Best Buy Funds Scholarship

Best Buy Company Inc. presented a gift of $2500 for an undergraduate scholarship in computer science to be used during the academic year 2000-2001 for tuition and/or book purchase. The recipient must be a full-time student at the University of Minnesota, demonstrate above-average academic achievement, complete an internship with Best Buy Co, Inc., and demonstrate active involvement and leadership in team activities. Best Buy will work with the department to develop an appropriate internship for the recipient.

Jia Awarded Millennium Scholarship

Ning Helen Jia won this year's Bill Gates' Millennium Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate students. Only 4,000 out of 60,000 students nationwide were selected as the scholarship recipients.

Students Compete in Regional ACM Contest

A University of Minnesota team, consisting of computer science students Dinan Jiang, Yan Yu, and Fred Narthasilpa, participated in the regional Association for Computing Machinery/IBM North Central Regional Programming Contest November 11, 2000 at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Competition included 100 teams from the Midwest and Canada.

Victoria Interrante Awarded a McKnight Professorship

Victoria Interrante, Computer Science and Engineering, was one of twelve Year 2001-2003 recipients of the University of Minnesota Graduate School's McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. The goal of this program is to advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty at a crucial period in their professional lives. Recipients are honored with the title McKnight Land-Grant Professor, an endowed chair, which they will hold for two years. The award consists of a $25,000 research grant in each of two years, summer support if needed, and a research leave in the second year. Winners were chosen for their potential for important contributions to their field; the degree to which their past achievements and current ideas demonstrate originality, imagination, and innovation; the potential for attracting outstanding students; and the significance of the research and the clarity with which it is conveyed to the non-specialist. Professor Interrante's research is described on pages 1 and 2 of this newsletter. For additional information, please click here.

Best Paper

"Parallel multilevel algorithms for multi-constraint graph partitioning" was one of four best papers at the Euro-Par 2000 Conference. Written by Kirk Schloegel, George Karypis and Vipin Kumar, it appeared in Proceedings of Euro-Par 2000.

New Book

Mastering Data Modeling: A User-Driven Approach by John Carlis and Joseph Maguire was published by Addison-Wesley this fall. Professor Carlis sends along his thanks to the students in 5702 (now 5707) who helped make the book better by using (suffering through?) early drafts.

Recent Grants

Mats Heimdahl
NASA Langley Research Center
"Methods and Tools for Flight Critical Systems"
$700,000

Anand Tripathi
National Science Foundation
"Dynamic and Secure Distributed Collaborations"
$259,961

Yousef Saad and James R. Chelikowsky (Chemical Engineering & Materials Science)
National Science Foundation
"New Algorithms for Scalable Modeling in Materials Science"
$441,981

Zhi-Li Zhang
National Science Foundation
Scalable Quality-of-Service Control for the Next Generation Internet
$1,255,045

ACM Receives Unisys Award

The student chapter of the ACM recently received a $2000 award from Unisys.

Recent Grad in Time Magazine

Ed Chi, a recent grad of the department, appeared in the December 4, 2000 issue of Time magazine. For additional information, please visit his website.

Alumni Branches Out to Screenwriting

John Borowicz, '80, and writing partner May Chaplin have been selected as the Barry Morrow Screenwriting Fellowship winners for 2000 in the full length feature category. The Fellowship means they are mentored for a year by Mr. Morrow (the writer of RAIN MAN) and receive a $10,000 stipend to cover travel expenses. This is the first time a comedy has been chosen as the winner. Borowicz and Chaplin used special purpose word processing/screenwriting software in pursuit of the fellowship.

Larson Awarded Fellowship

Amy Larson is a recipient of the Louise T. Dosdall Fellowship for the 2001-2002 academic year. This fellowship is for women in the physical or natural sciences who show exceptional promise for a successful research career.