Dr. Anthony Johnson, a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and Physics, was elected to serve on the American Physical Society’s (APS) Executive Board. With over 50,000 members, APS is one of the world’s leading organizations of physicists. It is dedicated to advancing research in the field through journals, scientific meetings, education, outreach, advocacy and international activities.

This one year term will be Dr. Johnson’s second appointment on APS’s Executive Board. He previously served nearly twenty-years ago while working for AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Johnson is the director of UMBC’s Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR). His research is in the area of ultrafast optics and optoelectronics- the ultrafast photophysics and nonlinear optical properties of bulk, nanoclustered, and quantum well semiconductor structures, untrashort pulse propagation in fibers and high-speed lightwave systems.

Earlier this month SPIE (The International Society for Optics & Photonics) interviewed Dr. Johnson and his colleague Dr. Elaine Lalanne about their research in the UMBC/ CASPR Ultrafast Optics & Optoelectroncis Lab during the SPIE 2012 Defense, Security + Sensing Conference. You can watch the video below:

“Minimizing Intrusiveness in Home Energy Measurement”, a paper written by CSEE Assisant Professor Nilanjan Banerjee, Computer Science graduate student David Lachut, and their colleagues at the University of San Francisco, was nominated for the best paper award at ACM's BuildSys workshop.

The paper outlines the design of a system that will analyze and manage energy use in homes. “The overarching goal of our work is to automate the process of adapting energy demand to meet supply, which requires a comprehensive understanding of home energy use,” explains the abstract. Banerjee and his collaborators have collected data on energy-consumption from six both on and off-grid homes. “Our techniques reduce the energy footprint of the system as well as the amount of physical infrastructure required, making adoption of the system more attractive, particularly to those who live in homes powered by renewable energy sources.”

You can learn more about Dr. Banerjee’s work with renewable-energy driven devices and green homes at the website for his Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Laboratory.

CWIT Director and CSEE professor Penny Rheingans was interviewed by Sheila Kast on today's Maryland Morning show on WYPR as part of a segment on Ada Lovelace Day (October 16). You can listen to the WYPR interview here.

Ada Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer in the mid nineteenth century. She is considered the "first computer programmer" because she was the first person to develop an algorithm intended to be executed by a machine. Ada Lovelace Day is about "sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM."

Filling the Black Hole

On August 8, 2012, Computer Education for the 21^st Century’s Computer Science Education Mini-Summit revealed the problem with high school Computer Science curricula, and, more importantly, what’s being done to fix it.

Photos: Shelby Clarke

“High School is a black hole for most students with respect to Computer Science,” says Jan Cuny, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Program Director for Computing Education.  In August, Cuny spoke about the scarcity of Computer Science in High Schools and what’s being done to encourage students—especially women and minorities—to pursue the field.

This was music to the ears of the roughly fifty high school and middle school teachers, university professors, and administrators that attended Computer Education for the 21^st Century (CE21)’s Computer Science Education Mini-Summit at UMBC. The brainchild of CSEE professors Marie desJardins, Penny Rheingans, and CWIT’s Associate Director, Susan Martin, the day-long summit was a way for Computer Science teachers to network, share best teaching practices, and get involved in fixing a problem close to their hearts. 

Probably more telling than any facts or figures on the subject was the testimony of four high school and middle school Computer Science teachers, which told how widely the high school Computer Science experience varies across our state. Dianne O’Grady-Cunniff, who teaches classes like Web Design, Keyboarding, and Introduction to Engineering Design, says that the success of her Computer Science program at Westlake High School is largely due to her school administration’s outpouring of support.  

But, support and resources must go hand in hand for success. Femi Ajimatanrareje of Prince Georges County’s DuVal High School knows this first-hand. While the administration supports his vision, resources have been hard to come by. In order to teach courses like Introduction to Engineering Design and Foundation to Technology, Ajimatanrareje had to pick up a class supply of computers and then network them himself.

Then there are schools that have the resources but lack support. Nancy Ale, who teaches courses like Software Applications, Information Communication Technology, Robotics, and Internet Safety to Sixth graders, is facing resistance from an administration that wants her to backpedal by teaching Keyboarding instead.

