Upcoming Events
Thank you all for connecting with us virtually this past year!
We appreciate all of you continuing to engage in the computer science community, even when there was no pizza involved. There will be no more events for the remainder of the academic school year. We are so excited to see you again in the fall!
Best,
ACM Officers
Dr. Craig Partridge, Chair, Department of Computer Science, CSU
All indications are that the United States is swiftly entering a recession due to the COVID-19 virus. Starting a career in a recession is challenging, even in high tech. The goal of this talk is to provide some advice to Computer Science students about how to successfully launch your career in a recession.
I will discuss how the high tech job market typically responds to a recession and how the response may differ in the current recession. We will look at methods to improve your chances of getting a job offer swiftly including what skills to highlight, what courses enhance your value on the job market, and how widely to apply to jobs.
Bio: Craig is chair of the CS department. He graduated into the tail end of the Reagan Recession in the 1980s. Later he experienced how the tech bubble collapse of 2000 and the Great Recession both affected the tech job market.
Time: Apr 22, 2020 06:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86135124332?pwd=U0NCaklWY0ZWSVUwUm9lSTkxRVNFZz09
Meeting ID: 861 3512 4332
Password: 054714
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,86135124332#,,#,054714# US (Houston)
+16699009128,,86135124332#,,#,054714# US (San Jose)
The CS department has recently announced a major update to the undergraduate curriculum. This includes the introduction of a comprehensive list of concentrations and greater flexibility that will allow you to combine CS with other areas of interest. The new curriculum is relevant for both new and current majors, who can choose to switch or continue with their current plan. Please joins us for an information session in which we will give an overview of the changes and answer your questions. Details on the new curriculum can be found on a CS department webpage dedicated to this topic: https://compsci.colostate.edu/new-computer-science-major/.
Presenters: Debbie Bartlett and Asa Ben-Hur
Time: Apr 15, 2020 06:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/756338525?pwd=L3NHNGprU2xZempyY05CTGxwUkE2Zz09
Meeting ID: 756 338 525
Password: 769539
Find your local number to join by phone: https://zoom.us/u/adZZah6wWR
Online learning during Covid-19 and beyond...
Virtual Classroom usage is exploding during the outbreak as everyone has been forced to immediately adopt online versions of classes, but beyond that there are many options for enhancing and improving the learning experience through technology. Bongo, a video assessment and experiential learning technology company with headquarters in Loveland Colorado, will present how approaches like AutoAnalysis and other video technologies are helping learners now and in the future.
https://www.innovationews.com/Bongo-announces-Auto-Analysis-video-assessment-feature/
How does AutoAnalysis work and what is the associated architecture and technologies that enable it? How are cloud and AI services like transcription and custom dictionaries as well as lambdas (Serverless technology) or other auto-scaling capabilities enabling these types of approaches and technologies for the masses?
Join us Wednesday at 6:00pm to hear more:
https://zoom.us/j/808739419?pwd=WHBvRngzaUNLS0VxRVZPbGxlNFAwdz09
We've all just experienced a massive overhaul in how our classes are run. The switch to fully online classes may be challenging, so this week's ACM meeting will address it directly.
Former ACM Officer and current CS student Steve Sutton will lead a discussion of methods for success while working from home. If you haven't taken well to this change, you are encouraged to come and get some inspiration. For those of you who are adjusting well, please also attend and share how you're adapting.
The meeting will be broken into two sessions:
ACM Succeeding in the New Normal - Wed Apr 1, 6 PM MDT: https://zoom.us/j/924781346
ACM New Normal Discussion & Collaboration - Wed Apr 1, 6:30 PM MDT: https://zoom.us/j/970092937
Hello Everyone,
The future of our ACM club is already implicitly defined within one or more of the ~100 emails you have recently received. Nevertheless, I see it fit to explicitly say what my plans are for the future.
This first part should be obvious: we will not meet in CSB 130 for the remainder of the semester. As our lovely department chair, Dr Partridge, said in one of his emails, there is no reason for us to be in that building anymore.
