April 2012 Edition

Greetings from the CSE Chair

Dear CSE Students, The end of Spring 2012 is near and many of our undergraduate students will be making presentations at the College of Engineering's Design Day on April 27. Members of our Industrial Advisory Board have been invited to see what students are doing at the College of Engineering. Everyone is invited to attend this event so I hope to see you there. UNT Honors Day was held on April 13 and we recognized our Outstanding Students for 2011-2012. Other CSE graduate students successfully defended their dissertations and theses. Congratulations to these students on their achievements! Please read about these and other CSE students below. If you are graduating in Spring 2012, congratulations and best wishes to you in your future career. After you graduate, I hope you will continue to support our Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Please keep in touch with us by registering on the alumni page of our website. We are proud of all our alumni and were especially pleased that CSE alumnus Jason West received the UNT Distinguished Alumni Award this year. Barrett Bryant Professor and Chair

	Department of Computer Science and Engineering News

UNT Distinguished Alumni Award presented to Jason West

CSE Alumnus Jason West ('96) received a Distinguished Alumni Award on April 20, 2012 from the University of North Texas. First presented in 1965, this is the university's most prestigious award. It is given to individuals who have achieved prominence in their profession, thereby reflecting a positive image of UNT. Only two Distinguished Alumni Awards are given each year. Jason was a founding member of the Laboratory for Recreational Computing LARC in 1993. Dr. Ian Parberry, Director of the LARC, is pictured on the left with Jason on the right at the UNT Alumni Award banquet. After graduating from UNT in 1996, Jason worked at Paradigm Entertainment. While there, he received a job offer from a small Tulsa start-up game studio, 2015, to work on the video game "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault," which became a huge success. In 2002, West co-founded the California-based studio Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward's creation, "Call of Duty," was published in 2003 and quickly surpassed "Medal of Honor" in popularity. West last directed "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," which sold about 20 million units and generated an estimated $1.3 billion in sales to date. In April 2010, West began a new independent studio called Respawn Entertainment. Respawn owns and has full control over the intellectual property it creates. Throughout his career, West has wanted to bring the cinematic and immersive thrill of film to video games. He specializes in realistic, first-person perspective military action games with real-world settings, blockbuster action sequences resembling those of big budget movies and games with multiplayer experiences. Among the games he has worked on are "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare," "Call of Duty 2," "Call of Duty, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault," "Terminator: Dawn of Fate," "Indy Racing 2000," "Beetle Adventure Racing," "AeroFighters Assault" and "F1WG." West is married to UNT alumna Adriana West ('00). They have two children and live in Los Angeles. ↑

