CS Major Savishinsky 5th in Mainframe Contest
CS Major Zach Savishinsky place 5th from among 1,750 students participating in the IBM Master the Mainframe Contest, winning himself a new Nintendo Wii system! In the competitive three Phase contest, graduate student Xiaoshuang Wang was a Part 2 winner (Top 60, $100), and graduate student Beilan Wang received an honorable mention.

Recent Student's Startup Company Goes Live
Recent CS Major Jake McGraw is Lead Developer at a new startup company, called Big Carrot. The company promotes and facilitates "crowd sourced inducement prizes."

Faculty Funding
Details coming soon

Senior Loverro Places 2nd in Security Competition
Caleb Loverro, CS Senior, excelled in 3 competitions at the Poyltechnic University Cybersecurity Awareness Week security competition. In particular, he placed 2nd in the Digital Forensics Challenge, 3rd in the Pitney Bowes Challenge. He also competed alone in the Capture the Flag, team competition, and placed 5th out of 14 teams, winning the award for "best individual! This is the second year a student from Binghamton has competed and won cash prizes.

Professor Earns Disability Awareness Award for Department
Professor Bill Ziegler's volunteer work with a local mentally disabled high school student has earned the CS Department a Disability Awareness Award. Prof. Ziegler accepted the award at the Heritage Country Club on Wednesday Oct. 17, 2007.

Loscalzo Earns Honor Society Scholarship Award
Former CS Major (May 2007) Steve Loscalzo was one of three undergraduate students nationwide to have earned a $1,000 Scholarship from UPE. UPE (Upsilon Pi Epsilon), is the national honor society for computer science. Binghamton has an active local chapter of the society. Last Spring, Loscalzo earned the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship; he is currently a Teaching Assistant in the CS Department, and is pursuing research with Professor Lei Yu.

BU Computer Science Team wins Honorable Mention in International Web Site Competition
As part of a semester-long project in Professor Ziegler's CS495 Professional Ethics and Communication class during the Spring 2007 semester, a team of Computer Science undergraduate students entered CHC61: The IEEE Computer Society Web Programming Competition. The competition required teams to design and implement a web site that explored an unsung hero in the history of computing. Nearly 70 teams from 63 universities in 27 countries participated in the competition. The BU Team earned the Honorable Mention Award and consisted of CS undergraduates Keith Nobbe, Alvin Oh, Hyun Mo Yoon and Yui Pang, with assistance from Peter Bazyluk and David Rodrigeuz. Professor Ziegler served as faculty advisor for the team. The title of the students' project was, "Posidonius and Ancient Computers." The competition was sponsored by Microsoft and The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society, an educational non-profit organization, and the world's largest and oldest professional association of computer scientists and engineers.

Meng's Company Releases News Metasearch Engine
Webscalers (www.webscalers.com), a company co-founded by Professor Weiyi Meng who serves as its President, released to the public a news metasearch engine called AllInOneNews (www.allinonenews.com) on August 22th, 2007. AllInOneNews connects to over 1,800 news sources in more than 200 countries/regions. The ability to connect with many search engines simultaneously enables AllInOneNews to provide the timeliest information possible. AllInOneNews also performs "semantic search," meaning that it looks not only for keywords, but also for subject matter closely related to the original query. AllInOneNews grew out of a research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Later, NSF's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program provided funds for Phase-I and II of the project. Prof. Meng is a leading researcher in large-scale metasearch technology. A PR Newswire Item contains more information about the release.

Prof. Yu Presents Tutorial at a Top Data Mining Conference
Professor Lei Yu presented a tutorial on Dimensionality Reduction for Data Mining, April 28th at the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. SDM is one of the leading conferences in the field of data mining research, and Prof. Yu's tutorial was one of three selected from proposals submitted to the conference.

Faculty Continue in Leadership Positions
The CS Department faculty continue to serve in leadership roles within their respective research communities. For example, Professor Madden recently wrapped up service as General Chair of ISPD 2007, the ACM International Symposium on Physical Design, and is also a Program Committee Chair of EDPS, the Electronic Design Process Subcommittee of IEEE DATC, a workshop meeting next week. Professor Abu-Ghazaleh will Co-Chair the Technical Program Committee of MSWiM, the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, for the 2nd consecutive year. This year's conference will be held in Crete Island, Greece, in late October. And Professor Chiu is co-organizing SOCP '07, a Workshop on Service-Oriented Computing Performance: Aspects, Issues, and Approaches, to be held in conjunction with HPDC '07 (the top grid computing conference) this June. Chiu is also serving as Program Co-Chair of e-Science 2007, the 3rd International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing, to be held in Bangalore, India in mid-December.