My next item is that we are not totally out of luck. Tonight we have a Zoom meeting with a guest speaker, Mr. Wesch, that Dr. Gersch made happen, the email for which has been out for a couple days. Following this, I am exploring how many of our scheduled speakers are interested in carrying out such a format and how many are just cancelling. As I do my job and try to deliver you interesting meetings, do not lose hope.
The final Item I have for you is that the plan for elections is TBD. Some individuals have already approached me with questions about officer positions, so if you already have any interest, I encourage you to connect with me for more information.
With that, I personally wish you all the best in these times where our regular schedules have been disrupted on a scale hitherto undreamed of. Everyone handles change differently, but it's worth remembering that we are all in this together, therefore I encourage you to remember to keep reaching out to peers, mentors, advisers, anyone who will listen.
Yours Through Thick and Thin,
W. Musser
This week we have the opportunity to listen to two tech reps from JBS, the leading global food provider. Attached is a big flier with more information about their company, and here is a video about the JBS story.
As always, come listen to this new industry perspective and enjoy some free food in the process!
Code for Fort Collins is a non-profit volunteer organization which is part of the Code for America “Brigade Program”. In this session we’ll talk on some of the work that’s been done by the organization in the past, why ACM members may be interested in volunteering there, and what kinds of things the “civic tech” space the CFFC represents mean for the future of technology and government.
Cool talks, free pizza, need I say more? Come check out ACM!
Have you ever been curious about current tools and practices in the software development industry? If you know Eclipse and Java, isn't that enough? Even though everything in this industry is constantly changing, at any given time there are favorites. I returned from academia to industry a couple of years ago, and found new tools and practices, as well as some old ones that haven't changed. This talk will cover the practices of the startup that I work for. It will be a hands on session which will include discussion and demos of development environments (Android Studio, Visual Studio, QtCreator), languages (Java, C++, Rust, Python), and a variety of other tools: GitHub, SourceTree, Confluence, Jira, and Slack.
Come for the pizza, stay for the exciting presentation!
Moses M'Bowe the Co-Founder/CEO of Foundation Inc will be mainly talking about his story and entrepreneurship from his upbringing in The Gambia, Tanzania, and USA to the story of Foundation, how it came about. Then he will be talking about the technical side of the business to the business side. The point of this talk is to give CSU ACM students a different perspective. Please come with your questions and stay for the pizza. https://foundationincorporated.com.
Living on a Big Salary: a guide for the new Computer Science graduate
The average starting salary for CSU Computer Science students on graduation is about $74,000. That is in the top 2% nationally for people aged 22, so by some metrics, you will considered rich. By any metric, it is a substantial salary.
Based on discussions with friends and colleagues, this talk is about things we wished we had known when we graduated into a big salary. How much free money will you really have? What is a reasonable budget? What benefits packages matter? How do you value stock options? The goal is to give you a starting point from which you can craft your own plan.
Because of our planned visit to HPE (see below), this week the ACM President, Westin Musser, will be giving a short talk on involvement opportunities within the CS Department and with the university's student government system. This is also an opportunity to ask questions if you are interested in becoming an ACM officer for Fall 2020. Come learn about all the awesome organizations we have, get involved, and go in on some free pizza!
As I mentioned before, we have an engagement on Friday morning with the Fort Collins HPE campus. The time commitment is ~9:30 (leave CSU) to 12:30 (likely to return). If this piques your interest, fill out our RSVP form.
ACM is hosting its annual internship panel! Students of various levels will be there to field your questions pertaining to their experiences with the full stack process from discovering and applying to actually working. Anything you and your classmates want to know about what interning is like is fair game. Come hang out, maybe learn something new about the best way to get your foot in the door of the industry, and enjoy some classic free ACM pizza!
Welcome back from break! I'm happy to announce our first speaker for the new semester, Brooksource. They will be talking about market trends in IT, Linkedin Navigation, and career paths you can take after graduating.
Faye is a Data Architect at Lockheed Martin. You can look forward to her talk about IT Positions in the exciting world of Space Exploration, as well as the ever-useful interview prep!
Come take a break from getting ready for the end of the semester and catch this exciting talk! Maybe even get some pizza while you're around!
