November 2011   CSE News Alumni News Student News College of Engineering News UNT News Greetings from the CSE Chair Dear CSE Alumni and Friends, We are approaching the end of the Fall 2011 semester and I wanted to share the news from this semester with you. As you may recall, our Robocamp won the Tech Titan Award in 2010. The Metroplex Technology Business Council came to Discovery Park recently and presented us with a check for our Summer Robocamp for Girls. We are proud of this program and recognize Robert Akl and David Keathly, co-directors of the camp, for their work with this excellent CSE program. Congratulations to Dr. Ram Dantu for being selected for the Innovation Corps award from the National Science Foundation. He is one of only 21 recipients in the country to receive this award. Dr. Dantu’s Network Security Lab is featured in this issue along with all the other CSE Department news. One of Dr. Dantu’s former Ph.D. students, Prakash Kolan, is our Alumni Focus in this issue. I have enjoyed meeting some of our CSE alumni at the UNT Homecoming and on my trips around the country. As I mentioned in the last issue, our Department of Computer Science and Engineering is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Until now we have held a departmental picnic and hosted Dr. Ali Hurson as a Distinguished ACM Speaker (story below). We would like to have additional speakers but also hold an event where all of our alumni and past faculty can gather. We would welcome any ideas that any of you have about this event and in particular your help in organizing it. Whether you are able to help or not, you will receive an invitation and we hope you will join us for our big celebration. I look forward to seeing you then! Barrett Bryant Professor and Chair

Department of Computer Science and Engineering News Robocamp receives $15,000 for 2010 Tech Titan Award The Metroplex Technology Business Council presented a check for $15,000 to the Summer Robocamp for Girls on October 28, 2011 for the Tech Titan award in 2010. Left to right in the picture are Armin Mikler, Associate CSE Chair; Miguel Garcia-Rubio, CENG Associate Dean; Greg Smith, 2010 Tech Titans Gala Co-Chair for the Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC); Lisa Danzer, Tech Titans of the Future Judge in 2010 and President of the Alliance of Technology and Women; Robert Akl, Robocamp Director; Ian Parberry, CSE Interim Chair in 2010; and Geoff Gamble, UNT Senior Vice Provost. In August 2010, Robocamp was recognized with MTBC's Tech Titan of the Future-University Level award for the program's creative, innovative approach to encouraging girls to pursue engineering careers. The Tech Titan of the Future-University Level award recognizes higher education institutions that encourage students to choose engineering and technology-related disciplines. Robocamp for Girls is a free, weeklong day camp for high school aged girls presented each summer by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Robert Akl and David Keathly are co-directors of Robocamp. The camp features numerous hands-on activities and experiments in robotics, engineering design, critical thinking, and computer programming. According to the data that has been collected, about 85 percent of the students who attend the camps decide to go into a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) -related career. Several of former camp students choose to pursue a degree at UNT. Dr. Ram Dantu receives NSF I-Corps award L-R: Brandon Gozick, Dr. Alan Kushner, Dr. Ram Dantu. Final Day at Stanford University, the Mobile Life Guard team presented their work to the 20 other selected University Teams and several private and public sector Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs. Dr. Ram Dantu, CSE Professor, has received an Innovation Corps award from the National Science Foundation to develop his Mobile Life Guard program for a commercial audience. Dantu is the only professor in Texas to receive one of the inaugural I-Corps awards, and one of only 21 awardees in the country. The I-Corps program will give Dantu and his team access to guidance from private and public-sector experts, a specially designed training curriculum and $50,000 of seed money. Dantu's program would allow drivers to integrate their smartphones with their cars' on-board computers. Through the integration, the smartphone would be able to analyze driver behavior and road conditions, and then send alerts to the driver or other drivers in the area. For instance, the program could alert drivers of construction delays ahead, poor weather conditions or that a driver ahead of them is braking for a speed bump. Dantu's team will include a student entrepreneur and a mentor. Brandon Gozick, a student in