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UNT took two teams to the ACM South Central Regional Programming
Competition at Texas A&M on Saturday, November 3rd. After 5 hours
of continuous programming, Team 1 solved 8 out of 9 problems (the
only team to solve 8 problems). The problem set included guiding
a laser beam through a maze of objects with reflectors and
splitters. UNT teams placed first and eleventh out of 76 teams
throughout the South Central United States. This is the first
time a UNT team has advanced to the World Finals in the ACM
Programming Contest sponsored by IBM. The World Finals will be
held in April 2008 in Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada.
Team coach Ryan Garlick said, "We were very pleased with the
results, in terms of the first team qualifying for the finals and
for future events, as our second team did very well also and was
composed of all first-time competitors."
Through a haze of caffeine, first team captain John Rizzo said,
"The problem set was diverse and challenging but we had a good
day." Rizzo added the he and his teammates had been practicing
individually and as a team every week for the past few months.
The first place team was composed of:
John Rizzo
Hector Cuellar
Robbie Mitchell Burke
Team 2:
Joey Parrish
Angel Fox
Matt Bishop
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ABET Update |
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The CSE Department was recently visited by ABET (Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology) to consider the
accreditation of the Computer Engineering program. Thanks to all
the faculty and students who participated in the discussions. The
visit went very well and we anticipate receiving accreditation
for the program. The entire process leading to the final approval
will occupy the remainder of the academic year. We will have the
formal approval during Summer 2008.
The visitors had only three minor concerns for the program that
are already being addressed. In ABET terminology there are three
levels of issues: 1) Deficiencies-these prevent accreditation 2)
Weaknesses-these would generally cause a shortened accreditation
period or other interim requirements to be met; 3) Concerns-
these are usually items that simply need to be addressed before
the next visit which can be 2, 3, 4 or 6 years. It is very
unusual for a new program to have no weaknesses and only a small
number of concerns, so we should be very proud. We need to be
aware that ABET board may change a concern to a weakness if they
feel that concern is serious enough. So, let us hope that that
this will not happen and that we will receive full (6 year)
accreditation.
Future announcements will keep you informed of the final outcome
of this process. ↑
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UNT to Host Workshop on Algorithms, Combinatorics and Geometry |
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Dr. Farhad Shahrokhi is organizing a workshop on Algorithms,
Combinatorics and Geometry (ACG) to be held November 29-December
1, 2007 at the University of North Texas. The workshop is
intended to promote interaction between the discrete mathematics
and the computer science communities and to foster collaboration
between junior researchers, graduate students, and senior
researchers.
More than 60 people are scheduled to participate in this
workshop, which is supported by a grant that Dr. Shahrokhi has
received from the National Science Foundation. Matching funds
have been provided by the University of North Texas.
Olivia Loza and Cameron Palmer, two outstanding CSE graduate
students are the workshop assistants. For more information,
please see the details at http://acg.unt.edu. ↑
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CSE Receives Grant from Motorola Foundation |
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Dr. Robert Akl and David Keathly received a $30,000 grant from
the Motorola Foundation to take the popular RoboCamp summer
program "on the road" to area schools and community centers
during the summer of 2008. The RoboCamp program was started in
the summer of 2005 with a 2004 grant from the Technology
Workforce Development program. Two camps were held in the summers
of 2005 and 2006 in Denton and Dallas.
In 2007 an Advanced Robocamp Program joined the other two, along
with an engineering design camp called Eng-inuity! and a
programming camp known as CSExperience. They hope to continue the
Dallas and Denton campus camps to complement the mobile camps,
and will be recruiting students during the spring semester to
assist with all of the camps. The student workers will receive a
salary for the program, which is provided free to participants.
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Dr. Mikler and Courtney Corley at EpiGrid 2007 |
Dr. Mikler and his father with Courtney
Corley at the train station in Frankfurt, Germany. |
Dr. Armin Mikler gave a keynote address on November 5, 2007 at
EpiGrid 2007, an international workshop held to find innovative
strategies to combat epidemics. The conference was held at Fern
University in Hagen, Germany. The workshop helped scientists of
different disciplines to cooperate on developing intelligent
decision-making systems.
Ph.D. student Courtney Corley presented "Social epidemiology and
intimate social networks" at the conference. It was co-authored
by Prof. Suhasini Ramisetty-Mikler, PhD, MPH, University of Texas
School of Public Health, Dallas Regional Campus. In this
presentation, Corley discussed how public health risk behavior
surveys provide operational insight into forming contacts between
individuals in an intimate social network. He also introduced a
computational simulator created to embody the intimate social
networks related to the disease transmission which can be used as
a tool by public health professionals in developing strategies
for targeted interventions.
Courtney also presented "Generating social networks of intimate
contacts for the study of public health intervention strategies"
at the IEEE 7th International Symposiums on Bioinformatics and
Bioengineering (BIBE07) held at Harvard Medical School Conference
Center in Boston, MA on October 14, 2007. Co-authors included
Lindsey Brown, Armin R.Mikler, Diane J. Cook and Karan Singh.