Karen graduated from CSU with a bachelor's in Computer Science and immediately began her career at HP as a software engineer. She went on to complete her master's degree in Computer Science while working full time. She did extensive software engineering responsibilities for the first 15 years of her career and then moved into management. She managed numerous software projects and eventually moved into cross-functional program management. Karen decided to retire from HP after 35 years of service when she was presented with the opportunity to become the CEO and Engineering Director of LunarG. She now heads up this small company of experienced software engineers specializing in 3D graphics and compute technologies. LunarG is responsible for delivering the Vulkan SDK and leads the development of the Vulkan Loader, Validation Layer, and many Vulkan ecosystem tools.
You can look forward to an overview of Karen's career since graduating from CSU followed by an overview of the Vulkan API and Vulkan Ecosystem Software activities of LunarG. The Vulkan API was developed by the Khronos group and released in 2016. Vulkan is a new generation graphics and compute API that provides high-efficiency, cross-platform access to modern GPUs used in a wide variety of devices from PCs and consoles to mobile phones and embedded platforms.
Don't forget about the pizza!
Navigating life after CSU is a challenging task. You're trying to juggle your college responsibilities and activities all while having to look for a job or apply for grad school. I used to be in this position not too long ago and want to share some advice on how to manage the job search in the last year of college.
I will also be sharing what a day in the life of a software engineer is like at the company I work at, Major League Baseball.
ACM and ACM-W are excited to team up this Wednesday night with a panel of CS students who attended two conferences this Fall - Tapia and Grace Hopper. This is an opportunity to hear from your peers why they attended, what the experience meant for them, and for them to share any insight they gleaned that may be helpful to you too. Both conferences have a focus on supporting the growth of diverse voices in our field, and both conferences had men and women from our department who received scholarships to attend! A great opportunity to ask questions of your peers and share in their experience.
As always, pizza!
Debugging using print statements is one way of understanding what your programming is doing. In this talk you will learn about a simple implementations in Java, C, and C++ that provides the convenience of printing while adding useful extensions.
ACM will not be meeting this week. Instead, consider RSVPing and attending Target Tech Talks and Treats from 2 to 4 PM in the Career Center Classroom.
This event from Target will discuss some of the cutting-edge developments that are making Target a leader in the industry, as well as why it's great to work for Target.
We are having a joint meeting with the CIS club. Cigna will talk in general on security in the field.
This will take place in Rockwell 167 instead of our usual meeting place.
User-Aware Shared Perception for Embodied Agents
This talk will present Diana, an embodied agent who is aware of her own virtual space and the physical space around her. Using video and depth sensors, Diana attends to the user’s gestures, body language, gaze and facial expressions as well as their words. Diana also gestures and emotes in addition to speaking, and exists in a 3D virtual world that the user can see. This produces symmetric and shared perception, in the sense that Diana can see the user, the user can see Diana, and both can see the virtual world. The result is an embodied agent that begins to develop the conceit that the user is interacting with a peer rather than a program.
Term projects are misunderstood, mismanaged, and underestimated. For most of the semester, they can be found at the shores where all academic procrastinations wash up. Prioritized barely over pop quizzes, term projects progress from conception to completion during the last two weeks of the semester. Given that the project is also a team effort, the compressed schedule alongside interpersonal dynamics contributes to a great deal of stress. A consequence is that term projects end up sputtering across the finish line. This is lamentable.
Why bother? Here’s why: done right, a term project demonstrates creativity, technical sophistication, and perseverance. Can you think of something else that packs so much punch? Term projects are very gratifying, and you can draw on the skills you hone many, many times. Such a project is also worthy of inclusion in your resume, where it sheds new light on you.
I will go over what constitutes a good term project and how to get there. Spoiler alert: it is not that hard!
Female enrollment in undergraduate Computer Science is historically low, with only 18% of bachelor's degrees in the field earned by women. Not only is this number low, it has actually declined since the 1980's when it reached a peak of 37%. Numerous explanations have been given, including negative media portrayals, lack of familial encouragement, and perceived or real differences in treatment of male versus female students. Whatever the reason, one widely recognized intervention is the exposure of female students to Computer Science at an early age. This talk will focus on how to make outreach activities that engage female students in Computer Science in a way that is interesting and relevant to them.