UNT's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will fulfill the student role, and Alan Kushner, former chief technology advisor for the National Transportation Safety Board, will serve as the team mentor. For more information, see this UNT press release and this NBC DFW news story. Krishna Kavi recognized for 10 years at UNT Dr. Krishna Kavi was recognized by Dr. Barrett Bryant at the CSE Faculty Meeting on November 16 for his 10 years of service to the University of North Texas. Dr. Kavi is the Director of The National Science Foundation Net-Centric Software and Systems Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (Net-Centric IUCRC). Armin Mikler to present webinar on November 30 Dr. Armin R. Mikler will present a webinar "Utilizing Computational Tools for the Design and Analysis of Bio-Emergency Response Plans" for the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin on November 30. Dr. Mikler is the Director of the Computational Epidemiology Research Laboratory at the University of North Texas. Following the accidental or deliberate release of harmful biological agents, responders have little time to mount an adequate response. Researchers at the newly formed Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis at the University of North Texas are developing new tools that will help to prepare for such events. "Where?" and "How?" questions are the basis for developing efficient emergency response plans long before these health emergencies actually occur. For more information, see this Department of State Health Services website. Dr. Ali Hurson is ACM Guest Speaker ACM Distinguished Speaker Professor A. R. Hurson visited the Department of Computer Science and Engineering on November 4, 2011. Dr. Hurson's presentation was on Heterogenous and Mobile Databases. Dr. Hurson (bio) is currently a Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, MO. His research is in pervasive computing, heterogenous and multi databases. He also worked on computer architecture. A Media Gallery page of Dr. Hurson's talk is HERE. Professor Hurson's visit was made possible by our reactivation of the UNT ACM Student Chapter. ACM is the largest and oldest professional society for computing. In addition to sponsoring the Distinguished Speaker Program, it also sponsors the International Collegiate Programming Contest. For further information about ACM and how you can participate in ACM Events, please contact Contact Dr. Ryan Garlick. News from the Information Management and Knowledge Discovery Lab Dr. Yan Huang, IMKD Director, on the far right of the front row, with her colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in Beijing this past summer. IMKD member Favyen Bastani (TAMS student, class of 2012) is a Regional Finalist in the most recent round of Siemens (high school) competition. TAMS students won a total of 14 semifinalist positions and 5 finalist honors. Favyen's work is mentored by Dr. Yan Huang and is titled "A Greener Transportation Mode - Flexi: Routes Planning and Evaluation". This work, co-authored by Favyen Bastani, Yan Huang, Xing Xie (Microsoft Research Asia) and Jason Powell, was accepted by ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2011 and presented earlier this month at the conference in Chicago. Chao Shen's paper titled "The Design of a Benchmark for Geo-Stream Management Systems" was accepted by ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2011. This work was co-authored by Chao Shen, Yan Huang and Jason Powell. Chao also defended his Master's thesis on this topic on October 26 and attended the conference in Chicago. Jason Powell presented a paper titled "Towards Reducing Taxicab Cruising Time Using Spatio-Temporal Profitability Maps" in Minneapolis at the 12th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases in August 2011. The paper was co-authored by Jason Powell, Yan Huang, Favyen Bastani, and Minhe Ji (Eastern China Normal University). Dr. Yan Huang visited Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) in Beijing for three months in the Summer of 2011. During her visit, she formed research collaborations with several distinguished researchers at MSRA and those visiting MSRA. She is currently visiting Fudan University in Shanghai China for Fall 2011. Fudan is one of the top ranked universities in China, featuring very talented faculties and students. She attended the National Database Conference of China on October 21-23 hosted by Fudan and gave an invited talk titled "Towards Smarter and Greener Transportation Systems". Her 11 year old son believes MSRA is a better place than Fudan mainly because of the Kinect and friends he found in the open area and fresh fruits served daily at 3:00 p.m. at MSRA. He is still trying to get used to the amount