Applications are now being accepted for the Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP) and the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS). US citizens capable of receiving security clearances are eligible.

These scholarships require the recipient to work for the government following graduation. The awards include full tuition, stipend ($30k/year for PhD students, $25k/year for MS/MPS students, and $20k/year for BS students), and more.

(1) Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP)

The Information Assurance Scholarship Program is a yearly awarded Department of Defense sponsored scholarship/fellowship program to promote the education, recruitment, and retention of rising junior and senior undergraduate, MS, MPS, or PhD student status in CMSC, CYBR, or related field at UMBC (including IS, Math, EE, CE, physics, public policy).

(2) Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS)

The Scholarship for Service is a yearly awarded National Science Foundation sponsored scholarship program to promote the education, recruitment, and retention of rising junior and senior undergraduates and graduate students in cybersecurity-related studies. See https://www.sfs.opm.gov/ for more SFS details. (We have 2 CYBR MPS, 1 BS in CS, and 1 PhD in CS, students presently in this program.)

Completed applications for both programs are due by 12:00 (noon) on February 8, 2013.  The same application form is used for each program.  This deadline is strict.

More information, points of contact, and application instructions for both programs can be found at http://www.cisa.umbc.edu/scholarships.php.

The UMBC Center for Information and Assurance (CISA) was created in 2001 as the central point of contact at UMBC for Information Assurance (IA) including  research, teaching, and best practices.  It is because of CISA that UMBC has been recognized as a national center of academic excellence in IA education and research (CAE/CAEr).

The Heidelberg Laureate Forum is an extraordinary opportunity for a group of students and young researchers to interact with some of the greatest minds of Mathematics and Computer Science for a week of scientific exchange and inspiration.

It will bring together winners of the Abel Prize, the ACM Turing Award, and the Fields Medal with young scientists from Computer Science and Mathematics. The first forum will be held over a week in September 2013 in Heidelberg and will consist of presentations, workshops, panel discussions and social events, all of them involving both the laureates and the young scientists. Some travel support is available.

The Forum will invite undergraduate students, PhD candidates, and young researchers at the postdoctoral level. Apply online by submitting a statement of purpose, CV, and the names of 1-3 people who can write recommendations. PhD candidates and postdocs should provide more information on their research. The deadline for applications is February 15, 2013 but may close early if the maximum number of applications that can be reviewed is reached.

The Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research is a collaborative research center sponsored by the National Science Foundation with two university partners (UMBC and University of California San Diego), six government, and seven industry members. The Center's research is focused on addressing productivity, performance, and scalability issues in meeting the insatiable computational demands of its members' applications through the continuous evolution of multicore architectures and open source tools.

As part of its annual industrial advisory board meeting next week, the center will hold an afternoon of public tutorials from 1:00pm to 4:00pm on Monday, 17 December 2012 in room 456 of the ITE building at UMBC. The tutorials will be presented by students doing research sponsored by the Center and feature some of the underlying technologies being used and some of their applications. The tutorials are:

• GPGPUs – Tim Blattner and Fahad Zafa
• Cloud Policies – Karuna Joshi
• Human Sensors Networks – Oleg Aulov
• Machine Learning Disaster Warnings – Han Dong
• Graph 500 – Tyler Simon
• HBase – Phuong Nyguen

The tutorial talks are free and open to the public. If you plan to attend, please RSVP by email to Dr. Valerie L. Thomas, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

UMBC hosted the guest speaker Stephen Prothero, acclaimed expert and author on religion, offered members of the UMBC community religious and spiritual insight during the discussion "God is Not One: The Eight Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter."
Prothero has authored numerous books on religion including God is not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World and Religious Literacy. He is also a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and has appeared on mainstream news networks like CNN, MSNBC and FOX.

The discussion was held on Thursday, November 29 in the Skylight Lounge. About 50 students, faculty and visitors attended to hear Prothero's lecture, in which he emphasized the importance of educational literacy in religion in America.

"You can't make sense of the world without making sense of religion," said Prothero. He pointed out how religion affects major societal matters such as politics, military forces and government systems. "I believe humans are motivated by passions that cannot be seen."

Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism and Christianity were some of the religions Prothero compared and contrasted. He also described how although the U.S. is the most religious country in the world, individuals have very little knowledge about religion itself.

"Religion has public power," he said, explaining that the media has displayed how religion affects human rights like abortion and marriage equality during the last decade. Individual morals and values differ across religions, which often ignites controversy regarding the legislation of these human rights.

One of Prothero's main goals is to encourage both teachers and professors to incorporate religious topics in their curriculum. "I think it would be good to teach world religions and Christianity in a general sense," said senior public health major Alexandra Mills. "It's important to discuss and have a basic understanding of different religions."

The discussion was sponsored by The Office of Student Life's Mosaic Center along with the Office of Undergraduate Education and several other co-sponsors. The Mosaic Center staff dedicates their time to creating and fostering cross-cultural collaboration and diversity on the UMBC campus through events such as Prothero's discussion.

"We like to find ways to be a more unified community at UMBC," said Assistant Director of Student Life for Cultural and Spiritual Diversity Lisa Gray.

"I agree that we should focus and celebrate our differences," said senior Asian studies major Yasmin Radbod. "We shouldn't assume that we are all the same."

UMBC Computer Science Alumni Donald Miner (BS '06, PhD '10) (left) and Adam Shook (BS '09, MS expected '13) (right) have written a book on the popular MapReduce paradigm that has revolutionized the way collections of computers are used to process large amounts of data in parallel. Their book, MapReduce Design Patterns Building Effective Algorithms and Analytics for Hadoop and Other Systems, was published by O'Reilly Media in December.

“Adam and I were teaching Hadoop classes and we saw a gap: students would pick up on how hadoop worked mechanically, but struggled to understand how to solve problems with it,” explains Donald, who now works as a Solutions Architect at EMC Greenplum. “This book is intended for people who have a basic understanding of Hadoop, but want to start solving their problems effectively.”

Adam and Donald met in fall 2008 during an Artificial Intelligence class at UMBC. Donald, a Ph.D. student working with Dr. Marie desJardins on machine learning and multiagent systems research, was teaching the class. Adam, an undergraduate Computer Science student, was taking the class. Later, the pair ended up working together at ClearEdge IT Solutions.  

“We worked well together and our skills and interests complemented each other well, so when I had the opportunity to write this book I knew it would be a much better book doing it with him than doing it alone,” says Donald.

Now Adam works with big data technologies like Hadoop, Accumulo, Pig, and ZooKeeper as a Software Engineer at ClearEdge IT Solutions. He is working towards his Master’s in Computer Science at UMBC under Dr. Tim Finin. His research deals with developing an efficient in-memory distributed database for Semantic Web applications.

“I don’t know how I do it,” says Adam about working full time, being in graduate school, and writing a book. “Caffeine helps.” He plans on finishing up his degree in 2013.

In the meantime, Adam and Donald have started working on Mapreducepatterns.com. Still in its infancy, the website is meant to be a Wikipedia style site where the Hadoop community can rally around a well-defined set of standard MapReduce design patters.

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! 

9255227 - Inside Sales - Aerotek
9253084 - Java Developer - GEICO
9255211 - Home Services Specialist I - Bank of America
9255274 - HR Administrator - Applied Defense Solutions

The following part-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!

9255199 - Audit Intern - UHY Advisors Mid-Atlantic M.D., Inc.
9255223 - Direct Support Person Wanted (Monkton) - Shared Support MD, Inc.
9255262 - Help Desk - Sage Dining, Inc.
9255191 - Laboratory Technician - Cloverland Farms Dairy