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Demo Session for Mobile Computing/Smart Home Automation (Tuesday, May 12th, 12:00 pm — 1:30 pm)

May 11, 2015 / Prajit / 0 Comments

Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee is organizing the annual demo session for two of his classes: Introduction to Mobile Computing and Systems for Smart Home Automation. This Demo session will be held on this Tuesday, 12th of May from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm in the third floor corridor the in the ITE building. This is the same place where Hi Tea is organized. Please find attached a Flyer for the event.

This event is exciting for people trying to learn about Smart Home Automation and Mobile Computing. Some projects have the potential for commercial expansion too. Please attend the event, in order to learn about the projects, in this area of research at UMBC.

Jane Gethmann's message to the CSEE students!

May 30, 2014 / Prajit / 0 Comments

Hello Folks,

As you probably know, our dear Jane is retiring today. She has shared with us a message to the CSEE students. Please click on the images below to read her message.

We wish her a fond farewell and all the happiness in her life ahead!

Baltimore Code Craftsmanship April Meetup, 7pm Thr Apr 24 at Betamore

April 23, 2014 / Primal Pappachan / 0 Comments

The April Baltimore Code Craftsmanship practice will be held at Betamore the premier startup incubator in Baltimore. Come hone your software skills, mingle with the crowd, develop connections for the future. This is also a chance to enjoy the Federal Hill nightlife after the meeting. The meeting will be held in conjunction with UMBC ACM Student Chapter. The event is open to all UMBC students, however programming ability is required. Interested faculty members can join in too! This can also be a good opportunity to network with professionals from various companies and get yourself noticed for any job opportunities that exist.

When: Thursday, April 24th, 6.30 pm (Networking)
Where: 1111 Light Street, 4th Floor Baltimore MD

This is a hands on coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your laptop equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don’t have a laptop, come anyway, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

More info can be read at http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-Code-Craftsmanship/events/176386692/

Research @ CSEE: Quantifying validation of Non-Testable Programs

April 9, 2014 / Primal Pappachan / 0 Comments

We would like to invite you for the next talk in our UMBC ACM techTalk Research@CSEE series. Professor Mohammad Raunak, who is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Loyola University Maryland will talk about “Quantifying validation of Non-Testable Programs”. Dr. Raunak will talk about his work in developing verification as well as validation approaches for software testing and how it can extended to non-testable programs.

Abstract: An important aspect of software testing is the development and use of different adequacy criteria, often referred to ascoverage criteria. These criteria help guide verification and validation (V&V) activities, and thus improve overall quality of software. However, all adequacy criteria assume the presence of test-oracles, which is not applicable for the set of programs often termed as `non-testable.’ Simulations, machine learning algorithms, and other non-deterministic software are examples of such programs. There has been little research to develop verification or validation related adequacy criteria for these types of programs. In this paper, we argue that developing such adequacy criteria are not only possible, but crucial for quantifying and communicating how well V&V activities have been applied on a program. We propose one approach to a validation coverage criteria and indicate how it can be extended to other V&V related coverage criteria for `non-testable’ programs.

Speaker Bio: Mohammad Raunak is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Loyola University Maryland. His primary research interest involves verification, validation, and analysis of complex software and simulation systems. He is also interested in modeling and analyzing software and other human-intensive processes. Dr. Raunak received his MS and PhD in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts Amherst. His email and web addresses are raunak@loyola.edu and http://www.cs.loyola.edu/~raunak/.

Event Details:
Talk: Quantifying validation of ‘Non-Testable’ Programs
Theme: Software System Modeling & Simulation
Date: Friday, April 18, 2014
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Room: ITE 346

Please RSVP for the talk here: http://my.umbc.edu/events/24044/

Call for nominations for ACM student chapter officers

April 7, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

We would like invite nominations from the graduate students in the CSEE department for student officer positions of the UMBC ACM student chapter, for academic year 2014 – 2015 (Fall 2014 to Spring 2015).

ACM or the Association for Computing Machinery, is a premier organization that promotes computing and technology around the US and the world. On the campus, the ACM student chapter is affiliated and supported by the UMBC graduate students association (GSA). The goal of the ACM student chapter is to foster interaction between all students, both graduate and undergraduate, in the CSEE department, provide a forum for student interaction, and opportunities for members to expand their knowledge of computing.

The positions available (and their general responsibilities):

Chair: is responsible for the overall management of the student chapter; Co-ordinate with rest of the student officers in planning events; Represent the student chapter at the GSA meetings.
Vice-Chair: Work with the chair to ensure smooth functioning of the chapter; Represent the student chapter at the GSA meetings in the absence of the chair.
Secretary: Co-ordinate with other student chapter officers for event planning; Point of contact for the student chapter;
Treasurer: Manage the ACM student chapter accounts; annual budget; expenditure during events

These positions are open to graduate students only. If elected, you would be required to signup as an ACM student member. Membership fee is $19 only.

Please email us the position you would like to run for (there will be elections if we get multiple nominations for a position). Alternatively you can nominate any other person for the positions above. In that case, please send their name, email address and which position you would like to nominate them for.

Please send in your nominations by end of day, Monday, April 14, 2014 to acmofficers at lists dot umbc dot edu. Elections will take place the following week (venue, date and time to be announced later).

Tech Talk: What can a Humanoid Robot Learn?