of homework at the international school he is attending in Shanghai. NanoSystem Design Laboratory Acquires State-of-the-Art VLSI Instruments NanoSystem Design Laboratory (NSDL) in the CSE Department has received state-of-the-art equipment for VLSI design and characterization. An advanced probing station was acquired for facilitating wafer characterization. A dual channel arbitrary function generator was obtained that can generate signals to provide input signals. For analysis and characterization of chips, a mixed-signal analyzer was acquired. Altogether they provide the NSDL an opportunity to fully characterize chips. As a demonstration of leadership VSLI CAD research conducted at the NSDL, director Dr. Mohanty was invited to join the International Conference on VLSI Design 2012 technical committee as a track chair for "CAD for Analog Mixed-Signal Circuits". Dr. Mohanty also serves as the publication chair of International Symposium on Electronic-System Design (ISED) 2011 which is technically co-sponsored by IEEE-CS and IEEE-CAS. In last several months the following papers have been published/accepted from NSDL members. A selection of those is listed here. A significant paper is the IEEE Transaction paper co-authored by student Oleg Garitselov. O. Garitselov, S. P. Mohanty, and E. Kougianos, "A Comparative Study of Metamodels for Fast and Accurate Simulation of Nano-CMOS Circuits", IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), Accepted on October 23, 2011. O. Okobiah, S. P. Mohanty, E. Kougianos, and O. Garitselov, "Kriging-Assisted Ultra-Fast Simulated-Annealing Optimization of a Clamped Bitline Sense Amplifier", in Proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID), pp. accepted on 2011-10-12, 2012 (blind review, 71 papers accepted out of 223 submissions, acceptance rate — 31.8%). O. Garitselov, S. P. Mohanty, and E. Kougianos, "Fast-Accurate Non-Polynomial Metamodeling for nano-CMOS PLL Design Optimization", in Proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID), pp. accepted on October 12, 2011, 2012 (blind review, 71 papers accepted out of 223 submissions, acceptance rate -- 31.8%). S. Banerjee, J. Mathew, D. K. Pradhan, B. B. Bhattacharya, and S. P. Mohanty, "A Routing-Aware ILS Design Technique", IEEE Transaction on VLSI Systems (TVLSI), Vol. 19, No. 12, December 2011, pp. 2335--2338. Oleg will be traveling to VLSI design conference in 2012 to present the two papers accepted there. Net-Centric Software & Systems Center News At the IUCRC meeting: (L-R) Tomislav Janjusic; CSE graduate student; Dr. Krishna Kavi, IUCRC Director; Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran, CSE Assistant Professor; and Yiwen Wan, CSE Graduate student. More pictures here. The National Science Foundation Net-Centric Software and Systems Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (Net-Centric IUCRC) met on October 18-19, 2011 in Tempe, Arizona, on the campus of Arizona State University. The meeting was a great success. The Net-Centric IUCRC organizes two meeting per year. At these semi-annual meetings, faculty and students make presentations on their current research projects that are funded by the industrial members of the center. New project proposals are reviewed for funding by the Industrial Advisory Board of the center. At present the IUCRC includes 17 industrial members and 4 universities (with UNT as the lead university). Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly known as the University of Missouri at Rolla) will be joining the center in Spring 2012 and will bring 4 additional industrial members to the center. In addition to normal presentations, the October meeting organized an open house with nearly 70 poster presentations by faculty and students from Arizona State University, Southern Methodist University, UNT and UTD. Nearly 35 guests representing various industrial organizations from Phoenix area attended this open house. The next semi-annual meeting of the Net-Centric IUCRC will be held April 3-4, 2012 in Dallas. If you are interested in the center's research and how you can join the center, contact, Dr. Krishna Kavi, the director of the center. Network Security Lab's Fall 2011 News Back row (L-R): Mike Trenfield, Brett McCormick, Brandon Gozick, Srikanth Jonnada, Kalyan Pathapati Subbu, Dr. Ram Dantu, Shanti Thiyagaraja and Garima Bajwa. Front row (L-R): Chaitra Urs, Enkh-Amgalan Baatarjav and Mohamed Fazeen Mohamed Issadeen. Inserted pictures: Cynthia Claiborne and Neeraj Gupta. The Network Security Lab (NSL), under Dr. Ram Dantu's supervision, has been actively involved in research projects in varied topics ranging from pervasive computing, context-aware computing, biomedical application development to privacy in online social networks and security