CSE Senior Projects to be presented at Design Day on April 27

Computer Engineering and Information Technology students will present their research projects at the UNT College of Engineering's Design Day on Friday, April 27. The program will begin with a Welcome Address in the Auditorium, B155, at 9 am. Poster and project presentations will be made in the Discovery Park Foyer from 9:30 am to 11 am. The following projects will be presented beginning at 11:30 am by Computer Engineering students in the Discovery Park Auditorium, B155: The "Van Buren Boys" are doing a parking lot system project that automatically identifies and reports parking space availability using a computer vision system on the lot and a mobile app for the customers. Student presenters are Charles Goodrum, Michael Holloway, Adrian Salazar, Michael Koch, Alex Humphries, and Ajay Joshi. "Swarm-Copter" Team will present a Cooperative Quad Copter Project that allows two or more quad-copters to develop cooperative capability to coordinate mission activities and communicate with a ground base station. Team members are Andy Hagar, Patrick Ungu, Mark Moudy, Tikitai James, Rasheed Wright, and Joseph Williams. The "Vroom" Team is presenting an automated golf cart that has been modified to provide "driver-less" taxi service within the Discovery Park facility for visitors. Student presenters are Juan Meza, Ricky Patel, William Kesterson, John Wing, and Nathanael Mathis. "Big Brown" has developed a UPS scanner for the UPS facility that will reduce the number of misloaded packages at the distribution site. Team members include Craig Carlson, Drew Allen, Farica Mascarenhas, Brian Curtis, and Curt Smith. The following projects will be presented by Information Technology students in F223 starting at 1:30 pm.: "Mean Green IT Machine" is a CSE Library System that has developed a library management system for the CSE departmental textbook library. Student presenters will be Ian Walton and Cjivona Hicks. "PEBKAC" is a physician website that has developed an informational, scheduling and retail sales website for a local professional speaker and chiropractor. Team members are Thomas Charuvila, Jose Lazalde, Ruben Rico, Alfredo Villagomez, Marcos Zepeda, and Curtis Myers. The "IT Crowd" has developed Blackbeard's Treasure chest, a retail sales site for a company that sells pirate and renaissance apparel and accessories. Student team members are Jared Hislop, Richard Travis Campbell, Ryan Crouch, Shannon West, Matt Moses, and Gerardo Picazo. The "Go Team Venture" has developed a Senior Design Parts Inventory system for the Computer Science and Engineering labs. Student presenters are Blake Carson DeBarry, Pa Sanna Ceesay, Scott Powers, Christian Lopez, Chris Brown, and Elizabeth Bennett. The "Redeye Consulting" Team has been working on the CTC Success Stories Web Project, a multimedia web component for the Convergence Technology Center at Collin College that will permit them to post and share success story videos and testimonials. Team members include Anousone Bouasanouvong, Carlos Camarillo, Henri Hernandez, Jonathan Mesa, Kevin Craig, and Matthew Murray. The "GET-IT" Team has developed the Clear View Auto Glass web project, a commercial and informational site for an auto glass repair company. Student presenters are J.R. Freeman, Wesley Nyamangwanda, Zachary Banes, and Tim Page. The "RoboTechTX" Team has automated graduate student records by creating an online repository of graduate records information such as degree audits that is accessible by students and faculty. This will help automate the checklist for progress towards graduation. Student presenters are Martinique Jackson, C.J. Edwards, Javier Avela, Rashad Robinson, Drew Turner, and Tom Boyd. The "Apptastic! Labs" Team has worked on DCTA Transit Tracking by developing a pair of mobile apps that will track the current location of trains and buses in the DCTA network and provide riders with real-time updates as to arrivals and departures from a particular stop. Team members include Brett McCormick, Kyle Taylor, Katerine Villafuerte, Eric Vannucchi, and Eric Boyd. The "Prestige Worldwide" Team has developed Forward Tutoring, a tutoring and volunteerism website that was designed by TAMS students and was the Winner of the UNT Innovation Challenge and Murphy Center Entrepreneurship awards for 2011. Student team members are Lee Crane, Michael Nelson, Amelia Chase, and Miles Collins. The "Umbrella Tech II" Team has redesigned and improved the online registration for the UNT Robocamp program. Student presenters are Christopher Beene, Eduardo Diosdado, Michael Hebron, Deidre DeNeal, and Huy Ngo. Everyone is invited to attend these presentations. We hope you will attend Design Day! ↑

Security Workshop hosted by CSE Department

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, in collaboration with the Convergence Technology Center at Collin College, hosted a Workshop: Security on the Move and in the Clouds on April 9, 2012. Following a welcome from John Hopper, UNT Chief Information Officer, keynote addresses were made by Murali Varanasi, Chair of the UNT Electrical Engineering Department, and Ram Dantu, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Security professionals from educational institutions and industry made presentations in a two-track format during this one-day workshop on Security issues related to mobile device platforms and applications, Social Media and the Cloud. This event was supported by a grant from the Convergence Technology Center, an NSF Regional Center hosted at Collin College. See more pictures at this Media Gallery page. ↑

Robocamp and Grandparents University

The Summer 2012 Robocamp sessions are coming up soon. The RoboCamp summer robotics camp is a one-week day camp that will engage middle and high school students in team, project-oriented activities that utilize laptops and the SumoBot Robot (Produced by Parallax Inc.). Activities include creatively programming the robots to draw different shapes and imagery or performing music and dance routines, as well as Sumo competitions. The design of the project activities encourages team exploration as well as independent operations. The Xbox game programming camp is a one-week day camp that will engage middle and high school students in team, project-oriented activities that utilize laptops, XNA Framework (which is provided by Microsoft), and Xbox 360 gaming consoles. Students will learn coding and programming principles and develop an understanding of the role of physics and mathematics in game design. Students will have the opportunity to play the games and therefore to see the results of their programming. Students must be entering at least the 8th grade in the Fall of 2012 and not graduated from High School in order to participate. The organizers will open additional seats for rising 7th graders at the end of May if seats are still available. More details about Robocamp can be found at http://www.cse.unt.edu/robocamp. We are also participating in this year's UNT Grandparents University. This camp is a two day residential experience for young students ages 7-12 plus a grandparent. Please visit http://call.unt.edu/lifelonglearning and click on Grandparents University for more information. ↑

