Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

If you are a computer science or computing engineering major, you should consider joining the Council of Computing Majors (CCM). This is a student organization that represents undergraduate CMSC and CMPE majors. Austin Murdock and Amanda Pyryt have revived the CCM and will lead the initial meeting for the year this coming Monday, October 7th from 12-1pm in Admin 101.

If you are interested in speaking with other Computer Science and Computer Engineering majors at UMBC, or interested in learning more about computing please feel free to attend! This year we are also introducing a system to set up study groups for your major.

The initial meeting will include a presentation from a Windows representative about Windows 8.1. This is the first major major update for the Windows 8 operating system and is expected to be released later this month.

UMBC students interested in learning more about pursuing a graduate program in a STEM area should consider taking advantage of a free GEM GRAD Lab event to be held at the University of Virginia on Saturday, September 28th. UMBC is a co-sponsor, along with UVA and VA Tech and will provide free bus transportation. See here for more information and details about how to reserve a seat on the bus. The event will cover topics that include why go to graduate school, how to apply to graduate school, how to fund graduate school and voices from the field.

Hi Tea is back with a bang! Registration is now open for the Fall 2013 CSEE Hi Tea Competition. Hi Tea is a student-run social event held (nearly) every Friday from 3:00 to 3:30 in the third floor hallway of the ITE building outside the CSEE Department suite (325 ITE). All students, staff, faculty and friends of the CSEE Department are welcome to attend. Each week, a group of students will plan and assemble simple refreshments for the event. This Fall we will repeat the popular competition used in the Spring (see some photos).

Let's come together to cheer and vote for the competitors, have some food, mingle with old friends and make new ones. Here are the rules:

• Form groups of one to four members. Teams do not have to have all members from the same lab. So feel free to form a group with any of your friends from the CSEE Department.
• Create a name for your team.
• The winning team will be chosen from a weighted combination of votes. One vote will result from attendees. Another vote will come from faculty judges. Ties will be resolved by faculty judges.
• Each team should limit their presentation to $15. Therefore, each team will be reimbursed up to $15. Each team must save their receipts and submit them to Jane Gethman to obtain their reimbursement.
• Teams will be judged on creativity, presentation, and budget planning. It is preferred that you list how you managed your expenses for the judges to verify limit-to-$15 rule.
• Each week, two teams will compete against each other (). The winner will proceed to the next round.

Hi Tea will proceed for eight weeks. After that, the winner, first runner-up, and second runner-up will receive a $100, $75, and $50 gift certificate, respectively.

The following dates are reserved for fun-filled special editions of Hi Tea. No teams will compete on these days. Stay tuned for more details!

• 25-Oct-2013: Halloween
• 1-Nov-2013: Diwali
• 22-Nov-2013: Thanksgiving

For questions, comments, and registration, email the following Hi Tea committee members:

• Raghavendra Shruti Rao ( )
• Genaro Hernandez Jr ()
• Rukmini Ramakrishnan ()

The first meeting of the UMBC Game Developers Club (GDC) will be held at Noon on Wednesday September 11 in Engineering 005a. Potential new members and people curious about the process behind video games are welcome. In the first meeting, club president Paul Tschirgi will review the club purpose, organization and activities and describe the guidelines for the game idea selection process. Information on last year's projects can be found on the GDC project page.

The GDC was originally formed in 2005 with the goal of giving students from varied backgrounds a chance to work together and make games. The GDC accepts members from any major or background, including computer science, digital art, computer modeling, information systems, and music. If you would like to know more about the organization, feel free to visit our forums or come to one of our meetings. Currently, the GDC meets every Wednesday from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm in the the GAIM Lab (ENGR 005A). Dates for meeting, workshops and other GDC related events are posted on the GDC Google Calendar.

The UMBC ACM student chapter is glad to announce the first meetup of Baltimore Software Craftsmanship User Group. This meetup is for the students and software developers in the Baltimore, MD area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

Please RSVP for the event by completing the form. More details can be read on the form or below.

Note: Registration for this initial meetup is limited to only twelve people from the UMBC community. If you are UMBC Student or Faculty please don't RSVP on the meetup site. Use the above form only.

Event Details

This is a HANDS-ON coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your LAPTOP equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don't have a laptop COME ANYWAY, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

The event is open to all UMBC students, however programming ability is REQUIRED. Interested Faculty members can join in too! This can also be a good opportunity to network with professionals from various companies and get yourself noticed for any job opportunities that exist.

