Junior and Senior Discovery Informatics and Computer Science majors — Are you looking for an interesting class for Spring 2012? Dr. Anderson will be co-teaching a Special Topics course with Dr. Shedlock of the Biology Department: CSCI 490-02/BIOL 502L: Vertebrate Genome Lab. The lab is a 3 Credit hour offering on Thursdays from 5:30 – 7:30 pm. You must also register for the lecture, BIOL 502: Verebrate Genome Biology. Check out the flier below for more details or email Dr. Anderson if you’re interested in this unique opportunity: andersonp@cs.cofc.edu.

Computer science students Edward Pharr and Chad Freeman make headlines at the Medical University of South Carolina.

http://www.musc.edu/catalyst/archive/2011/co10-7computer.html

Edward is working toward an MS in Computer and Information Sciences. Chad is a senior, completing a BS in Computer Science.

Mark Daniels (left) and Chad Freeman (right) pictured.

Students in our game programming class (CITA 210) have created a new video game for Android phones. Adolfo Rico Motis, Corneliu Illisescu, and Carlos Rodriguez Flick prototyped “Okho” while taking CITA 210 in Fall 2010. They continued development and finally released it to the Android Market in early September 2011.

“Okho,” which means box in Russian, is inspired by Tetris, except squares come to you from four directions. The game is free, but uses paid advertisements for income.

The game can be downloaded here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gaidde.okho

The game programming class teaches students how to design, prototype and test computer games using a scripting language. This class is part of our new Computing in the Arts (CITA) major. The CITA major is designed to offer students an interdisciplinary experience in computer science and the arts.

For more information on the “Okho” development experience, see: http://news.cofc.edu/2011/09/20/students-create-android-gaming-app/

Are you interested in an exciting and challenging undergraduate research opportunity? You may want to consider joining the new Bioinformatics Research Group (BiRG). Our research interests include:
• high performance computing,
• pattern recognition,
• data mining, evolutionary
• computation and optimization,
• computational science,
• cloud computing, and
• eScience.

We apply our computational expertise to a variety of problems from fields such as biochemistry and molecular biology. At present, we have multidisciplinary projects underway in metabolomics, human cognition, toxicology, and immunology.

We are looking for 2 - 6 students to join our research team. Students with all of levels of experience are welcome to contact Dr. Paul Anderson. For more information on our research goals and expectations, please see http://birg.cs.cofc.edu/index.php/Opportunities.

If you don’t work on important problems, it’s not likely that you’ll do important work. — Richard Hamming

Vanathi Vignesh has been awarded a full-ride scholarship to attend the 2011 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Portland, Oregon for five days. She was selected from a competitive pool of applicants.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today's technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.

Congratulations Vanathi!

What is your major? If you want to work at Facebook, you'll need to major in computer science.

For several years, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that computer science and other software-oriented jobs will dominate the top 10 jobs list in the United States. We are now seeing the reality of those predictions and they are even better than expected, even during what is a tough economy for other majors on the College of Charleston campus.

Computer Science at the College of Charleston has 229 majors as of July 2011, up from 68 in 2006. In the last year alone, the enrollment into Computer Programming I is up approximately 25% over Fall 2010.

Senior exit data from computer science majors in May 2011 indicate that job offers and starting salaries have never been hotter in Charleston and around the country. Computer Science majors at the College of Charleston now work at many companies including Blackbaud, Benefit Focus, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Automated Trading Desk, eThority and hundreds of other amazing companies. Many graduates also have excellent career positions in the Department of Defense and other national security agencies.

A recent article in the Software Development Times describes well how software development is a cross-cutting competency applicable to all industries (and governments) and it not pegged to any particular industry. Reference: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/35710

The Computer Science department offers four distinct programs: Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Discovery Informatics and Computing in the Arts.

The Computer Science Department hosted the Best Buy’s Geek Squad Summer Academy on June 23-24, 2011. With 125 girls in attendance, the camp was aimed at igniting their interest and confidence in technology. The curriculum included fun and interactive classes in PC Hardware, Digital Video, Digital Photography, and Digital Music. The success of the event was evident by hearing some of the students explain elements of what they learned during the camp.

The College community provided extraordinary support to the Summer Academy. The event occurred in an atmosphere comparable a “mini campus” with over 10 classrooms and facilities utilized. Bringing extra comfort to the sultry Lowcountry days, the Office of Admissions contributed cool drinks throughout the event. Members of the Library staff provided hands-on support on both days. The Physical Plant, Public Safety, IT, Registrar’s Office, Upward Bound, Student Affairs, Media Relations, and Mail Services are some of the other departments that helped to make the occasion comfortable and welcoming for the 9 to 18 year-old girls. At the end of the sessions, Christine Moore, of Computer Science, expressed words of encouragement to the participants. Debbie Counts, from the Office of Admissions, briefly addressed the girls about preparing for college and invited them to explore opportunities at the College of Charleston.

The Summer Academy was sponsored by Best Buy Geek Squad and Junior Girls Day Out Community Project.

The Computer Science Department hosted the first “Biz Apps” Technology and Entrepreneurship Camp for 14 middle and high school students from June 6-June 23, 2011 in the Software Innovations Lab.

Joshua Wooten and Joshua Moser, Computer Science majors at the College of Charleston, taught the students how to create basic Android mobile applications for their business ventures. During the camp the students learnt how to start their own businesses from Lancie Affonso, the founder of NetGen Consulting, a non-profit that provides entrepreneurship training programs for youth entrepreneurs (and CS students who are interested in starting their own technology ventures:)

The business plan competition was hosted by the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship and the camp was sponsored by Motley Rice LLC and YEScarolina.

Thomas Zalonis has been awarded a Doctoral Fellowship to pursue his Ph.D. studies in Computer Science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. This fellowship is awarded to only a few of the top Ph.D. students. It comes with a full tuition waiver and a stipend to allow graduate students to focus on their classes and research.

Thomas received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from our department. Additionally, he has done research in machine learning and music information retrieval funded by the National Science Foundation (with Dr. Bill Manaris). Thomas has attended two research conferences (ISMIR-2008 in Philadelphia, and IASA-2009 in Athens, Greece), and has three research publications to his credit.

Thomas will begin his Ph.D. studies in August.

The number of computer science majors tipped 200 in Spring 2011. The size of the graduating class continues to rise with 26 graduating in 2010-2011 academic year. The new major, Computing in the Arts, is expected to add an additional 50 majors over the next five years.
Pictured are the three Outstanding Computer Science Majors for 2010-2011. From left to right they are Perry Spyropoulos, Chris Starr (CS chairman), Stephanie Cary, Mike Auerbach (SSM Dean) and Steven Dix.

Text of P&C article from Sunday 8.May.2011, p 3B:

College of Charleston graduate Brittany Johnson wrung everything she could from her college experience.

The computer science major from Sumter worked as an undergraduate researcher with the Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences for three years. That work provided her with the opportunity to attend several national and state research conferences to present her work.

Johnson, 22, is a member of the South Carolina Alliance for Minority Participation, National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Association for Computing Machinery. She also is part of the college's first group of Ronald E. McNair Scholars, and had the best senior presentation at the first McNair summer conference.

She's one of the somewhat rare individuals who was "always attracted to equations, formulas, algorithms, counting and anything mathematical."

And she nourished her artistic side with music, playing the trumpet in the college's Pep Band. "Music also is about numbers, counting and keeping time," she said. But during her college years, it was mostly "a release from the academic world."

She plans to attend graduate school in the fall.

Johnson loved her experience in the computer science department, on the campus and in Charleston. "There's always something to do around here," she said.

Congratulations to Aspen Olmsted, a member of the Computer Science faculty, who has won Faculty of the Year in the School of Sciences and Mathematics!
Aspen and the other winners were chosen from nearly 100 nominations.

This year the 2011 Excellence in Collegiate Education and Leadership (ExCEL) Awards honored more than 30 students, staff, faculty and community members for their commitment to creating a campus environment that promotes diversity and excellence.

Congratulations again Aspen!

http://news.cofc.edu/2011/04/14/excel-award-winners-announced-2/

A creative effort to attract, nurture & promote Charleston's knowledge economy by facilitating a business, physical and social environment where technology companies thrive.
http://www.charlestondigitalcorridor.com/

College of Charleston students and alumni will soon begin using the Google Apps for Education suite, which includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites. This new system will give all students a much-needed increase in the amount of online storage space and will also be a substantial cost savings to the College.

Read full story:

http://news.cofc.edu/2010/11/college-to-implement-google-apps-for-education/

The Center for Continuing Professional Development and the Computer Science Department are offering a two week half day SQL Development bootcamp in J C Long Room 220 from May 16th, 2011- May 27th 2011. The course is part of the SQL Development Professional Certification Program.

The course will start each day at 8am and finish at noon. More information is available at http://ccpd.cs.cofc.edu

The department of Computer Science welcomes Cyril Claverie from our sister school, La Rochelle University, in France. Cyril is the fourth intern from La Rochelle that we have sponsored. Cyril is completing a two-year undergraduate course in the Institute of Computer Science with this three-month internship at the College of Charleston. He is working with Dr. Jim Bowring in the Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES). He will work on developing a new harness for unit-testing CIRDLES' open-source Tripoli software and on producing related documentation. You can find Cyril in room 207 JC Long, so please stop by and welcome him!

On Tuesday, 4th April 11 new students were inducted into Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE)Elipson Chapter of South Carolina. UPE is an international honors society for the computing and information disciplines. These students are Manny Francis Ani, Stephanie Cary, Stephen Dix, Nick Guzzardo, Alex Johnso, Jaime Miller, Brandon Sheppard, Perry Spyropoulos, Bobby Strickland, Staci Torrey and Megan Weaver.

