Photo Courtesy UMBC.edu

Whether you're running behind on credits, or just can't fathom three months without studying, it's always smart to take advantage of summer session courses. This May through August, the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE) Department is offering a selection of Undergraduate and Graduate courses in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, and Electrical Engineering. Check out the following list to see if there's a match for you. Don't forget to apply by MAY 28.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

Computer Science

CMSC 104
Problem Solving and Computer Programming (3)
T, TH 9 a.m. –12:10 p.m.
Ryan Bergeron
Session 1, 8 Week

CMSC 203
Discrete Structures (3)
T, TH 9 a.m. –12:20 p.m.
Yatish Kumar Joshi
Session 1, 8 Week

CMSC 451
Automata Theory and Formal Languages (3)
T, TH 6—9:10 p.m.
Jon Squire
Session 1, 6 Week

CMSC 455
Numerical Computations (3)
M, W 6—9:10 p.m.
Jon Squire
Session 1, 6 Week

GRADUATE COURSES

Cybersecurity

CYBR 623
Cybersecurity Law and Policy (3)
M,W 6—8:45 p.m.
Session 1, 6 Week

Electrical Engineering

ENEE 699
Mathematics and MATLAB Fundamentals for Engineers (1)
W 4:30—7 p.m.
Donald Gantzer
Session 1, 6 week

For more information, stop by the CSEE Department (ITE 325) to pick up a Summer Session catalog, or visit the website for course listings in all disciples.

Don't forget to apply by MAY 28.

What should be in the curriculum for a computer science undergraduate program in the next decade? What knowledge and skills should every CS major learn? What learning objectives should we set? How can we ensure that the field remains focused on the disciplinary core while embracing an outward-looking view that actively seeks to work with and integrate into other disciplines such as Biology, Engineering, linguistics and Sociology.

About every ten years the ACM and IEEE Computer Society jointly sponsor the development of a Computing Curricula volume on Computer Science. Their joint task force has just released a Strawman draft of the the CS2013 report and invites comments from a diverse audience with the goal of broadening participation in computer science. The report seeks to be international in scope and to offer curricular and pedagogical guidance applicable to a wide range of institutions.

Photo Courtesy jhu.edu

Computer Science and Computer Engineering students interested in becoming part of the renowned Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab are in luck. The lab is currently seeking interns for this summer.

Located in Laurel, Maryland, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory works on over 600 programs focused on protecting homeland security and advancing the nation’s goals in research and space science, says the lab’s website. Boasting a staff of 4,700, the lab has an annual funding level of nearly $980 million.

Interns will help develop a prototype immersive, distributed, web-application with the goal of putting together an entire virtual environment. The project will require skills like archival data structures, visualization tools, and distributed access.

Interns should have programming knowledge in Java, C++, and C#/00 Programming languages: Java Script, AJAX. In addition, interns should have experience with Apache, Tomcat, Glassfish, or similar web application servers.

For a complete job description and a full list of requirements, and for information about how to apply, click here.

Photo Courtesy jhu.edu

Computer Science and Computer Engineering students interested in becoming part of the renowned Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab are in luck. The lab is currently seeking interns for this summer.

Located in Laurel, Maryland, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory works on over 600 programs focused on protecting homeland security and advancing the nation’s goals in research and space science, says the lab’s website. Boasting a staff of 4,700, the lab has an annual funding level of nearly $980 million.

Interns will help develop a prototype immersive, distributed, web-application with the goal of putting together an entire virtual environment. The project will require skills like archival data structures, visualization tools, and distributed access.

Interns should have programming knowledge in Java, C++, and C#/00 Programming languages: Java Script, AJAX. In addition, interns should have experience with Apache, Tomcat, Glassfish, or similar web application servers.

For a complete job description and a full list of requirements, and for information about how to apply, click here.

Photo Courtesy g4tv.com

Computer Science alumnus Joshua Barczak (B.S. ’03, M.S. ’06) will be a featured speaker at this year’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD).

Now a Senior Graphics Engineer at the Maryland-based game development studio Firaxis Games, Joshua studied computer graphics at UMBC and carried out research under professors Dr. Marie desJardins and Dr. Marc Olano before graduating with his Master's degree in Computer Science in 2006.

At Firaxis, Joshua’s first game credit was for Sid Meier’s Civilization V video game. For the game, Joshua worked on implementing the rendering framework which drives the diplomacy screens. He also put together a procedural ice-floe generator. “If you’re playing the game and happen to go close enough to the poles, you’ll notice that each and every ice chunk is unique,” writes Joshua on his website.

