News & Events Archive - 2004

Department Welcomes Visitor from China
Prof. Jieyue He from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, arrived at GSU on October 25, 2004. She is visiting the Department of Computer Science for one year to collaborate with Dr. Yi Pan in the areas of grid computing and bioinformatics. Her visit is supported by the China Scholarship Foundation. (Posted 11/23/04)

GSU Brains and Behavior Program Launched
In a bid to develop more nationally recognized research and graduate education programs, GSU has launched a new interdisciplinary initiative focusing on neuroscience and behavior. The Brains and Behavior Program, led by the Departments of Biology and Psychology and funded by a $1-2 million annual budget, brings together 68 faculty members from eight academic departments, including the Department of Computer Science, and five research centers to develop collaborative research and graduate education programs in neuroscience and behavior.
     The program consists of research groups that conduct basic and applied studies in four areas. The Brain and Computers Group will examine interfaces that can be used in devices to help paralyzed people. The Neurons and Networks Group will study real and artificial neural networks to develop new computational devices and to understand mechanisms of biological computation. The Adaptability and Behavior Group will determine how neural development, learning, and life experiences such as drug abuse change brain circuits and behavior patterns. The Brains and Social Behaviors Group will study the neural and endocrine mechanisms of social behavior in conjunction with the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center consisting of more than 90 neuroscientists at eight metro Atlanta colleges and universities.
     The Brains and Behavior program will eventually support 43 new graduate fellowships and 16 undergraduate assistantships. Ten annual seed grants of up to $30,000 each will be awarded to faculty teams who pursue collaborative interdisciplinary neuroscience research. Five new junior faculty positions and at least one eminent scholar position are also expected to be created for the program. (Posted 11/23/04)

Ph.D. Student Participates in Data Mining Competitions
Yuchun Tang, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, participated in the Data Mining Cup 2004. 425 students from 166 universities and 32 countries took part in the competition, which lasted from April 15, 2004 to May 13, 2004. 111 participants submitted solution models. The objective of data mining is to discover hidden relations, patterns, and trends in databases. This year's data mining task dealt with the issue of predicting the behavior of customers returning mail-order merchandise. Mr. Tang's solution ranked 50th with 9559 points (the top-ranked solution received 10511 points).
     Mr. Tang also participated in KDD Cup 2004, a knowledge discovery and data mining competition held from April 28, 2004 to July 14, 2004, in conjunction with the Tenth Annual ACM SIGKDD Conference. Contestants were allowed to choose between a quantum physics task and a protein homology prediction task. Mr. Tang chose the protein homology prediction task. His solution ranked 24th out of 59 overall, based on four metrics:

Atlanta to Host ACM Southeast Conference
Kennesaw State University, located just north of Atlanta, will host the 43rd ACM Southeast Conference on March 18-20, 2005. The Southeast Conference is the the oldest continuously running annual conference of the ACM. The submission deadline is November 15, 2004 for papers, tutorials, workshops, and panels. The deadline for faculty and student poster submission is December 22, 2004. Dr. K. N. King is the publicity chair for the conference. Dr. King was the program chair for the 36th Southeast Conference, held in Marietta in 1998. (Posted 9/13/04)

Hu Joins Department
Dr. Xiaolin Hu joined the department in August as an assistant professor. Dr. Hu received his B.S. from the Department of Automatic Control at Beijing Institute of Technology, his M.S. in computer engineering from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona. His research interests are modeling and simulation, DEVS, simulation-based design, software engineering, software design methods, cooperative robotic systems, autonomous mobile robots, distributed real-time systems, and embedded software. Dr. Hu's Ph.D. dissertation was titled "A Simulation-Based Software Development Methodology for Distributed Real-Time Systems." He will be teaching CSc 4350/6350 (Software Engineering) during Fall semester. (Posted 8/26/04)

CS Faculty Members Promoted
Congratulations to the following CS faculty members, who were recently promoted:

The promotions are effective Fall 2004. (Posted 8/26/04)

GSU Lands $1 Million Bioinformatics Grant
Dr. Robert Harrison, associate professor of computer science, has been awarded a planning grant valued at $1.09 million from the National Institutes of Health. The grant, which extends over three years, is being used to develop a multidisciplinary program for research and education in bioinformatics and biomolecular computing. Only nine such grants were awarded nationwide; other universities receiving the grant include the University of Washington, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania.
     So far, money from the planning grant has funded 13 collaborative projects pairing a computer scientist or mathematician with a biologist or chemist. The planning grant has also been used to apply for a $22 million five-year grant that would establish a National Center for Biomedical Computing. Applying for the National Center grant was a massive undertaking involving the chairs of Computer Science, Chemistry, and Biology as well as the Dean of Arts and Sciences. Over 85 faculty from 13 institutions were involved in the proposal, which is currently pending.
     The planning grant has two principal co-investigators, Dr. Irene Weber of Biology and Dr. Yi Pan of Computer Science. Additional senior investigators on the grant include Drs. Belkasim, Bourgeois, Dogdu, Owen, Sunderraman, Weeks, Zelikovsky, Zhang, and Zhu of Computer Science, and Drs. Chen and Datta of Mathematics and Statistics. (Posted 8/26/04)

Computer Science Students Win Second Place in Imagine Cup Competition
Dr. Erdogan Dogdu and a team of four students were awarded second place in the Southern Regional Imagine Cup competition sponsored by Microsoft. (Posted 8/26/04)

Student Team Competes in  Windows ChallengE Competition
Last March, Dr. Michael Weeks and a team of three students traveled to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to compete in the Windows ChallengE competition. The competition was sponsored by Microsoft's Windows Embedded Devices Group in collaboration with the IEEE Computer Society International Design Competition. Teams of students from universities across the United States were challenged to design and implement a working prototype device that enhances human safety to correspond with the theme "Make the World a Safer Place." (Posted 8/26/04)

Computer Science Students Receive Awards at Honors Day
Seven computer science students were presented with awards at the annual Arts and Sciences Honors Day ceremony. The following list shows all awards and the winners:

Outstanding Senior Award

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Outstanding Graduate Research Award

Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student Award

The ceremony was held on April 14 in the Rialto Theater on campus. (Posted 6/8/04)