Most troubling are Computer Science programs that are desperate for both resources and support. Peter O’Conner, who teaches Intro to Computer Science and AP Computer Science at Boonsboro High School in Western Maryland, has to teach Computer Science in the school’s Chemistry lab. Not only are resources stretched, but O’Connor attributes a lack of understanding of the discipline on the part of guidance counselors, the administration, parents, and even students, to low enrollment. That coupled with the courses’ distinctions as electives, means that few students are willing to take his courses when familiar offerings like Art or Tech Ed would suffice. Out of the few students who do pursue Computer Science are even fewer women. In a course of 20 students, says O’Conner, he might only have two girls.

One thing that the four teachers did have in common was the conviction that demystifying Computer Science to the masses is the first step in reversing the trend in waning enrollment levels. People hear Computer Science and think Microsoft Power Point or word processing. Or, if programming does come to mind, the concept is, at best, ambiguous, or, at worst, terrifying.

Also crucial is the regulation of the subject at the state level. In her keynote speech, Jan Cuny shared staggering stats that reinforced the teachers’ testimony: Twenty years ago 25% of high schoolers took Computer Science, and now the figure is down to 19%. A mere 1% of students enter college claiming a Computer Science major. Out of that 1%, 0.3% are women.

So what’s the solution? A good first step is Computer Science: Principles, a future Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course being developed by the Collegeboard and NSF to help broaden participation in the field. As of now, there are more than 25 pilot sites in Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, and Chicago that offer the class, but the goal is much broader. The CS 10K project strives to reach 10,000 teachers, and 10,000 schools by the fall of 2016. NSF has  backed the program with $38 million in funds.

The proposed course will introduce high schoolers to programming and teach them the fundamental concepts of computing, how this knowledge can be applied, and how computing has the potential to change the world. As an AP course, it will act as a bridge to the study of Computer Science in college. The hope is that the course may help fill the widening Computer Science “black hole” and help foster future analytic minds capable of creating the technologies of tomorrow.

 

 

 

New Kids on the Block

The Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department welcomes three new professors starting Fall 2012. Learn what makes them tick.

Nilanjan Banerjee

Though technology has become an essential resource for many, it’s using up more and more of another kind of resource: energy. Not only is energy production costly, but it’s not infallible. For a generation that’s come to rely on technology, what do we do when we’re unexpectedly cut off? That’s a question that new Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor Nilanjan Banerjee, 30, is answering with renewable energy-driven devices that keep us connected, especially when we need it the most. Read More…

Jian Chen

Few things are more daunting than an excel spreadsheet full of data. Even scientists can react to massive data sets with blank stares. That’s where the work of new CSEE assistant professor Jian Chen comes into play. As a designer of visualization and interaction techniques, Chen translates data into symbols that humans are good at interpreting.

“I have been working with biologists, physiologists, neurologists, cognitive scientists, and structural engineers to study cutting edge visualization science,” says Chen. Read More…

John Park

Even though this will be my first real term as a full-time lecturer at UMBC, I'm actually an old hand here.  I have been teaching part-time at UMBC for 4 years, during which I've taken turns at teaching CMSC 104, 202, and 331, in various forms, including developing and teaching CMSC 202H, the new honors section of that course.  I've had extensive industry experience in many subfields of Computer Science, including operating systems, real-time control systems, artificial intelligence/machine learning, digital imaging and graphics, and bioinformatics.  I'm now eager to apply that experience to a much broader range of courses in the department, combining sound theory with practical considerations and applications.  This coming fall, however, I'm easing into the new job by starting with CMSC 104 and 201. Read More…

New CSEE assistant professor Nilanjan Banerjee works on building renewable energy-driven devices.

Though technology has become an essential resource for many, it’s using up more and more of another kind of resource: energy. Not only is energy production costly, but it’s not infallible. For a generation that’s come to rely on technology, what do we do when we’re unexpectedly cut off? That’s a question that new Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor Nilanjan Banerjee, 30, is answering with renewable energy-driven devices that keep us connected, especially when we need it the most.

Consider the following: a natural disaster strikes and you need to find a path to safety. Cell phone towers are down and there’s no wireless internet signal for miles. That's where Dr. Banerjee’s self-sustainable solar-powered emergency mesh comes in. It’s kind of like Google Maps, except it could save your life.

Made up of ultra-low power solar nodes that can be charged with solar panels, the mesh’s goal is to provide natural disaster survivors with a risk-free path to an emergency shelter. Risk-free means that you’ll be guided around burning buildings, car accidents, and other hazards, even if it means taking a bit of a detour. Just pull out your iPhone, or android, or other smartphone, and connect to the mesh when all other wireless networks are down. A digital map will appear and lead you to safety.