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Dr. Kavi Named SMU Distinguished Alumnus |
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Dr. Krishna Kavi was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus at
Southern Methodist University's School of Engineering for the
40th Anniversary Celebration of the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering on November 9 during the 2007 Homecoming
Weekend. Dr. Kavi received his Master's degree in 1977 and his
Ph.D. in 1980 from SMU.
Dr. Kavi also participated in a Distinguished Alumni Symposium
hosted by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and
the Dean of the School of Engineering of SMU. The symposium
featured six distinguished SMU alumni discussing the main
milestones of computing in the last four decades and sharing
their outlook for the future.
Congratulations, Dr. Kavi, on receiving this award from SMU!
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Dr. Celikel Organizes a Track at ITNG 2008 Conference |
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Dr. Ebru Celikel is organizing a track titled: "Risk Management
in Information Systems" at the 5th International Conference on
Information Technology: New Generations to be held in April 2008
in Las Vegas, NV. The Risk Management in Information Systems
Track at ITNG 2008 seeks to gather researchers and their work in
this multidisciplinary area. For more information about this
conference please go to http://www.itng.info.
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Parasoft CEO Presents Software Engineering Forum |
David Keathly presents Dr. Kowala
with a
CSE department shirt. |
Dr. Adam Kowala, CEO of Parasoft, Inc., discussed "Putting the
engineering in software engineering: technology infrastructure in
process improvement" on November 8, 2007 at the UNT Research Park
Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The event was
sponsored by the Department and the IEEE Computer Society Student
Branch.
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Student News |
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Santi Phithakkitnukoon Receives Toulouse Scholarship Award |
Santi Phithakkitnukoon with UNT President,
Dr. Gretchen Bataille, after receiving his award. |
Santi Phithakkitnukoon, a CSE doctoral student, received
one of two Toulouse Scholarship Awards at the 30th Annual Seminar
sponsored by the Federation of North Texas Area Universities held
at Texas A&M University in Commerce, TX in October 2007. The
Federation of North Texas Area Universities is a consortium of
three universities-Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman's
University, and the University of North Texas-that coordinates
various graduate programs and activities among the institutions.
The Federation Council awards the Robert Toulouse Doctoral and
Master's Scholarships annually to graduate students in one of the
Federation program areas. Each recipient of these awards must be
admitted to a graduate school at one of the three member
universities and be actively pursuing a graduate degree in one of
the Federation program areas.
A graduate student entering a Federated program has access to the
combined academic resources of all three universities, including
their libraries and laboratories. Benefits to the student include
the flexibility of cross-registration at member universities and
the option to select major professors, advisors, and thesis or
dissertation supervisors and/or directors from any of the schools
involved in a particular program area. The student also has
opportunities to interact with other advanced students in a broad
range of classes, seminars, conferences, and special programs.
Congratulations to Santi on receiving this scholarship.
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Samer Hassan and Carmen Banea Win
IEEE Best Student Paper Award |
Carmen Banea, Samer Hassan,
and Rada Mihalcea |
Samer Hassan and Carmen Banea won the best student paper award at
the IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing in Irvine,
CA, in September 2007. "Random-Walk Term Weighting for Improved Text
Classification," also co-authored by Rada Mihalcea, describes a
new approach for estimating term weights in a document, and shows
how the new weighting scheme can be used to improve the accuracy
of a text classifier.
The method uses term co-occurrence as a measure of dependency
between word features. A random-walk model is applied on a graph
encoding words and co-occurrence dependencies, resulting in
scores that represent a quantification of how a particular word
feature contributes to a given context. Experiments performed on
three standard classification datasets showed that the new
random-walk based approach significantly outperforms the
traditional term frequency approach of feature weighting.
Samer and Carmen are members of the Language and Information
Technologies lab.
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Dissertation Defenses During Fall 2007 |
(L-R) Dr. Ram Dantu, Dr. Armin Mikler, Dr. Tom Jacob,
Vandana Gunupudi and Dr. Steve Tate |
Vandana Gunupudi defended her dissertation on November 12, 2007.
The title of her dissertation is: Trusted Platform Module
Capabilities: A Theoretical and Experimental Study. Vandana's
major professor is Dr. Steve Tate. Her dissertation committee
also included Dr. Armin Mikler, Dr. Ram Dantu and Dr. Tom Jacob.
Krishna Kavi and Wentong Li |
Wentong Li defended his dissertation on October 24, 2007.
The title of his dissertation is: High Performance Architecture using
Speculative threads and dynamic memory management hardware. Dr.
Kavi is Wentong's major professor and his dissertation committee
also included Dr. Phil Sweany, Dr. Robert Brazile, and Dr. Saraju
Mohanty. ↑
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Advisor's Corner |
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The state of Texas has issued some new laws designed to speed up
the graduation process and discourage the dropping of courses.
From now on, taking a course more than twice at UNT raises the
price of the class by $75 per credit hour. There is also a limit
of 45 hours (30 hours for those starting college in Fall 2007 or
later) over the required number of hours for a degree.
Taking additional hours will incur additional fees. This does not
include workforce, remedial, or AP credit, but does include any
grade of 'W'. For people enrolled in college for the first time
starting in Fall 2007 or later, there is a limit of 6 'W' drops.