Joshua will speak on Wednesday, April 25 at 12:00 p.m. in the University Center 312. After Joshua's talk, come chat with him about what it's like to work in the video game industry in the Information Technology/ Engineering (ITE) Building 325B from 3:00-3:50 p.m.

For more information about Joshua’s game development experience, check out his bio on UMBC’s Office of Undergraduate Education website.

Joshua Barczak (CMSC, B.S. '03, M.S. '06)
Senior Graphics Engineer, Firaxis Games
 

The SEC has opened its applications to students interested in our 2012 Fall Internship Program.  Please include the following listing in any resource or email that you provide to your students.  To be considered for the Fall Internship Program, you must apply via theon-line application.  The application will start on April 6, 2012.  Apply now.  The posting will officially close on May 1, 2012, but we strongly suggest that you apply immediately because applications will not be considered after we have filled our slots.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for strong students for its 2012 Fall Internship Program.  Students have the opportunity to work for ten weeks during the fall semester at the SEC's Washington DC headquarters or at one of its eleven Regional Offices.  Interns directly support attorneys and other professionals in the regulation and enforcement of the securities markets.  Each intern is assigned to one of the SEC’s offices or divisions for a ten-week period.  The potential assignments are as varied as the SEC’s responsibilities in regulating the securities markets.

For more information, look at the SEC’s Web site.  There is a link there to the Futurestep Web site used for SEC hiring.  Students should look on that page under Current Opportunities / Washington, DC and click “Student Opportunities/Volunteer Opportunities.”  From there, they can apply to the DC or regional offices.  Any questions regarding the application process should be directed to students@sec.gov.  

Fall Internship Program Application

Students interested in our Washington, DC Headquarters offices apply here: NON-LEGAL Opportunities

Headquarters- 2012 Fall Internship Program- Division of Enforcement

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internship- Office of International Affairs

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internship-Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internship-Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internship-Office of Minority and Women Inclusions

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internship-Office of the Secretary

Headquarters-2012 Fall Internships- Office of Public Affairs

Students interested in our Regional Offices apply here: Both LEGAL and NON-LEGAL Opportunities

2012 Fall Internship- Atlanta Regional Office

2012 Fall Internship- New York Regional Office

2012 Fall Internship-Boston Regional Office

2012 Fall Internship-Denver Regional Office

2012 Fall Internship-Fort Worth Regional Office

2012 Fall Internship-Los Angeles Regional Office

We've starting to see advertisements for a new kind of position: privacy engineer.

If you've seen the classic movie, The Graduate, you'll remember the conversation that recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock has with a friend of his father, who says "I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. … Are you listening? … Plastics.". Today, 45 years later, that one word might be Privacy.

Our lives are increasingly being lived online through social media systems, cloud based services, smart phones and other ubiquitous computing and sensing devices. Your smart phone, it's common to hear, knows more about you than your spouse or Mom. Data about us is being collected minute by minute, aggregated, integrated, analyzed, bought and sold.  At the same time, we have develped powerful new datamining and machine learning techniques that, together with parallel computing, can  extract surprising amounts of information and knowledge from the data. 

This data can be put to good uses, such as providing you with better services, but can also result in a loss of privacy. Businesses and other organizations want to avoid a backlash in which they lose customers concerned about their privacy. We've seen recent ads for privacy engineers, such as these from Apple , Google and Intel. This is just a sample, many more exist, although the job title may be different.

The job of a privacy engineer doesn't yet have a well defined consensus description, but the focus is on designing an organization's information privacy policy and helping to ensure that it is accurately described and enforced.  High level tasks include (i) protecting data from unauthorized access, use or disclosure (ii) providing users with appropriate tools to both understand and control what information is collected and how it is shared and used; and (iii) recognizing how the data can be usefully mined without revealing private information.

What courses can a UMBC undergraduate take to prepare for positions like these? After getting a good grounding in the required computer science or computer engineering courses, undergrads can take classes in the fundamentals of security (CMSC 426 and CMSC 487), information assurance (CMSC 444), and cryptography (CMSC 443), take a course in databases (CMSC 461),  datamining and machine learning (CMSC 478) and/or visualization (CMSC 436), and perhaps mobile computing (CMSC 628). Interested students should also look for special topics course, like Security and Privacy in a Mobile Social World which is being offered this semester.  We also have several research labs that work in privacy-related areas, including the Cyber Defense, Coral, Ebiquity, Diadic and Maple labs.