The medical and military worlds are two other areas where lives literally count on dependable technology. Here, Banerjee has tied his interest in renewable-energy driven devices to things like EKG data  collection and communication between military busses and tanks.

Green homes are another area of interest for Banerjee, who has been installing monitoring systems in both on and off-grid homes to try and gauge energy consumption. The way it works is they collect instantaneous residual battery voltage and the energy consumed by the house. “Our goal is to make it easier for off-grid and grid-tied home residents to make smart choices about managing energy,” explains the project website. In fact, he’s got a smartphone application in the works that would use this information to tell homeowners when they should use highly consumptive devices like a clothes dryer, and that could send warnings about critical battery situations in the home.

Banerjee discovered renewable energy-driven devices as a Computer Science Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was drawn to the challenge of making these highly efficient devices, and in light of growing global environmental concerns, he thought the field was especially relevant.

After graduate school, Banerjee took a position as an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Arkansas. He started a lab, Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Laboratory, which focused on three key areas: renewable energy driven systems, healthcare systems, and mobile phone based systems. As a professor, his course repertoire included subjects like programming paradigms, mobile and pervasive computing, and mobile phone application development.

During his inaugural Fall semester at UMBC, Banerjee will teach Computer Architecture for the first time. He describes his teaching method as “hands on.” Students in his class will see lots of demonstrations, and the chance to learn how to build real systems. Because, while the research is important to him, so is the teaching. After all, it was UMBC’s mix of strength in both research and undergraduate teaching, explains Banerjee, that drew him to the university in the first place.

New CSEE assistant professor Jian Chen creates visualizations to represent large data sets. 

Few things are more daunting than an excel spreadsheet full of data. Even scientists can react to massive data sets with blank stares. That’s where the work of new CSEE assistant professor Jian Chen comes into play. As a designer of visualization and interaction techniques, Chen translates data into symbols that humans are good at interpreting. 

“I have been working with biologists, physiologists, neurologists, cognitive scientists, and structural engineers to study cutting edge visualization science,” says Chen.

Take her work with bats. Chen has been helping biologists analyze bat flight kinematics among species. She looks at how their wings morph during flight, and expresses the information with colorful representations that are easier to grasp than numbers.

Chen’s most recent research grant supports a project that works on expressing massive biology datasets in a simple way. The method is called “PathBubbles.” This interactive pathway visualization tool displays gene products as dots, and the connections between those genes as lines. The color of those dots varies depending on importance, and different colored lines can suggest things like binding between gene products or the sharing of a small molecule.

When a user clicks on a particular dot, it opens up a database of information about each gene product  and each interaction. Scientists can even add dots and lines to the database, as well as information about how the new genes should interact with genes already present in the database. With this new information, the system will be able to predict the effect of the newly-introduced gene product on the biological pathways.

Though PathBubbles is being developed to represent data from gene studies, its ability to graphically test different hypotheses has the potential to be applied to other fields like Chemistry, Engineering, Physics, and Computer Science.

For Chen, who says she was born to be a designer, creating visualizations is about allowing us to understand more, better, and faster. “It may lead to significantly better approaches to human knowledge discovery and decision making in many disciplines where visualizations have found successful application, including Neuroscience, Biomedicine, Bioinformatics, Biology, Chemistry, Geosciences, Business, Economics, and Education.”

Chen fell in love with visualizations as a Master’s student at Tsinghua University and Tianjin University in China, where she was working towards a Mechanical Engineering degree.

After that, Chen got her Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Houston, followed by her Ph.D. from  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her first experience with visualizations was as a research associate at Brown University, where she spent three years. Her time in academia convinced Chen that it was where she wanted to stay.

So, despite offers from labs, she took a teaching job at the University of Southern Mississippi. During her three years as an assistant professor, Chen taught both undergraduate and graduate courses like Software Engineering, C Programming, Game Design, 3D Interaction, and Visualization. She started a lab, the Interactive Visual Computing Lab (IVCL), which she hopes to one day bring to UMBC.

“It is an honor for me to join UMBC,” says Chen, who will be teaching Data Structures this fall. Her advice for students who take her class in the fall is to use the knowledge you learn in the classroom to solve real-world problems—not surprising, considering this is what Chen’s research is all about.

New CSEE lecturer John Park shares a little bit about his research and teaching career, and what he loves most about being a professor.

