Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Google is holding a contest to encourage students in the US and Canada to use Google Map Maker to improve the maps of their campus areas. You can add  2.5D and 3D models of building and interior floor plans. Registration started on Monday February 13 and the contest runs through March 9.

"Be a part of a university mapping contest open for US and Canadian students who currently study at a university in these two countries! From February 13, 2012 to March 9, 2012, improving the maps of your campus can give you a chance to be a local hero and the highest scoring entries will win prizes like Samsung Galaxy tablets, Samsung Android phones, Google Map Maker messenger bags, and more!

Submit your entry for a chance to win and help your university at the same time! Join together with up to three other student mappers to add high quality edits like university buildings, walking paths, public spaces, or restaurant hangouts near your campus using Google Map Maker, and your efforts could win a grand prize package worth more than $5,000 USD for your team."

Google maps and Google Earth now support Web GL, "a software library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser." The new interface requires Chrome 14 or Firefox 8 (beta), Windows Vista/7 or Mac OS 10.6+ or Linux and a graphics card that supports WebGL.

See the contest site for the full details.

If you have good programming skills and are looking for an interesting alternative to the usual summer internship, you might check out the Google Summer of Code program. It pays student developers $5000 stipends to write code for various open source projects over the summer. Over the past seven years, it's brought together over 6,000 students with over 300 open source projects to create millions of lines of code.

A set of open source projects (aka mentoring organizations) will be selected and announced in mid-March. Students apply to work on one of more of these and each mentoring organization ranks the students interested in working with them. Google facilitates the final selection and pairing. The mentoring organization works closely with the student to define tasks, check progress, help solve problems, etc. Typically the student works remotely, interacting with his or her mentor via email, chat, skype, etc.

Students can submit applications via the Google Summer of Code 2012 site from March 26 to April 6. Google says that that the best applications they receive are from students who took the time to interact with one of the participating mentoring organizations and discuss their ideas before submitting an application. About 1,100 students are expected to be funded this year.

You can get more information on the 2012 GSoC site, an associated Google+ page, or by subscribing to a mailing list.

A group of nearly 40 participants assembled yesterday afternoon at the UMBC 2012 Global Game Jam site. The Global Game Jam is an annual event where small teams design and create computer games over the course of one weekend. The teams will upload their final games to a central site by 3:00pm EST Sunday. Here’s a video stream live from the GAIM lab in 005 ECS.

If you are on campus tomorrow around 3:00pm, stop by the GAIM lab and see the final UMBC games demonstrated.

UMBC is a host for the 2012 Global Game Jam which takes place this coming weekend, January 27-29. This is a 48 hour event, where teams from around the world work to develop a complete game over one weekend. The first year had 54 sites in 23 countries. The second year had 124 sites in 34 countries. Last year was up to 169 sites. The UMBC site is open to participants at all skill levels and affiliations. Thanks to generous sponsorship by Next Century, there's no registration fee and food will be provided all weekend. However, you DO need to sign up in advance, just log into globalgamejam.org and select UMBC as your site.

The jam will start at 3:00pm on Friday, January 27th in the UMBC GAIM lab, room 005 in the ECS building with presentations by Microsoft about developing for the Windows Phone.  There will be some spiffy giveaways at the end of the weekend for teams that choose make a Windows Phone game.  The main event starts at 5:00pm with video keynote talks by Will Wright, Baiyon, Gonzalo Frasca, Brenda Garno Brathwaite and John Romero.  After these presentations, the theme for this year’s games will be announced, and participants will brainstorm game ideas and form into teams. For the rest of the weekend, each team will work to build a brand new computer game around the theme. At 3:00pm on Sunday, the final games must be uploaded and from 3-5, the group will review what was accomplished over the weekend.

For more information on the jam and how to participate, see the UMBC GAIM site.

Attention rising Junior and Senior Undergraduate and Graduate students interested in Information Assurance: Thursday, January 12 is the deadline to apply for a scholarship through the Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP).

The scholarship is great for students who are interested in pursuing careers in Information Assurance for the Federal Government.  Each recipient will receive full tuition, room and board, books,and stipend.  In return, the recipient must  work for DoD (for pay) for one year for year of scholarship.  Each recipient will also engage in a summer internship at DoD  (for pay).

Interested applicants should contact Dr. Alan Sherman () to be guided through the application process. For more information about the program, and for an application form, visit UMBC's Center for Information Security and Assurance website.

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal, Interns Are Latest Target In Battle for Tech Talent, focused on the increased interest in hiring summer interns in the Bay area.

"Bay Area tech companies, already in a fierce fight for full-time hires, are now also battling to woo summer interns. Technology giants like Google Inc. have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response—sometimes even luring candidates away from college."