The mission of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) is to recognize academic excellence
at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the computing and information sciences and the College of Charleston chapter is run by Dr. Renee McCauley.
Congratulations to those students!

On April 1, 2011, eight computer science/discovery informatics students from the College of Charleston spent some quality time in Atlanta with the developers of GWT and the App Engine. GWT is revolutionary, so talking with the developers was outstanding. During the conversation, the Googlers mentioned the importance of data structures, analysis of algorithms, compiler construction and automata theory. Each contributes to their ability to code the GWT, which is, of course, a compiler with interesting optimizations for AJAX and UI. We did not waste time talking about language knowledge requirements for Java and JavaScript. That goes without saying.

Of course we had a fantastic tour of the facility and enjoyed lunch with the Googlers. I particularly enjoyed the sushi and the orange-mint water. You’ll have to ask one of the students who attended to tell you about the green room used for pitching ideas.

I want to thank Bruce Johnson, the engineering site director for his time and attention to this next generation of computer scientists from the College of Charleston. I also want to thank Andrew Wamberg, Enterprise Account Manager for his help in arranging this special visit.

This was a special opportunity made available by Google ATL to the College of Charleston. Google funds several projects at the College of Charleston. The College of Charleston also deploys Google Apps for Education for all 10,000+ students at the College.

The one biggest take home tips from the Googlers @ Google ATL: Learn to code, then learn to code fast.

Do you think you are good enough for Google? Then hang out with us at the College of Charleston. You just can't get this level of geek at most universities.

Dr. Bowring took the 28 students in his CSCI 462 Software Engineering Practicum to POSSCON (Palmetto Open Source Software CONference : http://posscon.org/) on 24 and 25 March in Columbia, SC (students attended one or both days). Clay McCauley also drove a van and attended. POSSCON encourages students with free registration. Each student was tasked with meeting three presenters and then blogging about their experiences (see http://csci462-2011.wikispaces.com/). This was the third year for CofC students to attend and next year we anticipate having our own session at the conference.

The ORAU University Partnerships Office is pleased to provide the information below regarding a program available to all institutions. This notice is a service to ORAU Sponsoring and Associate Institutions. Please forward within your institution and broadly to colleagues as you feel appropriate.



Graduate Students

Life and Physical Sciences - Engineering - Computer Sciences - Medicine Mathematics - Social Sciences - Veterinary Medicine - Law


The Office of the Director of National Intelligence's (ODNI) National Security Analysis & Intelligence Summer Seminar (NSAISS) is now accepting applications through APRIL 3, 2011 for a two-week residential summer program in Washington, D.C., July 10-22, 2011.

NSAISS participants will be introduced to the business of intelligence and will interact with senior officials, current intelligence analysts, and private sector experts to explore intelligence disciplines, methodologies, and substantive topics through a curriculum of lectures, panels, case studies, simulations, and site visits to agencies. Program participants will receive accommodations, living expenses, and transportation to/from Washington D.C. and to all program activities.

Program participants must be US citizens, interested in intelligence careers, and currently enrolled university graduate students or exceptional graduating seniors with proven plans for ongoing graduate study in Fall 2011.

For more information about the program, eligibility and application visit: www.orau.org/nsaiss.





University Partnerships Office
university.partnerships@orau.org
Dr. Arlene Garrison - 865.241.1513(o), 865-599-3311(c)
Cathy Fore - 865.241.8158
Ann Farler - 865.576.1898

Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), www.orau.org , is a university consortium leveraging the scientific strength of 98 major research institutions to advance science and education by partnering with national laboratories, government agencies, and private industry. ORAU manages the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Computer Science at the College of Charleston continues to support economic development through the sponsorship of Pecha Kucha Charleston. Five hundred people gathered in February 2011 to hear another set of eight inspired creatives. It's all about creativity and software is the ultimate medium for a renaissance for creative human expression. Students from the CofC's Software Innovations Lab (image: Alex, Jeff, and Mike) and Clay (staff) ran the videos and slide shows for each of the 6 minute and 40 second presentations.

On Friday, February 25 2011, the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Computer Science Department at the College of Charleston hosted the 29th Annual High School Computer Programming Competition. The annual competition represents a recruiting and education tool for both students and faculty whether high school or college. The competition included nine teams of three students from high schools in the Southeastern region and for the first time, one of the teams was all-girl.

Students arrived in the afternoon and enjoyed a banquet with speaker Eric Wages of Google in Goose Creek. The banquet was followed by a two-and-a-half hour competition. The top four winning teams, listed below, were presented with prizes and trophies at the co-located Math Meet awards ceremony held the following day.

First Place:
School: Charlotte Math Club
Team: One Bit Wonders
Members: Brendan Fletcher, Kavi Jain, Jeremy Meyer

Second Place:
School: Wando High School
Team: The Spanish Inquisitors
Members: Jack Meagher, David Rogers, Jennica Egan

Third Place:
School: Providence Day School
Team: Providence Day Team #2
Members: Scott Dixon, Nelson Hall, Kevin Lee

Fourth Place:
School: North Carolina School of Science and Math
Team: Burninators!
Members: Bryce Taylor, Aakash Indurkhya, Jessie Duan

These CofC ACM students helped make it a success: Kyle Sprowles, Michael Cole, James Goodrich, Matt Saporito.

For more information about the High School Computer Programming Competition, please contact Dr. Jim Bowring at bowringj@cofc.edu or (843)953-0805.

Congratulations go out to Elena Barrio a Hospitality major at the College of Charleston, who took CSCI 199 Computer Animation with Prof. Raines. She won the Bronze award in this year's Charleston Advertising Federation's ADDY Awards for a self promotional website she created with Flash, competing with other students from Trident College and the Art Institute.

The ADDY Awards are the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition, it is connected to the American Advertising Federation and is three tiered, with categories such as local, regional and national. By winning this award it has shown that Elena has represented 'the true creative spirit of advertising'.

This is a great example of how the skills that Computer Science classes teach can help students of all different majors create bigger and better work for their desired field.

You can find her website at this address: http://eabarrio.stu.cofc.edu/

Good Work Elena!

Profs. Bill Manaris and Renée McCauley have been awarded a $125,000
grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the new
Computing in the Arts (CITA) major.

Computing in the Arts (CITA) is an innovative, interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree program, which integrates computer science and information technology with traditional art theory and practice. The curriculum introduces computing around a theme of creative expression, which has been found to increase participation by underrepresented groups. CITA is based on sound pedagogy, involving structured synthesis experiences. It has the potential to enrich computing education for undergraduate students across disciplines. Through this grant, learning materials, teaching strategies and faculty expertise are being developed to promote computational thinking in the arts and other disciplines. The project will include widespread dissemination of results across the nation.

For more information on the NSF grant see http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1044861

For more information on the CITA major see http://www.cs.cofc.edu/CITA.php

On Friday, December 10, the College of Charleston presented a first in South Carolina – a laptop orchestra performance. Twenty students in computing in the arts classes programmed their laptops to “play” music and using their programming knowledge, they manipulated the music live during the performance.

The students used Python programming language and the jMusic library (developed in Australia) to instruct the computer on which notes to play, which instrument to play them with, how many times to repeat them, at what volume, and at what tempo, etc. They performed Terry Riley’s avant-garde 1964 composition “In C.”

“We are joining renowned universities like Stanford and Princeton in producing laptop orchestra performances,” says Bill Manaris, professor of computer science. “Off-the-shelf laptops come standard with an advanced audio synthesis card, which can mimic 128 different instruments. Advanced students can even ‘play’ several instruments at the same time, it really shows computing and the arts are a natural fit.”

The students are enrolled in MUSC 131 and CSCI 180, a First-Year Experience learning community which links two courses around an interdisciplinary theme. Working together, assistant professor Blake Stevens teaches music appreciation (including music reading and writing) and professor Bill Manaris teaches computer science programming. The students in the class are all freshman, some with a small computing or musical background. Many would like to major in computing in the arts.

The CSCI 180 course is already over capacity for the spring semester and plans are in place for the “Computer Music and the Quest for Beauty” learning community to be offered again in fall 2011.

On Saturday, Nov 13, 2010, the College of Charleston hosted Barcamp CHS on the College of Charleston campus. Barcamp attracted participants from Atlanta (Yahoo), Charlotte (Barcamp), Orlando. One speaker was from Bolzano, Italy (a computer science student at the College). About 300 people learned and shared ideas and skills over a wide range of topics from brewing beer to Ruby to social graph analysis. The conference consisted of 64 talks (8 concurrent sessions x 8 hrs) from the attendees in Maybank Hall. To find out more about what you experienced or missed, see http://www.barcampchs.org .

Brittany Johnson, senior CS major at CofC, was among several students from across South and North Carolina to present research posters at the 2010 Carolinas Women in Computing conference. Brittany's poster featured her work on "The OpenMath Machine."

Six students and two faculty from the CofC Computer Science Department attended the Carolinas Women in Computing (CWIC) conference in Columbia, SC on November 12 & 13, 2010. The students were Alex Johnson, Brittany Johnson, Chanel Bonnette, Jamie Miller, Ditte Thomas and Vanathi Vignesh. Professors Stalvey and McCauley were the faculty in attendance. The program included talks from representatives from Microsfot, Intel, SCANA,
Georgia Tech, Avaya Labs, and the College of Charleston. The conference was both educational and fun and included a session on making art and jewelry from parts of otherwise-unusable computers.

Senior, computer science major, Brittany Johnson, and Professor Renee McCauley attended the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference along with 2147 others, in Atlanta, Georgia September 28 – October 2nd. The Anita Borg Institute, which sponsors the conference describes it as "The world’s largest gathering of women in computing, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) is a five-day technical conference designed to bring together the research and career interests of women in computing and highlight their accomplishments across industry, academia and government."

