News

For events in the Department of Computer Science, click here.

IPDPS Coming to Atlanta in 2010
Next spring, Atlanta will host the 24th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2010). The conference will be held at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel on April 19–23. IPDPS is the flagship conference of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP). It is held annually at locations around the world, with an average attendance of about 600.
     IPDPS 2009, which was held in Rome last May, featured 100 paper presentations (chosen from 440 submissions), three keynote talks, and a panel. In addition, the 2009 conference included 21 workshops and a Ph.D. forum. Attendees came from over 40 countries. IPDPS 2010 has received over 500 paper submissions; authors of accepted papers will be notified by December 7. The conference will have 19 workshops and a Ph.D. forum.
     The general chair of IPDPS 2010 is Dr. David Bader of Georgia Tech. Georgia State faculty involved in the conference include Dr. Sushil Prasad, who was recently reelected to a second term as chair of TCPP, and Dr. Anu Bourgeois, who will serve as local arrangements co-chair. (Posted 11/19/09)

Babaie Given Joint Appointment
Dr. Hassan Babaie of the Department of Geosciences has been granted a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Babaie performs research in geoinformatics with Dr. Raj Sunderraman. The two faculty members won an internal Research Team Award in 2008. Using funding from this grant, they created the SAFOD Brittle Microstructure and Mechanics Knowledge Base (SAFOD BM₂KB), a database of findings about microstructures and mechanics of brittle faulting, gathered from studies of SAFOD cores. SAFOD stands for San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth, an NSF-funded project in which a deep hole was drilled in the San Andreas Fault Zone. Dr. Babaie and Dr. Sunderraman have applied for an NSF grant to further develop SAFOD BM₂KB. (Posted 11/18/09)

Ph.D. Students Are Local Co-Chairs for 2010 Grace Hopper Celebration
Ph.D. students Mary Hudachek-Buswell and Stefanie Markham have been named local/volunteer co-chairs for next year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). In this role, they will coordinate local arrangements for the conference as well as organizing volunteers to assist with the event. GHC, which was inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, focuses on the research and career interests of women in computing. Started in 1994, the conference was originally held every three years but is now an annual event. The 2009 GHC, which drew 1570 attendees to Tucson earlier this fall, was sold out. Organizers are planning for 2000 people to attend next year's GHC, to be held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta on September 29–October 2, 2010. GHC is presented by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association for Computing Machinery. (Posted 11/18/09)

Pan Hosts Visiting Scholar
The Department of Computer Science welcomes Dr. Jianxin Wang as a visiting scholar. Dr. Wang is a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at Central South University in China. His research interests include algorithms, bioinformatics, and wireless networking. During his six-month visit, he will collaborate with Dr. Yi Pan on bioinformatics and wireless networking research. Dr. Wang is supported by the China Scholarship Council, a nonprofit institution affiliated with China's Ministry of Education. (Posted 11/11/09)

Hu Receives NSF Grant
Dr. Xiaolin Hu has received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled "Integrated Weather and Wildfire Simulation and Optimization for Wildfire Management." Dr. James Nutaro from Oak Ridge National Laboratory is co-principal investigator of the grant, which will run for four years. Dr. Hu's funding is part of a $1 million Collaborative Research grant. The remaining money will go to the University of Oklahoma, where Dr. Ming Xue is the principal investigator and Dr. Yang Hong is the co-principal investigator, and to Texas A&M University, where Dr. Lewis Ntaimo is the principal investigator.
     The grant will allow Dr. Hu and his collaborators to develop new models and computation methods for effective wildfire response management. One novel aspect of the project is the idea of coupling weather and wildfire modeling with data assimilation to enable two-way interactive dynamic weather-wildfire prediction. Another is the integration of wildfire simulation with stochastic optimization for wildfire containment. The goal of the project is to reduce losses caused by wildfires by providing data to make better firefighting resource-management decisions. The project includes collaborating with the Texas Forest Service to field-test systems developed with funding from the grant.
     The new grant builds on work done under an NSF grant that Dr. Hu received in 2007. It is also related to his recent NSF CAREER Award. Funding for both the new grant and the CAREER Award comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an economic stimulus package enacted by Congress in February. Dr. Hu's wildfire-modeling research has attracted wide interest, with stories appearing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Atlanta Business Chronicle, among other media outlets. (Posted 11/5/09)