The 7th and each subsequent 'W' will become an 'F'. This includes
transfer work from any public college or university.
There are some details and these rules may only apply to those
paying Texas resident tuition. For more information, please see:
http://www.cs.unt.edu/~garlick/advising/advising.html
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UNT Robotics Society to Compete |
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The inaugural semester of the University of North Texas Robotics
Society has officially begun. Members are currently working from
the ground up learning the basics of robotics and artificial
intelligence in preparation for a recreational contest in
November. The Society will be entering their first batch of
robots in the Dallas Personal Robotics Group's RoboRama contest
which includes events such as line following and mini-sumo
robotics.
After the contest, the members of the Robotics Society currently
plan to embark on a project of larger scale for the benefit of
the College of Engineering and to advance their experience in
this subject. Potential projects for the group include a
traveling robotic jazz band or a robotic tour guide for Research
Park.
Persons interested in becoming members of the Robotics Society
and paticipating in activities such as these should contact the
faculty advisor, David Keathly at dkeathly@cse.unt.edu or
Corey Rosemurgy, chapter President, at cpr0010@unt.edu.
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New on Exit Surveys: TA Evaluations |
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If you have taken our undergraduate CSE classes, you have been
asked to complete our Exit Surveys about our courses. After
Thanksgiving, it will be time to complete those Exit Surveys
again. In addition to evaluating your courses, you will be asked
to evaluate your Teaching Assistant. These evaluations will help
us place our Teaching Assistants for the Spring semester.
The exit surveys give you an opportunity to evaluate how
effective the course has been in helping you achieve the desired
outcomes for that course. Some instructors have chosen to do the
survey online and other surveys will be completed on paper in the
classroom.
Each course has outcomes which are measurable skills or
activities that you should accomplish during the course. The
outcomes of all the courses in the curriculum are designed to
ensure that, by the time you graduate, you will have mastered the
objectives of the degree. The course exit survey lets us know how
you think you are achieving these outcomes and lets you tell us
how you think the course could be improved.
One of the requirements of our accreditation by ABET is that we
have a program of continuing assessment and improvement. Your
part in this is very important. We will be letting you know on
the department web site and through newsletters what changes we
are making and why they will improve the program.
Thank you for completing these surveys and helping to improve our
CSE courses.
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Spring 2008 CSE Courses |
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2410.001 -- Introduction to Web-Programming with PHP |
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The web-oriented PHP Programming Language will be offered as a CSCE 2410
(Programming Laboratory) section 001 course during the Spring 2008 semester
on Tuesday/Thursday at 3:30PM-4:50PM in NTRP B158.
The course will discuss the process of developing web-based
applications using this language, showing students what it takes
to process forms-based data, as well as a variety of programming
techniques for the manipulation and storage of both client-oriented
data and webpage content. Advanced techniques will
include AJAX, database access and regular expression handling.
The course will provide an excellent introduction to students
preparing to take CSCE 4410 (Software Development) course.
The course will be taught by Don Retzlaff, who first taught this
course in the Fall 2004, as well as the discussion of the
language in his 4410/4420 Software Development courses.
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DC Best Sponsored by College of Engineering |
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UNT hosted the Denton County Engineering Science and Technology
annual competition held at the NT Coliseum on October 27, 2007.
More than 20 area middle and high schools competed in the
"Mission to Mars," the theme for this year's contest. The
playing field was set up to simulate the harsh conditions found
on Mars by robots preparing for the arrival of the first
astronauts on the planet's surface. The first robotics
competition gauged how well the robot performed in the field
which had a platform shaped like a square.
The teams competed four at a time. The robots navigated up a ramp
and onto a platform. From there, they picked up a number of
bottles and a variety of colored boxes which were set to
represent fuel cells and other important supplies. The items were
then dropped into a storage container on the edge of the playing
field. Points were awarded based on the number of items picked up
within a specific time. Denton High School won the title. The
runner-up was the team from Marcus ISD.
Miguel Garcia-Rubio, Associate Director of the College of
Engineering, emphasized the importance of the contest to the
future of our nation and announced that next year UNT will host
Texas BEST, the state competition, which will bring students in
from Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
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The CSE Student 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 newsletter@cse.unt.edu.
http://www.cse.unt.edu UNT
Computer Science and Engineering Department - November 2007
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David Keathly will offer a CSCE 4930 course entitled
"Introduction to Robotics and Automation." This course will be a
computer science approach to robotics concepts, including motion
control, environment sensing, movement and action planning, as
well as an overview of the entire robotics system from mechanical
components, digital hardware and software. Laboratory experiments
and projects will be completed using a number of Robotic
platforms including the BOE-BOT, Lego Mindstorm NXT and Roomba
Developer. The course meets Tuesday and Thursday from 12:30 to
1:50 pm in Room B158. The course can be used as an Advanced
elective for Computer Science majors and a Technical Elective for
Computer Engineering majors. Student should have completed CSCE
2050 and either be taking or have completed CSCE 2610 in order to
enroll in the course. 