From contemporary music-, art- and theatre-production, to creating new forms of animation and digital media, to invigorating the visual and audio systems of tomorrow’s computers, to inventing revolutionary internet applications, Computing in the Arts (CITA) at the College of Charleston will prepare students for productive and integrated careers in the information and arts economies.

The curriculum is interdisciplinary with a blend of existing courses offered by Computer Science, Music, Art History, Studio Art, and Theatre and the addition of two synthesis courses. This new major is managed by the Department of Computer Science and supported by the combined faculty from Computer Science and the School of the Arts.

The CITA major provides a true liberal arts and sciences experience because the students will acquire the knowledge and skills to combine creativity in the arts with the tools and conceptual modeling systems of computing. Graduates of CITA will create, design, and code new creativity tools for the future.

CITA is a BA program for undergraduates at the College of Charleston. CITA joins a number of similar programs being proposed and implemented at colleges and universities in the United States.

For more information, including course requirements, see http://www.cs.cofc.edu/CITA.php .
To pre-declare: http://tinyurl.com/cofc-cita

Machinima Inc. is a Los Angeles-based company focused on producing and curating "machinima" (films made using video games - "machine" + "cinema"). They have become the largest online video network for video game content in the world with a global audience reaching over 40 million gamers. In this age of "ego-casting" where everyone online has the potential to be an Internet celebrity, they have developed an innovative model that cultivates online talent.

Mr. Jones will discuss the company's unique approach to content production and distribution, how they have been able move beyond the stigma of user generated content, and how a contentproducing company has managed to grow exponentially at a time when the media industry at large is undergoing a drastic contraction. Mr. Jones will also reserve some time to discuss the current state of the video game industry and some hot-button issues surrounding it, such as the November 2nd Supreme Court case concerning California's decision to restrict the sale of violent video games and the controversy around game publisher Electronic Arts' decision not to allow players to take on the role of the Taliban in the multiplayer version of their military simulation game Medal of Honor.

Time and Place: 3:00pm Friday, November 12, 2010 @ Physician's Auditorium

FOR MORE VISIT MACHINIMA’S YOU TUBE CHANNEL @ http://www.youtube.com/user/machinima

The Joint Industrial Advisory Board (JIAB) had their second annual JIAB Social event last Wednesday at Bibliolabs on Concord Street. Representatives from Google, The Citadel, Blackbaud and a host of other companies attended to network with faculty, staff and students in computing majors from the College and The Citadel. The event was well attended and again a success! To find out more about the JIAB, visit http://www.cs.cofc.edu/JIAB.php.

The Computer Science Department at the College of Charleston is thrilled to be a sponsor of the second BarCamp Charleston, to be held at the College in Maybank Hall on November 13, 2010.

Want to be part of the creative and technical elite? For just ten bucks, you can attend this highly energetic “un-conference” (call it a mashup or tech-fest) where geeks, designers, non-profits and experts of all trades gather for a day full of user-generated sessions. Demos and talks are pitched and led by those who attend, and could range anywhere from topics on social media and robotics to tattoos and salsa dance.

If you’re in the loop, you already know that BarCamp is an active, dynamic event, as not a soul knows which topics will be presented until the votes are cast on the morning of the “un-conference.” If you did not attend the first BarCamp Charleston, make sure to drink your morning coffee and expect to be wowed. Attendees rush to fill exciting talks. Food is everywhere. The atmosphere is electric.

Already have your ticket or planning on attending? Expect to be entertained, amazed, motivated and invigorated. The Computer Science Department is excited to be hosting the “un-conference” as its atmosphere is just the same – full of energy and action, where students are encouraged to be creative individuals, using their areas of study as platforms to achieve their goals.

To purchase your ticket, pitch a session topic, or just find out more about BarCamp Charleston, visit their website at http://barcampchs.org.

Dr. Leclerc presented a talk at the weekly meeting of the of the ACM chapter to more than 30 students. He explained how Wired Equivalent Privacy or WEP works. He explained how and why WEP is not secure and demonstrated how it can easily be broken.

The Computer Science Department congratulates Professor Bill Manaris for his new one-year grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the EAGER project: An Efficient Algorithm for Automated Transcription of Music, Vocalizations, and Arbitrary Sound Recordings. The $37,016 award will support continued research in the Armonique project (http://armonique.org) and will operate under the “human-centered computing” NSF program area.

The new project focuses on implementing a robust and efficient technique to transcribe arbitrary sounds. Automated transcription of musical sounds is still an open research area and one of exceptional importance. The approach proposed in this project involves an innovative audio-to-MIDI transcription algorithm, which handles polyphonic compositions, captures harmonic, vocal and percussive instrumentation, is very efficient and works with sounds beyond human produced musical compositions, such as bird songs and sub/ultrasonic animal vocalizations.

For more information on the Armonique project, its objectives and its deliverables, see http://sger.cs.cofc.edu/.

Senior Brittany Johnson has been awarded a scholarship to attend the 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Atlanta Georgia from 28 September through 2 October. She was selected from a competitive pool of over 1,000 applicants.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today's technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.

On June 4, 2010, Dr. Renee McCauley, Professor of Computer Science at the College of Charleston, was elected as the chairperson for the Computer Science Education, Association for Computing Machinery ( http://www.sigcse.org ). Dr. McCauley will serve a three year term, leading the premiere professional organization of approximately 3,000 computer scientists in universities, colleges and industry throughout the world.

The faculty of the Computer Science Department are proud to have Dr. McCauley as a colleague and now as a leader among the best in the world. By association, this puts the College of Charleston on the international map in computer science through leadership in education. Globally, there is no higher post in computer science education.

Dr. McCauley’s Biography: http://www.acm.org/sigs/elections/SIGCSE/RMcCauley-Chair.pdf.

The Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES) releases a new website today: www.CIRDLES.org. Thanks to Jimmy Thomas, our talented intern from the University of La Rochelle, for the design and implementation using Drupal. Another talented CofC student and CIRDLES researcher, Hunter Hegler, designed our new logo.

2010-05-25

Congratulations to Dr. Bowring on his new, 3-year, $500,000, multi-institution, NSF award as principal investigator for developing cyber-infrastructure tools for Laser-Ablation ICP-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), combining work in software engineering and geochemistry. He has single-handedly put the College of Charleston on the map as the lead institution with MIT, the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona in this software research project that has already earned global visibility under the EARTHTIME project ( http://www.earth-time.org ).

The College of Charleston’s Computer Science Department has received another shipment of computers from Google Inc.

As part of the second grant from Google, the department received 30 desktop computers and monitors this week. Earlier this year, the College received a donation of 20 computers from Google for the College’s Computer Science Department.

The 30 machines will continue to help improve the Computer Science Department's cutting-edge programs, as well as further the implementation of new, innovative programs.

"This donation from Google to the Computer Science Department, combined with the continued generosity of Google and the other partner companies, enriches student experiences in ways that are not attainable otherwise. The learning and community impacts of the Google donations will last for years to come," says Chris Starr, Chairman of the Computer Science Department.

According to Starr, ”Computer science at the College of Charleston is positioned for growth thanks to this donation and through partnerships with 14 other industrial leaders in the United States. The department is intensely agile and focused on undergraduate preparation for global computing opportunities.”

Google recently built a data center near Goose Creek, South Carolina, in Berkeley County.

Along with the computers, Google is also supporting the Computer Science Department at the College of Charleston to host the Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) workshop. This three-day workshop will provide educators with resources and ideas to help them introduce the principles of computer science to young people in a fun and relevant way.

Computer Science Alumni Reunion 2010
A Charleston Affair

The Computer Science Department’s annual alumni event will once again be held at the College of Charleston’s Alumni Association Gala, A Charleston Affair. The event will take place on Saturday, April 24, 2010, from 7:00-10:00pm, and will feature music by The Plainfield Project, catering by Jim 'N Nick's, beer, wine, sangria and more.

The School of Sciences and Mathematics tent is where the Computer Science Department will meet to share stories and celebrate successes in the past year. The Department is proud to say that it has strong and growing alumni and industry relationships that now support new students and our leading educational programs in computer science. The programs represent a new margin of excellence in three areas:

- Recruitment and Scholarships to attract and retain the best students.
- Research and Innovation to prepare the students well.
- Engagement and Delivery to launch the students with care into a career and graduate school.

Contribute to our growing Margin of Excellence by meeting and networking with our new graduates, faculty, benefactors, industrial partners and other computer science alumni! The active Joint Industry Advisory Board (JIAB) members are invited, along with our alumni since 1980.

For more information, and to register, visit: http://alumni.cofc.edu/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1214

From the Open Source at Google Blog:

"Students, want to gain real world software engineering experience and get paid? We are now accepting applications for Google Summer of Code™ 2010, our global program to introduce students, ages 18 and over, to the wonderful world of Open Source development. For our sixth Google Summer of Code, students can choose from 150 Free and Open Source software projects, in technical areas as diverse as gaming to humanitarian efforts to operating system design. All accepted students will be paired with a mentor from academia or industry and will receive coaching in all aspects of software development over the course of their three month coding project. Successful students will receive a stipend of 5000 USD for their participation in the program.

Check out the program Frequently Asked Questions and the extensive set of resources for student applicants on the program wiki, then talk to your prospective mentors about your ideas. Each mentoring organization has provided an Ideas List to help you learn more about what the project needs and to get your creative juices flowing. You’ll also note that each organization has provided tags to help you better understand their technical focus areas, so if you’re looking for opportunities to, say, geek out on gaming or hack on networking, you can narrow the list of organizations based on various tags.