Internal Grants Awarded to Computer Science Faculty
Four Computer Science faculty members were among 38 Georgia State professors who recently won internal grants from the university. The awards were competitive, with 103 applications reviewed by an Internal Grant Peer Review Committee consisting of 25 senior faculty members. The winning CS faculty members were recipients of Research Team Awards, which provide funding for interdisciplinary research teams to prepare proposals for external research funding.
     One Research Team Award went to Dr. Yan-Qing Zhang, Dr. Robert Harrison, Dr. Xiaolin Hu, and Dr. Alex Zelikovsky (Computer Science), Dr. Irene Weber and Dr. John Houghton (Biology), Dr. Markus Germann and Dr. Donald Hamelberg (Chemistry), and Dr. Guantao Chen (Mathematics and Statistics) for a proposal titled "Multidisciplinary Research in Bioinformatics and Complex Systems." The other award went to Dr. Yujun G. Zheng (Chemistry) and Dr. Yan-Qing Zhang (Computer Science) for "An Interdisciplinary Approach to Discovering New Substrates of PRMTs." (Posted 11/3/09)

Beyah Is Co-Editor of Network Security Book
Dr. Raheem Beyah is a co-editor of the soon-to-be-published book Security in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (ISBN 978-981-4271-08-0), along with Dr. Janise McNair of the University of Florida and Dr. Cherita Corbett of Sandia National Laboratories. The book, which is volume 3 of the Computer and Network Security series, consists of thirteen chapters written by experts in network security. The chapters are grouped into four sections: Authentication and Confidentiality, Privacy, Reliability, and Network Management and Configuration. One of the chapters in the Privacy section is co-authored by Dr. Xiaojun Cao. Topics covered in the book include attacks, malicious node detection, access control, authentication, intrusion detection, privacy and anonymity, key management, location verification, security architectures and protocols, secrecy and integrity, network resilience and survivability, and trust models. Published by World Scientific, Security in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks is a 406-page hardcover book. It can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com for $120. (Posted 10/22/09)

Fall 2009 Newsletter Now Available
The Fall 2009 edition of the department newsletter has been published. A PDF version is available for download. (Posted 10/7/09)

Prasad Wins NSF Grant
Dr. Sushil Prasad was awarded a $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled "A Planning Workshop on Curriculum Standards for Parallel and Distributed Computing." The grant, which runs for one year, will support a workshop that explores the state of parallel and distributed computing education, assesses education needs in this area, and recommends how best to address these needs. One outcome of the grant is expected to be an annual curriculum workshop at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, the flagship conference of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP). Dr. Prasad also plans to establish a TCPP committee that would set curriculum standards. (Posted 9/30/09)

Beyah Is Co-Chair for Computer and Network Security Symposium
Dr. Raheem Beyah will serve as a co-chair for the Computer and Network Security Symposium, one of thirteen symposia to be conducted at the 6th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2010). Under the theme of "Innovative Communications for a Better Future," IWCMC 2010 will target a wide spectrum of state-of-the-art as well as emerging topics pertaining to wireless networks, wireless communications, and mobile computing. The conference will be held in Caen, France on June 28–July 2, 2010. (Posted 9/28/09)

Li Hosts Visiting Scholar
The Department of Computer Science welcomes a new visiting scholar, Dr. Longjiang Guo. Dr. Guo is an associate professor at Heilongjiang University in China. His research interests include wireless sensor networks, data stream processing, and data mining. During his visit, which will last at least a year, Dr. Wang will collaborate with Dr. Yingshu Li on research related to data management in heterogeneous wireless networks. (Posted 9/23/09)

Ph.D. Student Receives Travel Grant
Ph.D. student Chunyu Ai was awarded a $600 travel grant to attend the Fourth International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications (WASA '09). At the conference, she presented the paper "In-network Historical Data Storage and Query Processing Based on Distributed Indexing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks," co-authored by Dr. Ruiying Du, Dr. Minghong Zhang, and Dr. Yingshu Li (her Ph.D. advisor). WASA '09 is a leading conference for presenting research in the area of algorithms, systems, and applications for current and next-generation wireless networks. The conference was held in Boston on August 16–18. (Posted 9/23/09)

