Fall 2012 Letter From the Chair, Dr. Gary Carter

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:01:43 -0400
chairs-notes, news

Welcome to the 2013 Academic Year. We have a lot to celebrate in our department. We welcome two new Assistant Professors: Nilanjan Banerjee and Jian Chen, and new Lecturer John Park. Dr. Banerjee directs UMBC’s new Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Laboratory, which will carry out research that focuses on renewable energy driven devices. Dr. Chen specializes in visualization techniques that help scientists make better sense of their data. John Park has extensive indsutry experience in areas including operating systems, real-time control systems, artificial intelligence/machine learning, digital imaging and graphics, and bioinformatics. This Fall he will teach CMSC 104 and 201.

We will have a very busy recruiting season this year. We are searching for two lecturers in Computer Science and a third lecturer/Professor of Practice in Computer Science with expertise in CyberSecurity.

Our research efforts continue to remain strong and our expenditures were approximately at the $5 million level for last fiscal year. Our awards starting January 1, 2012 to date exceed $5.5 million! CSEE Professor Dr. Alan Sherman (PI) and Dr. Rick Forno (Co-PI), Graduate Program Director, Cybersecurity have received an NSF grant of $2.5 million over five years to fund 22 students studying Information Assurance (IA) and Cybersecurity. The scholarships are part of the Federal Cyber Scholarship for Service (SFS) program. UMBC CSEE Professor Penny Rheingans received an NSF research award, Transforming the Freshman Experience of Computing Majors, to develop and evaluate an innovative first-year seminar for computing majors aimed at increasing retention, completion, and success among students, especially women and those from underrepresented groups. Dr. Rheingans will serve as the principal investiga-tor for this three year project, which will also include Drs. Marie desJardins (CSEE), Carolyn Seaman (IS), and Susan Martin (CWIT).

Both the Computer Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate programs were successful in their ABET accreditation. Have a great Fall semester. Keep up to date by visiting www.csee.umbc.edu

-Gary