Our mentors are also very excited to hear from students who have their own plans for improving the projects’ code bases, so let their ideas inspire rather than constrain you. You can find knowledgeable folks on hand to answer questions in #gsoc on Freenode and on the program discussion list, or you can keep up with our announcements on various social networking sites.

We'll be accepting student applications through April 9, 2010 at 19:00 UTC. Best of luck to all of our student applicants, and get those applications going!

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team"

Refer to: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/students-apply-now-for-google-summer-of.html

Hau Chan is a senior computer science major and math major, graduating in May 2010. He has been accepted to multiple PhD program in computer science cross the US. One of those, SUNY-Stony Brook, has offered Mr. Chan a teaching assistantship, a department chair fellowship, tuition waver and a nice health insurance package. This constitutes an attractive package to study at a top research-based computer science department.

Hau came to the College of Charleston from West Ashley High School (Charleston, SC). In addition to double majoring, he also participated in research in discrete mathematics and published three journal papers and participated in a leadership role in the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery at the College of Charleston, among many other engagements.

Hau is moving from the BS straight to a PhD and intends to decide later whether he will begin a career in industry or academics. Either way, Mr. Chan will find numerous, challenging and probably lucrative opportunities because of his decision to complete a graduate program in computer science.

C. Starr

Hau is the second student from the graduating class of 2010 who has announced his decision to pursue a PhD following graduation. This continues the trend in computer science at the College of Charleston to place 10% of the graduating class into PhD programs.

The Department of Computer Science at the College of Charleston and the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management, with support from The Citadel’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, is offering a free computer camp to high school sophomores and juniors on March 13, 20 and 27, 2010. Students will learn about IT concepts, computer development, and software development, and will be introduced to career opportunities in computing and IT. Each student will get to build and take home their own laptop. Students were chosen through a competitive application process.

Twenty students will spend three consecutive Saturdays in March working with College of Charleston Computer Science professors, students, and BlueCross/Blue Shield technology professionals. High-school students in attendance will have the opportunity to learn from current College of Charleston computer science students about the various study abroad, internship and research opportunities available within the computer science department. The students will begin to understand what being a computer science student and professional is like. They will tour the College campus, tour Blue Ion, LLC, a premiere, local interactive marketing agency, and hear from CS alumni about computer careers, “which are growing faster than the College can produce computer science graduates,” according to Chris Starr, chair of Computer Science at the College of Charleston.

The mission of the Lowcountry Computer Science Camp is to motivate high-achieving, South Carolina Lowcountry high school students with a proven record of accomplishment to pursue an interest in computer science at College of Charleston and ultimately a career in a computing field. A second camp will be held in spring 2011.

For more information, please contact the Computer Science Department 843.953.6905.

From Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Network World: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/022210-computer-science.html

"Here’s a tip for incoming and current college students: If you want to have a high-paying job on graduation day, study computer science."

Reported in the article are starting salaries for BS CS degrees that starting have hit $105,000 per year. Read other eye-popping stats about computer science graduates from Georgia Tech, Stanford, Univ of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley.

The starting salaries reported by computer science graduates from the CofC in May 2009 were in the $60K range. Others report entry into solid PhD programs, deferring high remuneration. The College of Charleston has also seen the size of the freshman class jump 30% (Fall 2007-2008) then 69% (Fall 2008-2009) and expects the surge to continue as bright students and their parents understand the outstanding career prospects of a computer science education.

To help faculty put this into perspective, BS Computer Science graduates make approximately the same annualized salary as the average starting faculty member at the College of Charleston. And their salaries are likely to increase much faster over time.

The 2010 Horizon Report is now available. Of the six computational and technology trends predicted to be significant at the university level over the next five years includes Visual Data Analysis, an area of Discovery Informatics (di.cofc.edu) and Computer Science (cs.cofc.edu). Other predicted trends include:
1) Mobile computing
2) Open content
3) Electronic textbooks
4) Simple augmented reality
5) Gesture-based computing
and
6) Visual data analysis

Additionally the cloud is certainly going to play a role as well in the delivery of services over the Web. Computer Science at the College of Charleston is proud to deliver undergraduate programs of significance to computing and humanity.

Reference: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/chapters/visual-data-analysis/

On Tuesday, February 23 2010, the Computer Science Department at the College of Charleston hosted the 4th Annual Computer Science Alumni Symposium. The Symposium featured seven Computer Science alumni as guest speakers. Students in attendance were given the opportunity to network with CS alumni, as well as ask valuable questions during the panel discussion and Q&A session.

Topics of conversation during the Q&A session ranged from job hunting, getting into graduate school, finding your passion, and creating start-up companies. Alumni in attendance came from all walks of post-undergraduate life, including a current Virginia Tech Ph.D. student, a self-employed programmer, and a kayak-enthusiast webmaster.

Alumni Panel:
Alex Endert (2008) - Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech
Major Murphy (2007) - Sawgrass Technologies
Wes Stallard (2009) - Modus21
Randall Sparks (1995) - Lexmark
Fred Ruddock (2000) - Charleston County Schools
Matthew Merricks (2007) - International Sound Corporation
Christopher Zorn (2000) - Collecta

For more information about the annual Computer Science Department Alumni Symposium, contact Dr. Jim Bowring (bowringj@cofc.edu).

Computer Science student Brittany Johnson is one of first of 25 students to be accepted into the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program for Summer 2010 and Academic Year 2010-2011.

Johnson is involved with various programs at the College, including a continuing research experience in the Computer Science Department with the CIRDLES (Cyber Infrastructure Research & Development Lab for the Earth Sciences) Lab. In October 2009, Johnson was one of four College of Charleston SCAMP (South Carolina Alliance for Minority Participation) students to win first place for her research at the Annual SCAMP Undergraduate Research Conference.

As a McNair Scholar Johnson will earn a $2,100 stipend for her summer research experience, and a $600 scholarship during the academic year, as well as participate in service learning, coursework, workshops and advising to prepare participants for successful completion of graduate degrees.

The McNair Scholars Program at the College of Charleston is a four-year renewable TRiO grant from the U.S. Department of Education. $220,000 in federal funding is provided each year to help 25 first-generation college students, low-income and/or under-represented undergraduates prepare for and succeed in doctoral programs.

For more information about the McNair Scholars Program, contact Carrie Bullock Ben-Yisrael (benyisraelc@cofc.edu) Program Coordinator or Marta Rivell (rivellm@cofc.edu) Administrative Assistant via email or by phone at (843) 953-6755.

On Friday, February 19 2010, the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Computer Science Department at the College of Charleston hosted the 28th Annual High School Computer Programming Competition. The annual competition represents a recruiting and education tool for both students and faculty whether high school or college. The competition included nine teams of two or three students from high schools in the Southeastern region.

Students arrived in the afternoon and enjoyed a banquet with speaker Darren Cumbie, who is the Software Development Manager for the ACM\\\'s sponsor HAWKES Learning Systems. The banquet was followed by a two-and-a-half hour competition. The top four winning teams, listed below, were presented with prizes and trophies at the co-located Math Meet awards ceremony held the following day.

First Place:
School: Charlotte Math Club
Team: The Bit Busters
Members: Brendan Fletcher, Aakash Indurkhya, David Lucia

Second Place:
School: NCSSM
Team: Burninators
Members: Bryce Taylor, Greg Kroniller, David Keatts

Third Place:
School: Academic Magnet High School
Team: Raptors
Members: Linus Mixson, Howie Mao, Edmund Higgins

Fourth Place:
School: Carrboro High School
Team: Carrboro High School
Members: Kai Lieth, Thomas Hege

For more information about the High School Computer Programming Competition, please contact Dr. Jim Bowring at bowringj@cofc.edu or (843)953-0805.

EVENT

1:30 PM in Wachovia Aud.
CofC Math Meet
2/20/2010

See how the math behind the ranking of Webpages can be used to select winning basketball teams, or help you play a game of Google-opoly.

The Computer Science Department is excited to share some news: Google Inc. has donated 20 desktop computers (and 30 more to come!) for our use in the ACM Innovations Lab! Our department chair, Chris Starr, explains that, “Through this support, Google has enabled computer science faculty at the College of Charleston to improve its computing programs and implement new programs, including the proposed computing in the arts degree.”

To read more about the gift from Google, visit the College of Charleston news page: http://news.cofc.edu/2010/02/google-donates-computers-to-computer-science-department

Not familiar with our iLab? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hG0AqTFzEc

Designers of new ideas and solutions define the new creative class. Designers using software as their medium, create games, graphics, CGI, interfaces, websites, and Google Android applications to name a few.

Computer Science at the College of Charleston is one of the sponsors of Pecha Kucha Night Charleston (PKC). Chris Starr, Chair of Computer Science, sits on the board of Parliament to promote and develop the creative economy in the Lowcountry in which computer science graduates thrive.

A quote from an article by Nick Smith, featured in Charleston City Paper, reads:
The venue was announced: the Terrace Hippodrome on Concord Street, with a 74-foot screen and 400 luxury-size stadium seats. According to Fox, the $5 tickets sold out in two and half days with people looking for spare tix on Craigslist.

So what is all the buzz about? Read the rest of the article to find out! And see you at PKC6.

Article: http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/six-minutes-and-40-seconds-to-go/Content?oid=1721458

Innovation 2010 - Engage with Computer Science Alumni in Person!
The Department of Computer Science presents our fourth annual alumni symposium, on Tuesday, February 23rd at 12:00pm, featuring Computer Science alumni engaging with students about their careers. All topics are welcome including job-hunting, graduate school, start-ups and jobs. Questions from students are encouraged, and we invite students from all walks of life to attend! The event is open to the public. Please register below if you plan to attend.

