes will be given for the best research paper submitted by a undergraduate, M.S. and Ph.D. student and for the best three posters.

For more information, contact the CRR-11 General Chair, Professor Alan Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

UMBC Linux Users Group

SELinux Talk and Tutorial

David Quigley
Advanced Engineering & Development, Keyw Corporation

4:00pm Friday, 1 April 2011
Room 229 ITE, UMBC

Over a decade ago researchers at the National Information Assurance Research Lab at the NSA identified a need for flexible mandatory access controls to help provide a solid foundation for secure systems. This resulted in the development of the FLASK architecture, which has seen implementation in a number of operating systems. The most prominent implementation of FLASK is in the form of SELinux. Since the early days of SELinux adoption much work as been done to improve the utility and usability of SELinux. These enhancement have turned SELinux from a prototype research implementation into a robust access control mechanism that is used by a variety of customers world wide.

This talk is a from the ground up journey through SELinux. It starts with why do we need this technology and then moves through where to obtain it, how it works, and how to identify and solve problems associated with SELinux. In addition to these basics the talk also covers slightly more advanced topics such as hot to construct policy for new applications and hot to address customizations particular to your deployments.

David Quigley started his career as a Computer Systems Researcher for the National Information Assurance Research Lab at the NSA where he worked as a member of the SELinux team but has since left that position. David leads the design and implementation efforts to provide Labeled-NFS support for SELinux. David has previously contributed to the open source community through maintaining the Unionfs 1.0 code base and through code contributions to various other projects. David has presented at conferences such as the Ottawa Linux Symposium, the StorageSS workshop, LinuxCon and several local Linux User Group meetings where presentation topics have included storage, file systems, and security. David currently works as a Computer Science Professional for the Advanced Engineering and Development division at Keyw Corporation.

This talk is sponsored by the UMBC Linux Users' Group.

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Our smartphones are quite capable, but not really very intelligent. They have more computational power than the supercomputers NASA used to reach the moon and are loaded with sensors, but lack "situational awareness" — an ability to understand their context and use that knowledge to provide better services for their users.

CSEE professor Tim Finin is one of the organizers of a workshop on Activity Context Representation: Techniques and Languages that is focused on the problems underlying making mobile devices more intelligent. The workshop will address techniques and systems to allow mobile devices model, reason about, and recognize the activities and context of their users and exploit those models to provide better services. The workshop is sponsored by the sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and will be held on August 7th and 8th in San Francisco as part of AAAI-11, the Twenty-Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Finin is working with colleagues Anupam Joshi and Laura Zavala and students from the ebiquity lab on the NSF-sponsored Platys project that is working on this problem. The project is developing software for Android phones that uses machine learning algorithms to recognize their users' activities and their roles in them and selectively share this information with other devices based on user-defined privacy policies.

The Ph.D. programs for Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering have adopted a new comprehensive portfolio process that replaces the old comprehensive examinations process. The requirements and associated forms can be found in the following document: CMPE/ENEE Ph.d. Comprehensive Portfolio Policy Implementation Guidelines.

The UMBC cybersecurity graduate MPS program will host an informal information session from Noon to 1:00pm on Wednesday, April 6 in ITE Lecture Hall 7. Attend to hear the benefits and practical applications of the program and meet staff members who will be available to answer questions.

The program allows students to:

• Learn from both research faculty and industry practitioners
• Acquire the latest knowledge and skills and get the preparation you need to make meaningful contributions to the fieldDevelop a network of fellow students and faculty that will benefit you throughout your career
• Choose either a post graduate certificate or master's degree

UMBC is designated as a Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (CAE) as well as a Center of Academic Excellence in Research (CAE-R) by the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security.

The program is now accepting applications for Fall 2011. See the Cybersecurity program Web site more information.

The Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is seeking candidates for a Research Faculty position in the area of Computational Photonics. The appointment will be made at the level of an Assistant Research Scientist or Assistant Research Professor (or in exceptional cases at the Research Associate level) as commensurate with experience.

The successful candidate will develop and validate computational models of opto-electronic oscillators, short-pulse, modelocked lasers, and possibly photonics crystal fibers. The research will involve close collaboration with experimentalists. More information about research in Computational Photonics at UMBC can be found at http://www.photonics.umbc.edu/. An appointment at the level of Assistant Research Professor would require the ability to engage in instructional activity in either or both the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department and the Mathematics and Statistics Department. Such an appointment would have to be approved by the appropriate department(s).

This position is available immediately. The initial appointment is for one year, with the possibility of renewal for additional years. A Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, Theoretical Physics, or Electrical Engineering is required. Preference will be given to candidates with experience in computational methods for solving partial and ordinary differential equations, a strong background in physics and mathematics, and a strong interest in mentoring PhD students. Experience in the modeling of optical systems is useful but not required.

Interested applicants should email a CV and the names and contact information of three professional references to both Curtis Menyuk (menyuk at umbc.edu) and John Zweck (zweck at umbc.edu). For best consideration, applications should be received by June 1st, 2011. However, applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

UMBC is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

UMBC is highly ranked in the U.S. for its degree and certificate granting in the computing sciences. The University is fourth among U.S. research universities in the production of IT degrees and certificates, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which is available from National Science Foundation’s WebCASPAR site. The table below displays the top ten universities in terms of total production in the Carnegie classification categories RU/VH and RU/H.

The most recent data from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics also shows that UMBC ranks second among U.S. research universities in undergraduate IT degrees awarded, and it is the largest producer among those universities of IT graduates in Maryland, DC and Virginia. According to the same data, UMBC is second in Maryland and 31st nationally in the number of PhDs granted in IT. The numbers are averaged from the two most recent years available — 2007 and 2008.

Professor Yun Peng received a research award of $150,000 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology support work on "Integration Testing in Supply Chain Logistics" in the coming year. The research is focused on improving the systems that companies use to exchange and process information on services, products, orders and transportation. The objective is to reduce or eliminate problems that lead to late deliveries, inaccurate tracking, insufficient visibility, poor security, unreliable planning, and unnecessary disruptions in supply chains. The funds will be used to support research by UMBC students, postdocs and faculty in collaboration with NIST technical staff.

The Association for Computing Machinery named Harvard's Leslie Valiant the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for "his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science."

"Valiant brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing."

The Turing Award is considered to be the computing's “Nobel Prize" and carries a $250,000 prize.