Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

If you plan on applying to graduate school for next year or are currently a graduate student in your first or second year and are a US citizen or permanent-resident, you should consider applying to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This program makes approximately 2000 new fellowship awards each year.

The GRFP program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $32,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, and opportunities for international research and professional development.

GRFP is the country’s oldest national fellowship program directly supporting graduate students in STEM fields. The hallmark features of the program are: 1) the award of fellowships to individuals on the basis of merit and potential, and 2) the freedom and flexibility provided to Fellows to define their own research and choose the accredited U.S. graduate institution that they will attend.

US citizens and permanent residents who are planning to enter graduate school in an NSF-supported discipline next fall, or in the first two years of such a graduate program, or who are returning to graduate school after being out for two or more years, are eligible. Applications for computing and engineering areas fields are due October 27. The applicant information page and the solicitation contain the necessary details.

Huebotics developers Jasmin Martin, Erika Shumacher, Tad Cordle and Michael Leung

Technical.ly Baltimore reports that the HueBots robot-building game made by a four UMBC students has been added to the PC game platform Steam.

“HueBots is a deceptively challenging top-down puzzle game. You control a team of colorful robots that will only interact with objects that match their color; they will also keep moving in one direction until they collide with something that matches their color.”

You can try a demo version of Huebots at http://huebots.com/ and also download the demo version for use on a Mac or PC.  The release trailer will give you an idea of what it’s like.

The UMBC Entrepreneurs group reports that the student team that developed the game includes lead Michael Leung ’16, computer science; Tad Cordle ’16, computer engineering; and Erika Schumacher ’17; and Jasmine Martin ’15, both visual arts students with interactive media concentrations. This summer Graham Dolle ’18, computer science, contributed special visual effects.

CSEE Professor Marc Olano notes that it is the first game to go for sale to the larger public from UMBC’s Game Developer’s Club.

“The Steam greenlight process requires the game to get strong community feedback before it is approved, which it could only have gotten with wider interest than just UMBC,” Olando said in an email to Technical.ly.

The group has already sold about 100 copies of the game and has a mobile version that is waiting for approval from iOS and Android in the coming weeks.

Nielsen Audio, a consumer research company that collects and analyzes listener data on radio broadcasting audiences, invites UMBC faculty and students to attend events focused on data science from 11:00am-2:30pm on Thursday June 25 at its headquarters in Columbia MD.

In the past few years, data science has become one of the top career opportunities for students with a background in computing or mathematics, offering interesting challenges and top salaries. Nielsen has been actively recruiting on campus and has hired three graduating UMBC students into its leadership rotational program, as well as several summer interns. They will be recruiting for full-time positions in the Fall.

The Nielsen Data Science Day event will take place in lobby and auditorium of Nielsen Audio's headquarters at 9705 Patuxent Woods Dr #200, Columbia, MD 21046 (map). Activities will include presentations, data science themed games and group discussions.

Between 11:00 and 12:00 participants can engage with interactive games with a Math/Data Science/Audio theme, including Data Science Jeopardy, Name that Tune, and Sampling Marbles. In the auditorium, a short video on data science produced by Nielsen will play continuously.

Lunch is available at Noon, followed by an introduction to data science at Nielsen Audio and presentations from managers of Nielsen's data science groups.

In the afternoon there will be a chance to meet with data scientists and find out what they do and opportunities for internships and positions.

If you have questions, contact the Columbia Data Science Day Committee leads: Kelly Dixon () or Freddie Navarro ()

The UMBC Game Developers Club will hold its annual Summer Game Jam Friday, June 5 to Sunday June 7 in the GAIM lab in Engineering 005. The game jam theme is Art and Code out of a Hat.

There will be one "hat" from which a team will pull three random art assets, and another "hat" from which they will pull three random code samples. Then, the team must use as many of those six items as possible in their game!! Here's the catch: At some point, you'll have to decide on a game idea and form a team around it.

If you pull from the hats before you make the idea, you have to use four of the six items. If you pull from the hats after you form the idea and team, you only have to use two of the items. The team that receives an item is free to do whatever they want with the art and code they receive.

The GovConnect conference seeks college sophomores, juniors and seniors interested in cybersecurity to apply for free admission to its showcase event:

   GovConnects' 6th Annual Cyber Conference: Migration to the Cloud:
   Vulnerabilities and Challenges/ Opportunities and Solutions
   Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab Kossiakoff Center, 
   Wednesday, 17 June 2015, 9:00-5:00

Resumes are currently being accepted by GovConnects for a one day internship that provides free attendance.  Participation options: 8:00am–12:00noon or 12:00noon — 4:00 pm.
 
GovConnects, a program of the Howard County Chamber of Commerce, is the organizer of this event. Over 300 industry and government professionals are expected to attend the all-day conference. Student interns will be provided with breakfast and lunch. Parking is free and there is no charge for internship participants.
 
Keynote speakers are Dmitri Alperovitch, Co- Founder and CTO of CrowdStrike Inc., and LTG (R) Rhett Hernandez, Chair, Army Cyber Institute.  The conference has multiple paths of interest including breakout sessions in Mobile IT, Insider Threat, Health IT, and FedRAMP. Interns will be able to attend a breakout session of choice and have access to the who's who of the conference cyber speakers. Tech Talks will feature new products and ideas pitched by companies and judged by a panel of industry experts including representatives from Leidos, Ciena, Honeywell, Dell Federal, and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
 
Cyber 6.0 is an excellent opportunity for technical candidates (For example, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering, but not limited to these fields.) to meet and interact with industry and federal government officials. Conference sponsors have agreed to review internsÕ resumes for potential employment eligibility, if interested.
 
Several sponsors have current programs in place that support technical students close to graduation in obtaining federal clearances.
 
