CSU COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

Fall 2006                                                                                         Volume 5.1

Dr. Darrell WhitleyGreetings from the Department of Computer Science! After serving as Chair for the last three and a half years, I am more convinced than ever that having a vision of the future and goals for achieving that vision are critical to the health of a department. more...
What do toy dinosaurs, helicopters, dolls, and rubber duckies have to do with computer science? They are just a few of the items students use in CS612 Topics in Computer Vision. The class emphasizes the practicalities of building working object recognition systems. Teams of students build an actual camera-to-decision system able to recognize, at least often, specific objects.

According to Dr. Ross Beveridge, new laptops look like supercomputers with cameras compared to what was available in the past, and it is now practical to develop and experiment with full object recognition systems. This hands-on experience is a tremendous complement to the more traditional study of papers and adds a sense of immediacy to the topic.

Learn more about our Computer Vision Group.

road sign photo
On
The
Move...

 Geri Georg has changed positions from Visiting Research Scientist to Research Scholar.

 Paul Hansen is now our Systems Administrator for Windows.


Fall 2006

Doctor of Philosophy

Charles A. Ross, An Abstract Target Architecture for FPGA Compilation. Dr. Ross is a Software Engineer at Google working on application performance.
 
Master of Science

Mark F. Rogers
Andrew M. Sutton
Gagan Tandon
Batsukh Tsendjav
Sung-Whan Woo
Bin Zhang

Master of Computer Science

Richard Z. Aandahl
Lori B. Ailes
Brett S. Dee
John T. Grieggs
Xi Hua
Sundeep Katepalli
Mark L. Kirchner
Charles Panaccione
Thayne T. Walker
Michael D. Wright
Xinwei E. Zhang

Indrakshi Ray and Indrajit Ray, Addressing Security Challenges in Pervasive Computer Applications, DOD-USAF.

Adele Howe, Model Justified Search Algorithms for Scheduling under Uncertainty, DOD-USAF.

Michelle Strout, Combinatorial Scientific Computing and Petascale Simulations, Argonne National Laboratory/University of Chicago.

The newly formed Graduate Student Association (GSA) brings graduate students together in a social network for support, learning, and fun. It also serves as a point of contact between graduate students and department faculty. Initially, GSA members met to socialize and teach each other about graduate school, but their activities have grown to include representation on the new building committee, revising the Graduate Student Handbook, and providing feedback on research exam defenses before students appear before their committees. For more information about the GSA, please contact Thomson Comer (comer at cs.colostate.edu).

acm news

On September 30 ACM hosted Computer Science Jeopardy, once again sponsored by Cheyenne-based company OCI. OCI generously supplied video iPods to the winners and iPod shuffles to all contestants as well as audience prizes and food. Congratulations to John DeJournett, Scott Lundberg, and Weston Pace, our first place winners!

The CS Department annual fall picnic was held at City Park on September 16th. Turnout was great with attendance between 80 and 100 people. Although the promised student/faculty softball game never materialized, there was plenty of volleyball action.

The ACM meets weekly to discuss many topics ranging from programming to job skills. More information on our ACM Club is available here.


Industrial Advisory Board
The department held its Annual Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) meeting on October 6. The Board facilitates our communication and collaboration with industry and also provides practical suggestions and assessment of our educational efforts. For more information about our IAB, click here.


In November, the department helped sponsor ISTeC High School Day. The full day event was aimed at introducing high school students, counselors, and advisors from across the state to IS&T careers and educational opportunities at CSU. For more information about ISTeC, please click here.


The department is pleased to welcome Kim Judith to the staff. Kim will provide our accounting services, and she is replacing Linda Hardeman who has retired.

Congratulations to Ben Joeris who recently competed in the 2006 International TopCoder Algorithms/Programming Competition. Ben was the top-ranked of only three Americans who qualified (from CSU, Harvard, and MIT, in that order).

Plans for our new building are proceeding. Groundbreaking is still slated for this fall (2007). View our new building webpage.

Want to know what other CS alumni are doing now? RamBytes will publish any requested alumni updates in this section.  Please e-mail your information to: newsletter@cs.colostate.edu
RamBytes is published by the Computer Science Department, Colorado State University.  All articles are copyrighted by the respective authors.

Communications regarding this publication are welcome and should be e-mailed to:  newsletter@cs.colostate.edu

RamBytes Editor:  Lisa Knebl
Faculty Advisor:  Dr. Charles Anderson
Faculty Advisor Issue 5.1: Dr. Sudipto Ghosh
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RamBytes Vol. 5.1  Fall 2006                                                         Computer Science Homepage