LARC News

LARC Alumnus Jason West received UNT's Distinguished Alumni Award in a presentation dinner on April 20, 2012. First presented in 1965, this is the university's most prestigious award. It is given to individuals who have achieved prominence in their profession, thereby reflecting a positive image of UNT. Jason was one of the founding LARC members in 1993 and graduated from UNT in 1996. He is widely known as the co-founder of the Call of Duty game franchise. LARC Director Ian Parberry has signed a contract with AK Peters Publishers for a new book entitled Introduction to Game Physics with Box2D, to be published in 2013. You can see the Supplementary Material for the book as it takes shape. Two LARC students have passed their PhD proposals. Dhanyu Amarasinghe passed his PhD proposal on April 13. Joshua Taylor passed his PhD proposal on March 28. Please check LARC News for the most recent information. ↑

NanoSystem Design Laboratory (NSDL) members make multiple presentations in International Conferences

NSDL members (L-R): Geng Zheng, Dr. Saraju Mohanty, Karo Okobiah, and Oleg Garitselov NSDL member Karo Okobiah made multiple paper presentations at the International Symposium of Quality Electronic Design (ISQED) in Santa Clara, CA in March 2012. Two important papers that relate to the PhD dissertation of Karo were also presented at the conference: O. Okobiah, S. P. Mohanty, and E. Kougianos, "Ordinary Kriging Metamodel-Assisted Ant Colony Algorithm for Fast Analog Design Optimization", in Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, pp. 458--463, 2012. O. Garitselov, S. P. Mohanty, E. Kougianos, and O. Okobiah, "Metamodel-Assisted Ultra-Fast Memetic Optimization of a PLL for WiMax and MMDS Applications", in Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, pp. 580--585, 2012. Another NSDL member, Geng Zheng, is all set to make two presentations at another conference, GLSVLSI 2012, in Salt Lake City, Utah at the beginning of May. Both Karo Okobiah and Geng Zheng are PhD candidates and are pursuing research in the areas of nano-CMOS mixed-signal metamodeling and Verilog-AMS modeling, respectively under the supervisions of NSDL director Professor Saraju Mohanty. ACM SIGDA has awarded NSDL members, Geng Zheng and Karo Okobiah, scholarships to attend the ACM A.M. Turing Centenary Celebration in June 2012. Each scholarship includes two nights at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, CA and $500 to help with the cost of travel and meals. In Spring 2012, three student members of NSDL defended their PhD dissertation or Master's thesis. Oleg Garitselov defended his PhD dissertation and Juan Franco defended his Master's thesis. NSDL Director Dr. Saraju Mohanty was the major professor for Oleg and Juan. Please see the Student News section of this newsletter for more details on these defenses. Another NSDL student Gavin Coelho defended his master's thesis on a new quadrotor design that can perform real-time object recognition thus can have applications in video surveillance. Dr. Elias Kougianos, Associate Professor in the Departments of Engineering Technology and Electrical Engineering, was the major professor for Gavin. ↑

Net-Centric Software and Systems holds Industrial Advisory Board Meeting

Danielle Gaither and Tomislav Janjusic, CSE PhD students, presented at a poster session The NSF Net-Centric Industry / University Cooperative Research Center held its semi-annual Industrial Advisory Board meeting on April 3, 2012. The meeting was held at Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine. Despite an interruption due to tornado warnings, the meeting was very successful. More than 20 industrial representatives and more than 40 university faculty and graduate students attended the meeting. The Net-Centric IUCRC is led by UNT with Dr. Kavi as the director. In addition, Arizona State University, University of Texas at Dallas, Southern Methodist University and the Missouri University of Science and Technology are academic sites of the center. At present the research of the center is supported by more than 20 industrial memberships and NSF. For more pictures of the meeting, go to this Media Gallery page. ↑

SELL (Software Engineering Language Laboratory)