in VoIP networks. The lab had an inclusion of four new students - two PhDs, one Master's and an undergraduate. Below are some highlights of the NSL: Enkh-Amgalan Baatarjav is a Ph.D candidate who recently passed his qualifying exam and proposal defense in September. His two papers titled "Unveiling Hidden Patterns to Find Social Relevance" and "Current and Future Trends in Social Media", were accepted at The Third IEEE International Conference on Social Computing held at the MIT campus with a 11% acceptance rate. One of his papers was also nominated for the best paper award. Currently, he is working on his dissertation "On sharing information on online social networks" to develop the next generation of social network. Kalyan Pathapati Subbu successfully defended his dissertation "Indoor Localization Using Magnetic Fields" on October 21, 2011. He had a paper titled "Indoor Localization using Dynamic Time Warping" along with Brandon Gozick accepted at the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics conference held in Alaska in October 2011. He also has a paper titled "LocateMe: Fine Localization Using Magnetic Fields" under review in ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technologies. Neeraj Gupta is a Ph.D. candidate, working on Next Generation 911 system. He successfully passed his Ph.D. qualifying examination and dissertation proposal. He has a paper titled "Emergency Dispatch Protocols for NG 911" under review in IEEE Transactions Information Technology and Biomedical Engineering. He is also working on a smartphone application that calculates the depth of CPR compressions from accelerometer sensor in a smartphone. Srikanth Jonnada is a Master's student in Computer Science. His primary work is developing smartphone based applications for estimating the blood pressure, heart beat, finger pulse localization and remote heart beat monitoring using smartphones. He recently attended the International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services in Los Angeles to present his work titled "Are you burning fat?". He has also another paper titled "Cuffless Bloodpressure Measurement using Smartphones" accepted at the mHealth Summit conference on Mobile Health to be held in Washington later this year. He is expecting to complete his thesis work before the end of this semester. Mohamed Fazeen Mohamed Issadeen, a Ph.D. student, is focusing on road safety using smartphones and brain computer interfaces (BCI). He is developing techniques that can measure changes in human emotion using multi sensor Electroencephalogram (EEG) recording that will contribute to the drivers' safety. Specifically, he is researching on quantifying driver distraction using EEG, identifying human brain activities while drivers perform various safe and unsafe driving activities in a vehicle, and developing a mobile application that can read and process the EEG from a BCI device. Brandon Gozick, a Master's student in Computer Engineering, is working on analyzing driving behavior and road conditions using the embedded sensors in smartphones. His work was accepted to the NSF Innovation Corps program at Stanford University (1 of 21 teams) in which research is transitioned into a potential startup. He has been selected as the Entrepreneurial Lead of his team. He along with Mohamed Fazeen has a paper titled "Safe Driving Using Mobile Phones" under review in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transport Systems. He recently had a paper titled "Indoor Localization using Dynamic Time Warping" along with Kalyan Pathapati Subbu accepted at IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Shanti Thyagaraja is a Ph.D. student currently working in the areas of mobile health and signal processing, developing healthcare apps for Android based smartphones. Prior to joining NSL she pursued her Bachelors from Malaysia where she was conferred the valedictorian title. Chaitra Urs, a Master's student in Computer Engineering, is currently working in the area of vehicular communication and ad-hoc networks. She is also focusing on P2P VoIP Client infrastructure as part of her thesis work. Garima Bajwa is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering. She is currently working on mathematical modeling of bio-signals for real time application in smartphones. Prior to joining NSL she completed her Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Waterloo, Canada. Mike Trenfield is an undergraduate physics major working to create mathematical models for activity recognition in driving. His goal is to create a guidance and performance evaluation program for young drivers. Brett McCormick is a senior in Information Technology. He will be pursuing his Master's degree in Computer Science at UNT after