Hu Receives NSF CAREER Award
Dr. Xiaolin Hu has received a five-year, $425,000 award from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The CAREER grant, which emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives, is the most competitive and prestigious award from NSF to young faculty members in science and engineering fields.
     Dr. Hu's proposal was titled "Large-Scale Spatial Temporal Data Driven Simulation with Sequential Monte Carlo Methods." Advances in sensor and network technologies have made it possible for simulations to incorporate real-time data, leading to a new paradigm of dynamic data-driven simulation. In such a system, real-time data is continually fed into the simulation to improve its predictive abilities. Dr. Hu is planning to use Sequential Monte Carlo methods to incorporate probabilistic techniques into the dynamic data-driven simulation approach. His research may potentially benefit other fields in which sophisticated simulation models are used, such as manufacturing, transportation, geo-ecological science, and national security. Dr. Hu's work will build on his previous research into developing a software system to support real-time optimal decision-making for wildfire management.
     Dr. Hu joined the Department of Computer Science in 2004 as an assistant professor. He received a B.S. from the Department of Automatic Control at Beijing Institute of Technology in 1996, an M.S. in computer engineering from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999, and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona in 2004. Dr. Hu's research interests include modeling and simulation, autonomous agent and multi-agent systems, model-based development, and software engineering.
     Only six faculty members at Georgia State have active CAREER awards, and four of these are in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Yingshu Li, Dr. Xiaojun Cao, and Dr. Raheem Beyah won CAREER awards in 2006, 2007, and 2009, respectively. All four of the department's assistant professors now hold CAREER awards. (Posted 9/10/09)

Department Awards Four Ph.D. Degrees in August
The Department of Computer Science awarded four Ph.D. degrees in August. The recipients of the degrees were:

(Posted 9/2/09)

Graduate Fellowship Winners Announced
The winners of Molecular Basis of Disease (MBD) and Brains & Behavior (B&B) fellowships were recently announced. New MBD fellowships were awarded to the following computer science graduate students (the name of each student's advisor is in parentheses):

The following students hold MBD fellowships that were awarded in prior years:

New B&B fellowships were awarded to the following students:

The following students hold B&B fellowships from prior years:

Fellowships last for one year but can be renewed for up to three years. Molecular Basis of Disease is a program in computational biomedicine that includes faculty in six departments engaged in interdisciplinary research: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics and Statistics, and Computer Information Systems. The program provides both graduate and undergraduate fellowships as well as support for state-of-the-art facilities in these departments. Brains & Behavior is a Georgia State initiative that unites a wide variety of researchers who bring unique perspectives about how nervous systems produce behavior. B&B research groups foster collaboration among faculty from Biology, Chemistry, Computer Information Systems, Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics, Philosophy, Physics and Astronomy, and Psychology. The B&B program is administered by GSU's Neuroscience Institute. (Posted 9/2/09)

Zelikovsky Receives NSF Grant
Dr. Alex Zelikovsky received a $224,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project titled "Reconstruction of Haplotype Spectra from High-Throughput Sequencing Data." The grant will run for three years, starting September 1, 2009.
     High-throughput sequencing (HTS) is a technique for parallelizing the DNA sequencing process, allowing thousands or millions of sequences to be produced simultaneously. Research to be performed under the grant involves developing efficient computational methods for reconstructing the full spectrum of haplotype sequences from HTS data. In collaboration with molecular biologists from the University of Connecticut Health Center and the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Zelikovsky will develop methods to enable three novel applications of HTS: (a) reconstruction of diploid genome sequences, including complete haplotype sequences of each CNV copy, (b) reconstruction of alternative splicing isoform sequences and their frequencies, and (c) reconstruction of viral quasispecies sequences and their frequencies. Work will include developing a comprehensive analytical toolkit for these applications, along with high-quality open-source software implementations. (Posted 9/1/09)

Computer Science Tutoring Center Announces Fall Hours
The Department of Computer Science is once again offering free tutoring this semester for core 2000- and 3000-level courses. The tutoring center is located in Suite 2117 of the One Park Tower building at 34 Peachtree Street. Hours of operation are Monday through Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tutoring is available for the following courses:

Tutoring is free and available to all students enrolled in these courses. (Posted 8/26/09)

