News, Events and Announcements

Tommy Carpenter and Caleb MacDonald, CCSU students majoring in Computer Science, have won the first prize at the national Student Research Competition organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The competition took place at the 41^st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) on March 10-13, 2010, Milwaukee, WI. SIGCSE is the largest international conference dedicated to Computer Science education that is attended each year by well over 1000 attendees from around the world. Tommy and Caleb’s work focused on using iris recognition to protect mobile devices from unauthorized access. Both of them are supported by Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics Scholarship program at CCSU funded by a half-million grant from the National Science Foundation.

ETS is a standardized comprehensive test for Computer Science students. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) conducts these tests nationally. This test is mandatory for all CS-Honors students and is required for graduation.

ETS exam announcement

Good news!
The Computer Science Lab in MS 314 will be open for CS students as follows:

Monday    10:00 am – 1:30 pm
Tuesday   10:00 am – 1:30 pm and 3:30 – 6:30 pm
Wednesday 10:00 am – 1:30 pm
Thursday  10:00 am – 1:30 pm and 3:30 – 6:30 pm

Justin Babey, a student worker, will be available in the lab during the above times for assistance with CS courses. Please feel free to use the room to work in study groups, course projects, homework, etc.

The Computer Information Technology Graduate Program invites you to join us for a Fall, 2009 Capstone Presentation on Friday, December 11, 2009 at 11:00 a.m. in Maria Sanford Hall, Room 203. "Development and Evaluation of Semantic Web Ontologies" presented by Saumil Shah & David Thiery, team advisor: Dr. Neli Zlatareva. A meeting for Spring 2010 teams will follow the presentations. All CIT students are invited and encouraged to attend.

Announcement

Attention CIT Students: If you have not yet formed or joined a group for your Spring or Summer 2010 Capstone presentation, please contact Neva Deutsch at 860-832-2710 or deutschgem@ccsu.edu as soon as possible. Please include your concentration (CET or CS) and interests for the project. Thank you.

Department of Computer Science will offer a section of CS 290 titled Secrecy: Science and Fiction in the Spring 2010 semester. The main focus of this course is cryptology, its evolution from ancient times to today, as well as the portrayal of cryptology and cryptographers in fiction and literature. Check out the course wiki for more details.

Working with his family and friends, Central Connecticut State University has established a fund in honor of Brian M. O’Connell, a professor in CCSU’s computer science and philosophy departments who passed away in May 2008.

Official site

Fall 2008 issue of Threads, a newsletter published by the Computer Science Department is now available.

Threads (Fall 2008)

Brian M. O'Connell, Esq., 47, of West Hartford, died Wednesday, (May 21, 2008) at his home. He leaves his wife Sarah Cox. Born in Wethersfield to the late Robert F. and Elizabeth (Shannon) O'Connell he lived in the Hartford area all his life. He graduated from Northwest Catholic High School, Trinity College, and the UCONN School of Law. He practiced law in the Hartford area from 1987 to 1996 and was a professor in computer science and philosophy at Central Connecticut State University. He founded the Young Democrats of West Hartford, and was a member of DeMolay, IEEE, and the Connecticut Bar Assoc. He loved his students, his friends, reading, music, robots, and rocketry. Friends may call on Sunday, May 25, from 3-6 p.m. at the Molloy Funeral Home, 906 Farmington Ave., West Hartford. Donations in his memory may be made to www.alleycat.org. Messages of sympathy and condolences may be made at www.molloyfuneralhome.com

Dr. Zdravko Markov has been named co-principal investigator on a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project involves developing, implementing, and testing curricular materials that teach core Artificial Intelligence topics using a unifying theme of machine learning. Machine learning involves developing systems or programs that improve on their performance based on experience.

CCSU news announcement

Drs. Kurkovsky and Kjell, together with Dr. Gotchev from the Department of Mathematics and Dr. Sharma from the department of Physics, received a nearly half million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation program Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM). Beginning in the fall 2007, this grant will fund scholarships for academically talented but financially needy students majoring in computer science, mathematics, or physics. Scholarships provided through this program will pay up to $5,200 per year for up to four years.

Scholarship program web site