he graduates. He won an award from the National Science Foundation for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Technological Education which came with a scholarship to represent UNT at the ATE Principal Investigator's Conference 2011 in Washington D.C. Cynthia Claiborne is pursuing her Master's in Computer Science at Oklahoma State University. As part of her project work, she is currently working with NSL. Her work is focused on object recognition and detecting the change in the position of objects using the magnetic field sensor in smart phones. News from Trusted Secure Systems Lab In the picture (L to R): Satyajeet Nimgaonkar (Ph.D.), Srujan Kotikela (Masters), Dr. Gomathisankaran (Faculty), and Fahmida Hamid (Ph.D.) Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran's Trusted Secure Systems Lab is having a very productive and rewarding semester. We have had two conference papers accepted, one poster accepted, and two papers are under submission. Our results will be presented in International Symposium on Electronic Design (ISED), International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS), and Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). Our Ph.D. student Satyajeet Nimgaonkar has been awarded the Raupe Travel Grant by UNT's Student Government Association to present his work at these conferences. Fahmida Hamid, a new Ph.D. student, has joined our lab. Dr. Gomathisankaran has been invited by the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas to talk about his "Homomorphic Encryption System" at their Computer Science Colloquium. CSE to host NACLO in February 2012 High school students solve problems for NACLO in February 2011. More pictures from this event here. The regional competition for the 2012 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) will be hosted by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering on February 2, 2012. NACLO is an educational competition in Computational Linguistics, the science of designing computer algorithms to solve linguistic problems. It challenges students to develop strategies for tackling problems in real languages and formal symbolic systems. The competition will be held in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering on the second floor of Discovery Park, 3940 N. Elm Street, in Denton. Rada Mihalcea, Associate Professor, will supervise this event, along with Genene Murphy and graduate students from the LIT lab. For more information, see this NACLO website. Dr. Ebru Çankaya and her graduate student to present paper in 2012 Senior Lecturer Dr. Ebru Çankaya (left) and her graduate student Jennifer Melkus Israelson (right) have their paper titled "A Hybrid Web Based Personal Health Record System Shielded with Comprehensive Security" accepted for publication in HICSS 2012 in Maui, Hawaii, in January 2012. In this work, they present the design and development of a hybrid, web-based scheme for creating, maintaining and sharing personal health records (PHRs) with embedded security. They adopt a hybrid approach to processing PHRs and present a prototype called Personal Health Manager (PHM) that is based on this hybrid model. PHRs in the PHM prototype are owned by patients but updated by medical professionals who have been granted access to the record by the owner. Their prototype design provides a framework to begin exploring the major security concerns such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization and non-repudiation (as part of the X.800 security architecture) that arise with the adoption of an electronic method for maintaining and sharing highly sensitive healthcare information. They provide comparison of their work with existing PHR tools based on parameters that distinguish PHR models such as ownership of data and security considerations. CSCE 3410: Advanced Programming creates Apps CSCE 3410: Advanced Programming is in full swing again this semester, with students each creating their own Android app (and a few iPhone apps). The course is primarily on software development, but also focuses on the marketability and economics of app development. We may also be collaborating toward the end of the semester with students in Visual Design for graphics help. Interesting apps this semester include an iPhone app that examines an image for the main colors present and can match similar colors from a given palette. This could be used for interior designers to automatically choose matching furniture for a photo of wall color, for example. Another student is working on an Android app to automatically log you in to web based wi-fi connections. We also have several games, flashcards for kids to learn math, travel guides, and mapping applications. Contact Dr. Ryan Garlick for more information.

