Our department is a member of the Computing Research Association, which started in 1972 as a organization of US PhD granting CS departments and has grown to more than 220 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies. The CRA has become an important advocate in the US for research and education for all of the computing disciplines.

One of its useful services is publishing the free Computing Research News (CRN) five times a year. It has short articles on trends, programs, issues, events, and opportunities as well as advertisements for academic and R&D oriented positions. Reading it is a good way to stay informed about computing research and higher education and to find R&D-oriented jobs.

The CRA has announced that the CRN will no longer be published in hard copy and invites people to sign up to receive announcements of the availability of electronic versions. We encourage anyone interested in computing R&D or higher education to subscribe.

A small study by the Brookings Institution looked at the percentage of people age 25 and over in the 100 largest U.S. metro areas who held at least a bachelor’s degree in 2010, versus in 1970. It reveals a trend for college graduates to concentrate in a set of metropolitan areas that include the greater DC and Baltimore regions. Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area had the highest percentage (46.8%) and the Baltimore-Towson area had the 14th highest (35.1%). Baltimore had one of the largest increases in the percentage between 1970 and 2010.

"Metro areas that enjoyed the most substantial jumps in their college degree attainment ranks included many, like Dayton, that lost a tremendous share of their manufacturing between 1970 and 2010. But because regions like Worcester, Baltimore, Charlotte, and Pittsburgh shed much of that base earlier than other manufacturing centers, they have had more time to build services-oriented economies in sectors like health, professional services, higher education, and finance, and to grow, attract, and retain highly educated populations to fill those jobs."

A story in the New York Times, A Gap in College Graduates Leaves Some Cities Behind, discusses the results of the analysis and what they might mean.

Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, is seen using SQL in the Hollywood remake. See The Girl With The ANSI Tattoo for an analysis of which DBMS this is and a critique of the queries (Everybody’s a critic!).

NIST will hold a Big Data Workshop 13-14 June 2012 in Gaithersburg to explore key national priority topics in support of the White House Big Data Initiative. The workshop is being held in collaboration with the NSF sponsored Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research, a collaboration between UMBC, Georgia Tech and UCSD.

This first workshop will discuss examples from science, health, disaster management, security, and finance as well as topics in emerging technology areas, including analytics and architectures. Two issues of special interest are identifying the core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share big data that could be standardized and developing measurements to ensure the accuracy and robustness of big data methods.

The workshop format will be a mixture of sessions, panels, and posters. Session speakers and panel members are by invitation only but all interested parties are encouraged to submit extended abstracts and/or posters.

The workshop is being held at NIST’s Gaithersburg facility and is free, although online pre-registration is required. A preliminary agenda is available which is subject to change as the workshop date approaches.

Photo Courtesy Penny Riordan

That's Todd Marks up there, standing over a banner for Mindgrub Technologies. In 2002, Marks founded the Catonsville-based start-up that specializes in mobile and web development. In fact, you're probably a fan of their work if you've downloaded UMBC's free iPhone application.

According to a Patch.com article, Mindgrub has already outgrown its office space on Frederick Road, which houses the company's 36 full-time employees. The company, which started in Marks' basement, is growing faster than anticipated. Its growth is likely tied to a string of recent successes. Like, at this year's Biz Buzz Awards–sponsored by the Baltimore Business Journal–Mind grub took home first place in the App Creator Category. And, at this year's ADDY Awards, they earned a Gold Addy for their iPhone game TAG: The Mobile Assassination Game.

To learn more about Mindgrub's rapid success, check out the full article: "In Just a Year, Tech Startup Outgrows Frederick Road Space."

Oh, and by the way, they're hiring.

Photo Courtesy Penny Riordan

That's Todd Marks up there, standing over a banner for Mindgrub Technologies. In 2002, Marks founded the Catonsville-based start-up that specializes in mobile and web development. In fact, you're probably a fan of their work if you've downloaded UMBC's free iPhone application.