Questions or Suggestions? Send email to Primal Pappachan (primal1 at umbc.edu) or Vladimir Korolev (vkorol1 at umbc.edu).

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. UMBC has an active ACM student chapter that is open to all UMBC undergraduate and graduate students of any major.

This year the chapter is planning to organize various events where faculty members, ACM distinguished speakers, and local tech companies will talk about various interesting topics. The first event of the year is the Welcome Back Picnic which be held from 11:30am to 1:30pm on September 18th in the Engineering Atrium. Other activities like Hi-Tea competitions, Code Craftsmanship, Reading groups and Peer mentorship are also in the works. Suggestions on speakers or other events are welcome and can be sent to .

While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

Please stop by for these events for which we will send out detail as they get confirmed. Sign up for the UMBC ACM mailing list to become a part of the local chapter and receive updates and news of its activities and events. You can also follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to keep track of chapter’s events.

If you are a senior planning to apply to a graduate program next year or a current graduate student early in your program of study, you should consider applying for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

NSF has opened the application for the 2014 Graduate Research Fellowship Program. These Fellowships give three years of funding to students in research based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics master’s and doctoral programs.

Funds are awarded to the student and can be used in any appropriate program. If you will be applying to graduate programs for next year, you only need describe the insititutions that you plan to apply to.

NSF's Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate is looking for strong applicants in this year’s program. The deadline for submission is November 4, 2013 and the application can be found here.  If you are interested, you should start by talking with your advisor and or other faculty members about the program and how to submit a strong application.

Two UMBC students were among the 18 fellows selected by Code 2040 for a unique fellowship program that places high performing Black and Latino/a software engineering students in internships with top technology companies and startups in the San Francisco Bay area and supports them with mentorship, leadership training, and network development.

Perry Ogwuche, a rising senior majoring in computer science and mathematics, will spend the summer working at Redbeacon, a startup in Foster City, CA that connects qualified home-service professionals with exclusive job requests from homeowners. Perry is a member of the Phi Mu Epsilon National Mathematics Honorary Society, and has served as a Resident Assistant, Student Government Association member and as a math tutor to student athletes.

Randi Williams, a rising sophomore majoring in computer engineering, will spend her summer as an intern at Jawbone, a San Francisco company known for its noise eliminating Bluetooth headsets and portable speakers. Randi is a Meyerhoff scholar and Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) affiliate and coach in UMBC's Math Gym.

CODE2040 is a non-profit organization that aims to close the achievement, wealth, and skills gaps for Blacks and Latinos in the United States by creating access, awareness, and opportunities in technology and engineering. Its summer fellowship program brings high performing Black and Latino undergraduate and graduate coders and software engineering students to Silicon Valley for a comprehensive summer internship program that includes a paid internship with a top startup, mentoring, a speaker series, company visits, interactive workshops, executive coaching, and more. The program began last year with five students and has expanded to 18 this summer.

Students who are interested in the program can get more information on it and find out how to apply for the 2014 CODE 2040 fellows program at their web site.

The UMBC Review is a journal for undergraduate research done at UMBC. CMSC and CMPE majors who have recently finished a research project or paper or plan to do so before the fall should consider submitting it for volume 15, which will be published next April. The Review publishes papers in all disciplines, including the computing sciences.

Papers may be submitted at any time between now and 13 September 2013 for consideration in the next volume. Students graduating this spring or summer are eligible to submit papers on work completed as an undergraduate. See the table of contents of the current issue to get an idea of the range and length of published papers.

If you are interested, fill out this online form to get additional information.

The CSEE Department will hold a "town hall" meeting for undergraduate COmputer Science (CMSC) majors, minors and other interested students in ITE 456 from 12:00 to 2:00 on Thursday, April 18.

This is an opportunity to interact with your department chair, Professor Gary Carter, the CMSC undergraduate program director Professor Marc Olano and other faculty members. During the meeting you will hear about recent developments in the department and CMSC program, and have opportunities to express opinions, raise issues, make suggestions, ask questions and discuss how to make the CMSC program better. There will also be pizza and drinks.

If you plan on attending, please send an email message to so we can be sure to order enough food. If you have any questions or topics that you would like to raise in advance, send them to . We look forward to a lively and useful event where the communication flows both ways.