Modern day heavy vehicles are equipped with numerous sensors, embedded controllers, communication networks, and electro-mechanical systems that work in tandem to improve the performance, efficiency, and connectivity of vehicles. We identify several possible attacks on heavy vehicles and discuss the constraints on providing security solutions. We describe how to distinguish between attacks and safety-critical events from the generated network logs and also how to provide visualization aids to the operator of heavy vehicles in near real-time for CAN situational awareness. We conclude by enumerating our future directions in heavy vehicle security which includes methodology for designing secure heavy vehicles and developing a testbed for heavy vehicle security research.
The new school year has just started and produced new challenges for all of us as students. To provide some guidance and familiarize everyone with the department, the ACM officers are presenting on how to be successful in the computer science program. Come, hang out, enjoy free pizza, and get some insight from the experienced members of the club's cabinet.
Good luck on finals and have an awesome summer break!
2019 - 2020 school year positions
President: Westin Musser
Lead ACM-CSU. Organize company/future events, company relations, and overall administrative tasks.
Vice President: Sarah Hultin
Support the President, possibly lead ACM-CSU's side project initiative
Treasurer: Toby Patterson
Handle the finances, order and receive the food/prizes
Secretary: Anteneh Zeleke
Support the President & Vice President, help with the Vice President's additional event or effort, and/or lead your own
Web Developer: Kiera Jost
Update the site for events, improve the site, and add any functionality needed
Marketing Manager: Kiera Jost
Run the social media accounts and help with any advertising
Event Coordinator: Anteneh Zeleke
Dedicated position to be at meetings, count attendance, and keep the room maintained
Join us for the last official ACM event of the year where we will hold elections for officer positions next year and discuss what you want to see added or changed about ACM!
We will be using the first 15 or so minutes to let those interested in running for a position introduce themselves. The vote will take place after this.
As always there will be pizza and feel free to bring homework and hang out with us even if you are not running for a position.
Come wind down the semester by playing some board games and getting to know your classmates! Feel free to bring your own games or play some of ours!
Please note that the location is in Pinon Hall 131 (residence hall across the street from Moby Arena).
Come see what it's like to work at Lockheed Martin and also see a cool Virtual Reality demo of their Mars Base Camp! This was rescheduled from last month when school closed for the bomb cyclone.
Data Science is a broad and evolving field, offering many opportunities for Computer Science, Applied Math, and Engineering graduates. In this talk, I will discuss data science and machine learning applications in cybersecurity, as well as share some experiences related to entering the field, interviewing, and impostor syndrome.
This event has been cancelled due to impending weather.
Exploring the value of cloud tools and practices through applied consulting experience in Supply Chain and Distribution. Blue Horseshoe will be going over topics in Azure Cloud, Analytics (Data Science, Machine Learning, & BI), DevOps, and Consulting vs. Engineering.
The average starting salary for CSU Computer Science students on graduation is about $74,000. That is in the top 2% nationally for people aged 22, so by some metrics, you will considered rich. By any metric, it is a substantial salary.
Based on discussions with friends and colleagues, this talk is about things we wished we had known when we graduated into a big salary. How much free money will you really have? What is a reasonable budget? What benefits packages matter? How do you value stock options? The goal is to give you a starting point from which you can craft your own plan.
Come join ACM for our newly formatted coding competition and win one of three Raspberry Pis! There will be 3 programming problems and winners will be split among three groups: freshmen, sophomores, and juniors and seniors.
A new addition to this year's competition is that we will spend the last 15 minutes going over one of the problems and how you might approach it in a technical interview setting.
Please bring your laptops if you would like to participate!
The competition will take place on HackerRank: https://www.hackerrank.com/acm-programming-competition-2019
You can view a document with the solutions and explanations here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pv61qKJj_0qEQrr6vXV5PIkXAxxx2jExQ2t09y88Lzg/edit?usp=sharing
Come see what it's like to work at Lockheed Martin and also see a cool Virtual Reality demo of their Mars Base Camp!
