CS Department Alumni News Feed

Former Post-doc Shontz Wins PECASE

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Suzanne Shontz, who completed a post-doc position at the CS&E department from 2004-2006 received a 2011 NSF Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (NSF PECASE) for her NSF CAREER project on parallel dynamic meshing algorithms, theory, and software for simulation-assisted medical interventions. The Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is given to a selection from among the most meritorious new CAREER awardees. It is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

Shontz was cited "for exemplary research in computational and data-enabled science and engineering that bridges applied mathematics, computer science, and scientific applications, and for contributions to education, including new curricula and approaches that encourage diversity in this emerging field." Shontz says her position working under CS&E Professor Yousef Saad was an important step on her career path. Shontz is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University.

CS&E alumnus Bruso Promoted to Unisys Distinguished Engineer

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Computer Science alumnus Kelsey Bruso has been promoted to the role of Distinguished Engineer for Unisys Corporation. It is the highest designation in Unisys Engineering. There are five Distinguished Engineers at Unisys, selected from over 22,000 company employees.

CS&E Alumnus and MIT Professor Arvind Wins 2012 IEEE Computer Society Goode Award

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

CS&E alumnus and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Arvind, a world-renowned leader in computer languages for parallel processing, has been named the winner of the IEEE Computer Society's 2012 Harry H. Goode Award. Arvind is an MIT Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. He was recognized "for fundamental contributions to research in dataflow computing, memory models, and cache coherence protocols."

The Goode Award was established to recognize achievement in the information-processing field-either a single contribution of theory, design, or technique of outstanding significance; or the accumulation of important contributions on theory or practice over an extended period.

Arvind was also recently elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He will be inducted into the 232-year-old academy at a ceremony on October 6, 2012 in Cambridge, Mass.

Hui Xiong Appointed Vice Chair for MSIS Dept at Rutgers

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Hui Xiong, an associate professor, began his three-year appointment on July 1 as Vice Chair for the Department of Management & Information Systems at Rutgers University.

CS&E alumnus Gaurav Pandey's dissertation wins "honorable mention" at the 2011 ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0500

CS&E alumnus Gaurav Pandey's dissertation was recently awarded an "honorable mention" at the 2011 ACM SIGKDD Dissertation Award (http://www.sigkdd.org/awards_dissertation.php). Gaurav's dissertation, titled "Data Mining Techniques for Enhancing Protein Function Prediction", proposes several novel data mining methods for addressing various challenging aspect of the important computational biology problem of protein function prediction. These methods utilize classification, clustering and association analysis methods for inferring protein function and functional modules from large-scale biological data sets, such as gene expression data and protein interaction networks.

Gaurav will receive a certificate of recognition at the KDD-2011 conference at San Diego in August.

GroupLens Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems named recipient of the ACM Software System Award

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0500

ACM announced the GroupLens team as the winners of the 2010 ACM Software System Award. The group was honored for their innovations in computing technology that have led to practical solutions for a wide range of challenges facing commerce, education, and society. The award reflects outstanding achievements that have resulted in personalized recommendations from information filtering.

The GroupLens team includes John Riedl (University of Minnesota), Paul Resnick (University of Michigan), Joseph A. Konstan (University of Minnesota), Neophytos Iacovou (COVOU Technologists), Peter Bergstrom (Fluke Thermography), Mitesh Suchak (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), David Maltz (Microsoft), Brad Miller (Luther College), Jon Herlocker (VMware, Inc.), Lee Gordon (Gordon Consulting, LLC), Sean McNee (FTI Consulting, Inc.), and Shyong (Tony) K. Lam (University of Minnesota).

The Software System Award is given to an institution or individuals recognized for developing software systems that have had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts and/or commercial acceptance. ACM will present the award at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 4, in San Jose, CA.

Work of Du, He, and Jeong selected for Spotlight Paper

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The paper "Trajectory-Based Data Forwarding for Light-Traffic Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks" written by Professor David Du, Associate Professor Tian He and alumnus Paul (Jaehoon) Jeong was selected as the Spotlight Paper for the May 2011 issue edition of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.

The paper proposes a Trajectory-Based Data (TBD) Forwarding scheme, tailored for the data forwarding for roadside reports in light-traffic vehicular ad hoc networks.

Spring 2011 Alumni Lunch & Learn

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

We invite you to join us at one of our Spring 2011 alumni luncheons in March or April. Please come back to campus and join Professor Kumar to learn about some of the innovative research going on in computing today. Lunch will be provided.

Dates: Thursday, March 31, 2011 OR Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Time: Noon-1:30 p.m.

Location: Conference Room 4-192
Keller Hall (formerly the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building)
200 Union Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

RSVP: to Becky Kiefer at kiefe069@umn.edu or 612-625-3767.

Parking: Conveniently located across the street from the building in the Washington Avenue Ramp.

Thursday, March 31, 2011 (RSVP by Friday, March 25)
Topic: Database Support for Discovery-Based Proteomics for Oral Cancer
Professor John Carlis will describe his ongoing interdisciplinary work involving the use of and extensions to DBMS in a project aiming to discover biomarkers for early detection of oral cancer. Carlis and his team use mass spectrometers and computational means to analyze saliva from patients in varying disease stages.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 (RSVP by Friday, April 15)
Topic: Database Support for Location-based Services
Assistant Professor Mohamed Mokbel will discuss his projects that provide database support for scalability, privacy, and personalization of location-based services, which have become ubiquitous in our daily life use of GPS or WiFi-enabled devices. Mokbel will include his group's most recent project about location-based social networks.

We hope to see you there!

Work of CS&E alumnus and faculty featured as a major advance in computational biology in 2010

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0600

A paper published by CS&E alumnus Gaurav Pandey, Department Head Vipin Kumar and Assistant Professor Chad Myers was one of the "notable breakthroughs in computational biology from the past year" in an editorial published in Nature Biotechnology. The paper, "An Integrative Multi-Network and Multi-Classifier Approach to Predict Genetic Interactions" was published in the highly reputed PLoS Computational Biology and was cited by several leading computational biologists for having significantly influenced their research.

The goal of the project was to develop an accurate system for predicting genetic interactions from a variety of genome-wide data sets. This goal was achieved by means of an integrative, multi-classifier, multi-network system that made effective use of the available genomic data sets, and also employed critical concepts from machine learning. The work and its results can help scientists understand basic cellular processes, which could lead to the development of drugs for diseases that are hard to cure.

Survey shows computer science one of five highest-earning undergraduate majors

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0500

A recent article in Forbes magazine lists the computer science major in the top five highest-earning undergraduate majors.

The survey was released by the National Association of College and Employers, which produces a quarterly survey of graduates, breaking down their starting salaries by college major.

The most recent survey shows computer science as the only non-engineering major in the top five, with an average starting salary of $61,112. See the full article: The College Degrees With The Biggest Salaries.