News for Alumni Alumni Focus Prakash Kolan graduated with a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Enginnering in 2007. While at UNT, he carried out his doctoral research in the Network Security Laboratory with Dr. Ram Dantu as his advisor. Dr. Kolan's research findings are published in leading ACM and IEEE conferences and journals and have been widely cited. He authored a paper "Securing Medical Networks" which was listed among "Top 25 Hottest Articles" (2007) and "Top 10 Cited Articles" (2005-2009) by Network Security Journal. His paper "Detecting Spam in VoIP Networks", published in USENIX, is the highest cited paper on VoIP spam till date (Google citation index). Another paper of his, "Risk Management using Behavior based Bayesian Networks", was recommended for the Best Paper award at a prestigious Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) conference in 2005. His work at UNT significantly contributed to the receipt of three awards from the National Science Foundation amounting to $1.3 million. The awards were granted for UNT to lead the development of a multi-university VoIP security testbed between the University of North Texas, Columbia University, Purdue University and the University of California-Davis. Network World Magazine listed this project among "10 cutting-edge network research projects you should know about" in 2006. As a recognized contributor to the field, Dr. Kolan is frequently invited to serve on review committees for leading IEEE conferences and journals. He also served on Technical Program Committees for IEEE conferences. For his accomplishments during his Ph.D. study, Dr. Kolan was awarded the "Outstanding Ph.D. Student in Computer Science" award for 2007-2008. After his graduation, Dr. Kolan joined NIKSUN, a network forensics and compliance company based in Princeton, New Jersey. As a Senior Lead and Technical Manager in the Media Solutions (formerly the VoIP Solutions group), he spearheaded the design and development of quality of service (QoS), experience (QoE) and security monitoring solutions for Voice over IP, IPTV, video on demand, and IMS networks. Currently, Dr. Kolan works for the Network Services Research group at AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, New Jersey. He is involved in research and development of a cloud based language translation system that includes speech recognition, machine translation, and speech synthesis models running on a real time communication platform. This is the first of a language translation system that enables individuals to converse in different languages in real time. At AT&T Research, Dr. Kolan also works for the Innovative Services research group where he develops reusable application software modules that can be used for developing VoIP server and endpoint applications. We want to hear from you! What have you been doing since graduating from UNT? Please send a few paragraphs and a picture to CSEAlumni@unt.edu. Dr. Bryant visits CSE Alumni UNT Alumni visit with Dr. Bryant on October 26 in San Jose, CA. From left to right are Robert Burgess (B.B.A. and M.S. in Applied Economics); his wife, Angela (M.S. in Applied Economics); Brian Harrington (CSE Ph.D. 2006); Samer Hassan (CSE Ph.D. 2011); current doctoral student, Carmen Banea (CSE M.S. 2009); Dr. Bryant; and Suresh Vijayakumar (CSE M.S. 2009). On November 12th, Dr. Bryant had dinner with Larry Sullivan in Seattle, WA. Larry (B.S. 1992) is married to UNT alum Reko Cox Sullivan. They have two daughters in high school who share Larry's passion for soccer. Larry is Director of Engineering at Microsoft. On October 26th, Dr. Bryant visited with more UNT alumni when he attended the SACNAS conference in San Jose, CA. Dr. Bryant met with Samer Hassan, a recent CSE Ph.D. graduate, and his wife, Carmen Banea, a CSE alumna and current doctoral student. Samer is working at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA. At the same time on October 26th, Dr. Bryant also met with Brian Harrington (CSE Ph.D. 2006), and Suresh Vijayakumar, a recent M.S. graduate in Computer Engineering. Brian is employed at Netflix. Suresh travels the western U.S. for Azimuth and occasionally travels to its headquarters near Boston, MA. Suresh is a native of India. Since Dr. Bryant has traveled there many times, they discussed regional cuisine and customs. On September 25th, Dr. Bryant attended a conference at Texas A&M and traveled to nearby Houston, TX to meet Maurice Steward (B.S. 1982). Maurice remembered recently deceased CSE Professor Denis Conrady and CSE Principal Lecturer, Don Retzlaff. Maurice works at Sungard Consulting Services and has two daughters, one is a high school senior considering matriculating at UNT. CSE Alumni enjoy UNT Homecoming 2011 At the College of Engineering Homecoming Tent: Nergis Soylemez (left), Class of 2006-Electrical Engineering Technology and husband, Harris Sayed (right), BS-Computer Science- 2003 and MBA-2005. Homecoming activities began Friday evening at Nicola's Italian Restaurant. A select group of CSE alums and their spouses were invited to mix, mingle, and meet Dr. Bryant, and Dean of the College of Engineering, Costas Tsatsoulis. Dr. Bryant discussed plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the CSE department and his vision for its growth. On Saturday, October 22, nearly fifty guests visited the College of Engineering tent at Victory Plaza, the new tailgating arena adjacent to Apogee Stadium. More visitors would have stopped by the CENG tent if they could find the new more remote location. Walking is integral to enjoying the wide expanses available behind the newly constructed stadium. At the tailgating tent, new CSE Chair, Barrett Bryant, met Computer Science and Engineering alums from the classes of 1980 through 2005. Graduate students Bharath Dandala and Ravi Sinha presented their current research with guidance from Rada Mihalcea. A Mexican buffet was available for alumni, friends and family members. Following the tailgating event, CSE faculty, alumni and friends attended the first Homecoming football game in the new stadium. Our Mean Green football team was victorious over University of Louisiana-Monroe by a score of 38-21. LIKE UNT Computer Science and Engineering Alumni to get all the latest news from your CSE Department! You can also register on our Alumni application or update your alumni information on our CSE website.

