Author: Michael

Computer Science 2nd Advisory Board Meeting

On May 10, 2018, the department of Computer Science, which is composed of four programs: Computer Science (CS), IT, Mechatronics and the masters program in CS (MSCS), held its second Advisory Board meeting. The first meeting took place on November 3, 2017.

The Advisory Board consists of leaders in the industry and public service in Ventura County, and its mission is to:

  • Champion the department in the community.
  • Help with placement of our students in internships and full time positions.
  • Support the curriculum.
  • Provide access to real world problems which can than be given to our students for senior capstones, projects and masters theses.
  • Form the constituents of the department, as for example required by ABET accreditation.

The meeting started with lunch at 12:30 (Handel Evans Conference Room, Broome Library Room 2533), and welcome words from Chris Meissner (Meissner filtration, and also a member of the CI Foundation Board), who outlined a vision for the board, and has kindly agreed to take the lead of a planning committee that will develop bylaws and membership. Dennis Gaiseer has also agreed to help in this effort. Chris’ remarks were followed by two faculty presentations, Profs. Brian Thoms and Houman Dallali, who briefly showcased their various research projects and how they involve CI students.

Lunch was followed by a tour of the new labs in Sierra Hall, with detailed visits in the Robotics, Embedded Systems and Networks & Security labs. At 3pm, in Sierra 1422, we held a planning meeting that started with a presentation by Michael Soltys; here are the slides:

AdvisoryBoard-May10-2018

 

The talk outlined the recent successes and accomplishments, e.g., starting of Mechatronics program in the fall 2018, student programming competitions, scholarly achievements (over a dozen publications arising from research in the department), as well as the rapid growth of the students majoring in Computer Science (at 400 currently, doubled in the last 3 years). We also mentioned some of the challenges, such as the leaving of several key tenure-track faculty (moving to other universities and retiring).

We also spoke about the push toward ABET accreditation, and that the Advisory Board will be key in that enterprise, as we are required to have one in order to maintain a discussion about the Program Educational Outcomes, which comprise a vision for our graduates, and which has to be examined by the constituents (i.e., Advisory Board) of the department. The department has a working document for its implementation of an ABET assessment program: https://goo.gl/jrvHft

Following that, Ritchie LeRoy from Advancement led a discussion about the following items:

  • Membership of the board
  • By-Laws
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Leadership
  • Expectations

The day ended with the Capstone Showcase presentation 4-6pm in the Sierra Hall Lobby, held at the end of each term, presenting the magnificent senior projects of our students. The students were excited about the possibility of presenting their work to industry leaders.

Some shots from the Capstone Showcase:

14 most popular programming languages according to Stack Overflow study

Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer site for global programmers, has released its 2018 report on the most popular programming languages based on responses from over 100,000 developers. The top language cited is Javascript, which allows developers to build interactive elements on websites, making it one of the most common languages on the Web. HTML, while technically a markup language rather than a programming language, placed second in the ranking, as it forms the basis of all Websites. Third on the list was Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, used to design Websites and browser-based apps. Structured Query Language (SQL), which allows users to handle large amounts of data by accessing and managing databases, placed fourth in the ranking, followed by Java, the most common tool for building Android apps. Following Java in the ranking were, in descending order, Bash/Shell, Python, C#, PHP, C++, C, Typescript, Ruby, and Swift.

Source: 14 most popular programming languages according to Stack Overflow study – Business Insider

Professor in Theoretical Computer Science

Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University, is looking a Professor in Theoretical Computer Science (Deadline: 25th May, 2018) to lead the theory research group.