Dr. Bryant at the conference center in Riva del Garda. In Spring 2012, Drs. Barrett Bryant and Phil Sweany co-founded the Software Engineering Language Lab (SELL) which maintains a focus on issues relating to software engineering and programming language design and implementation. This focus includes research in software engineering techniques designed to improve the quality of computer language design and implementation as well research into language design and implementation methods to facilitate development, testing and execution of well-designed software. SELL PhD student Danielle Gaither received a travel award from the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W), the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC), and the ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) to attend the Principles of Programming Languages conference in January in Philadelphia. She also received a travel award from Microsoft to attend the CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop in April in Bellevue, Washington. In March, Dr. Barrett Bryant co-chaired the Programming Languages Track of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing in Riva del Garda, Italy. UNT CSE PhD student David Haraburda also presented a paper in this track, co-authored with Dr. Paul Tarau. This was the 19th Programming Languages Track at SAC, having been founded by Dr. Bryant in 1994. Dr. Tarau was also a presenter at the very first SAC PL Track. ↑

Dr. Kavi presents papers and explores collaborations in Germany and Italy

The first picture shows BMW headquarters in Munich. The second is the city center in Siena. The third is at the entrance of 1972 Munich Olympic venue. Dr. Krishna Kavi traveled to Munich, Germany, Siena and Pisa, Italy in early March 2012. He presented a paper titled "New memory organizations for 3D DRAM and PCMs", at the International Conference on the Architecture of Computer Systems, held at the Technical University of Munich, Feb 28-March 2, 2012. This paper is the result of a research project supported by funds from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Then Dr. Kavi went to Italy and spent three days at the University of Siena and one day at the University of Pisa. He gave seminars at both universities describing the current research conducted by Dr. Kavi and his students at UNT. He is currently exploring collaborations with faculty in Italy. In particular, he has been asked to join a very large EU project called TeraFlux which aims to build a very large multicore processor containing several hundreds of cores. The basic building block of the system relies on the dataflow architecture developed by Dr. Kavi in early 2000 (known as the Scheduled Dataflow). In addition, Dr. Kavi is exploring collaborations with faculty at the University of Pisa to improve the performance of next generation memory systems for multicore processors. Dr. Kavi is seeking funds to travel to Pisa and Siena with his graduate students so that the UNT research team can spend time understanding the research conducted by Italian researchers and develop clear plans to integrate UNT research with European research projects. ↑

Congratulations to Robert Akl (left) and Ram Dantu (right) on being selected by students as the Professor of the Year runner up award during National Engineers Week in February 2012. The award was presented by the Council of Engineering Organizations for motivating and encouraging students to do more than their best.

	Student News

CSE faculty members selected the following outstanding students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering who were recognized at the UNT Honors Day on April 13, 2012.

Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Computer Science – Brandon Nelson

Former Marine Brandon Nelson is utilizing his G.I. Bill to pursue a degree in Computer Science at UNT. During his time at UNT, Brandon's passion for coding has grown through the knowledge and experiences his professors have provided. In addition to a BS in Computer Science, he is pursuing a minor in Mathematics. He has been able to use his mathematical background to improve his abilities in software engineering. With a planned graduation in December 2012, he looks forward to a promising career. In addition to Computer Science, Brandon also loves music. He has been a percussionist for nearly twenty years. Brandon is married to his loving wife Jennifer, and loves spending time with his puppy and two cats. Brandon would like to thank all of UNT's staff and faculty for their continued support and efforts. He would also like to thank them for the honor of this award. ↑

Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Computer Engineering – Andrew Allen

Andrew Allen transferred to UNT in 2009 and is currently working towards Bachelor's degrees in Computer Engineering and Mathematics. He will graduate in May 2012 and plans to attend graduate school. He is interested in artificial intelligence and spends some time studying machine learning. He was also selected to take part in UNT's Research Training Group (RTG) last summer. Drew enjoys playing soccer, running, and reading in his spare time. He would like to thank everyone in the CSE department for three outstanding years. ↑

Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Information Technology – Brett McCormick