According to a Patch.com article, Mindgrub has already outgrown its office space on Frederick Road, which houses the company's 36 full-time employees. The company, which started in Marks' basement, is growing faster than anticipated. Its growth is likely tied to a string of recent successes. Like, at this year's Biz Buzz Awards–sponsored by the Baltimore Business Journal–Mind grub took home first place in the App Creator Category. And, at this year's ADDY Awards, they earned a Gold Addy for their iPhone game TAG: The Mobile Assassination Game.

To learn more about Mindgrub's rapid success, check out the full article: "In Just a Year, Tech Startup Outgrows Frederick Road Space."

Oh, and by the way, they're hiring.

Congratulations to Computer Science Ph.D. student Yasaman Haghpanah, who will be receiving one of three prestigious Dissertation Fellowships from UMBC’s Graduate School to help complete her Ph.D. dissertation this summer.

Originally from Iran, Yasaman began her Ph.D. studies at UMBC in Spring 2009. Her dissertation, entitled “A novel trust and reputation mechanism through behavioral modeling of reviewers,” focuses on trust and reputation modeling for online markets.

“My research interests lie in the broad area of trust and reputation modeling and their effect on various domains such as online markets, supply chain management, auctions, social networks, smart grids, and e-commerce applications,” explains Yasaman. She credits the success of online auction site eBay to its reputation system: “Feedback Forum.” “I have extensively modeled trust and reputation through behavioral modeling of the reviewers using formal probabilistic modeling. My model is general and can be applied to several domains.”

Planning to defend her dissertation in August 2012, Yasaman credits the fellowship with helping her to wrap up her research over the summer. Once she graduates, she will be looking for postdoc positions or work in a research lab. She aspires to one day become a professor.

Russia-based anti-virus firm Kaspersky Labs has described a new cyber attack toolkit dubbed Flame (Worm.Win32.Flame) which they describe as "what might be the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet." Their analysis suggests that Flame is a state-supported effort rather than one created by hacktivists or cybercriminals.

"Flame shares many characteristics with notorious cyber weapons Duqu and Stuxnet: while its features are different, the geography and careful targeting of attacks coupled with the usage of specific software vulnerabilities seems to put it alongside those familiar 'super-weapons' currently deployed in the Middle East by unknown perpetrators. Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. It’s big and incredibly sophisticated. It pretty much redefines the notion of cyberwar and cyberespionage."

Flame appears to be designed "to systematically collect information on the operations of certain nation states in the Middle East, including Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and so on." Initial infection can be from an infected USB drive, spear phishing or an infected web site. Here’s a map of the top seven affected countries.

More information is available in articles on Wired (Meet ‘Flame’, The Massive Spy Malware Infiltrating Iranian Computers) and the BBC (Flame: Massive cyber-attack discovered, researchers say).

The UMBC student chapter of the ACM met last week to elect a new slate of officers for the 2012-13 academic year. Outgoing preseident Yasaman Haghpanah officiated the election meeting. Elected were Varish Mulwad as President, Lisa Mathews as Vice-President, Ravendar Bhojwani as Secretary and Prajit Kumar Das as Treasurer.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. It provides members with resources that advance computing both as a science and a profession. UMBC's chapter meetings are open to all undergraduate and graduate students of any major.

While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

The ACM UMBC student chapter will continue to organize the weekly hi-tea event in the upcoming year. It will also be working on inviting speakers (from industry and academia) to present on topics such as preparing for a career in the industry to pursuing graduate school. If you have any questions about the UMBC chapter or suggestrions for activities for the coming year, you can send them to the acmofficers at lists.umbc.edu.

Outstanding Achievement in Computer Science
Outstanding academic achievement or service in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Clay Alberty

Laura J. Anzaldi

Madeleine R. Sparling-Sedlak

Nathaniel K. Lam

Menal G. Modha

Lauren J. Won

Outstanding Achievement in Computer Engineering
Outstanding academic achievement or service in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Thomas M. Christovich

Stephen G. Harvey

Kristopher N. Lamont

Linh R. Pham

Adam P. Page

Daniel Park