Even though this will be my first real term as a full-time lecturer at UMBC, I'm actually an old hand here.  I have been teaching part-time at UMBC for 4 years, during which I've taken turns at teaching CMSC 104, 202, and 331, in various forms, including developing and teaching CMSC 202H, the new honors section of that course.  I've had extensive industry experience in many subfields of Computer Science, including operating systems, real-time control systems, artificial intelligence/machine learning, digital imaging and graphics, and bioinformatics.  I'm now eager to apply that experience to a much broader range of courses in the department, combining sound theory with practical considerations and applications.  This coming fall, however, I'm easing into the new job by starting with CMSC 104 and 201.

A thumbnail autobiography: I received an A.B. in Biochemistry from Harvard University, with every intention of going on to medical school.  However, I got completely sidetracked by an accidental introduction to computers late in college–back in the early days when most computers still had dozens of toggle switches on the front panel.  Medical school was postponed.

Since then, I've been on an extended professional and academic arc, which has included working at a variety of software and hardware companies, universities, research firms, and startups, including my own.  Along the way, I helped develop a fault-tolerant parallel computer, a next-generation MRI scanner, one of the earliest autonomous land vehicles, and drugs that may one day help you breathe easier.  I was also a PhD candidate in the Biomedical Informatics program at Stanford Medical School, but left ABD ("all but dissertation") to start up a bioinformatics company with some colleagues.

Most recently, I've been doing research at UM College Park, but that project was coming to an end, and I was ready to try something different.  I decided to teach, for three reasons: First, in my part-time teaching here, I found that I was becoming quite attached to the fate of my students, despite my very limited involvement in the program. Now, I’d like to do it more seriously: get more involved with the students, the department, and the university.  Second, I want to leverage my years of practical experience in building software systems to help mold the next generation of computer scientists and software engineers.  Third, and most important, I'm annoyed that my cellphone, my TV, and even my blender, keep crashing, Although I could hack it myself, I'm too lazy to.  So, I want to train more good programmers, so that my stuff will just work, and I won't have to.

CSEE professor Hillol Kargupta is one of fifteen Data Mining experts featured in a new book: Journeys to Data Mining: Experiences from 15 Renowned Researchers (Springer, 2012).

The book assembles the career journeys of fifteen experts in the field, answering questions like: “What are your notable success stories”, “What did you learn from your failures”, and “How would you advise a young researcher to make an impact?” Written in a narrative style, the book is a great tool for current Ph.D. students who are trying to find their own success in the field of Data Mining.

Kargupta, who has been teaching at UMBC since January 2001 is also the co-founder of AGNIK INC, a data analytics company for mobile, distributed, and embedded environments. An IEEE fellow, Kargupta has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. He has a host of awards to his name including the IBM Innovation Award (2008), an NSF CAREER award in 2001 for his research on ubiquitous and distributed data mining, and 2010 IEEE Top-10 Data Mining Case Studies Award for his work at Agnik. More information about Dr. Kargupta’s research accomplishments can be found on his website.

In the book, Kargupta’s personal account is called: “Making Data Analysis Ubiquitous: My Journey Through Academia and Industry.”

His account begins:

“It was one of those late fall mornings in Urbana. I was working on some of the final pages of my dissertation. I got a note from Mike Welge of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) whom I came to know during the course of my work with my Ph.D. advisor David Goldberg. Mike was leading a data mining project for Caterpillar, the US heavy duty equipment manufacturer. Caterpillar clients bring their equipment to their worldwide service center for maintenance and repair. Their service staff types in short descriptions of the work done on the equipment and saves that information in the computer. Caterpillar wanted to link this data from different service centers, analyze, and identify which equipment and parts are failing frequently and related decision support tasks. The problem became more challenging because their employees often used different abbreviations and spelled names incorrectly to describe the work done on the equipment. Mike wanted to address this as an unstructured text data mining problem and asked me if I would like to collaborate. I joined their meetings and started thinking about the problem in a bigger context.”

You can continue reading on Springer’s website.

Photo: UMBC Magazine

CSEE Professor Marie desJardins' success at the 2012 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament last March was highlighted in the latest issue of UMBC Magazine:

"I didn't realize I could be this good at crossword puzzles," says desJardins. She adds that her development as a crossword competitor also highlights the hurdles to bringing more women into the sciences.

"A lot of girls think that they must not be intrinsically good at that stuff," argures desJardins, who adds that the biggest impediments are "the psychological blocks we put up for ourselves."

Check out the full write-up on UMBC Magazine's website.