March 30, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

We hope everyone had a fun spring break! We are back with another talk in our UMBC ACM techTalk Research@CSEE series. Professor Tim Oates, who is also one of the faculty advisers of the ACM student chapter, will talk about “What can a Humanoid Robot Learn?“. Dr. Oates will split the talk into two sessions. In the first half, he will introduce the topic and talk about current research being pursued in the area of humanoid robots. Whereas, the second half of the talk will be an interactive session focusing on ideating challenges and future research directions.

Abstract: Robots and AI have a long history together, both in the popular culture and in research. In this talk I will review some of my past work at the juncture of robotics, AI, and machine learning, as well as ongoing work with collaborators at UMCP along the same lines. With those collaborators, I wrote a proposal to buy a few humanoid robots that was funded, so I’ll next describe the robots that we’ve bought. Finally, I’d like to have an open discussion about my ideas for research using these robots, and ideas that those in the audience might have as well. My goal is to get as many people as is practical involved with the robots, which are relatively expensive and thus not a common resource. If you’re coming to the talk, spend a few minutes beforehand thinking about what you would do if you had access to a humanoid robot for research purposes.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Tim Oates is an Oros Familty Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1989, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1997 and 2000, respectively. Prior to coming to UMBC in the Fall of 2001, he spent a year as a postdoc in the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 Dr. Oates won a prestigious NSF CAREER award. He is an author or co-author of more than 100 peer reviewed papers and is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include pattern discovery in time series, grammatical inference, graph mining, statistical natural language processing, robotics, and language acquisition.

Event Details:
Date: Friday, April 4, 2014
Time: 10.00 AM to 11.00 AM
Room: ITE 346

Please RSVP for the talk here: http://my.umbc.edu/events/23881

Baltimore Code Craftsmanship Mar. Meetup, 7pm Thr Mar 27, UMBC

March 19, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

The Baltimore Code Craftsmanship meetup group, organized by the UMBC ACM student chapter, will hold its monthly meeting at 7:00 pm on Thursday, March 27 in the Physics Building, Room # 107 on the UMBC Campus. The meetup is for the students, faculty and software developers in the Baltimore area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

Join the meetup and register to attend here : http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-Code-Craftsmanship/events/171037892/

Tech Talk: System Support for Renewable Energy-driven Devices

March 5, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

We hope everyone’s been having a fun Spring semester so far! Before winter break last we kicked-off the UMBC ACM techTalk, a thematic series of technical talks, with the theme Research@CSEE. This theme is designed to create awareness about current research efforts as well as future research interests of CSEE faculty and affiliated research labs. Join us on Friday, March 7, at 12:00 pm in Engineering Building Room # 027, to hear Prof. Nilanjan Banerjee talk about “System Support for Renewable Energy-driven Devices.” This is your chance to participate in a niche discussion and grab some soda while you’re at it.

Abstract: Renewable energy driven devices span micro-harvester powered devices for healthcare application to large solar panel or wind turbine driven houses. The key challenge in designing these wide spectrum of devices is balancing energy supply with energy demand. However, depending on the size of the system, specific challenges such as harvester design (in micro-harvesters) and user-comfort (in renewable energy-driven homes) must be addressed. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the challenges in designing such systems in the context of both micro- and macro- renewable energy-driven that my group has designed.

Bio: Nilanjan Banerjee is an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is a NSF Career Awardee and a receipient of the Microsoft Research Software Engineering Innovations Award. He also received a Yahoo! Outstanding Disseration award and a Best Undergraduate thesis award. His research interests are in the areas of Mobile, Embedded, and Sensor systems.

Event Details:
Date: Friday, March 7, 2014.
Time: 12.00 PM to 1.00 PM
Room: Engineering Building Room # 027

Please RSVP on Facebook or myUMBC.

Baltimore Code Craftsmanship Feb. Meetup, 7pm Thr Feb 20, UMBC

February 17, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

The Baltimore Code Craftsmanship meetup group, organized by the UMBC ACM student chapter, will hold its monthly meeting at 7:00 pm on Thursday, February 20 in the Sondheim Building, Room # 107 on the UMBC Campus. The meetup is for the students, faculty and software developers in the Baltimore area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

Join the meetup and register to attend here : http://www.meetup.com/Baltimore-Code-Craftsmanship/events/166547102/

UMBC's 36th Graduate Research Conference

February 11, 2014 / Varish / 0 Comments

UMBC’s annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) is back and will be held on Wednesday, March 26, 2014 ! The GRC provides graduate students an opportunity to showcase their work and research in form of poster and oral presentations to the UMBC community. Graduate students are invited to present their ongoing or previously published research as posters or oral presentations. Students are also encouraged to convert their class projects into poster or oral presentations. For the recently joined graduate students, it is an opportunity to learn what your fellow colleagues are working on.

Please consider submitting and presenting your work at the GRC as it provides you an opportunity to gain valuable experience in communicating and presenting your work, especially to people outside your field. To participate, submit your abstract by March 1 here : http://gsa.umbc.edu/grc-2/grc-presenters/

Attendees and presenters both need to register, also by March 1 here : https://docs.google.com/a/umbc.edu/forms/d/18OWOmZ6yuSTEigwdHpaTYZyx2NWmZRpMR-X_Gluv_nU/viewform

UMBC’s Graduate Research Conference is organaized by UMBC’s Graduate Student Association. More information about this year’s Graduate Research Conference can be found here : http://gsa.umbc.edu/grc-2/

UMBC ACM STUDENT CHAPTER