* For detals and application, please see
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/hr/jobs/featured-jobs/
<http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/hr/jobs/featured-jobs/> or
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BJC377/professor-in-theoretical-computer-science/
<http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BJC377/professor-in-theoretical-computer-science/>*

Furthermore, there is an advertisement of a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) position in Networks (Deadline: 10th May, 2018)*

* For detals and application, please see
<http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BJA998/lecturer-in-computer-science-networks/>*
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BJA998/lecturer-in-computer-science-networks/

Cyber Quest Competition

This Cyber Security event might be of interest to your students

Carlos Miranda

Associate Director of Information Security

CSU Channel Islands

One University Drive, Camarillo, CA 93012

U.S. Cyber Challenge’s annual online competition, Cyber Quests, is now open to competitors! But, hurry and register at www.CyberQuests.org as the last day to register is Monday, April 30, 2018.

This year’s focus is on cryptography and everyone is welcome to participate –whether you are a student or professional; novice or highly-experienced; a US citizen or international, all are welcome! You have 3 chances to earn a top score & top performers who are US citizens and 18+ years old will be invited to attend one of U.S. Cyber Challenge’s week-long cyber camps this summer for intensive training & a CTF competition.

Continue reading “Cyber Quest Competition”

Comp Sci @CSUCI seminar on algorithms by Marina Lepikhina @TheTradeDesk

Speaker: Marina Lepikhina, Principal Software Engineer at The Trade Desk
Title: Forecasting for advertising campaigns. How we utilize HyperLogLog and Minhash algorithms to estimate number of available impressions.
Bio: At The Trade Desk Marina Lepikhina designs and executes solutions for a complex business problems involving data at a large scale.
When/Where: Tuesday May 1st at 7pm in Sierra Hall 2422
Marina will be introduces by Zak Stengel, Senior Vice President of Engineering.
From the Trade Desk site:

Every day, media is becoming more fragmented as old models are reinvented digitally. This new landscape makes it harder for advertisers to reach their audience and requires an unbiased partner with powerful technology to help media buyers coordinate campaigns across digital channels.

With The Trade Desk, buyers can value each impression like traders value stocks, using first and third party data to decide which impression to buy and how much to pay. Customers can also use our APIs to build their own proprietary analytic insights or access our bidders to create specialty DSP offerings.

CPM-SPIRE-L Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Artificial Intelligence (1, 0 fte)

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSITION IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (1,0 fte)

Please see: https://tiu.nu/13422

The Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence of the Tilburg
School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, is looking for an enthusiastic
colleague for the position of Assistant Professor in the field of Artificial
Intelligence. The candidate is expected to contribute to the teaching and
research track ‘Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence’. Topics range
from, but are not limited to, research and development in natural language
technologies, brain-computer interaction, multi-agent systems and robotics,
serious games, and virtual and mixed reality. The Cognitive Science and
Artificial Intelligence track emphasizes innovative cutting-edge research in
those areas of cognitive science that bring together cognitive theories and
computational methodologies. The track is closely related to the university-wide
data science Master program Data Science: Business & Governance, as well as to
the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) in Den Bosch. Faculty members in
the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence department have access to a
computer cluster with GPU computing capability, experimental lab facilities,
as well as robotics, virtual reality and sensing technologies.

Continue reading “CPM-SPIRE-L Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Artificial Intelligence (1, 0 fte)”

Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Cognitive Science (1, 0 fte)

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSITION IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE (1,0 fte)

Please see: https://tiu.nu/13423

The Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, is looking for an enthusiastic colleague for the position of Assistant Professor in the field of Cognitive Science. The candidate is expected to contribute to the teaching and research track ‘Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence’. This track emphasizes interdisciplinary research in the cognitive sciences including human cognition, (psycho)linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence. Topics of research include, but are not limited to, robotics and avatars, serious games, virtual and mixed reality, and language technologies. The Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence track emphasizes innovative cutting-edge research in those areas of cognitive science that bring together
psychological and computational theories and methodologies. The track is closely related to the university-wide data science Master program Data Science: Business & Governance, as well as to the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science. Faculty in the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence track have access to a computer cluster, experimental lab facilities, a robotics lab, as well as the DAF Technology Lab, a virtual and mixed reality lab and its sensing technologies.