ISBRA 2009 Held in Fort Lauderdale
In May, the Department of Computer Science helped organize the Fifth International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (ISBRA 2009), which drew researchers, developers, and practitioners working on all aspects of bioinformatics and computational biology and their applications. Attendees came from 10 countries and 15 U.S. states. A group photograph (high-resolution version) is available showing some of the participants. ISBRA was held at Georgia State in 2007 and 2008. This year, the conference moved to Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
     The symposium featured 26 papers (selected by the program committee from 55 submissions) and 22 posters. Six distinguished scientists gave keynote talks: Dr. Nick Eriksson (23andMe, Inc.), Dr. Mikhail Gelfand (Russian Academy of Sciences), Dr. Itsik Pe'er (Columbia University), Dr. Shamil Sunyaev (Harvard Medical School), Dr. Nicholas Tsinoremas (University of Miami), and Dr. Esko Ukkonen (University of Helsinki).
     The proceedings of ISBRA 2009 were published as volume 5542 of the Springer Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics series. Special issues of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and Journal of Computer Science and Technology will be devoted to expanded versions of the best symposium papers.
     Four best poster awards were presented at the conference:

     The general chairs of ISBRA 2009 were Dr. Matthew He (Nova Southeastern University) and  Dr. Alex Zelikovsky. The program chairs were Dr. Ion Mandoiu (University of Connecticut), Dr. Giri Narasimhan (Florida International University), and Dr. Yan-Qing Zhang. Dr. Raj Sunderraman was the publicity chair, Dr. Anu Bourgeois was the finance chair, and Dr. Yufeng Wu (University of Connecticut) and Dr. Craig E. Nelson (University of Connecticut) were the poster chairs. Ph.D. student Zejin (Jason) Ding was the conference webmaster.
     Financial support for ISBRA 2009 was provided by Georgia State's Molecular Basis of Disease Program. (Posted 8/12/09)

Prasad Reelected Chair of Technical Committee on Parallel Processing
Dr. Sushil Prasad has been reelected chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing. His first term of office was from July 2007 to June 2009. His second term will end in June 2011.
     With nearly 85,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world's leading organization of computing professionals. Founded in 1946, it is the largest of the 38 societies of the IEEE. The Computer Society sponsors over 40 Technical Committees, which serve as the focal point for the society's activities within a technical discipline and directly influence standards development, conferences, publications, and educational activities.
     The Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) acts as an international forum to promote parallel processing research and education, and participates in setting up technical standards in this area. Topics of interest are related to the design, analysis and implementation of parallel systems and solutions, including design and analysis of parallel architectures and algorithms as well as application development on parallel machines.
     Among other activities, TCPP sponsors professional conferences and workshops. The flagship conference is the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), which is held annually in the spring. TCPP also sponsors the International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC). (Posted 7/17/09)

Ph.D. Student Wins Award at NAFIPS
Ph.D. student Yanjun Zhao won the Best Student Paper Award at the 28th North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society Annual Conference (NAFIPS 2009). The paper, titled "Biological Data Classification Using Rough Sets and Support Vector Machines," was co-authored by her Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Yan-Qing Zhang, and Dr. Naixue Xiong, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia State. Ms. Zhao received a cash prize of $500. Four papers were selected by the program committee prior to the conference as candidates for best student paper. These papers were presented in a special session and judged on both content and presentation. The conference, held in Cincinnati on June 14–17, was sponsored by the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, the premier fuzzy society in North America. (Posted 7/17/09)

Ph.D. Students Participate in Molecular Basis of Disease Research Day
A number of computer science Ph.D. students participated in this year's Molecular Basis of Disease Research Day, which was held on May 22 in the Student Center Ballroom. Kelly Westbrooks, who received his Ph.D. in May, gave a talk on "HCV Quasispecies Assembly Using Flow Networks." His co-authors included fellow Ph.D. student Irina Astrovskaya and his advisor, Dr. Alex Zelikovsky. In addition, many of the presentations during the poster session involved current and former Ph.D. students and their advisors:

(Posted 7/7/09)

Department Awards Three Ph.D. Degrees in May
The Department of Computer Science awarded three Ph.D. degrees in May. The recipients of the degrees were:

A group photograph (high-resolution version) is available showing the graduates and their advisors. (Posted 6/5/09)