Although there is no meeting this week, ACM and ACM-W are holding an officer planning meeting for prospective officers. If you are interested in being an officer for one or both of the clubs next year, please see the details below:
Are you interested in Industry Speakers, Cool Hackathons, the Computer Science Community at CSU, and of course PIZZA? Are you interested in planning, organizing, and boosting your resume with leadership skills? Come see what it takes to help build the ACM and ACM-W communities at CSU!
It's that time of year where we are looking for more community builders to help us keep our community thriving!
ACM and ACM-W are holding open meetings in the open area on 3rd floor CSB at 5:00pm on the first Wednesday of every month (March 6th, April 3rd, and May 1st) so students can get a better idea of how the clubs operate and the planning that goes on behind the scenes.
We will be going over the responsibilities for each open role next year, talking about what events we want to see more/less of, and anything new students want to see added. The current officers from both clubs will be here to answer questions about what they do and can give advice on how to succeed in an officer role. If you are interested in becoming an officer for ACM and/or ACM-W next year, please come to these meetings!
If you have any questions about this, feel free to email us at acm-officers@cs.colostate.edu or acm-w-officers@cs.colostate.edu
Please Join the ACM Slack channel here & ACM-W Slack channel here!
Overview of officer roles here
Mark Gants will be presenting about what it is like working in the gaming industry at Zynga, specifically, from an engineering perspective and how people can prepare themselves for entry into that field.
He will also be sticking around afterwards if you are intereseted in an internship/full-time position.
Join ACM & ACM-W and we will go over how to prepare/what to expect from a hackathon, figure out teams, and discuss transportation to the event.
Fereydoon, a PhD candidate, will be giving an introduction to models in Machine Learning and Deep Learning, definition and types of errors, and how model performance is evaluated in the context of the human brain research. No specific AI/ML background is necessary, and the talk is accessible for first and second year undergrad students.
Fritz will describe a debugging tool with implementations in Java, C and C++
A link to the tool can be found here
Andrew Cook from MiTek, a collaborative construction software company, is coming to give a high level presentation/demo on C# and its similarities and differences with Java. If you would like to follow the demo, feel free to download Microsoft's Visual Studio before coming to the meeting!
Ever wonder how to go about getting an internship or what they're like? Come listen to some of the ACM officers talk about their experiences with finding, getting, and working at previous internships! We'll also be answering any questions you may have regarding internships!
Start off the semester with a blast by playing some board games and getting to know the people in the CS department!
Please note that the location is in Pinon Hall 131 (residence hall across the street from Moby Arena).
Please fill out this form
Good luck on Finals! Have a good break, and see all of you in the Spring semester!
Finish the semester with a blast by playing some board games and getting to know your classmates! Feel free to bring your own games or play some of ours!
Please note that the location is in Pinon Hall 131 (residence hall across the street from Moby Arena).
Autonomous Networked Technologies: ANTs Group will be presenting an update on their distributed robotics project, talking about how to get undergraduate research experience, and how you can get involved with ANTs next semester.
Resume failures and how to avoid them with Gillian Fahey
Update: ACM Meeting tonight is cancelled due to presenter illness. See you after break!
Are you an undergraduate CS major within two years of graduating and wonder what graduate school has to offer? Please attend to have your questions answered.
Why graduate school?
Dr. Sanjay Rajopadhye
Sample of current research
Presentations and answers to your questions from several computer science faculty. Ask them how you can be involved in research.
Experiences of current graduate student
Questions and Answers
Ask how you can be paid to attend graduate students.
The CSU VR/AR Club and the VPR for Virtual Reality is bringing an Apple ARKit Professional to teach us how to work with Apple's Augmented Reality technology (ARKit 2).
There will be about 15 Macs available, but bring your own Mac if you have one since supplies are limited.
This meeting will be on a Tuesday instead of our usual Wednesday meeting!
Info security principles and how to apply concepts that are well defined in the curriculum to this area.