Program Details
Noon-12:15, Meet and select lunch from buffet
12:15-12:20, Introductory Remarks
12:20-12:45, Each presenter gives \"3-minute madness\"
12:45-2:00, Panel discussion and Q and A from students and audience

Alumni Presenters
Alex Endert - 2008 - Ph.D student at Virginia Tech
Major Murphy - 2007 - Sawgrass Technologies
Wes Stallard - 2009 - Modus21
Randall Sparks - 1995 - Lexmark
Fred Ruddock - 2000 - Charleston County Schools
Matthew Merricks - 2007 - Booz Allen Hamilton
Christopher Zorn - 2000 - Collecta

This is your chance to get up-close and personal with our alumni and begin your networking for success.

Please:
1. Register early https://alumni.cofc.edu/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=1181 (so we have enough food for you).
2. Encourage other majors / minors to register and attend.

Hope to see you there!

Every second year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides a ten-year forecast of job growth in all fields of employment.

Among the highlights:

Among the 10 major BLS occupational groups, the “Professional and related” category (which includes computer science occupations) is projected to grow by the largest percentage between now and 2018 — by 16.8%. (The average growth projected across all occupations is 10.1%.)

Focusing in on the “Professional and related” occupations, of the 8 occupational clusters that are included, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are projected to grow by the largest percentage between now and 2018 — by 22.2%. In other words, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are the fastest growing occupational cluster within the fastest growing major occupational group.

Looking at all science and engineering occupations — “Computer and mathematical,” “Architecture and engineering,” and “Life, physical, and social science” — computer science occupations are projected to be responsible for nearly 60% of all job growth between now and 2018. The next largest contributor — all fields of Engineering combined — is projected to contribute 13.4% of total growth. All of the life sciences combined: 5.6%. All of the physical sciences combined: 3.1%.

In other words, among all occupations in all fields of science and engineering, computer science occupations are projected to account for nearly 60% of all job growth between now and 2018.

So what is your major?


Sources:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/11/art5full.pdf
http://www.cccblog.org/2010/01/04/where-the-jobs-are/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cccblog%2FwDnv+%28CCC+Blog%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Professor Pothering and Clay McCauley won $66,000 ($22,000 a year for three years) from the National Science Foundation as part of a large NSF award to the State of South Carolina for new cyber-infrastructure for support of the project entitled "Collaborative Research: An EPSCoR Desktop to Teragrid Ecosystem" (Attachment A). This subaward is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Funding will directly impact the research infrastructure for students and faculty in the Department of Computer Science and School of Sciences and Mathematics at the College of Charleston. This subaward is part of a larger award that is shared between the College, Clemson University and the University of South Carolina.

Aspen Olmsted is finishing an MS in Computer and Information Sciences at the College of Charleston in December 2009. He has already been accepted into the PhD program in Computer Science at the University of South Carolina. He is currently on the adjunct faculty in Computer Science at the College of Charleston.

The world is awash in data and the trend continues to accelerate. Gigabytes and terabytes are merely child's play today. We are talking now about petabytes and exabytes of data piling up annually, all begging to be analyzed. And what about all that net traffic? With dynamic data mining, data in motion can even be analyzed as it whizzes past us in order to make live decisions, make money in stocks and maybe even prevent attacks.

"But the field [of analytics] is so new and growing so fast that there just aren’t enough qualified workers who can do these jobs. IBM currently has over 2,500 job postings for analytics-related jobs, and 60% of its new hires come from universities." Reference: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/12/want_a_job_anal.html

You'll get a great education at the College of Charleston. You'll get high-paying career paths if you choose your major wisely. Discover the BS degree in Discovery Informatics to learn how to do analytics today. Only at the College of Charleston.

Brian Muller graduated with honors in 2005, earning a BA in Computer Science with a minor in Music. He conducted research under Dr. Bill Manaris in the Computer-Music Laboratory at the College of Charleston before heading to graduate school. Brian continued his education in bioinformatics at the Medical University of South Carolina. He defended his thesis today for the MS degree.

Brian's research thesis is entitled "Literature Classification Using a Modified Ising Model." Brian developed and evaluated a machine learning method for classifying multi-label text documents by applying the Ising Model to the Gene Onotology. He has shown that there are marginal precision and recall benefits in applying the Ising Model over the traditional use of the Naive Bayesian Model in the Gene Ontology, an acyclic, directed graph ontology. Dr. Starr is a member of Brian's MS thesis committee.

Brian is currently developing software in genomics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is applying to the PhD program in computer science at John Hopkins.

A team of CS students led by Dr. Bill Manaris have developed and launched both a new internet music platform and iPhone application, called Armonique (www.armonique.org). While other systems, such as Pandora, use playlists created by human effort, Armonique's playlists are created automatically.

To learn more, read this article or watch this video.

Student James Goodrich joins CIRDLES as an undergraduate researcher this week. Dr. Bowring and the team look forward to James' contributions.

CIRDLES (Cyber Infrastructure Research & Development Lab for the Earth Sciences) is an NSF-funded lab creating cyber infrastructure for geochronology in an interdisciplinary effort between our software engineers and geochemists from two NSF supported initiatives, EARTHTIME and EarthChem.

Website

College of Charleston's two teams turned in great performances. Team 'Undefined Behavior', composed of Hau Chan, Patrick Moran and Jonathan Tashakori placed 15th out of 82 total teams in the Southeast region and team 'Voiture Mach 11', composed of Robert Goodrich, Josh Moore and Matthew Saporito placed 50th. Please congratulate these students on a job well done.

Planning for next year's competition has already started. To see this year's scores, visit: http://www.cs.fit.edu/~ryan/icpc/ser2009/standings.html.

Imagine completing a semester’s worth of computer programming in one afternoon. The powerhouse computer programmers from the College of Charleston, and top collegiate programmers from surrounding areas, will do just that in an all-out “battle of the brains.” On Saturday, November 7, two teams from the College of Charleston will compete with teams from 13 other universities in the ACM “Battle of the Brains” Southeastern Collegiate Programming Competition. The competition will be held from 1:30-6:30pm at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, GA.

The IBM-sponsored ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the most prestigious computer programming competition of its kind, will include tens of thousands of university students during its preliminary rounds through December. One hundred teams from approximately 90 countries on six continents will earn coveted spots at the Contest’s World Finals February 1-6, 2010 hosted by Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China.

The 34th annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest challenges teams of three university students to use their programming skills and rely on their mental endurance to solve complex, real world problems under a grueling five-hour deadline. Since the IBM sponsorship began in 1997, the number of teams participating has increased from 1,100 to more than 7,100 teams.

Click to see team photos.

From CofC News and Events postings:

ExxonMobil has awarded a $35,000 grant to the College of Charleston's Department of Computer Science to help in the development of a system that will help scientists to archive and share geological data.

The proposed work will be done by College of Charleston Visiting Assistant Professor Jim Bowring and selected students as part of CIRDLES (Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for Earth Science).

"This ExxonMobil grant demonstrates the willingness of Computer Science faculty to engage with industrial partners in support of high-impact research that involves collaboration with other universities and provides research opportunities for undergraduates, including SCAMP students," says Bowring. "This grant supports an ongoing collaboration between CIRDLES and Earth Sciences research at MIT, the University of Kansas and the University of Arizona."

With this grant, Bowring and his students will be able to extend development of their powerful and rigorous system for processing uranium-lead geochronological data to include data acquired with laser-ablation mass spectrometry. Bowring's NSF-funded system is the first to provide automated support with interactive visualizations for end-to-end data processing, analysis, archiving, retrieval and compilation that supports geochemists studying the age of the earth.

Office of Media Relations

Mike Robertson
Senior Director of Media Relations
robertsonm@cofc.edu
843.953.5667

Melissa Whetzel
Director of Media Relations
whetzelm@cofc.edu
843.953.7752

To echo the College's article on the changes happening in JC Long 220...
We've redesigned the style of our computer lab into a more interactive learning space. We've replaced traditional rows of desks with a design that seats students around the perimeter of the classroom, with the option to sit at a larger "conference table" in the middle of the room. With the chairs, tables and even white boards on wheels, our classroom is now capable of transforming its configuration at any time. The JC Long 220 lab is our first step toward designing innovative learning spaces - a design that we continue to work on as we plan our department's move into the main floor of the RSS building. Stay tuned for before/after shots of JC Long 220!

Jack Bennett, the Tri-County Coordinator of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program presented his service to the ACM meeting on Tuesday, 27 October. VITA is an economic stability program that provides free tax preparation and electronic filing services for low-to-moderate income individuals at several tri-county locations. He was joined by Kenneth Brown of the IRS, which actively supports VITA. He sought student volunteers to act as computer technologists to help with laptops and printers used during the sessions. Nine of our students volunteered to become certified and to help!

- Jim Bowring

J.R. Armstrong, Thomas Zalonis and Dr. Bill Manaris attended the 40th Conference of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA 2009), September 20-25, in Athens, Greece. They presented a paper entitled "Armonique: A framework for Web 2.0 audio archiving, searching, and metadata extraction", co-authored with Brys Sepulveda, on the music search engine Armonique (http://www.armonique.org) they have developed. During the visit, they also explored archeological sites, such as Sounion, and studied ancient artifacts, such as the Antikythera Mechanism. The Antikythera Mechanism, is a 2,000 year-old computer that has only recently been reconstructed.

Lancie Affonso presented "Building Consensus and Collaboration through Social Networks" at the Higdon Student Leadership Center's 3rd Annual Fall Leadership Conference on Saturday, October 17, 2009 in the Stern Student Center. Over 200 College of Charleston students attended this free one-day conference, themed "On Track with Leadership."

Check it out here.

View a Slideshow.