ACM Chapter Welcomes New Officers
The Georgia State University student chapter of the ACM recently elected officers for the 2009–2010 academic year. The new officers are:

Chair: Saurav Karmakar
Vice Chair: Marco Valero
Secretary: Nick Mancuso
Treasurer: Vinay Madhadi
Program Chair: Jason Marcell
Publicity Chair: Adrian Caciula
Membership Chair: Lakshmi Kollepara
Webmaster: Chad Frederick

(Posted 6/5/09)

Pan Is Co-Editor of Wireless Networking Book
Dr. Yi Pan is a co-editor of the recently published book Emerging Wireless LANs, Wireless PANs, and Wireless MANs: IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15, 802.16 Wireless Standard Family (ISBN 978-0-471-72069-0), along with Dr. Yang Xiao of the University of Alabama.
     The book, which is part of the Wiley Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing, describes current and emerging IEEE 802 wireless standards and draft standards, including those for wireless LANs, wireless PANs, and wireless MANs. It also provides information on MAC (medium access control) and related physical layer protocols with an emphasis on channel access and power management.
     Emerging Wireless LANs consists of 23 chapters, divided into five parts: (1) IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs, (2) IEEE 802.15.1 Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.2, (3) IEEE 802.15.3 wireless PANs, (4) IEEE 802.15.4 and 802.15.5 wireless PANs, and (5) IEEE 802.16 wireless MANs. Dr. Pan is the co-author of two chapters.
     Published by John Wiley & Sons, Emerging Wireless LANs is a 648-page hardcover book. The list price is $110; Amazon.com currently sells the book for $88. (Posted 6/5/09)

Ph.D. Student Speaks at Brains & Behavior Retreat
Ph.D. student Akshaye Dhawan gave a presentation titled "NeuronBank: A Computer Science Perspective" at the Brains & Behavior 2009 Spring Retreat. Five GSU students holding Brains & Behavior Fellowships were invited to speak; Mr. Dhawan was the only one from Computer Science. The retreat was held at the Loudermilk Center near campus on May 13. Mr. Dhawan's advisor is Dr. Sushil Prasad. (Posted 5/27/09)

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

The promotions are effective Fall 2009. (Posted 5/27/09)

King Featured in Georgia State Magazine
Dr. K. N. King is featured in the Spring 2009 issue of Georgia State Magazine. An article on page 12, titled "Little Robots, Big Lessons," discusses the experimental section of CSc 2010 (Introduction to Computer Science) that he taught last fall. Each student in this section was loaned a small robot for the semester. Students learned how to control the robots by writing programs in the Python language. Funding for the robots was provided by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE), a partnership between Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, Bryn Mawr College, and Microsoft Research. Georgia State Magazine is a quarterly publication distributed to more than 120,000 alumni, donors, and other friends of the university. (Posted 5/27/09)

Weeks Teaches iPhone Development in Embedded Systems Course
During the Spring Semester, Dr. Michael Weeks taught the rudiments of iPhone programming to students in his CSc 4110/6110 course.
     The iPhone was introduced by Apple Inc. in 2007. In 2008, Apple began allowing developers to create iPhone applications ("apps") that would be sold through Apple's App Store. Apps have been very popular with iPhone users, with over 40,000 apps currently available and over one billion apps downloaded.
     The popularity of the iPhone led Dr. Weeks to switch to that platform for the latest offering of CSc 4110/6110. He has taught the course, titled Introduction to Embedded Systems Laboratory, for the past six years.
     To write their iPhone apps, students in the course used Xcode, Apple's development environment for Mac OS X, along with the iPhone SDK. Students had to learn the Objective-C language, an object-oriented version of C. They could either develop programs on their own Macintosh computers or use one of the Macs in Classroom South 400, a laboratory operated by the department. Each student could borrow an iPod touch for testing apps. (The iPod touch runs the same software as the iPhone.) Funding for the iPod touches used in the class was provided by student technology fees.
     Nine students enrolled in the course, which Dr. Weeks hopes to offer again in the spring of 2010. (Posted 5/14/09)

