For undergrads interested in cutting edge research, the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program in Nanotechnology at UMass might be for you.  The ten week lab-and-learning experience will give you a head start on a career that is truly at the forefront of knowledge--nanotechnology!

- May 28 - August 4, 2012

- Free housing in our newest dorms

- Free travel to and from campus

- Competitive stipend

- Application deadline is Feb 29, 2012

In an exciting close finish, UMBC placed 2nd with 5 points at the 2011 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, held Dec 27-30 in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX. Also advancing to the President's Cup (Final Four of College Chess) are Univ. of Texas at Dallas [UTD] (1st place with 6 points), Texas Tech (3rd place with 4.5 points), and New York Univ. (4th place with 4.5 points). Top-rated Univ. of Texas Brownsville [UTB] finished 5th with 4 points, failing to make the cut for the Final Four.  UMBC's only loss was to UTD, in Round 5.  In Round 6, UTD defeated UTB, clinching clear first place in this six-round team Swiss championship open to any university team from North, South, or Central America.

UMBC's International Grandmaster Giorgi Margvelashvili won top player on Board 2, and UMBC's  Adithya Balasubramanian won the prize for top alternate. Also playing for UMBC were GM Leonid Kritz (captain), IM Sasha Kaplan, WGM Sabina Foisor, and alternate Benjamin Krause. Supporting the UMBC team in Texas was Associate Director GM Sam Palatnik.

Twenty-eight teams entered this annual championship, known as the "World Series of College Chess." Princeton placed 16, Yale 24.  Each team comprised four players and up to two alternates. UMBC has won or tied for first place a record nine times at the Pan-Am.

For complete results, see http://swchess.com/sce/tourney/PanAms11/Colres.htm
For some of the games, see www.monroi.com

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal, Interns Are Latest Target In Battle for Tech Talent, focused on the increased interest in hiring summer interns in the Bay area.

"Bay Area tech companies, already in a fierce fight for full-time hires, are now also battling to woo summer interns. Technology giants like Google Inc. have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response—sometimes even luring candidates away from college."

The motivation for companies is simple. Their growth depends on a steady stream of new hires with good skills and work habits. Hiring prospects as summer interns is a "try before you buy" strategy, giving the company lots of information to decide whether to extend an offer for a full-time position after graduation.

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google's director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class, Ms. Mangolini says. "It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires."

While the WSJ story focused on Bay area companies, the situation is similar throughout the country and applies not only to companies, but also government agencies. It you are pursuing a computing-related program, now is the time to aggressively explore internship opportunities for the summer.

Graduate students and undergraduates who are currently juniors or seniors planning on going into graduate school will get the most interest, but there will be opportunities for current sophomores and even freshmen as well. If you want start working on lining up a great summer internship, your first stop should be the Career Services Center.

We congratulate the 114 students who graduated from our programs in December 2011. Three students received Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, 58 received M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, and 53 got B.S. degrees in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. We wish all of our new alumni happiness and success as they moved on to new challenges in 2012. Please stay in touch by keeping your contact information current on the UMBC Alumni Association site.

As a member of the Amazon development team, you’ll be given the opportunity to have direct impact on the evolution of the Amazon e-commerce platform and lead mission critical projects early in your career. Your design, code and raw smarts will contribute to solving some of the most complex technical challenges in the areas of distributed systems, data mining, optimization, scalability, security and tweaking algorithms, just to name a few.

Innovation: Are you seeking an environment where you can drive innovation? Are you interested in finding the best intersection of features vs. performance? Are you up to the task of delivering innovative technology that offers millions of unique products to thousands of suppliers, to tens of millions of customers around the world? Many of the technical challenges Amazon encounters have never been dealt with before on this scale, if at all. Come help lead the way in e-commerce innovation.

Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering or related technical discipline
• Must be currently enrolled in school or graduated within the last 12 months
• At least 2 years experience with object-oriented design and coding, to include academic experience and/or internships

Preferred Qualifications:
• Strong, object-oriented design and coding skills (C/C++ and/or Java preferably on a UNIX or Linux platform)
• Knowledge of Perl or other scripting languages a plus
• Experience with distributed (multi-tiered) systems, algorithms, and relational databases
• Experience in optimization mathematics (linear programming, nonlinear optimization)
• Ability to effectively articulate technical challenges and solutions
• Deal well with ambiguous/undefined problems; ability to think abstractly
• Previous technical internship(s) preferred
• Graduate degree a plus

In order to be considered, please apply through our website:
https://up-amazon.icims.com/jobs/122383/job?in_iframe=1

Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Amazon will also be hosting a Technical Talk/Information Session on February 23rd at 7pm on the UMBC campus.  More details can be found in UMBCworks.

Every year, the President’s Commission for Women (PCW) recognizes a faculty or staff member on campus who has directly contributed to promoting women’s issues and/or eliminating gender inequality. Nominations are available and are awaiting you to nominate that awesome someone on campus. This is your chance to tell someone, “thanks for the work you’ve been doing… it hasn’t gone unnoticed!”

Nominations have been attached to this post. For additional information feel free to contact Dawn Stoute (co-chair of the PCW) at dstoute@umbc.edu.

Nominations are due January 23^rd.