Student News Two Students defend Ph.D. Dissertations Congratulations to the following students who defended their Ph.D. Dissertations in Fall 2011: Balathasan Giritharan (right) Dissertation: "Incremental Learning from Large Datasets" Major Professor: Xiaohui Yuan (left) Defense Date: October 21, 2011 Kalyan Pathapati Subbu (right) Dissertation: "Indoor Localization Using Magnetic Fields" Major Professor: Ram Dantu (left) Defense Date: October 21, 2011 Two Students defend M.S. Theses Congratulations to the following students who defended their M.S. Theses in Fall 2011: David Haraburda (right) Thesis: "Arithmetic Computations and Memory Management Using a Binary Tree Encoding of Natural Numbers" Major Professor: Paul Tarau (left) Defense Date: October 25, 2011 Chao Shen (left) Dissertation: "The Design of a Benchmark for Geo-Stream Management Systems" Major Professor: Yan Huang (right) Defense Date: October 27, 2011 CSE Programming Teams Compete in Regional Programming Contest Back (L-R) Michael Mohler, Faisal Al Naseef, Nathanael Mathis, Devin Kautz; Front (L-R): Michael Chapman, Brent Morris, Mano Nandu Manem The University of North Texas programming team participated in the 2011 ACM South Central Regional Programming Competition at Baylor University on October 28-29, 2011. The UNT Department of Computer Science and Engineering had two teams compete this year. UNT Team 1 consisted of Brent Morris, Michael Chapman and Nathanael Mathis. UNT Team 2 consisted of Devin Kautz, Mano Nandu Manem and Faisal Al Naseef. The team was coached by Michael Mohler, CSE graduate student and former member of several UNT programming teams. CSE Students on Discovery Park Student Advisory Board The Center for Student Affairs at Discovery Park has created an advisory board for students to provide advice and input for planning and executing of events, and services to students at Discovery Park. The monthly meetings are also an opportunity for members to address ongoing issues or concerns existing at Discovery Park. The following individuals are student representatives of each academic department serving the inaugural board of 2011-2012 academic year: Bailey Chandler: Junior, Learning Technologies Gayle Prybutok; Graduate, Information Science Junaid Saeed: Senior, Electrical Engineering Tawfiq Shah: Junior, Computer Science Bradley Tatum: Junior, Engineering Technology Lisa VanHooser: Senior, Computer Science Rayne Vieger: Graduate, Library Science Hitesh D. Vora: Graduate, Materials Science Guangyuan Xirong: Graduate, Mechanical and Energy

College of Engineering News Energy Efficiency Research enhanced by agreement with Chinese firm (L-R) Yong Tao, chair of Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering; Vish Prasad, vice president for UNT Research and Economic Development; Warren Burggren, Provost of UNT; Yu Lin, president of American House. UNT has signed a memorandum of understanding with Future House Real Estate Co. Ltd., a research institution in Beijing, to research and promote green building technologies. The agreement also extends UNT's involvement with the American House, previously known as the Future House USA. Dr. Warren Burggren, UNT provost and vice president for academic affairs, signed the agreement in Beijing on October 12, 2011. The partnership expands UNT's role as a leader in zero-net-energy and lays the foundation for future projects with Chinese partners. Dr. Yong Tao, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering oversaw the design and construction of the house, a 3,200 square-foot-zero-net-energy house that was built in Beijing and displayed during the 2008 Olympic Games. Earlier this year UNT broke ground on a state-of-the-art Zero Research Energy Laboratory at UNT's Discovery Park campus. This facility will provide students and faculty with first-hand experience with the sustainable energy technologies of tomorrow. The Zero Energy Research Lab will be completed in early 