Dr. Bowring is participating in the Buist Academy Mentor Program this Fall and next Spring. He is mentoring eighth-grader Ben Muldrow, with a first visit by Ben to shadow Dr. Bowring on October 20th, 2009. Dr. Bowring's schedule on October 20th includes the weekly meeting of the student chapter of ACM at noon and the teaching of his first year seminar class on "Designing Responses to Large-Scale Natural Disasters." Please welcome Ben to the department.

The Annual SCAMP Undergraduate Research Conference was held on October 9, 2009, at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. The conference featured more than 50 competitive oral and poster presentations in a variety of science categories. In an impressive showing of hard work and passion for their research, all four College of Charleston students won first place in their categories!

Research is an important component of SCAMP, an NSF funded program designed to support minority students who are seeking degrees in STEM disciplines. Both summer and academic year research are conducted under the auspices of faculty mentors throughout the nation. SCAMP students are highly encouraged to take advantage of these opportunities for the positive impact that research has on their undergraduate career as well as their pursuit of graduate education.

Congratulations to the SCAMP students for their extraordinary performance in representing the College of Charleston. Information about these FIRST PLACE WINNERS is shown below:

Brittany I. Johnson, “CIRDLES (Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences)”
MENTOR: Dr. Jim Bowring, Computer Science Department

Tiffany S. Williams, “Investigating the Role of Palmitoylation as a Potential Regulator of Circadian Rhythm Pathways within the Central Nervous System of Drosophila”
MENTOR: Dr. Christopher Korey, Biology Department

Erica B. Flores, “Expression of Myoregulatory Genes in the Developing Sea Urchin”
MENTOR: Dr. Christine Byrum, Biology Department

Portavia L. Featherstone, “Quantification of Photosensitizer in Vivo with Fluorescence Methods”
MENTOR: Dr. Linda Jones, Department of Physics & Astronomy

For information about SCAMP and the conference, visit http://scamp.scsu.edu/conference.html.

Join us at this semester's ACM LAN Party!


Date: October 17, 2009
Time: 11AM - Midnight
Where: JC Long 220


Pizza and drinks will be provided!

On October 8, 2009, the Computer Science Department and the School of the Arts received approval to go forward with our complete master plan for the addition of the Computing in the Arts (CITA) degree program.

The Commission on Higher Education (CHE) ACAP’s decision was unanimous, and we will now begin the next phase in the implementation process.

Today’s decision was monumental in keeping pace with the tentative inaugural offering of the CITA degree program, scheduled for Fall 2010.

Students in a Social Networking course (CSCI 112) are learning about emerging web applications in the newly redesigned "CSCI Innovation Lab" in JC Long 220. The new design of the computer lab allows students to collaborate in small groups and quickly design mock ups of social media applications using online collaborative tools like Google docs and VoiceThread.

A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). The students can doodle while commenting, and pick which comments are shown through moderation. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on the class website and exported to MP3 players.

For additional details see Top 10 Web Apps for CofC Students
http://www.cofc.edu/newsandevents/news/top-10-web-apps-for-students.php

Every seat was filled, students were standing, and the pizza went fast. Alex Summer (CS alumnus) spoke to the Student Chapter of the ACM @csatcofc on Tuesday, October 6, 2009. LiveVibes was founded in 2007 by three College of Charleston students. Now graduated, Alex Summer focuses on developing VisuaLive. VisuaLive brings a fresh approach to delivering multiple types of user-generated content from the Web. Alex and his development group invite additional programmers to join them. Students found out how practical a computer science education really is.

WHAT: Lecture by 2008 Academy Award Winning College of Charleston alumnus Nafees Bin Zafar. FREE and open to the public.
WHEN: Thursday, October 15 at 5:00 p.m.
WHERE: Physicians Auditorium on the College of Charleston campus (George St.)

Nafees Bin Zafar, a visual effects engineer with Digital Domain in Venice, California, will speak about the connection between computational thinking (the use of computing capacity and capability) and the creative arts. Mr. Zafar, who uses mathematical algorithms to create immense floods and other amazing visuals on the big screen, has a unique perspective on this topic. In March 2008, he won a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in recognition of his special effects work on many films, including "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End," "The Day After Tomorrow," "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring," and "Flags of Our Fathers."

Nafees Bin Zafar graduated from the College of Charleston in 1998 with a major in computer science. He has worked in the film industry developing special effect software since 2003.

Mr. Zafar was featured in the College of Charleston magazine this summer. Of his talents, it was written that "the magical scenes [Zafar] whips up through keystrokes — creating on-screen cyclones, floods, infernos and end-of-the-earth waterfalls — are so realistic, they threaten to make nearly every aspect of traditional film making superfluous."

This talk, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Computing Outreach Lecture Series. That series is sponsored by the College of Charleston’s Department of Computer Science and the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Mr. Zafar’s appearance is also made possible by PMI Charleston and PM One (www.pmone.net), two firms that are advancing the effectiveness of project management in the Lowcountry.

For additional information on the lecture or Mr. Zafar, contact the Department of Computer Science via phone 843.953.6905 or e-mail csdept@cs.cofc.edu.


Jim Bowring

On Tuesday, 29 September 2009, the ACM student chapter hosted Rick Sease of SCANA who presented SCANA's corporate structure and the many internships and coop positions available to Computer Science students. With 20 students and four faculty members present, a great question-and-answer session followed Sease's presentation. The SCANA website will have information on internships available beginning in early January. Many thanks to Rick Sease for coming to the ACM meeting, and to SCANA, who donated the pizzas for lunch during the meeting.

Jim Bowring

Steven Melcher has added Hash Tables to CLforJava without having to design and code new types of hash table from the ground up as do other Lisp implementations. Steven's approach uses the two hash table classes found in the Java libraries. The first is an identity table where the key must match the exact object found in the table. This is used directly for one of the four types of Common Lisp hash table. Common Lisp defines three other types of hash table based on different notions of equality. Steven implements those three, based on the other type of Java hash table. To implement the three Lisp tables, Steven cleverly devised an algorithm to wrap the key of the item and present the wrapped key to the Java hash table. There are three wrapping types based on the specific equality defined for the Lisp hash table. It is an elegant solution that is easily extendable to new Lisp hash tables.

For his Bachelor's Essay, Patrick Moran is building the core of a new compiler for CLforJava. He has adapted and coded in Lisp a sophisticated algorithm (Structure Analysis) used for understanding the control flow of a program to the analysis of a Lisp function. From that, he has adapted the core data flow algorithm and is creating the implementing Lisp code. With these components, he is poised to add some of the both common and sophisticated optimizations. The result of this work will be the core of a more robust and smarter compiler resulting in at least a ten-fold improvement in speed and reliability of CLforJava.

The BiblioLife Scholarship is a four-year, full-tuition scholarship, given to an incoming freshmen to a South Carolina student. The award is provided by the principles of BiblioLabs, LLC, an innovative Charleston, SC-based company. The award is given to a promising new major in computer science, computer information system or discovery informatics at the College of Charleston. The award is independent of financial need.

John Youngblood was selected for the 2009-2010 award. Congratulations to John. John's extra-curricular high school passions for music transcription and chiptune music generation through software contributed to his selection.

The next BiblioLife Scholarship will be awarded to an incoming freshman for Fall 2010. In total, BiblioLabs has donated four, four-year scholarships to students in computing at the College of Charleston.

Students - remember to periodically check out the jobs and internships listed at http://www.cs.cofc.edu/jobs.php. There are great new opportunities posted each week!

-The SCAMP program will sponsor its annual Minority Undergraduate Student Research banquet at the Tate Center on Friday, September 25, 2009. During this celebration of scholarly efforts, five SCAMP students who engaged in research during the summer will present the results of their research.

One of the participants is Brittany Johnson, a Junior Computer Science major. Brittany has been working under the mentorship of Jim Bowring since Fall of 2008. She will be making a presentation about her role in CIRDLES (Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences), and about the research in general.

She will also be presenting at the Annual Science and Engineering Research Conference in Columbia on October 9. Her faculty mentor, Jim Bowring, will be there to support her. Tony Leclerc will also attend the conference and participate as a judge in the category of Computer Science and Engineering.

If you see Brittany around, please wish her well in her endeavors.

Check out our photostream on Flickr!

New full-time job postings are being made to the CS Alumni Listserv. One was just posted from Booz Allen Hamilton.

To subscribe visit http://alumni.cofc.edu/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=1078&srcid=1078

Chris Starr

Students, faculty, and anyone else interested:
Please see the information below (along with the link) about the Women in Technology: Making your Mark in the IT Industry event.


August 27
Thursday 11:30 a.m - 2:30 p.m.
Location: Tate Center, College of Charleston, Room 207 and Gallery


“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight.” -Former Chairwoman of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina


For more information, see this link (scroll to the bottom of the August calendar!)

Beginning today, representatives from the CS department will join other CofC academic and student groups for 10 orientation sessions this summer.

What's the point?

If you want to know more about our degree programs, our new minor (Computational Thinking), our classes designed to benefit any major, how much money to expect post-graduation with a degree in CS, and how cool, fun, exciting and creative CS@CofC really is...

...then make sure to stop by our information table - or come check out the department!

Don't miss out on your chance to learn more about and get involved in Computer Science at the College of Charleston!

The Gussie Greene Technology center will officially open Tuesday, May 5! This Linux-based computer lab, sponsored in part by the CS department, will be used to hold free computer classes for individuals in the community. This is to help them develop computer skills and make them more marketable to potential employers.

This is a great opportunity for CofC students to get involved in a tech-related community project! So far 4 CofC students have participated in building the lab. Jeff Cash, Jacquie Myers, Rachel Walenceus and Computer Science major Betty Brooks participated as part of the Computer Science Department's Social Networking (CSCI 112) class.