Brett McCormick transferred to UNT in the Fall of 2009 from Collin College (Collin County Community College), where he studied Convergence Technology in an NSF funded ATE program. He found out about UNT's IT program through David Keathly and Convergence Technology Center staff Ann Blackman. Once he got to UNT, he dove straight into college life at Santa Fe dorms, where he met his best friends and girlfriend, and started adjusting to Engineering school. As Brett went through the IT program, he met his partner in crime Kyle Taylor, and they have really developed an entrepreneurial spirit. Once they gained enough knowledge through the CSE classes, they started work on their Senior Design project, a Public Transportation Tracking System powered by mobile phones. Their project paper has been accepted at the National Transportation Workforce Summit so Brett and Kyle will travel to Washington, DC on April 24 to participate in the conference and represent UNT. Brett's senior design team is developing their transit tracking system with collaboration from Denton County Transit Authority, and they are planning on testing their system during April and May. They will present their project during the Design Day on April 27. Brett is the team lead and he said it has been an exciting, but stressful process! Outside of the design lab, Brett gives tours to prospective students as a College of Engineering Ambassador in the Dean's Office. Brett said it has been an amazing job and opportunity to work with the Dean's office staff to help prospective students decide on an engineering school. Brett also participates in other extracurricular activities, such as the College of Arts and Sciences Innovation Challenge, AT&T Hackathon event, member of UNT IEEE student chapter, recreational and high school soccer referee, UNT Robotics Society, Keep Denton Beautiful Volunteer, Excellent Engineers Volunteer, and Girl Scouts Robotics Competition volunteer (IEEE event), and more! From Summer 2009 to January 2012, Brett worked at UNT's own Network Security Lab, and he has since began pursuing work in the mobile apps industry. Over the summers, he has also worked in the CSE Department's Robocamp programs. In Summer 2012, Brett will be doing an internship with Bottle Rocket Apps in Addison as an Android Developer. ↑

Outstanding Master's Student in Computer Science – Sandeep Panchakarla

Sandeep Panchakarla is from India and he considers himself fortunate to have such a wonderful family. During his childhood, his parents had to work so hard to provide him and his younger brother a proper education, good food and other basic necessities. His Dad never wanted to compromise with his educational standards. There were days when his Dad had to get help from a friend to pay the fee for him to get in a good school. There were days when his parents had to work so hard to clear all the debts they had. Yet his parents never compromised with anything about their family. Sandeep's mom, who is also his best friend, used to tell him all these things as bedtime stories which helped him to understand the value of life. Sandeep feels lucky to get the same care and guidance from his major professor here, Dr.Xiaohui Yuan. Sandeep said Dr. Yuan has taught him about the subjects and also life. Dr. Yuan has been his teacher, friend, philosopher and guide. Sandeep is thankful Dr. Yuan has steered him in the right direction through some tough situations. Sandeep want to thank his labmates, Giritharan Balathasan and Mohamed Abouelenien, for working with him and being his good friends. Sandeep is very happy and his parents are proud that he was recognized as Outstanding Masters student in Computer Science at UNT. He believes he received this award because of the support from all these wonderful people in his life. Sandeep is grateful to UNT for recognizing him as an outstanding student. He thanks everyone for inspiring him to do his best. ↑

Outstanding Master's Student in Computer Engineering – Brandon Gozick

Brandon Gozick received his BS in Computer Engineering from University of North Texas in Summer 2010. The following semester, he began UNT's Graduate program and received a position as a Research Assistant in the Network Security Lab (NSL). During his time here, his interests have grown tremendously in adaptive and ubiquitous mobile computing. He worked with a fellow student on project creating an indoor navigation method for the blind which was subsequently awarded UNT's 2012 Graduate Students Impact Award. This award is given to those projects that could make the biggest impact on improving lives and society. Brandon defended his thesis titled "A Driver, Vehicle and Road Safety System Using Smartphones" in March 2012. His research resulted in potential safety enhancing techniques that categorized real time problems that arise for drivers on the road using only smartphone based sensors. This project spawned Mobile Life Guard, which was accepted by the NSF Innovation Corps program at Stanford University where he served as the Entrepreneurial Lead on a team with fellow CSE Professor, Dr. Ram Dantu. His team was only 1 of 21 teams out of more than 350 selected and was awarded with a $50,000 grant to improve the driver safety system for potential public use. He currently has 3 IEEE publications and 2 more under review. His current research interests are in the converging area of Mobile Cloud Computing. When not in the lab, Brandon is either on the court playing basketball with friends or creating interactive Android applications. ↑

