Alumni News from Drexel's Department of Computer Science

Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, Drexel University

Issue 6 Spring 2011

Welcome to the e-newsletter from Drexel's CS Department. Every quarter we plan to keep in touch with our alumni by sending student, faculty and alumni news and achievements. For more information about alumni events and activities, please visit our Alumni Website.

Where are they now?

Sam Bossen

Class Year: 2009

Degrees: MS in Software Engineering (online)

Currently: Sam is a software developer and building commissioning engineer at Lutz Engineering. He received his bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and, because of a strong interest in programming, continued in the field of computing and received his Masters in Software Engineering through Drexel's online program. Sam enjoys his work at Lutz. He provides web applications both for the back-end work (timecards and project management) and for the side visible to customers (meeting minutes and exception reports). Read more about his upcoming projects.

Lisa Anthony

Class Year: 2002

Degrees: BS/MS in Computer Science

Currently: After graduating from Drexel, Lisa received her Ph.D. in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and graduated in 2008. She currently lives in Philadelphia and commutes half the week to the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) for a post-doctoral research assistantship in the Information Systems Department. She works on making computers more accessible for all users, including those with disabilities, through multimodal interaction such as speech, touch, gesture and other alternative modes of input. In her spare time, she volunteer at Philly PAWS, tends her roof-deck vegetable garden, enjoys the Philly arts and culture scene, and spends time with her partner, Isaac, and their cat, Andrew.

Lisa (Byrne) Stoltz

Class Year: 1986

Degrees: BS in Computer Science

Currently: Lisa is pursuing a degree in Nursing and hopes to re-enter the workforce in a few years. After graduating from Drexel, Lisa worked as a software developer for ten years, but since then, she's been concentrating full-time on family development. Lisa feels blessed to have had the time to be home with her children, as well as volunteer in her church and at her kids' schools. Lisa also served as the Teaching Director of the Southern Chester County Community Bible Study class for several years. While not studying, Lisa loves to hang out with her husband, Joe, and kids, Rachel, Joey and Rebecca.

Christina Kirby

Class Year: 2005

Degrees: BS in Computer Science

Currently: Christina is a senior engineer at Comcast, where she manages the core network infrastructure with an eye towards scaling the deployment of new services nationwide. She serves as capacity planning lead for Metro Ethernet and Cell Backhaul initiatives including the launch of 10-Gigabit Ethernet. Christina also directs the development and testing automation within the planning and implementation organization. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and wine tasting.

CS Ph.D. student hosted Random Hacks of Kindness Philly at Drexel

Michael Brennan, computer science Ph.D. candidate, led Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia at Drexel University, Saturday and Sunday, June 4-5, 2011. Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), which is open to all designers, programmers, hackers and problem solvers, is a competition to create immediate applicable solutions to real world problems. It was founded in 2009 in partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank. Roger Dingledine, director, project leader and researcher of the Tor Project, presented the keynote talk, plus other special guests attended. Projects created that day included Disaster Mapper, PhillySNAP, Ground Data Satellite Imagery, SPLASH, Tor Challenge, and CouncilMatic. Read more about the projects. To view a recap video of Day 1, click here. View pictures from the event.

DistroWhale Wins First Place at CS Senior Design Competition

DistroWhale logo Team DistroWhale took top honors in the Department of Computer Science's Ninth Annual Outstanding Senior Project Competition, May 24, 2011. Team AHOY received second place, with Teams GPUnit and Stylo/Anonymouth garnered honorable mentions. DistroWhale is a system for distributing schedules via smartphone to people attending events with multiple sessions, such as conventions or conferences. It also includes an administrative website for conventions to input their event schedule, exhibitor information, maps, and alerts into a database. The Competition was sponsored by Bentley Systems, Bloomberg, CIGNA, and Unisys. Judges included Brian Mitchell (CIGNA), Mike Kain (Unisys), Dan Stamate (Bloomberg), Frank Jacquette (Jacquette Consulting), Earlin Lutz (Bentley Systems), and Col. Jody Daniels (Army). Read more about all 2010-11 Senior Design projects here.

CS Welcomed Alumni during Drexel's 2011 Alumni Weekend

Alums with Popyack The CS Department hosted two exciting activities during Drexel's Alumni Weekend, May 6-7, 2011. Forty CS alumni, current students, faculty and staff gathered for a Phillies vs. Braves game at Citizens Bank Park, Friday, May 6. Guests (including members of the class of 1986!) then visited the CS Department, Saturday, May 7, for lunch, a tour of the facilities, student research presentations and a happy hour. Student research presenters included:

Michael Brennan (Privacy, Security and Automation Laboratory): Adversarial Stylometry: Authorship Recognition, Privacy and Anonymity
Rob Lange (Software Engineering Research Group): Network-based Detection of Anomalies and Malware on Smartphones
Walt Mankowski (Vision and Cognition Laboratory): Canonical Behavior Patterns
Geoff Oxholm (Vision and Graphics): Aligning Surfaces Without Aligning Surfaces: Application to Virtual Artifact Reassembly

View pictures of both events here. Save the date for Drexel's 2012 Alumni Weekend: Friday and Saturday, May 4-5, 2012!

Drexel Honors Dr. John Anderson during Franklin Institute Symposium

John Anderson images Drexel's Department of Computer Science hosted the Computer & Cognitive Science Symposium, honoring Dr. John R. Anderson, recipient of The 2011 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science, Thursday, April 28, 2011. This symposium was held in conjunction with The Franklin Institute Awards,

which celebrated the contributions of Dr. Anderson along with scientists in other fields including Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. Guest speakers included Niels Taatgen (University of Groningen) and Ken Koedinger (Carnegie Mellon University). Dr. Anderson is R. K. Mellon University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Click here to learn more about the event and also watch a video of the presentations.

Note from the Department Head

The spring term was filled with CS and SE alumni activities: a Phillies game and department open house during Drexel's Blue and Gold Days, as well as our annual senior design competition where students present their software projects to a panel of industry judges, including some of our outstanding alumni. In addition to these alumni events, the Department hosted the regional Random Hacks of Kindness competition and a symposium associated with The Franklin Institute Awards. These events provide a venue to connect with alumni, students, faculty, and leaders in the computing field. I was particularly pleased with the large turnout and our growing sense of community.
Jeremy Johnson
Jeremy Johnson