UPE Inducts New Members
The UPE Computer Science Honor Society inducted six new members this semester: Rostislav Agashiyev, Ovidiu (Lucian) Bolintis, Ari Fuchs, Jon Grode, Charles June, and Krzysztof Stasik. In the Fall 2006 Semester, the following six students had been inducted: Matthew Fowler, Saugata Ghose, Moonjeong Kang, Keith Nobbe, Luke Pamel, and Brett Taylor. The UPE web space contains lists of the honor society's full student membership, rules for membership, events, and more. Among other things, UPE offers free tutoring of other students. Congratulations to the new (and existing) members, and thank you for your hard work and excellent service to the Department!

Madden Secures $25K Sandia Grant
Professor Patrick Madden has received a $25K grant from Sandia National Laboratories to design dense interconnect structures for integrated circuits such as optical sensors. The circuits have more than a quarter million connection points in an area roughly the size of a nickle. Graduate student Satoshi Ono is working on the project.

Ghose, Ponomarev Secure Intel Grant
Professors Kanad Ghose and Dmitry Ponomarev of the Computer Architecture and Power-Aware Systems (CAPS) Research Group have recently been awarded an Intel research grant to improve the performance and energy-efficiency of multicore microprocessors and to develop related software tools.

Ziegler Made Honorary Member of Honor Society
Professor William Ziegler has been inducted as an Honorary Member into the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society. Phi Eta Sigma was founded in 1923 and is currently the oldest and largest freshman honor society, consisting of 350 chapters and 900,000 inducted members. The goal of the Society is to encourage and reward academic excellence among first-year students in institutions of higher learning. To be eligible for membership, students must exhibit distinguished academic ability and have a cumulative grade-point average of at least 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Honorary Members are selected upon student nomination followed by a review by students and college officials. `

CS/Watson Students Take Second Place in Morgan Stanley Website Competition
A team of three Watson School students finished in second place in the Morgan Stanley Website Competition at the Eastern Technical Career Conference (ETCC) in Philadelphia, The conference was hosted by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and managed by the the Hispanic Eastern Technical Career Institute (HETCI). The Watson School team consisted of two Computer Science undergraduate students, Peter Bazyluk and Keith Nobbe; and one Mechanical Engineering student, Vadim Bromberg. Competitors were given two weeks to determine a problem with information regarding current ETCC conferences and fix it using an online module created by the entering team. The websites were judged on creativity, teamwork, difficulty of the problem to solve, and presentation. Our student's entry can be found at http://sa.binghamton.edu/~shpe/ETCC_Competition/index_fl.html (requires Internet Explorer).

CS Major wins Essay Contest
CS Major Peter Dobrie has won the undergraduate award in an Essay Contest sponsored by the Information Systems and Internet Security Lab at Polytechnic University, as part of Cyber Security Awareness Week 2006. Details of the contest can be found here. For his efforts, Peter received a new iPod Shuffle; Congratulations, Peter!

Two Student Teams Finish in Top 10 in IEEE History Competition
As part of a semester-long project in Professor Ziegler's CS 495 Professional Ethics and Communication class during the Spring 2006 semester, two 4-person teams of Computer Science students entered CHC60: The IEEE Computer Society 60th Anniversary History Competition. The competition requires teams to design and build a website that covers, in depth, a topic related to the history of computing. Both teams advanced to the final round of the competition, and finished in the Top 10. Nearly 70 teams from 63 universities in 27 countries participated in the competition.

One team includes students Jeffrey Gibat, Matt Kornher, Peter Meyer, and Allan Rysin; the other comprises Chad Evans, Bryan Latten, Arin Lipman, and Michael Perry, with Professor Ziegler serving as faculty advisor for both teams. All the Finalists' Web sites, including those created by the two Binghamton CS teams, are featured here.

Grid Group to Receive New Research Grant
Professors Madhu Govindaraju (PI), Ken Chiu (co-PI), and Mike Lewis (co-PI) have received a new grant that will make the Grid Computing Research Laboratory (GCRL) an official partner in a new Department of Energy Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) Computer Science Center. The Center will provide "Plug and Play Supercomputing" along with a number of partner institutions, including most of the government national laboratories, and researchers from the Universities of Maryland and Utah, and Indiana University. The grant will provide approximately $460K in funds to GCRL researchers over the next 5 years.

Another Best Paper Award!
Professor Lijun Yin his students Xiaozhou Wei and Peter Longo, and the SSIE Department's Abhinesh Bhuvanesh, won a Best Paper award at the 18th IAPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2006), a top conference in pattern recognition and computer vision, held in Hong Kong from August 20-24, 2006. Their paper, titled "Analyzing Facial Expressions Using Intensity-Variant 3D Data for Human Computer Interaction," was selected as one of five papers, out of 1168 submitted, for the award of $500.

CS Researchers Win Best Paper Award
Graduate student Ke Liu, and CS faculty K.D. Kang and Nael Abu-Ghazaleh won the Best Paper award at the 9th Annual NYS Cyber Security Conference: Symposium on Information Assurance. The paper is titled "Securing Geographic Routing," and was presented to the conference in Albany this June.