The other organizations that have made this project a reality are the Charleston Linux Users Group, the Free Linux PC program, Comcast Cable, The City of North Charleston and Clemson University.

If you're interested in teaching community computer classes or being a part of this project in any other way, contact Dr. Starr. You can also find more information at www.csclug.org.

An EARTHTIME/EarthChem-sponsored workshop focusing on data acquisition, manipulation, processing, visualization, and archiving for high-precision U-Pb and Ar-Ar geochronology as well as discussion of progress in the geochronological aspects of EARTHTIME will be held in Denver May 1-3, 2009. The workshop will involve discussion of all sources of error, error propagation strategies, data reduction algorithms and software, data acquisition methods and strategies, and archiving in community databases, emphasizing consensus on common protocols and maximization of data utility. This step will be essential for accurate inter-laboratory and inter-technique comparisons.

The workshop will involve hands-on experience with existing software, as well as providing input for further software development. Tripoli and U-Pb_Redux from CIRDLES will be demonstrated for review by the community and be presented as a possible template for future Ar-Ar software. Data upload to the EarthChem database will also be demonstrated, as well as the use of SESAR for acquiring unique sample identifiers. The two most commonly used Ar-Ar data reduction programs (ArArCalc, Mass Spec) will be demonstrated and discussed with possible movement towards seamless compatibility. Future support and possible platform migration of ISOPLOT will be considered.

One of CIRDLES’ goals is to attract beta-testers and developers to join our open-source development efforts.

New in 2009! What's the difference between a computer science major and your roommate's * degree program?


A job.

Twelve computer science majors are ready to kill -9 CofC_Undergrad. I suspect they too now know that there is nothing more rewarding for mind or machine than computer science.

"You chose... wisely." (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

-Starr

April 27, 2009: Eight (67%) of the College of Charleston computer science seniors and one applied-math senior with a DI minor met over ample Andolini's Pizza for some serious data mining. The results? 10 new ways to improve the computer science experience for current and upcoming generations of students.

Feedback from our previous CS graduates has resulted in many changes in Computer Science over the recent years, including new course topics, ACM food, student phone, upgrades to Long 218, game loft, a sofa, free printing, laptop stations, lockers, combination door locks, 24hr building access, and I almost forgot, use of the CS department's BMW. (Who ever borrowed it, please return with a full tank ;)

When you see upgrades around the department in Fall 2009, remember to thank this year's graduating seniors. We are proud of them all.
Dr. Starr

On Friday, 24 April 2009, four students each from the CofC ACM and the Citadel ACM took a field trip to Automated Trading Desk (ATD) in Mount Pleasant. Dr. Bowring lead the group and Kelly Forward, head of electronic trading human resources at ATD, hosted the group for a question and answer session. The students then entered the trading floor and sat in pairs with programmer/traders to learn in real time how ATD works and how computer science is critical to their success. The students were all very impressed and some will follow up with applications for one of the four internships available at ATD.

The department of Computer Science welcomes Antoine Lagarde from our sister school, La Rochelle University, in France. Antoine is the second intern from La Rochelle that we have sponsored, as last year we sponsored Jonathan Benattar. Antoine is completing a two-year undergraduate course in the Institute of Computer Science with this three-month internship at the College of Charleston. He is working with Dr. Jim Bowring in the Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES). He will help with the May 1 launch of CIRDLES' open-source software, "U-Pb_Redux," for an international geochronology workshop to be held in Denver in May. He will also work on developing unit and system testing harnesses for the software and on producing related documentation. You can find Antoine in room 207 JC Long, so please stop by and welcome him!

On Friday, April 17, 2009, President Benson, Provost Jorgens and the Deans (or their representatives) individually recognized every undergraduate student who applied for a nationally competitive award in 2008-2009. Of the 42 students recognized, five were computer science majors and one was a discovery informatics major. Computer Science therefore represented 14% of all recognitions. The cash value of the awards for computer science recipients was approximately $84,000 this year. Wow!

But that's not all. Computer Science, compared with other academic departments, won 50% of all awards given to students in the School of Science and Mathematics, even with departments like Biology with 800+ majors.

Nationally competitive awards include a wide range of opportunities for students to extend their educational experiences and to support gradate studies. The award programs that our CS and DI students applied to are the following.
1) National Science Foundation, Research Experiences for Undergraduates:
Hau Chan
Bobby Goodrich
Patrick Moran
Brys Sepulveda
2) Department of Defense SMART Scholarship:
Katherine Gumps
3) NASA Cooperative Education Program:
Matt Baer

Congratulation to all of you smart and industrious students! And thanks to all of the CS faculty members who supported, mentored, and coached their CS and DI advisees.

What about you? Next year, work with your CS advisor to identify ways to put you into a nationally competitive offering. Ask the students listed here what they did to be successful. If you don’t try, you’ll never know what was possible!
Dr. Starr

What is the most efficient design for a traffic circle? This was the problem given to 1675 teams who submitted solutions from around the world last month.

Two teams from the CofC entered the modeling contest:
- Hau Chan, Taylor Hamrick, and Ryan Parker
- Patrick Moran, Caroline Edwards, and Jonathan Tashakori

Only 0.5% received the top honor of Outstanding Paper, 18% received the next best honor of Meritorious, and the next 18% received Honorable Mention, and the remaining were Successful Participants.

Both CofC teams independently produced solutions that received Meritorious awards, setting a CofC record. In addition to math majors, note that both teams had computer science students participating and a student minoring in Discovery Informatics. Both teams used computational approaches to arrive at their respective solutions.

(Image courtesy of the City of Vancouver, Canada)

Hau will work in a research lab at Georgia Tech in Summer 09 and will be funded (paid) by a grant from the National Science Foundation through an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) grant. Congratulations to Hau.

Please inform the CS department of any happenings in your academic/professional life. It is important that we all share our accomplishments with each other.

Hau will work in a research lab and will be funded (paid) by a grant from the National Science Foundation through an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) grant.

Help out your fellow classmates! Follow or become a fan of CLforJava's social networking tools. You can follow CLforJava on twitter at http://twitter.com/CLforJava and on Facebook - search for "CLforJava" where you can become a "fan" of CLforJava... just look for the logo! It will show those outside the College of Charleston community that lots of students are supporting the project! Don't forget to invite your friends!

On Friday, February 20, 2009, high school students from SC and NC competed in the 27th Annual High School Programming Competition, sponsored by the Student Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery at the College of Charleston. Ten teams competed, including local schools Wando HS, Summerville, HS and Academic Magnet HS. Both Govenor's schools from SC and NC competed along with private high schools.

The teams, composed of up to three students each, use three hours to solve two programming problems. Emphasis is placed on the quality of the software design and testing in addition to the program's ability to meet the problem specification.

Congratulations to all students and schools who participated!
First Place: North Carolina School of Science and Math
Second Place: Charlotte Math Club
Third Place: Governor's School for Science and Mathematics
Fourth Place: Academic Magnet High School

Most newsworthy: The following Computer Science students organized and hosted the high school programming competition with the help of their faculty advisor, Dr. Jim Bowring. This type of community involvement strengthens your education and develops your character as a rising professional in computing. Your volunteerism does not go unnoticed either by faculty or future employers and graduate schools.

Thanks to:
Bobby Goodrich - for stepping up as a leader and presenting the rules to the students at the banquet, cleaning up
James Goodrich - for helping to keep things running, cleaning up
Hau Chan - for ushering our sponsor, Carol Diamond of Benefitfocus.com, around campus
Kurt Goldstein - for keeping the registration of teams on target
Avery Scott - for staying late to help the judges
Alex Schroeder - for helping with all aspects as needed

Submitted by Dr. Starr

Dr. Benson, President of the College of Charleston, met with the computer science faculty and staff today after a brief tour of the department and facilities. He reported that he has already heard about the innovative ideas coming from computer science students and faculty with regard to research, innovative courses and programs, economic development and community outreach. Computer Science is a leader among academic departments at the College of Charleston. President Benson now has a better appreciation about what you do.

What is Pecha Kucha Night?
Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show. Eat, drink, and be amazed.

Why should I care?
You shouldn't unless you are >=21, are a member of the creative class (duh, you create with code), and want to be engaged in the closest thing to a TED talk this side of California.

All software developers with an entrepreneurial flair help to define the creative class.

Want to be amazed?
6 PM-8:30 PM, Feb 25, 2009. Registration required. Only 250 will be able to attend.
http://pechakuchacharleston.wordpress.com/
The location will be announced a day before the event. Clues are already posted in physical locations. But know that the PK will be in a downtown Charleston location.

BTW. Charleston is still the only place in South Carolina where you can find a Pecha Kucha Night. Charleston is finally on the map: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/

What is the Computer Science department up to now!? You'll have to attend the Pecha Kucha Night to experience the innovative, visual, audience participation mashup, happening live during the PK. Bring your cell phone and leave it on. Really.

Congratulations to Bobby Goodrich and Dr. Green for winning the highly competitive MAYS grant to support robotics research in CS this spring and summer. If you want to be a funded researcher in computer science, ask your advisor to help you to plan and achieve your goal.

The CS Alumni Symposium is today (2/17/09) at noon. This is a private event for CS/DI/CIS students about the transition from college into the world beyond.

Last night I picked up Alex Strehl from CHS. Alex, one of amazing CS alumni speaking today, flew in from LaGuardia last night after he left his job in Manhattan at Yahoo! Research in machine learning. Alex finished in Computer Information Systems (and double majored in Mathematics) at the College of Charleston in 2002. Before starting at Yahoo! he finished a PhD in computer science at Rutgers. Nice job Alex.

If you are a DI/CS/CIS major, your story may look similar. Think about it.

See Alex at the symposium and at Yahoo! See Alex at Yahoo! http://research.yahoo.com/People .
Dr. Starr

The CS Department and the ACM announce our 3rd annual Alumni Symposium.