The opportunity to attend the conference, gain valuable information about the trends/forecasts for cybersecurity issues and technology, and meet companies, speakers and potential employers is a day well spent!
 
If you are interested in attending, explore the conference details and send your resume to Tom Sabia, Conference Intern Coordinator at   or

Team HueBotics, a video-game development team at UMBC, is among the final four student teams competing to represent the U.S. in the Games division of the 2015 Microsoft Imagine World Cup competition. The teammates are (l. to r.) Jasmin Martin, Erika Shumacher, Tad Cordle, and Michael Leung. Source: Nicolas Deroin

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski has a commentary article on CNBC, Video games in the classroom? Welcome to the future of learning, that talks about new ways to engage students in learning.

“Our university is headed to the “final four” — in game design. Next month, a team from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) will travel to San Francisco to compete against three other teams in the games category of the final U.S. round of the Microsoft Imagine Cup, a global student technology competition. The team will pitch its project to a panel of judges composed of Silicon Valley technology leaders and entrepreneurs. As the students vie for the honor of representing the U.S. internationally, they’re also showing us the future of teaching, learning, and careers.”

Dr. Hrabowski makes an important observations on collaborations between STEM the arts and STEM disciplines, the need for diversity and how to excite and inspire today’s students.

“The UMBC team reflects the American workplace of the near future, bringing together two men and two women from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. The team also illustrates the potential of “STEAM” collaborations, where science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are combined with art and design. Two members of the team are studying the computer sciences and two the visual arts, focusing on interactive media. … Moreover, Team Huebotics provides clues about how to improve education for students of all backgrounds. Too many young people today are bored at every level of education. And yet our student game developers voluntarily put in hundreds of hours on their winning creation. American education, from pre-K to college, must find ways to inspire similar dedication and to bring content to life. Digital environments are second nature to today’s young people. Playing well-designed games, as well as creating them, can pack an educational punch.”

Dr. Hrabowski also mentions the game Bandit (though not by name), in which you play a fox sneaking around civil war Baltimore in the time leading up to the Pratt Street Riot. This game, designed to teach about an important episode of civil war history, is being developed by a team of computer science and visual arts students in collaboration with students in history and music under the faculty guidance of professors Anne Rubin and Marc Olano, the director of UMBC’s Computer Science Game Development Track.

You can read Dr. Hrabowski’s full commentary piece online here.

The UMBC ACM Student Chapter invites you to Hi Tea this week. Mingle, network, discuss research and ideas, explore opportunities to collaborate and treat yourself to a snack while you’re at it. Faculty, staff and students across the computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering and cybersecurity programs are encouraged to participate.  Friends of the department are also welcome.

Date: Friday, April 3, 2015
Time: 3:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m.
Location: CSEE hallway outside ITE 325
Hosted by: Chi Zhang

If you or your lab are interested in volunteering for or hosting Hi Tea, please contact Genaro Hernandez Jr. at genaroh1 @ umbc.edu. We need volunteers for 4/17/15 and 4/24/15.

UMBC’s Graduate Research Conference Program (GRC) will be held on campus on Wednesday, March 25, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. There will be a variety of presentations for faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate). Featured events include professional development workshops, a keynote panel, and a research information fair.

Twenty-eight CSEE graduate students will describe their research in oral or poster presentations. Feel free to attend as many sessions as your schedule allows.

Please note that registration is required for both presenters and attendees. Registration is particularly important, in regards to securing a seat for the lunch and for the professional development workshops.

For more information, visit the GRC web site or email .

To register, please go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/37th-annual-graduate-researchconference-registration-13201250295.

Please find a link to the program guide and the events flyer listed below:

• GRC 2015 Program
• GRC Featured Events Flyer

Two of UMBC’s regular hackathon participants took 3rd place at MHacks, a competitive 1000 student hackathon at the University of Michigan this past weekend!

CSEE students Michael Bishoff (President, HackUMBC) and Sekar Kulandaivel created a haptic feedback suit that makes virtual reality more immersive. To do this, the team created 12 vibrating modules that are placed on the user’s arms, legs, chest, and head. When various events occur in the virtual environment, the user will feel a vibration in the appropriate location on their body. For example, when a user falls in a virtual environment, they will feel a vibration in their legs, or when a user gets hit in their arm, they will experience a vibration on the appropriate arm.

For placing third, the duo won a trip to Seoul, South Korea in the summer to represent UMBC at the Global Hackathon, a 2000 person hackathon event backed by the mayor of Seoul. The event’s goal is to increase innovation and produce projects that make a global impact. Attendees of the event will include other brilliant students from around the world!

Mike and Sekar incorporated Oculus Rift technology, which they won at UMD’s 2014 Bitcamp hackathon.

Interested in maker-faires and participating in future hackathons? Join hackUMBC!

The JHU Summer Research Expeditions in Computational Sciences, Systems and Engineering program is an intensive, ten-week program to help undergraduates immerse themselves in research and taste the excitement of inventing. Participants will be part of a research team, including one or more JHU CS faculty and/or graduate student mentors and will be expected to make contributions to a challenging research topic. Example areas of research include Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Interactive Visualizations, Healthcare Cost-Effectiveness and Mobile Computing.

Participants will present their summer findings in a poster and a final presentation session. In addition to research, they will take in a class that teaches scientific presentation skills, go on lab and company tours and meet and socialize with peers from institutions around the country.

The program runs from May 25 to July 31 and includes a stipend of $4,500 and housing, if needed. Apply online before March 2 with your choice to two SRE projects and a copy of your resume and transcript. Two letters of recommendations are also required.

Email or call Anita Sampath (, 410-516-6841) if you have questions about the application process.