Continue reading “Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Cognitive Science (1, 0 fte)”

Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Educational Technology (1, 0 fte)

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSITION IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (1,0 fte)

Please see: https://tiu.nu/13424

The Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, is looking for an enthusiastic colleague for the position of Assistant Professor in the field of Educational Technology. The candidate is expected to initiate and conduct fundamental and applied research in Educational Technology, as well as contribute to teaching in the Bachelor program Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence and the Master’s program Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence. Researchers in the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence have access to a computer cluster with GPU computing capability, experimental lab facilities, a robotics lab, as well as virtual reality and sensing technologies. The department plays an important role in Mind Labs (www.mind-labs.eu), an initiative which fosters collaborations between knowledge institutions and corporations in the field of interactive technologies and behavior.

Continue reading “Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Educational Technology (1, 0 fte)”

Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Data Science (1, 0 fte)

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR POSITION IN DATA SCIENCE (1,0 fte)

Please see: https://tiu.nu/13421

The Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, is looking for an enthusiastic colleague for the position of Assistant Professor in the field of Data Science. The candidate is expected to initiate and conduct fundamental and applied research in Data Science as well as contribute to teaching in the Master Data Science: Business & Governance (DSBG) and the Bachelor Data Science. The Master DSBG is a joint initiative of the four schools of Tilburg University (Economics and Management, Law, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Humanities) and offers a broadly oriented Data Science program for students with various backgrounds. The Bachelor Data Science is a joint initiative of Tilburg University and the Eindhoven University of Technology. Also, the candidate contributes to the teaching and research track ‘Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence’. The tracks are closely related to the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (http://www.jads.nl ). Faculty members at the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence have access to a computer cluster, experimental lab facilities, a robotics lab, as well as the DAF Technology Lab, a virtual and mixed reality lab and its sensing technologies. Moreover, researchers play an important role in Mind Labs (www.mind-labs.eu), an initiative which fosters collaborations between knowledge institutions and corporations in the field of interactive technologies and behavior.

Continue reading “Job opening: Assistant Professor position in Data Science (1, 0 fte)”

Cybersecurity event @CSUCI on April 20, 2018

On the evening of April 20, 2018 Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin and CSU Channel Islands president Erica D. Beck co-hosted a Cybersecurity event  in Sierra Hall, promoting regional industry partnerships. At this event we had the opportunity to showcase our work – three masters students and one senior student presented research under my supervision:

Zane Gittins spoke about his network penetration testing at HAAS: this work started as a Hank Lacayo Internship at HAAS in the fall of 2017, but since then Zane has been hired by HAAS to continue his work.

Eric Gentry spoke about the SEAKER project, a digital forensic tool that was developed with and for the High Technology Task Force (HTTF) at the Ventura forensic lab. We presented this tool at an event on August 7, 2017.

Geetanjali Agarwal spoke about the Image Recognition project, also inspired by the work done at the HTTF at the Ventura lab, where we aim to identify images from partially recovered files and compare them to a bank of images using the difference hash technique.

Ryan McIntyre presented his work on algorithms in bio-informatics. These results have been published recently in the Journal of Discrete Algorithms, and described in a blog post on March 6, 2018.

Here are the presentation slides.

I introduced the students making some remarks elaborating on president Beck’s statement about partnerships between CI and the Ventura industry. As a CI faculty, I find interdependence in the triad of Scholarship, Teaching and Industry relations. Many of our projects start by addressing a Research & Development need of the community, such as the SEAKER tool for HTTF. We use it to teach our students a hands-on approach to problem solving in Computer Science; we aim to produce quality work that advances knowledge and is publishable.

Scholarship, the first component of the triad, is really composed of three simultaneous activities: the research itself, which is laborious, time consuming, consisting of literature review and the cycle of hypothesis, testing and proving.

The funding component: labs, equipment, salaries, conferences, all these require funds, which can be secured through grants, philanthropic gifts or state support.

And finally dissemination, which is crucial as without it no one is aware of our work, and which takes place through publishing, conference presentations, blog writing, and events such as the one described in this blog. At CI we are lucky in that Advancement facilitates both fundraising and dissemination.