Dr. Gersch will be presenting an introduction to blockchain, its uses, and the course he is creating about it next semester.
There will be no meeting this week. Good luck on midterms, evereyone!
Dave Matthews, Computer Science professor at CSU after 37 years in industry, will be discussing scale and its effect on engineering software for millions of people. He will also answer any questions about his time in industry, the new and responsive web pages he worked on this summer, or anything else you would like to know about him!
Walk through an overview of our worldwide SaaS deployment and our continuous integration pipeline. How we use various services in Amazon's cloud (AWS) including virtual private clouds, Amazon Machine Images, AutoScaling groups, Load Balancers, Amazon Relationship Database Services, Amazon Guard Duty, lambda functions, elastic transcoders, cloud formation, multiple availability zones, etc.
Also, some of the other tools and technology we use like github webhooks, Jenkins, CircleCI, Docker, Artifactory, SonarQube, Chef Automate, and Grafana sitting on top of our ELK/Elastic stack (ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana - with some Beats) to round out the CI pipeline and associated automation and monitoring.
Learn what ACM-ICPC is about, join a team, and get ready to head to ICPC with ACM this October!
If you weren't able to make it to tonight's meeting to sign up, use the link below!
ICPC SignUpSee what goes into starting and finishing one of these and what you can learn from the development process.
Come see the side projects, research, and independent studies some of our officers have worked on in the past!
View PresentationsKickstart, a Google coding competition, hosts online rounds throughout the year consisting of fun and challenging algorithmic puzzles. Come practice with your peers and learn more about the competition at an on-campus practice session led by Google engineers.
Ready to take your coding to the next level? Interested in pursuing career opportunities with Google?
Then join us for kickstart at CSU!
RSVPGet some 1 on 1 time with Google engineers to go over your resume. Limited availability, so express your interest in the RSVP.
RSVPA problem isn't truly solved until it's solved for all. At Google, you're invited to bring your insight, imagination, and healthy disregard for the impossible to build products that create opportunities and build -- for everyone. Join us to learn more about our culture and teams!
RSVPDo you love free food and free swag? Would you like the opportunity to ask Googlers about their experiences? Come join two Googler CSU alums for food and informal conversation.
RSVPCurious to hear what Google looks for on a resume? Get hands-on advice on best practices, must-haves, and common mistakes.
RSVPCome listen to advice from ACM officers on how to do well in CS and make the best of your time in college!
Also, free pizza!
View and download the presentation below
PresentationACM and ACM-W are kicking off the semester with a game night meeting! Come learn about the clubs, what we have planned, and grab some pizza and play some card/board games.
Finish the semester with a blast by playing some board games and getting to know your classmates! Feel free to bring your own games or play some of ours!
Please note that the location is in Pinon Hall 131 (residence hall across the street from Moby Arena).
This biennial event provides a venue for current and future computing professionals to gain confidence in their skills, network with each other, and learn from accomplished technical attendees. In addition to renowned keynote speakers, the conference will feature two main tracks: a track aimed at undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students, and a track designed for industry professionals.
Use the form below and let us know if you are interested!
Form
Celebrate the success with women in the Computer Science industry over a banquet!
RSVPKickstart, a Google coding competition, hosts online rounds throughout the year consisting of fun and challenging algorithmic puzzles. Come practice with your peers and learn more about the competition at an on-campus practice session led by Google engineers.
Ready to take your coding to the next level? Interested in pursuing career opportunities with Google?
Then join us for kickstart at CSU!
RSVPGet some 1 on 1 time with Google engineers to go over your resume. Limited availability, so express your interest in the RSVP.
RSVPA problem isn't truly solved until it's solved for all. At Google, you're invited to bring your insight, imagination, and healthy disregard for the impossible to build products that create opportunities and build -- for everyone. Join us to learn more about our culture and teams!
RSVPDo you love free food and free swag? Would you like the opportunity to ask Googlers about their experiences? Come join two Googler CSU alums for food and informal conversation.
RSVPCurious to hear what Google looks for on a resume? Get hands-on advice on best practices, must-haves, and common mistakes.
RSVP