This semester we have a departure and arrival to announce. Professor Yung-Jui (Ray) Chen has retired. Ray has been with UMBC for twenty-four years. He taught courses in electronics and circuit theory and initiated research in compound semiconductors here at UMBC. He served as Program Director for the Electrical Engineering program in its early days. We hope to see him often and wish him well.

On the arrival side, Dr. Pedram Sadeghian has joined our department as a computer science lecturer. Pedram comes to us from Howard Community College (HCC), where he spent more than five years as an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Computer Science and Information Systems. Welcome aboard Pedram!

In October, Professor Anupam Joshi was named director of the new UMBC Center for Cybersecurity. Dr. Joshi and co-director Dr. Richard Forno, Graduate Program Director Cybersecurity, will work together to advance UMBC’s position as a leading research university in the field of Cybersecurity.

The CSEE department continues to do well in its mission. Last Academic Year we recorded approximately $5 million in research expenditures in spite of the very difficult funding environment. We have reached a milestone of producing 238 PhD’s since 1986.

On the teaching forefront, the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation has awarded an Implementation and Research Grant to a team led by professor Marie desJardins for “Active Computing Teaching and InnoVation Environment” (ACTIVE). ACTIVE will be  a dynamic “laptop laboratory” that will support innovation in computing courses–with a particular focus on improving the retention and success of women, underrepresented minorities, and transfer students. The laboratory will extend active-learning environments, such as CASTLE and the new English writing labs, to a new area of the university.

Looking towards the future, we anticipate searching for a new tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computer Science. Have a great Spring semester. Keep up to date by visiting www.csee.umbc.edu.

Go Ravens

Dr. Gary Carter
Chair, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Yesterday President Obama held a Google+ hangout with a group of bloggers. Limor Fried, the CEO of robotics firm Adafruit Industries asked the President

"When I attended high school, I had to take a foreign language requirement. Can we make it a national effort to also add a computer programming language requirement?

The President, responding very positively, said "I think it makes sense, I really do" and talked about a conversation he had with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to explain his thinking.

"Look at Mark Zuckerberg. I was sitting next to him at dinner a couple of years ago, and he said he taught himself programming primarily because he was interested in games. If we set programs in high schools that engage kids because they get it, they won’t be just sitting there slouching in back of rooms while someone is lecturing. Given how pervasive computers and the Internet is now, how integral it is in our economy, and how fascinated kids are with it, I want to make sure they actually know how to produce stuff and not simply consume stuff."

The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies Group in Greenbelt, MD is looking for a smart, eager and motivated undergraduate student to intern and support web-development for a number of our earth science applications projects. This will be an all year around paid internship: half time during the school year and full-time during the summer.

Posting:

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies group provides scientific Earth systems research through the use of satellite remote sensing for environmental studies in ecological dynamics associated with climate variability. Our research has applications in global agricultural monitoring, food security, and disease surveillance.

The NASA/GSFC GIMMS group is offering a paid internship position to a Computer Science student to assist in developing a website and web mapping applications to support the surveillance and risk analysis of vector borne diseases using satellite imagery.

The successful candidate will also have opportunities to learn and assist in developing scientific computing applications and computational methods for remote sensing and geographic information systems.

Requirements

US citizen, permanent resident, or foreign national from non-designated countries

Experience and/or interested in:

• Web development using HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• Programming client-side web mapping applications
• Software development on Linux
• Programming in C

Apply

Submit cover letter and resume to Ed Pak at edwin.w.pak@nasa.gov

UMBC CSEE Colloquium

Analytics for Cancer Survival Time

Dr. Shujia Zhou and Ran Qi
CSEE Department, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

1:00 pm Friday, 15 February 2013, ITE 227, UMBC

With advent of new medical technologies, more and more prognostic factors are discovered and used in predicting cancer survival time. Consequently, the number of cancer patient types increase significantly. However, there are limited therapies available for cancer patients. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop accurate algorithms in grouping cancer patients so that a doctor can choose the optimal therapy for a cancer patient. In this talk we will introduce current grouping algorithms, discuss new approaches in improving their efficiencies, and present a prototype of prognostic system for cancer patients.

Dr. Shujia Zhou is a research associate professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at UMBC. He received a Ph.D. from Washington University at St. Louis in 1993. He held a Director’s-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and became a LANL technical staff member in 1996. At LANL, his researches in large-scale molecular dynamics simulations were published in the Journal of Science and reported in the journals of both Science and Nature. In 2000, he joined Northrop Grumman Corporation and worked on NASA Computation Technology Projects. He is a pioneer in accelerating climate and weather applications with multi-core processors such as,IBM’s Cell B.E. processor. His current research interests are big data analytics, in particular in finance and health.

Ran Qi received her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the Lamar University in 2009 and started her Ph.D program in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2010. In 2011, she worked on train monitoring system development at Norfolk Southern for 4 months as a co-op intern. In January 2012, she worked on personalized medicine in IBM Toronto Lab for 3 weeks. Her current Ph.D research focus is data mining in health analytics and personal medicine including cancer survival analysis and developing a cancer prognostic system.

