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.
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Ravindar Gujral
 Class Year : 2004Degrees: MS in Software Engineering
Currently: Ravindar is involved in multiple projects that focus on organizational improvement. His primary focus has been on software processes, especially agile and lean practices and the creation of high performing teams. This led him in helping establish Agile Philly, one of the largest user groups in the area. Apart from being active within the Philadelphia software community, Ravindar works as an Agile Coach and constultant helping organizations transition to a lean and agile model. He also is the Director of Technology for a small startup in Philadelphia called United by Blue.
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Neel Pahlajani
 Class Year : 2004Degrees: BS in Computer Science
Currently: Neel Pahlajani is a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton with eight years of industry experience designing, developing, and managing commercial and government software systems. He has delivered software solutions in the Internet, government, healthcare, tourism, insurance, and legal industries. In his spare time, Neel designs proprietary software that he can pitch to businesses.
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Santiago Lombeyda
 Class Year: 1998
Degrees: MS in Computer Science
Currently: Santiago has been a Research Scientist for the Center for Advanced Computing Research at the California Institute of Technology since 1998. He works on visualization of large scientific data resulting from collaborations with professors and laboratories across campus, which ranges from portals for geophysics to 3D Immersive visual exploration tools for fluid phenomena, to visual paradigms for gene expression. His work has graced the cover of Science and Nature magazines and his artwork has been shown on two separate occasions in Siggraph's Art Gallery.
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Gregory Hartman, Ph.D.
 Class Year : 1992Degrees: BS in Computer Science
Currently: After Gregory graduated from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science and Software Engineering's PhD program in 2010, he started working at Google in Pittsburgh, PA. He's currently working on the shopping reviews team for a project that involves adding monitoring to an automated data pipeline to alert staff when things go wrong.
Read more news about our alumni here.
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Dr. Spiros Mancoridis Appointed Interim CS Department Head
Dr. Spiros Mancoridis, professor of computer science, has been named Interim Department Head for the 2012-13 academic year, succeeding Dr. Jeremy Johnson after 10 years of dedicated service and inspirational leadership. Dr. Johnson will return full time to teaching and research. Click here to learn more about the Department of Computer Science leadership transitions.
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CS Department Welcomes Class of 2012 as New Alumni
Drexel's Department of Computer Science proudly welcomes graduates from the Class of 2012 as new alumni. Taking the next steps to success after graduation, students accepted job offers at companies such as Microsoft, Amazon.com, Thomson Reuters, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Unisys, and Zynga, among many others. The CS Department also congratulates six Ph.D. candidates on successfully defending their dissertations and receiving doctorate degrees. Pictures of the Commencement Ceremony in June 2012 can be found on the CS Facebook and Flickr pages. View the full list of graduates here.
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CS Graduates are Microsoft Imagine Cup World Champions
Drexel Computer Science graduates Matt Lesnak, Keith Ayers and N. Taylor Mullen claimed a world championship in the Microsoft Imagine Cup technology design competition after their "MathDash" game rose to the top from a field of 106 teams from 75 countries. The group, dubbed team "Drexel Dragons," won the game design mobile category with a smartphone app that turns learning math concepts into a fun game. The Imagine Cup is considered to be one of the most challenging technology competitions in the computer science community. Learn more about the competition and contestants here.
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Drexel PSAL Students Win Best Paper Award at Privacy Symposium
"Use Fewer Instances of the Letter "i": Toward Writing Style Anonymization" a paper by students Andrew W.E. McDonald (CE, undergraduate), Sadia Afroz (CS, Ph.D.), Aylin Caliskan (CS, Ph.D.), Ariel Stolerman (CS, Ph.D.), and Dr. Rachel Greenstadt, assistant professor of computer science, won the Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award at the 12th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, July 11-13, 2012. The students work in Dr. Greenstadt's Privacy, Security and Automation Lab (PSAL) at Drexel University. The paper presents Anonymouth, a novel framework for anonymizing writing style.
Dr. Michael Brennan, recent CS Ph.D. graduate, was also recognized with a best presentation award for his work "Perspectives on Academic Impact From Inside the Federal Trade Commission." Read more here.