Outstanding PhD Student in Computer Science and Engineering – Oleg Garitselov

Oleg Garitselov received his MS/BS in Computer Science from Moscow Baumann State University in 2003. After serving in the US military for five years and working for two years as a government contractor he went back to pursue his PhD in Computer Engineering in January 2010. His area of interest is Nanoscale VLSI Systems Design. While receiving great support from his major professor, Dr. Saraju Mohanty and co-major professor Dr. Elias Kougianos has put Oleg on fast track for completing his research and studies. He also taught robotics and game programming to high school students that attended the UNT Robocamp program in the summer of 2010. He has won a fellowship award to attend Design Automation Summer School (DASS) in San Francisco, CA in summer of 2011. Oleg has published/presented 2 journal and 9 international conferences articles. The research is funded by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF). Additionally he served as a program committee member/reviewer for 13 conferences and workshops. He defended his PhD dissertation titled "Metamodeling-based Fast Optimization of Nanoscale AMS SoCs" in February 2012. ↑

	Outstanding Students recognize CSE faculty members
On Honors Day, the following CSE faculty members were recognized by their students as a positive influence in their college career: Robert Akl Ram Dantu Yan Huang David Keathly Saraju Mohanty Ian Parberry Xiaohui Yuan  ↑

CSE Graduate Student honored by Toulouse Graduate School

Yassine Belkhouche (L) with his major professor, Dr. Bill Buckles (R), at the banquet Mohammed Yassine Belkhouche was honored for his academic excellence and performance by the Toulouse Graduate School during the UNT International Education Week. UNT International, Office of Sustainability, and Division of Institutional Equity and Diversity hosted Celebrating Great Global Citizens on Monday, April 16, 2012 at UNT's Apogee Stadium. One of the University's main goals is to help nurture and create excellence in students who can be leaders in a global society. The banquet and ceremony honored students who have done outstanding work at the University of North Texas and embody the university's core values of internationalism, sustainability, and diversity. Congratulations to Yassine on this award! ↑

CSE Students defend PhD Dissertations

Congratulations to these students who successfully defended their PhD dissertations in Spring 2012! Mohammed Yassine Belkhouche (right) Dissertation: Multi-modal, Multi-perspective Image Registration and Fusion Major Professor: Dr. Bill Buckles Defense Date: March 27, 2012 Oleg Garitselov (right) Dissertation: Metamodeling-based Fast Optimization of Nanoscale AMS SoCs Major Professor: Dr. Saraju P. Mohanty Defense Date: February 23, 2012 Terry Wayne Griffin (left) Dissertation: GPS CaPPture: A System for GPS Trajectory Collection, Processing, and Destination Prediction Major Professor: Dr. Yan Huang Defense Date: March 30, 2012 ↑

Three Students defend MS Theses

Congratulations to these graduate students who defended in Spring 2012! Juan C. Franco (left) Thesis: Rapid Prototyping and Design of a Fast Random Number Generator Major Professor: Dr. Saraju P. Mohanty Defense Date: March 15, 2012 Brandon Gozick (right) Thesis: A Driver, Vehicle and Road Safety System Using Smartphones Major Professor: Dr. Ram Dantu Defense Date: March 27, 2012 Saratchandra Indrakanti (left) Thesis: A Global Stochastic Framework to Simulate and Visualize Epidemics Major Professor: Dr. Armin R. Mikler Defense Date: March 27, 2012 ↑

Computer Science student wins first place in AT&T Hackathon

Christopher Rust (in the middle) with his team at the AT&T Hack-a-thon Christopher Rust, Computer Science senior, and his team won first prize and $500 in the mobile health category of AT&T's Hack-a-thon competition in Dallas in February. Christopher's application would help people with disabilities use mobile devices more easily. He developed his app, "RehAPPbilitate," in about eight hours at the Hack-a-thon. This app is for Android phones and features an interface with large buttons on either side of the phone's screen to scroll through letters and numbers. Rust has uploaded the technical demo to the Android Market app store for free and plans to develop the app into a more full featured product with the help of Dr. Kamesh Namuduri. Read the full story in the North Texas Daily. You can check out "RehAPPbililtate here. ↑

Advising Corner

If you're wondering which classes to take, it's a breeze! Just visit this advising page to download the Academic Guide for your major and catalog year, and go to the page with the list of the required courses. Anything that fills a requirement you don't already have, fits in your schedule, and has the prerequisites satisfied is a class for you. Sign up for it immediately if not sooner! Occasionally you may be on an earlier catalog year and the courses under your catalog have changed to different courses. For example, if you are on the 2009-10 catalog as an IT major, it lists CSCE 1035 and 1045. Those courses were changed to CSCE 3220 and CSCE 3420 (Human Computer Interfaces and Internet Programming respectively). So, you will take the new courses if you don't already have credit for 1035 and 1045 (as they are no longer offered). ↑