• To educate the general public, target companies and professional talent to the benefits of doing business, working and living in the Greater Baltimore area.

• To engage in business retention efforts, including targeting existing businesses located in the region for expansion and retention.

• To work in close cooperation with officials of Baltimore City and the surrounding county governments and civic leaders in an effort to attract more businesses and employment to the area by engaging in endeavors which will include professional prospect handling, support and outreach power.

• To serve as a resource for the Greater Baltimore metropolitan area for the purpose of fostering economic development.

• To perform non-partisan analysis, study and research of various issues relating to doing business in the region. To make the results of such research available to the public by means of discussion groups, seminars and other educational activities.

• Update a comprehensive data center
• Provide information and support for business development, marketing, and investor relations
• Provide ready response to requests for proposals and/or information from businesses considering relocation or expansion
• Gather data and information to support the production of a wide variety of reports and publications to be issued by the Alliance

• Basic knowledge of public and private resources, data and information, including Census, BLS and BEA data
• An inquiring mind and the ability to assess and assemble information in a way that tells a story
• A student or recent graduate in business, planning, economics or other research and commerce related fields; knowledge of economic development is preferred
• Preferably one year of work experience or education in regional economic research, economic development research, or related field
• The ability to present and convey information in simple, logical and effective ways
• PC and software skills, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint; the ability to use other programs, such as Access, InDesign and Photoshop are desired, but not required
• Knowledge of the Greater Baltimore region and an enthusiasm for its success and growth
• A collaborative, team-oriented approach

Reinventing the Classroom

Professor Harry Lewis

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Harvard University

12:00-2:00 ITE 456, UMBC

TALK AND LUNCH: 12:00-1:00. Lunch courtesy of Dr. Warren DeVries, Dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology. RSVP on my.umbc.edu by Monday, February 25 to reserve a spot. Email requests from outside UMBC to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

DISCUSSION: 1:00-2:00. The community is invited to stay after the talk for an open discussion and conversation with Professor Lewis and your UMBC colleagues about designing new classroom spaces for active learning and the flipped classroom approach.

For decades my lectures kept getting better, my enrollments kept going up, and the number of warm bodies in the lecture hall kept going down. So I decided to try something entirely different, a "flipped classroom." Students watched lectures over the Internet at night in their rooms, and spent class time solving problems under supervision in small groups. The subject matter was discrete mathematics, which is well suited to this pedagogical style, but the class was so successful that it is being adapted for use in other Harvard courses. I will report on some of the conceptual and practical problems I encountered, including the creation of a new teaching space, which had to be cheap to construct and adaptable in use since the experiment might have failed.

Harry Lewis is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, where he has taught since 1974. He is uncertain whether he should be proud of his role in launching the careers of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom dropped out of Harvard shortly after taking his course. From 1995-2003 Lewis served as Dean of Harvard College. In this capacity he oversaw the undergraduate experience, including residential life, career services, public service, academic and personal advising, athletic policy, and intercultural and race relations. He is a long time member of the College’s Admissions Committee.

For more information, see his article Reinventing the Classroom in the Fall 2013 issue of Harvard Magazine.

On-Campus Interviews offer students a chance to conveniently interview for professional positions on campus.  Employers travel to our campus for the specific purpose of interviewing preselected students for currently open positions.  This is a great opportunity to interview with employers specifically interested in UMBC students and offers the advantage of a smaller applicant pool.  Interviews take place during the fall and spring. The logistics (viewing positions, applying, signing up for interview time slots, etc.) are all handled via UMBCworks.

Don't miss out on employers coming to UMBC to recruit YOU this fall! The following is a list of employers coming to conduct on-campus interviews with application deadlines in the next month.

**W. R. Grace
Interviewing on 3/6
Deadline to Apply:  2/22
Position:  Manufacturing Leadership Program

**Mueller Associates, Inc.
Interviewing on 3/6
Deadline to Apply:  2/20
Position:  Mechanical Engineer

**U.S. Census Bureau
Interviewing on 3/8
Deadline to Apply:  2/22
Position:  IT Specialist

**ARINC
Interviewing on 3/14
Deadline to Apply:  2/28
Position:  Junior Software Engineer

**Stanley Black & Decker
Interviewing on 3/27
Deadline to Apply:  3/13
Position:  SLP Operations Associate

** Northwestern Mutual Financial Network
Interviewing on 2/14/13 

** Insight Global
Interviewing on 2/14/13
Position:  Recruiter/Account Manager

** Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Interviewing on 2/19/13
Position:  Research Study Assistant

A full list of On-Campus Interviews scheduled is available on our website calendar and on UMBCworks, please check regularly for any updates or changes that may occur.

The following full-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings! 

9256300 - Account Representative - Advance
9256234 - Customer Service Analyst - McCormick
9256297 - WorkFirst - Employment Consultant - Humanim
9256325 - Information Security Compliance Auditor - Tenable Network Security