The motivation for companies is simple. Their growth depends on a steady stream of new hires with good skills and work habits. Hiring prospects as summer interns is a "try before you buy" strategy, giving the company lots of information to decide whether to extend an offer for a full-time position after graduation.

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google's director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class, Ms. Mangolini says. "It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires."

While the WSJ story focused on Bay area companies, the situation is similar throughout the country and applies not only to companies, but also government agencies. It you are pursuing a computing-related program, now is the time to aggressively explore internship opportunities for the summer.

Graduate students and undergraduates who are currently juniors or seniors planning on going into graduate school will get the most interest, but there will be opportunities for current sophomores and even freshmen as well. If you want start working on lining up a great summer internship, your first stop should be the Career Services Center.

We congratulate the 114 students who graduated from our programs in December 2011. Three students received Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, 58 received M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, and 53 got B.S. degrees in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. We wish all of our new alumni happiness and success as they moved on to new challenges in 2012. Please stay in touch by keeping your contact information current on the UMBC Alumni Association site.

If you’re at loose ends for the semester break and want to sharpen your programming slils, you might try competing in the ACM Queue Magazine online programming competition. You will program a player that will compete with others in the game of Coercion. The competition opens January 15 and closes at midnight GMT on February 12.

“The game of Coercion takes place on a square field that is divided into regions, which vary by height and slope of the field. Each player controls three movable playing pieces called pushers, using them to push little doughnut-shaped markers around. Players use the markers to claim new territory on the playing field. The player with the most territory at the end of the match wins. The game rules will describe how to control your team, score points, and win. A double elimination tournament follows the coding phase, to determine the top four places.”

You can create your entry in in C++, C#, Java, Python or JavaScript. Preliminary matches will take place during the one-month coding phase will that will let you know how well your player is doing. A final double-elimination competition among all the submitted players will decide whose player is best.

Queue is the ACM’s magazine for practicing software engineers. Written by engineers for engineers, it focuses on the technical problems and challenges that loom ahead, helping readers to sharpen their own thinking and pursue innovative solutions.

Tyler Campbell, Nick Ducq, Ryan King, Andrew Nguyen and Tim Spillman walked out of the Baltimore Convention Center elated. Their team, the Sherwood Cyber Warriors, had just won the high school division of the inaugural Maryland Cyber Challenge. Their success netted them each a $5,000 scholarship from the National Security Agency.

The entire experience was rewarding for both the students and their parents, says Steve Weiss, one of the team’s advisers. “Winning first place was the icing on the cake.”

In a conference with over 800 attendees, the excitement over the cyber competition was palpable. With scoreboards changing in real time, onlookers crowded around to see who was in the lead.

Following the competition, held October 21 and 22, eight teams from each division — professional, college and high school — walked away with scholarships and cash prizes. The scholarships for students, put up by the National Security Agency (NSA), totaled more than $84,000.

Members of first place high school and college teams took home $5,000 scholarships each. Members of second place high school and college teams took home $2,000 scholarships. Each member of the first place professional teams won $2,000 and each second place member won $1,000.

First place winners in the college and high school categories were from, respectively, the University of Maryland, College Park and Sherwood High School. Second place winners were Towson University and Poolesville High School. In the professional category Team ICF came in first, with Team Pr3tty coming in second.

The Sherwood Cyber Warriors, four seniors and a junior, are mostly undecided in their future careers, although one does plan to work cybersecurity. Jim Kirk, the team’s senior advisor, says that regardless of the their ultimate career choices, the students learned valuable skills from the competition — such as how to communicate effectively and work as a team.

The Cyber Warriors began practicing for the competition in May, often meeting twice a week. The team developed strategies to pick the low hanging fruit — what hackers go for first. That, says Kirk, includes developing strong passwords and removing unnecessary software from servers.

The challenge for the high school teams, says Rick Forno, Director of UMBC's Graduate Cybersecurity Program and an organizer of the Cyber Challenge, was purely defensive. “They were being attacked and their job was to keep services open.”

The challenge was run using CyberNEXS, a software system developed by SAIC for cybersecurity training and exercises.The system is self-contained and runs both Windows and UNIX systems.

But, more than just the chance to compete, the event gave college and high school students a taste of what cybersecurity work is like. And that, involves more than technical skills say professionals in the field.

“The cyber challenge is especially interesting to me, since all the students participating are passionate about cyber security and the teams will only excel if every member is doing their job,” says Neil Furukawa, vice president of CyberPoint International. “We’re looking for people who can lead, but who can also roll up their sleeves and get the work done.”

Phyllis Villani, Director of Talent acquisition at Northrop Grumman says that to get a job, “networking is key.” Besides honing “soft skills” like communication, Furukawa says, people should never stop their education because cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving field.

Fittingly, education is what the Maryland Cyber Challenge is all about.

Originally posted by Nicole Ruediger at November 18, 2011 1:02 PM