The UMBC Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) will hold the second Bits & Bytes event on February 20-21, 2011 for academically talented young women who are juniors in high school and excel in math and science. This year's event is sponsored by Northrop Grumman and is intended to engage local high school girls in the college atmosphere and expose them to the possibilities open to them in Engineering or IT majors in college.

Along with in-depth exposure to life as a college student and UMBC as an institution, the students will participate in an Engineering or IT design competition and will interact with current college students involved in the CWIT Scholars Program, including staying overnight in a residence hall on campus and attending a college class with one of the CWIT students.

CSEE Professor Hillol Kargupta was named a IEEE Fellow for his contributions to distributed data mining. Dr. Kargupta's research focuses on distributed data mining that explores technology for data analysis in distributed environments where data cannot be centralized because of organizational, performance or privacy reasons.

He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. He is also a co-founder of AGNIK LLC, a ubiquitous data analytics company. His research interests include mobile and distributed data mining, mining in sensor networks, peer-to-peer data mining, privacy-preserving data mining, vehicular sensor networks.

The IEEE elevates a members to the grade of Fellow for "unusual distinction in the profession" and only for people "with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest". The number of new Fellows in any year is limited to at most one-tenth of one percent of the total membership.

UMBC will host the 2011 FIRST Lego League Maryland State Championship on Saturday February 26 in the UMBC Retriever Activities Center. The UMBC organizers, led by UMBC Mechanical Engineering Professor Anne Spence, need volunteers from the UMBC community to help on the tournament day as well as to help set up in on Friday. If you are interested in helping please register online.

FIRST Lego League (FLL) an international competition for elementary and middle school students that is run by the FIRST organization with support by Lego. FLL teams use Lego Mindstorms kits to build small autonomous robots built with a limited number of sensors and motors that complete to perform predefined challenge given tasks.

"Guided by adult mentors and their own imaginations, FLL students solve real-world engineering challenges, develop important life skills, and learn to make positive contributions to society. FLL provides students age 9-14 with an opportunity to challenge their math and science skills in an internationally recognized competitive environment. FLL combines a hands-on, interactive robotics program with a sports-like atmosphere. Teams of up to 10 players focus on team building, problem solving, creativity, and analytical thinking to develop a well thought out solution to a problem currently facing the world – the Challenge."

Volunteering to help in the Maryland FLL championship is a great way to help engage young people in science and technology and have some fun doing it.