Beyah Becomes IEEE Senior Member
Dr. Raheem Beyah has been elevated to Senior Member grade in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Senior Member is the highest grade for which IEEE members can apply. To qualify for this grade, a member must "have experience reflecting professional maturity, have been in professional practice for at least ten years, and show 'significant performance' over a period of at least five of their years in professional practice," according to IEEE rules. Dr. Beyah joins Dr. Anu Bourgeois, Dr. Yi Pan, and Dr. Michael Weeks, who are also IEEE Senior Members. (Posted 5/8/09)

Department Acquires Cluster Server
The Department of Computer Science recently acquired a cluster server, named Cheetah, which is now up and running. The new server, which was purchased at the request of Dr. Sushil Prasad, has a heterogeneous architecture that allows it to be used for shared-memory computing, distributed computing, and GPGPU programming.
     Built by Advanced Clustering Technologies, Inc., Cheetah consists of nine computing nodes plus a head node. Four of the computing nodes have dual quad-core AMD Opteron CPUs, four have dual quad-core Intel Xeon CPUs plus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 GPUs, and one has four quad-core AMD Opteron CPUs. Including the head node, Cheetah has 88 CPU cores and 144GB of system memory. Nodes are connected through InfiniBand and gigabit Ethernet switches.
     Cheetah runs the CentOS 5.2 operating system. Installed software includes GCC, Java, NVIDIA's CUDA 2.0 development tools, PGI Server, Open MPI, additional MPI libraries including MPICH2 and MVAPICH/MVAPICH2, Sun Grid Engine, Ganglia Monitoring System, and ns-2 network simulation software.
     Cheetah, which was purchased with $39,000 of student technology fee funds, will be used for both teaching and research. All graduate students may have a Cheetah account; undergraduate students doing research are also eligible. Students enrolled in certain courses, including CSc 4310/6310 (Parallel and Distributed Computing), will use Cheetah for homework and projects.
     The department's first multiprocessor computer, Hydra, is still in use. Hydra is a shared-memory computer built by SGI. Originally an eight-processor machine when it was purchased in 2000, Hydra now has 24 CPUs and 4GB of shared memory. Both Cheetah and Hydra are housed in the basement of the Library South building. (Posted 4/23/09)

Weeks Awarded STEM Faculty Fellowship
Dr. Michael Weeks was recently named a STEM Faculty Fellow by Dr. Cherilynn Morrow, the director of Georgia State's STEM Initiative. Fellowships were awarded to 12 faculty members to promote innovative teaching in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines.
     One goal of the STEM Fellowship is to encourage collaborations with social science faculty and faculty in the College of Education. Dr. Weeks will collaborate with Dr. Brendan Calandra, an associate professor of learning technologies in the Department of Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology. Both Dr. Weeks and Dr. Calandra will receive $6,800. Their team was one of eight selected to receive a grant from among 14 submissions.
     The project proposed by Dr. Weeks and Dr. Calandra is titled "Creating Educational Simulations for STEM Teachers' Professional Development." The first stage of the project involves creating video recordings of preservice science teachers in actual classrooms. Participants will then select one exemplary teaching incident and one in need of improvement. Exemplary teaching incidents will be shared within the group via Georgia State's iTunes U portal. Incidents that need improvement will be used in stage two of the project.
     The second stage focuses on providing simulated teaching experiences in Second Life, a popular 3-D virtual world. Dr. Weeks is planning to develop a virtual version of a science classroom and populate it with avatars of virtual schoolchildren and a virtual teacher. Preservice teachers will reenact their "needs improvement” incidents within this environment. Some of the virtual children will be controlled by other teachers in the group, but other children will be "bots" that simply follow artificial intelligence rules.
     STEM Faculty Fellowships are administered by Georgia State's STEM Initiative, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Office of the Provost. (Posted 4/15/09)

Computer Science Students Receive Awards at Honors Night
Four computer science students received departmental awards at the annual Arts and Sciences Honors Night ceremony:

Outstanding Senior Award: Eric Topasna
Outstanding Graduate Research Award: Fasheng Qiu
Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student Award: Irina Astrovskaya
Outstanding Graduate Student Award: Navin Viswanath

The event was held on April 6 at in the Student Center Ballroom. (Posted 4/8/09)