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Largest High School Class Graduates from 2012 Drexel Computing Academy
Computing summer camp Drexel University Computing Academy (DUCA) concluded its fourth successful program with its largest class in attendance yet. After five weeks of living on campus and completing courses in game design, computer networking and security, social media and web development, robotics, and information technology, 50 sophomores and juniors in high school graduated from DUCA, Saturday, July 28, 2012. Sponsored by the Drexel's iSchool, College of Engineering, and Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, this residential program provides students with an authentic college experience while taking interdisciplinary classes from faculty, participating in interactive projects, and exploring Philadelphia. Watch the 2012 project presentations here, plus view pictures of DUCA activities and trips.
DUCA is now accepting applications for its 2013 summer camp. Current sophomores and juniors in high school interested in exploring the variety of fields in computing can apply at the DUCA website. Students who successfully complete DUCA and subsequently enroll at Drexel University will receive a $3,000 renewable scholarship.
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Drexel Provides Privacy Talk, K-8 Outreach, and More for CS Ed Week
Drexel joined the high schools, colleges, and universities across the country to honor Computer Science education and its vital contribution to society during National Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 9-15, 2012. Events hosted by the CS Department, its computing student organizations, and Drexel's iSchool, Nov. 28 to Dec. 5, continued the effort to raise awareness of Computer Science's fundamental role by providing guests a wider understanding of the field and industry.
Dr. Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist and senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, shared details about law enforcement surveillance of Internet and mobile communications. Random Hacks of Kindness returned to Drexel for its fourth hackathon on campus and TeacherCom, an automatic, mass text or robo-call tool for school teachers to save time in relaying messages to parents, won top honors. Read a full recap here.
Also, for the first time during CS Education Week, the CS Department and a group of freshmen Honors students from CS 164 Intro to Computer Science are working with St. Francis de Sales, a local K-8 school in Philadelphia. Drexel students, under the guidance of Dr. Jeff Popyack, class instructor, are developing a year-long technology assistance program that began during CS Education Week and will progress throughout the academic year. View pictures of the visit. Learn more about the activities offered during CS Ed Week here and view photos from the events.
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Drexel Vision Lab Publishes Four Papers in Top Euro Conference
The Drexel Vision Lab, lead by Dr. Ko Nishino, associate professor of computer science, published four papers in the top-tier European Conference on Computer Vision. Two of the accepted papers, "Shape and Reflectance from Natural Illumination," by Geoff Oxholm, CS Ph.D. candidate, and Dr. Nishino, and "Reflectance and Natural Illumination from a Single Image," by Stephen Lombardi, CS Ph.D. candidate, and Dr. Nishino, investigate the inference of physical properties of the world that are captured within a photograph.
The third work, "The Scale of Geometric Texture" by Oxholm, Prabin Bariya, a recent CS master's graduate, and Dr. Nishino, is a new take on the study of texture in images. The fourth work, entitled, "Going With the Flow: Pedestrian Efficiency in Crowded Scenes," written by Dr. Louis Kratz, recent CS Ph.D. graduate, and Dr. Nishino, shows how measuring a pedestrian's conformance with the crowd around them leads to more accurate tracking, and unusual event detection.
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Note from the Department Head
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The summer and fall quarters have marked a period of transition for our department. Dr. Jeremy Johnson and Dr. Jeff Popyack have stepped down after ten years of exemplary service in their roles as Department Head and Associate Department Head, respectively. Dr. Dario Salvucci is our new Associate Department Head for Undergraduate Affairs and Dr. Ali Shokoufandeh is our new Associate Department Head for Graduate Affairs and Research. I am very fortunate to have them as part of the new management team.
The department is seeing a significant growth in undergraduate student enrollment, and we have been busy trying to recruit top CS faculty to help us expand our education and research mission. The increase in demand for a Drexel CS education is in large part a reflection of the quality of our dedicated faculty and talented undergraduate and graduate students. For example, since the last newsletter, Dr. Frank Lee led a team of our students to victory in the prestigious Imagine Cup World Championship, Dr. Greenstadt's research team won a best research paper award, Dr. Nishino's research team published four papers in a top computer vision conference, and Dr. Jeff Popyack and Professor Bill Mongan helped run a successful summer camp at Drexel for future computing students.
I encourage students and alumni to stop by my office and share their successes and ideas with me.
Sincerely,
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Please contact the editor, Julie Fisher, for any questions or information
about the Department
of Computer Science and its newsletter. |
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