Kang Secures NSF Grant
Prof. K.D. Kang has received an NSF Grant for his research on Quality of Service (QoS) in Real-Time applications. More information on the research project can be found on the grant's official NSF page.

Recent CS Minor Lander on the Cover of Science
Gabe Lander, who graduated with a minor in CS in 2002, is using his computer science background for his research in the PhD program in Molecular Biology at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, CA. Impressively, his research will be featured on the cover of Science magazine; an abstract of the forthcoming paper can be found here, and more information can be found in a Scripps press release. Congratulations, Gabe!

Prof. Iwobi Receives Watson Founders Award
Prof. Margaret Iwobi was honored as one of 5 recipients of Watson Founders Awards, at a ceremony on Friday, May 19, 2006. The Founders Award is granted annually to individuals who have shown vision and commitment to the Watson School since our formation in 1983. Congratulations (and thank you), Margaret!

Three CS Faculty Win SUNY-Wide Awards
Computer Science faculty members Kanad Ghose, Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, and Leslie Lander were honored with SUNY Chancellor's Awards for Excellence this year. Professor Ghose won an award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities for his outstanding research. (Here's a link to an Inside BU Article announcing Professor Ghose's award.) Professor Abu-Ghazaleh won an award for Excellence in Teaching, and Professor Lander won an award for Excellence in Faculty Service. Impressively, only thirteen total excellence awards were made to faculty at Binghamton, three of which were to Computer Science professors; clearly, this demonstrates the quality and dedication of the Computer Science faculty!

Tilak Wins Distinguished Dissertation Award
Recent Computer Science PhD graduate Sameer Tilak has won a Distinguished Dissertation Award from Binghamton's Graduate School, for his PhD thesis titled "Towards a Holistic Approach for Protocol Development in Sensor Networks." This is the 4th consecutive year that a Computer Science graduate has won the award. Other former winners are listed on our Student Awards page.

Ziegler Named Binghamton Faculty Master
CS Professor Bill Ziegler has been selected as a Binghamton Faculty Master of Newing College, starting in Fall 2006 and running through Spring 2009. As a Faculty Master, Prof. Ziegler will pursue a wide variety of efforts to enrich the living and learning experiences of Newing College student residents. More information can be found in a recent inside BU article. More information about the Binghamton Faculty Masters program itself can be found on the Provost's Faculty Masters Search page, and in an old (1999) Inside BU article.

Madden Chairs Technical Symposium
Prof. Patrick H. Madden is acting as the technical program chair for the 10th International Symposium on Physical Design to be held in San Jose, California, from April 9th to the 12th. The symposium is the leading venue for research on the physical design of integrated circuits, and is sponsored by the ACM, the IEEE, and a number of semiconductor design and manufacturing companies. In related news, Prof. Nael Abu-Ghazaleh will be co-chair of the technical program committee for the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Modeling Analysis and Simulation of Mobile and Wireless Systems(MSWiM) conference to be held in Spain this October.

Moore Wins Honorable Mention in IBM Mainframe Contest
CS Student Christopher Moore placed in the top 5 in IBM's national Mainframe Contest. Winners are listed on the mainframe contest's Students Page. Chris won an ipod in the second round and received an Honorable Mention in the third round of the contest. The 5 students who completed the third round were invited to Poughkeepsie over spring break to tour the facility there. Congratulations, Christopher!

Michael Wins University Award for Student Excellence:
Computer Science major Nick Michael will receive the University Award for Student Excellence. Nick is one of nine Binghamton undergraduates who will receive the award, and was selected as the lone winner from the Watson School. Congratulations, Nick!

Longo Wins SUNY Chancellor's Award:
Computer Science major Peter Longo has been selected to receive the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence. The award honors "SUNY students who have best demonstrated and been recognized for their integration of academic excellence with other aspects of their lives." This is the second consecutive year that a Binghamton Computer Science major has won a Chancellor's Award. Congratulations, Peter! A list of all computer science award winners for the past several years can be found on our Student Awards page.

Sharkey to Receive Student Excellence in Research Award
CS PhD student Joe Sharkey will be awarded a 2005-06 Student Excellence Award for Excellence in Research from Binghamton University's Graduate School. In the past year, Joe has published seven conference and journal papers, including papers in HPCA and ISPLED, two top conferences in the field of computer architecture and low power design. Joe defended his PhD proposal in January, and will work as Summer Intern at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights this summer. Congratulations, Joe!

Levering Article Appears in Dr. Dobb's Journal
CS PhD student Ryan Levering has published a short article in the February 2006 issue of the highly visible Dr. Dobb's Journal, titled "SPARQL for Sesame." The article describes a project that Ryan conceived, designed, and implemented as part of Google's"Summer of Code" program. Ryan's idea for the open-source development project was selected from among a pool of proposals, and he was paid to do open source development in the Summer of 2005. Over 250 students from all over the world implemented 2005 "summer of code" projects for various organizations and companies; only five were selected for inclusion in Dr. Dobbs. Congratulations, Ryan!