Exit Interview for Graduating Graduate Students on May 4th

Dr. Bill Buckles, Graduate Studies Coordinator, invites all graduate students who are graduating this semester to come to an Exit Interview Meeting on May 4th at 3 pm in the CSE department's main conference room, F223. To ensure the quality of our program and to determine how it should be changed and improved, we seek information from a number of sources including our recent graduates, our advisory board, area employers, and most importantly, from our current students. Dr. Buckles looks forward to meeting with our graduate students who will be leaving us this semester and getting their feedback about their experience in our CSE department. ↑

Graduating Undergraduates should complete Online Exit Interview

Congratulations to all of our BA and BS graduates! If you are graduating with an undergraduate degree in May, you should have received a letter from Dr. Barrett Bryant inviting you to take an online exit interview. This simple survey has been designed to let the Undergraduate Committee know how our graduates are prepared according to the ABET program outcomes for Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology. The deadline for taking this survey is May 1st. Students who participate in the survey will be entered in a drawing for a UNT item that will be given away on May 2. Thanks for taking the survey and congratulations again on your graduation! ↑

Course Exit Surveys help improve our undergraduate programs

All undergraduate students are asked to take two surveys at the end of the semester. The SETE is a university survey about your instructor. The online exit survey is about the course to find out how well our ABET course outcomes have been met. At the end of the semester, your instructor will ask you to complete an online exit survey to evaluate how effective the course has been in helping you achieve the desired outcomes for that course. Each undergraduate course has outcomes, which are measurable skills or knowledge that students should achieve by the end of the course. The outcomes of all the courses in the curriculum are designed to ensure that you will have mastered the objectives of the degree by the time you graduate. 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. The BS in Computer Science has been accredited since 1986 and the BS in Computer Engineering has been accredited since 2008. The Undergraduate Committee will seek ABET accreditation for the Information Technology program in 2012-2013. ABET requires us to have a program of continuing assessment and improvement. Your surveys are reviewed by the CSE Undergraduate Committee and needed changes are made in our courses. Thank you for completing these exit surveys and helping to improve our CSE undergraduate programs. ↑

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	College of Engineering News

Design Day for CENG Students on April 27

The College of Engineering is hosting its second annual Design Day on Friday, April 27, at Discovery Park. The program will begin at 9 am in the Auditorium, B155, with a Welcome Address followed by poster and project presentations in the Discovery Park Foyer. Students in the following College of Engineering programs will present their projects: A) Computer Engineering at 11:30 am in B155 B) Information Technology at 1:30 pm in F223 C) Electrical Engineering at 1 pm in B242 D) Mechanical and Energy Engineering in D201 E) Electronics Engineering Technology at 11:30 am in B190 F) Mechanical Engineering Technology at 1 pm in B185 G) Construction Engineering Technology at 1:30 pm in B192 Everyone is invited to attend Design Day and see what students are doing at the College of Engineering! ↑

College of Engineering opens Zero Energy Research Lab

The University of North Texas cut the ribbon on the College of Engineering's new Zero Energy Research Laboratory on April 20. This new lab will give students and researchers the tools to study the next generations of sustainable and renewable energy technologies. The lab is a state-of-the-art facility — the only one of its kind in Texas — designed specifically to test various energy technologies and systems in order to achieve a net-zero consumption of energy. Net-zero consumption means different building systems, such as solar, geothermal and wind systems, can produce enough energy to power a building and in many cases even create excess energy to return to the power grid. For more information, read this UNT press release and see this Denton Record-Chronicle article published on April 21, 2012. ↑

Name your Building by May 1st and Win an iPad2

Students are invited to participate in naming the building at Discovery Park. Of course, we are referring to the building where you all attend your engineering classes and labs. Here's your chance to come up with a catchy or innovative name for the building and win an iPad 2! Examples of buildings with names: SAGE Hall, Marquis Hall, etc. The best entry will win the iPad. We are looking forward to your exciting suggestions! One entry per student. The deadline for entries is May 1, 2012. ↑