Beyah and Bourgeois Honored by Career Services
Dr. Raheem Beyah and Dr. Anu Bourgeois were recently commended by Kevin F. Gaw, the director of University Career Services, for "supporting the career development process of Georgia State University students." In his letter of commendation, Dr. Gaw said that each of these faculty members "has been a true advocate for students seeking career assistance." Faculty and staff selected for this honor were chosen from a pool nominated by University Career Services staff. (Posted 4/8/09)

Hu Gives Talk at Columbus State
On March 4, Dr. Xiaolin Hu gave a talk entitled “Towards Dynamic Data Driven Simulation for Wildfire Management" at Columbus State University. In the talk, which was part of the Computer Science Colloquium Series, Dr. Hu presented his research on dynamic data-driven simulation and its application to wildfire management. He was invited to speak by the TSYS Department of Computer Science. (Posted 3/18/09)

Fall 2008 Newsletter Now Available
The Fall 2008 edition of the department newsletter has been published. A PDF version is available for download. (Posted 2/25/09)

Beyah Receives NSF CAREER Award
Dr. Raheem Beyah has received a five-year, $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The CAREER grant, which emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives, is the most competitive and prestigious award from NSF to young faculty members in science and engineering fields.
     Dr. Beyah's proposal was titled "A Networking Approach to Host-based Intrusion Detection." In it, he proposes to develop network-based defense systems for protecting cyber infrastructure from threats. His strategy avoids the weaknesses of the traditional approach, which attempts to secure a node by placing a defense mechanism (for example, an intrusion detection system) at the node. This approach may provide an additional avenue through which the host can be compromised.
     Another goal of Dr. Beyah's proposal is to broaden the participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. His proposal includes a summer academy at which he will actively engage underrepresented middle school students by using technology to convey computer architecture and computer networking concepts.
     Dr. Beyah joined the Department of Computer Science in 2005 as an assistant professor. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998. He earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999 and 2003. Dr. Beyah's research interests include network security, security visualization, and Internet traffic characterization.
     Only four faculty members at Georgia State have active CAREER awards, and three of these are in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Yingshu Li and Dr. Xiaojun Cao won CAREER awards in 2006 and 2007, respectively. (Posted 2/20/09)

Li Is Program Chair for FOWANC 2009
Dr. Yingshu Li is serving as a program chair for the Second ACM International Workshop on Foundations of Wireless Ad Hoc and Sensor Networking and Computing (FOWANC 2009). The workshop, which will be held in New Orleans on May 18 in conjunction with MobiHoc 2009, seeks technical papers in all areas related to mobile ad hoc networking and computing where distributed algorithms and theoretical methods are used. The deadline for submitting papers is February 26. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by March 25, with final versions due on April 6. FOWANC 2009 is sponsored by ACM SIGMOBILE. (Posted 2/18/09)

Computer Science "Major in a Minute" Video Released
The College of Arts and Sciences recently released a short video to promote the computer science major and give students tips on how to make the most of it. The video is one of a series called "Major in a Minute" being created for the College's Major Matters program. The goal of the Major Matters program is to help undergraduate students choose the right major and chart a course toward finishing their degrees.
     Dr. Anu Bourgeois, the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies, is featured in the video; a number of CS majors also appear in it. The video, which can be viewed below, is available at the College of Arts and Sciences web site, YouTube, and iTunes U (look under Georgia State University/Life at Georgia State/College of Arts and Sciences). The video was created by Alex Kreuter, a media specialist who works for the Dean of Arts and Sciences. (Posted 2/18/09)

Li Joins IJWMC Editorial Board
Dr. Yingshu Li has joined the editorial board of International Journal of Wireless and Mobile Computing, a quarterly journal published by Inderscience Publishers. IJWMC, which began publication in 2005, is aimed at academics, professionals, and educators. The journal publishes both theoretical and practical contributions on all aspects of wireless communications and mobile computing. (Posted 2/16/09)

Cao Named to Editorial Board of IEEE Communications Letters
Dr. Xiaojun Cao was recently chosen to serve as an associate editor of IEEE Communications Letters, a monthly journal of the IEEE Communications Society. Each issue of Communications Letters contains 20–30 short contributions from every area of communications technology. Unlike other journals, IEEE Communications Letters offers researchers a quick way to share their latest results, with publication occurring within four months of submission. (Posted 2/13/09)

