Computer Science and Engineering

The department is pleased to welcome three new faculty members for Fall 2012.

Dr. Renee Bryce joins us as an Associate Professor from Utah State University where she has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. She completed her Ph. D. in computer science in 2006 at Arizona State University and her B. S. and M. S. degrees in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1999 and 2000, respectively. Dr. Bryce's research applies combinatorial software testing techniques to help testers to more effectively identify software defects. Among her recent research funding are grants from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to examine test suite prioritization and reduction techniques for web applications, the National Science Foundation to capture, analyze and prevent software bugs, and a U. S. Forest Service grant to create an open source software tool that allows the biological research community to more accurately record and share metadata. She also has an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates award in software testing. In 2012-2013 it is expected that Dr. Bryce will teach classes in software engineering and software testing. Dr. Bryce has been the faculty advisor of the USU ACM-W chapter and plans to help UNT initiate a similar chapter for women students.

Dr. Cornelia Caragea joins us as an Assistant Professor from the Pennsylvania State University, where she has been a Post-Doctoral Scholar in the Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory. She will be part of the Knowledge Discovery from Digital Information cluster at UNT and will have a joint appointment in the Department of Library and Information Sciences. Dr. Caragea completed her Ph. D. in computer science in 2009 at Iowa State University and her B. S. in computer science at the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1997. Dr. Caragea's research applies machine learning techniques to text classification in large library databases, sequence analysis in bioinformatics, and emergency response management in disasters, including the development of effective and efficient methods for classification, organization, indexing, and summarization, to facilitate retrieval of content that is tailored to the interests of specific users or groups. In 2012-2013 it is expected that Dr. Caragea will teach classes in machine learning and social network analysis.

Dr. Rodney Nielsen joins us as an Associate Professor from the University of Colorado, where he has been an Assistant Professor Adjunct in the Computer Science Department, a Research Scientist in the University of Colorado Center for Computational Language and Education Research, and a Research Scientist with Boulder Language Technologies. He completed a dual Ph. D. in computer science and cognitive science in 2008 from the University of Colorado and has a B. S. in computer science and B. A. in mathematics from Minot State University in 1986 and an M. S. degree in computer science from the University of Colorado in 2005. Dr. Nielsen's research is primarily in the areas of Machine Learning, Computational Semantics, Natural Language Processing, and the application of these fields to Educational Technology, Health Informatics, Companion Robots, and End-User Development. Among his recent research funding are grants from the the National Science Foundation on development of companion robots for dialoguing, especially generating and answering questions, in the context of providing education and training related to depression, monitoring participants for signs of physical, mental or emotional deterioration, and being a companion, and the U. S. Department of Education on helping instructors assess young students' knowledge and skills in real-time by analyzing their responses to questions. In 2012-2013 it is expected that Dr. Nielsen will teach classes in natural language processing and semi-supervised and active learning.