Date: Tuesday, 17 February
Time: 12:15 PM - 2 PM
Food: FREE LUNCH BUFFET provided by your great academic department
Where: Tate 202

We have assembled a fantastic group of CS and DI alumni (some in careers, some in grad school) who will tell their stories and answer your questions! This is the best preparation you can have for the Jobs Fair to be held on Feb 25!

Register (no charge): https://alumni.cofc.edu/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=1094=705
Dr. Starr and CS faculty

Need a way to build your resume? Looking for something fun and cheap to do over spring break? Build your resume by spending your spring break at the SIGCSE conference (http://www.cs.arizona.edu/groups/sigcse09/) in Chattanooga, Tennessee as a student volunteer and the Computer Science department will cover your travel and lodging expenses! For volunteering just five hours during the conference, SIGCSE will cover your registration fee and some of your meals. Any time outside of volunteering is free for students to attend the conference meetings and visit Chattanooga (http://www.chattanoogafun.com/).

Professor Stalvey is organizing the SIGCSE trip, which will be from Tuesday, March 3 to Sunday, March 8. For more information, please email Professor Stalvey at stalveyr@cofc.edu or stop by her office. Space is limited to 6 students, so sign up soon for this amazing opportunity!

Dr. Purewal and students in computer science are partnering with the Charleston Linux Users Group (LUG), the City of North Charleston, the Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development, the Clemson Restoration Institute (CURI), Comcast, and the Free Linux Personal Computer group (FLPC) to start the Gussie Green Community Center Computer Lab in North Charleston. The proposed lab will be located at the Gussie Green Community Center at 2012 Success Street North Charleston, SC.

Besides serving as a public computer lab, Clemson University and the College of Charleston would like to offer training programs to the local population.The computers will utilize Linux operating systems, most likely Edubuntu.

If you are interesting in offering your time and computing/teaching talents to the project, please contact Dr. Semmy Purewal at purewals@cofc.edu.

The research lab continues to thrive with continued funding and recent publications. Students interested in working in XML technologies, modeling, HCI, testing and technical documentation are encouraged to investigate the CIRDLES lab located in the Computer Science Department. Three CS students are working in the lab in Spring 2009.

Thirteen majors (about 10% of all majors in CS and DI) have stepped up the plate to help. You just don't see that type of developing professionalism in any other department!

The conference will be held on January 11-13, 2009 at the Francis Marion Hotel at the corner of the College of Charleston campus in Charleston, South Carolina.

"The ICS addresses the interface of OR and computing. Major interests are algorithms and software for modeling, optimization, and simulation. We are also interested in the leading edge of computing and how it affects OR (e.g. XML modeling standards, OR services offered over the web, opensource software, constraint programming, massively parallel computing, high performance computing, etc.). We are INFORMS' leading edge for computation and technology."
http://computing.society.informs.org/

Dr. Bowring will present a paper detailing the research of his CIRDLES lab, entitled "Building Cyber Infrastructure for Geochronology: A Case Study in Collaborative Software Engineering Research." The workshop is on Infrastructure for Research in Collaborative Software Engineering (iReCoSE) at the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) Conference in Atlanta (https://cgi4.cc.gatech.edu/phps/conferences/fse16/ .)

ABSTRACT: The Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES) collaboratively integrates domain-specific software engineering with the efforts of two NSF-supported initiatives in geochronology. Geochronology is the science of determining the age of geological formations. The EARTHTIME initiative pursues consensus-based approaches to geochemical data reduction, and the EarthChem initiative pursues the creation of data repositories for all geochemical data. CIRDLES provides software engineering infrastructure to support the development of software and systems that serve as the cyber infrastructure for geochronology. This collaboration benefits the earth sciences by enabling geochemists to focus on their specialties using robust software that produces reliable results. This collaboration benefits software engineering by providing research opportunities to improve process methodologies used in the design and implementation of domain-specific solutions. Finally, this collaboration benefits the teaching efforts of both software engineers and geochemists by producing tangible, open-source artifacts for students to use. CIRDLES is an example of how research in collaborative software engineering can expand to include collaboration with other sciences and domains.

On Tuesday, October 28th, the Computer Science Department and ACM hosted a panel of employers from various local companies for a lunch and symposium. CS students had the opportunity to interact with representatives from nine different companies, including L-3 Communications, ATD and Blackbaud.

After a time for mingling and eating lunch, each company representative gave a three-minute presentation about their company. Students and faculty were then able to ask questions. Topics of conversation ranged from job availability for CS students, interview pitfalls, internship opportunities, turn-around rates, and the ways in which the current economy is affecting the computer science job market. Following the question-and-answer session, students and employers had another chance to meet each other and talk one-on-one.

Many CS students and the visiting employers said that the Meet and Greet was a positive networking event, especially before the Career Expo that was held at the Gaillard Auditorium the following afternoon.

The Computer Science Department offers many thanks to all those who attended, and is already looking forward to hosting next year's Meet and Greet.

The College of Charleston is the newest member of the South Carolina Computing Consortium (SC3) < http://www.sccomputing.org/about.html>. This membership puts the College of Charleston into a position of leadership and access to the supercomputing research, high speed networking between SC universities and labs, and large data storage services. The invitation was extended to the College by the other members of the Consortium -- Clemson, MUSC, USC, Savannah River National Laboratory and Hollings Marine Laboratory.

Highlights of current and future SC3 activities:
-- SC3 will host a booth at the Supercomputing Conference 2008 in Austin, TX in November. < http://sc08.supercomputing.org/ > The booth will showcase, among many member projects, the College of Charleston�s Discovery Informatics program.
-- SC3 has lobbied and received funding from the SC legislature to install the first phase of the South Carolina Light Rail (a high speed commuter service for bits not atoms) for connections that exceed one gigabit per second. Lobbying will continue to build out that infrastructure and a connection to Lambda Rail.
-- The College is currently planning a connection to the SC Light Rail, enabled by an invitation from MUSC.

The School of Science and Mathematics is the active unit associated with SC3, however any academic or administrative department is welcome to be an active participate in SC3 through the CofC membership. Access to faster machines and other shared resources can lead to opportunities for CofC faculty such as joint projects and increased funding opportunities.

Special thanks go to Jill Gemmill (Clemson), Bob Chapman (Hollings), Ray Greenburg (MUSC) and George Pothering (CofC) for supporting the SC3 membership and SC Light Rail connectivity for the College of Charleston. (If I�ve left anyone out, please reply to let us know. It is not intentional.)

CofC-SC3 Contacts:
Clay McCauley, Supercomputer Architect and Administrator < mailto:mccauleyc@cofc.edu >
Department of Computer Science

George Pothering, Dean < potheringg@cofc.edu >
School of Science and Mathematics

Chris Starr, Chair < starrc@cofc.edu >
Department of Computer Science

As an application of his bachelor's essay project, Campus Crime Scene: Creating a Web 2.0 Solution for Relevant Campus Crime Information, Hector Mojica (senior CS major), has been asked to implement his Web 2.0 software for Public Safety at the College of Charleston. When he finished the implementation, all CofC Community Watch Alerts will be mashed up on a Google Map of campus and the surrounding areas. Anyone with a web browser will be able to view and interactively customize the information displayed.

So say you're a girl, walking back to your dorm, alone, at 2 AM, you can pop open the map on your iPhone to see the latest reports just for female assaults in the last month. Plugging the results into your Bayesian calculator, you can then determine the risk of an attack, based on the prior probably distribution. (Or you can call for an safety escort.)

The cost of the Campus Crime Mashup - negligible.
Knowing if you are positioning yourself to be a future victim - priceless.

The first joint industry advisory board for computer science was established this year by The Department of Computer Science at the College of Charleston and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at The Citadel. The IAB had its inaugural meeting on Friday, March 2, 2007 on the College of Charleston Campus.

The two institutions partnered in the formation and offering the MS degree in computer science. Having a shared program and common interests in increasing the quality and number of computer scientists in South Carolina lead to the formation of a joint advisory board, which can efficiently leverage the technical expertise and leadership available in our rapidly growing technical community.

Chris Starr said, �This is the first IAB within the sciences and mathematics at both institutions. The joint IAB strengthens and enriches the connections between academics and industry partners to promote and support the growing technical community in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.�

The IAB will concentrate on matters of strategic direction and philosophy of the computing programs offered by each institution. The Board shall have, as a specific charge, the responsibility for making recommendations that will enhance and make more relevant the total educational program of the departments at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Board will review activities of the departments with the goal of keeping the Departments focused on all mission areas.

Academic-industry linkage can also lead to new opportunities for computer science students, including industry advisors for students in computer science, greater access to internships as a co-educational experience, research projects with companies, scholarships to complete a computer science program, and entrepreneurship in software development.

At the first meeting, Jonathan Brown, VP at ICF Consulting, was elected as chair of the IAB. Following introductions and organizational tasks, including approval of the IAB Charter, the board discussed issues and opportunities concerning computer science such as the declining interest of high school students nationally in computer science careers.

The Computer Science Department proudly welcomes Dr. Tarsem (Semmy) Purewal as it's newest faculty member! Dr. Purewal is an alum of the College of Charleston Computer Science program and is no stranger to the wonderful group of faculty, staff and students here. He has spoken on several occasions to the ACM student group and participated in other department events.

Dr. Purewal will be teaching DISC 101 - Intro to Discovery Informatics and CSCI 310 - Advanced Algorithms in the Fall 2008 semester. He will also be heading up our student recruiting efforts by visiting high schools to promote Computer Science at the College of Charleston.

Dr. Purewal received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the College of Charleston in 2002. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Georgia in 2007.

See Dr. Purewal's contact information .