Department Welcomes a Bumper Crop of Visitors
The Department of Computer Science has hosted a record 11 visiting scholars and postdoctoral fellows so far during the 2008–2009 academic year, with more on the way. The following visitors are currently on campus or have already completed their visits:

(Posted 2/12/09)

Robots Invade Introductory Computer Science Course
Last fall, Dr. K. N. King taught an experimental section of CSc 2010 (Introduction to Computer Science) using robots. Each person in the class was loaned a small robot for the semester. Students learned how to control the robots by writing programs in the Python language.
     In response to declining computer science enrollments, CS departments across the country are experimenting with innovative ways to teach the introductory course. The robot approach helps motivate students and allows them to work on projects that are fun and creative. The long-term goal is to attract and retain more students.
    Ph.D. student Stefanie Markham, who assisted with last fall's class, is currently teaching a section of CSc 2010 using robots. The Department of Computer Science plans to offer at least one robot-based section of 2010 each semester for the next few years.
     Students enrolled in the robot sections of 2010 use the Scribbler, an off-the-shelf robot equipped with three wheels, two motors, a variety of sensors, and a speaker. An add-on circuit board created at Georgia Tech gives the robot Bluetooth capabilities, allowing it to be controlled wirelessly from a laptop. The circuit board, known as a Fluke, also includes a camera and additional sensors. The robots and Flukes are available from Georgia Robotics.
     Stories about the robot project have appeared on the GSU web site and on the College of Arts and Sciences web site. A third story is scheduled to be published soon in Georgia State Magazine.
     Funding for the robots was provided by the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE), a partnership between Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, Bryn Mawr College, and Microsoft Research. Georgia State was one of 27 institutions to receive funding from IPRE last year. (Posted 2/4/09)

Computer Science Tutoring Center Opens
Beginning January 26, the Department of Computer Science will operate a tutoring center for students enrolled in several core undergraduate CS courses. The center is located in Suite 2117 of the One Park Tower building at 34 Peachtree Street. Hours of operation are Mondays through Thursdays from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The center will be staffed by five undergraduate CS majors and roughly an equal number of graduate students. At least two tutors will be available at all times. Tutoring is available for the following courses: CSc 2010, CSc 2310, CSc 2510, CSc 3210, CSc 3320, and CSc 3410. Tutoring is free and available to all students enrolled in these courses. The center will remain open through April 30. (Posted 1/26/09)

Ph.D. Student Wins Award at HiPC
Ph.D. student Akshaye Dhawan won a "Best Poster Presentation Award" for a short paper, "On Distributed Algorithms for Maximizing the Network Lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks," that he presented at a Student Research Symposium held in conjunction with the 15th Annual IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2008). He received a cash prize of $250. Mr. Dhawan was also the author of a full paper presented at HiPC 2008. The paper, titled "Energy Efficient Distributed Algorithms for Sensor Target Coverage Based on Properties of an Optimal Schedule," was co-authored by his Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Sushil Prasad. The conference was held in Bangalore, India, on December 17–20, 2008. (Posted 1/23/09)

Beyah Joins Editorial Board
Dr. Raheem Beyah has been appointed an associate editor of the Journal of Computer Systems, Networks, and Communications. JCSNC is an open-access journal from Egypt-based Hindawi Publishing Corporation, which publishes more than 100 peer-reviewed journals. The publication is aimed at researchers, developers, practitioners, policy-makers, professional trainers, educators, and other specialists in the areas of computer systems, networks, and communications. (Posted 1/16/09)

Pan Is Featured Speaker at Two Conferences
Dr. Yi Pan gave invited talks at two conferences in November 2008. The first talk was delivered in plenary session at the 2008 Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering conference (ANNIE 2008), which was held in St. Louis on November 9–12. The title of his talk was "Clustering Support Vector Machines with Application to Prediction of Protein Local Tertiary Structures." The focus of ANNIE 2008 was building “smart” components that can interact with their environment and adapt to changes in it. The conference was organized by the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
     The second talk, entitled "Protein Structure Prediction and Its Understanding Based on Machine Learning Methods," was given as a keynote at the 9th International Conference for Young Computer Scientists (ICYCS 2008). The conference was held in Zhang Jia Jie, Hunan, China on November 18-21. It was organized by Central South University and sponsored by the China Computer Federation. (Posted 1/15/09)

Want more news?
Visit the News & Events Archives for
2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.