2012. For more information, see this UNT press release. UNT IEEE hosts Guest Speaker from L3 Communications UNT IEEE Officers with Guest Speaker, Dr. Frank Boyle, from L3 Communications. (L-R) Thomas G. Tracy, Vice-President; Keith Rommel, President; Dr. Frank Boyle; Will Hightower, Treasurer; and Jonathan Colerangle, Webmaster. UNT IEEE had Dr. Frank Boyle from L3 Communications as a guest speaker on October 28. Dr. Boyle started out describing the engineer's role and how engineering salaries rate against other top paying jobs. Dr. Boyle then talked about three projects he worked on for L3 Communications. The first project was biologically-inspired algorithms, which use acoustic color to convey relevant signal attributes. The second project was Direct RF sampling, where a Nyquist Folding Analog-to-Information Receiver was presented. The final project was Plenoptic methods to explore 3D imaging approaches. UNT IEEE strives to provide students that are studying an engineering related field or those who have an interest in engineering with the opportunity to participate in a professional and active organization. We are committed to the standards of excellence of IEEE. UNT IEEE expands horizons by hosting informative seminars designed to help the members develop valuable industrial contacts and technical skills. They encourage team effort by participating in several technical events such as paper submissions or hardware / software design. Contact Keith Rommel, President, at unt.ieee@gmail.com for more information about UNT IEEE. Meetings for UNT IEEE are held on the last Friday of each month at 4:00 p.m. More information can be found on UNT IEEE's website.

University of North Texas News UNT ranked among the best schools for veterans For the second year in a row, the University of North Texas has been selected among the best 4-year schools for student veterans by Military Times Edge which recently released a “Best for Vets: College 2011 list. This year UNT will meet the needs of about 2,500 veterans and their family members as they pursue degrees after serving the country in an effort to better serve this large population. UNT opened a Veterans Center in Fall 2009. UNT also has an active Student Veteran's Association and offers emotional support through the Disability and Well-being Consortium. Earlier this year, UNT was selected for inclusion in G.I. Jobs magazine's list of Military Friendly Schools for 2012. For more information, see this UNT press release. Jazz Trumpeter Terell Stafford to perform with UNT One O’Clock Lab Band on November 22 Acclaimed jazz trumpeter Terell Stafford will perform with the UNT One O'Clock Lab Band on November 22 at 8 p.m. at the Murchison Performing Arts Center located on the north side of Interstate 25E at North Texas Blvd. on the UNT campus. Piano legend McCoy Tyner has hailed Terell Stafford as "one of the greatest players of our time, a fabulous trumpet player." The six-time Grammy-nominated One O'Clock Lab Band will open the concert with new material composed this year, as well as other selected pieces. Stafford will join the band for the second set with his own original works arranged by Jesper Riis and others. Tickets are $15 for adults; $10 for senior citizens, students, children, UNT faculty/staff and groups of 10 or more. To purchase tickets for this event or other UNT music events, call 940-369-7802 or visit the online box office. For more information about this concert, see this UNT press release.

The CSE Email Newsletter was assembled and produced by Genene Murphy and Don Retzlaff. It is a publication of the UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department. Contact the department at csenewsletter@unt.edu. If you would like to receive this newsletter as text rather than formatted in HTML, please contact Don Retzlaff at donr@unt.edu. http://www.cse.unt.edu UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department — November 2011