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, please visit our Alumni Website.
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Michael Becker
Class Year: 2005
Degrees: B.S. in Computer Science
Currently: Michael is currently a Software Engineer at AWeber Communications in Chalfont, PA where he works on advanced analytics. In his spare time he runs the DataPhilly meetup group. This month Michael will be giving talks on scikit-learn, a machine learning toolkit, and Amazon's mechanical turk.
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Matthew Inger
Class Year: 1997
Degrees: B.S. in Computer Science
Currently: Matthew is currently working as a Senior Software Engineer for Comcast, in the Comcast Interactive Media division. The division powers the delivery of TV Listings on the web and the online content on the xfinitytv.net website. He is also an active member of the Philadelphia Area Java Users Group, which meets in King of Prussia.
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Dan Parmet
Class Year: 1993
Degrees: B.S. in Computer Science
Currently: Dan is a Software Developer at Susquehanna International Group in Bala Cynwyd, PA. He has worked on various systems including firm-wide P&L, general ledger, haircut/margin requirements, research publications and enterprise reference data. He is married to Donna Rebecca Parmet (Drexel '94, MS in Math & Computer Science). In his spare time, Dan helps raise his fraternal twin boys and bowls in a league.
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NSF CAREER Award Funds Online User Privacy Research at Drexel
Dr. Rachel Greenstadt, assistant professor of computer science and head of Drexel's Privacy, Security and Automation Lab (PSAL), received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her five-year research project, "Privacy Analytics for Users in a Big Data World." Dr. Greenstadt and her students are focusing their efforts to collect and analyze data determining what precautions, if any, users actually take to ensure personal privacy on the Internet.
Not only will the results help other researchers better understand how users' online actions correspond to the information they want to keep private, but they will also provide awareness to users about how their data is being used. Greenstadt and her team want to build enhanced privacy and analytical tools to assist Internet users, as well as raise awareness of Internet privacy and distribute educational materials to a wider audience through regional hackathons, open data initiatives, and the Freedom Rings Partnership. Read more about the project's goals here.
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CS Hosts First Research Experience for Teachers in Big Data, Machine Learning and CS Principles
Drs. Jeff Popyack, associate professor of computer science, and Mary Jo Grdina, associate professor in the School of Education of Drexel University, received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the REThink Project, a new summer program in CS for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) high school teachers and two-year college faculty in Philadelphia and the Great Philadelphia metropolitan area. This is the CS department's first Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program.
REThink is an annual, seven-week summer research institute that will include 10 to 11 teachers per year. Participants will be introduced to increasingly popular topics in computing, such as big data and machine learning, while working with faculty and graduate students on cutting-edge research. They will also focus on CS Principles and computational thinking, including their widespread application areas, through professional development workshops. Click here to learn more about REThink.
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Drexel's Game Design Program Ranks in Top 15 from Princeton Review
Drexel's Game Design Program, a joint program between the Department of Computer Science in College of Engineering and Digital Media program in the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, has been recognized by the Princeton Review's "Top Game Design Programs" and placed sixth in the undergraduate category and third in the graduate category. Drexel's video game program, which has expanded within the last few years with the recruitment of more than 20 gaming companies into the co-op program, includes the Research on Play or "RePlay" Lab. RePlay exposes students to game development through research projects and proof-of-concept demonstrations, enabling students to not just learn video game development, but to live it. Read more about the ranking here.
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Dr. Maxwell Young Joins the CS Department as Assistant Professor
The Department of Computer Science is happy to welcome Dr. Maxwell Young as a new assistant professor. He will begin teaching undergraduate and graduate courses Fall 2013. Dr. Young's research addresses the challenges of designing scalable and robust distributed systems where many of the participants are unreliable or even malicious in nature. This work deals with the intersection of security and distributed computing, and often leverages randomized analyses and cryptographic techniques to obtain algorithms with provable guarantees even in the presence of very powerful attacks.
Dr. Young obtained his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Waterloo (Canada) in late 2011. Following his graduate studies, he spent one year as a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, and later was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about Dr. Young's education and achievements here.
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Internet Privacy Featured, Stephen Lombardi Awarded at Modi Lecture
Dr. Balachander Krishnamurthy, a researcher from AT&T Labs, was the distinguished speaker at the 5th Annual Jay Modi Memorial Lecture, March 11, 2013. The presentation, "Internet Privacy: Towards More Transparency," focused on AT&T Labs' work examining the variety of user information collected during Web browsing. Dr. Krishnamurthy presented results from studies on the leakage of personally identifiable information (PII) via Online Social Networks (OSNs) and non-OSN sites, as well as the status of both technical and non-technical attempts to improve the problem. Read the full abstract here.
Prior to the lecture, CS Ph.D. Candidate Stephen Lombardi received the Modi Memorial Award, which is presented annually to a Computer Science Ph.D. student in recognition of academic excellence and the potential to become a leader in the field. Lombardi is currently working with Dr. Ko Nishino in Drexel's Vision and Graphics Lab. Read more about his research accomplishments.
Visit the Jay Modi Memorial Lecture website to view past presenters and award recipients.
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Drs. Paul Oh and Michael Wagner Join CS Department as Affiliated Faculty Members
Drexel's Department of Computer Science is continuing to strengthen its academic program with the addition of Drs. Paul Oh and Michael Wagner as affiliated faculty. They will service the department's mission by assisting with teaching and research. Dr. Paul Oh is currently an ASME Fellow and Associate Department Head at Drexel's Mechanical Engineering Department. Dr. Oh's research interests and specializations include robotics, autonomous vehicles, mechatronics, unmanned aerial vehicles (UVAs), and humanoids. Dr. Michael Wagner is an Associate Professor of Digital Media and Director of the top-ranked Digital Media Program at Drexel's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design. His research focuses on theoretical aspects of the educational use of digital media and computer games. Read more about Drs. Oh and Wagner here.
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UPE Hosted Annual Alumni Dinner and Student Research Reception
Drexel's Chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) hosted its Annual Student Research Reception and Dinner for alumni, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. More than 50 people attended and caught up with fellow UPE alumni, current students, faculty, and staff. The following projects and presenters were featured during the event:
- "VisAssist" by Trevor Adams, Nate Bomberger, Tom Burdak, Shawn Busolits, Andrew Scott, Mateusz Stankiewicz, and Nate Vecchiarelli (2012 College of Engineering Senior Design Champions; Advisor: Jeff Salvage)
- "Identifying Authors and Machine Translation Tools in Translated Text" by Aylin Caliskan Islam (Privacy, Security and Automation Lab; Advisor: Rachel Greenstadt)
- "Low-Power/High Performance Clock Network Design for Microprocessors" by Scott Learner and Ahmet Can Sitik (VLSILab; Advisor: Baris Taskin, Computer Engineering)
- "Single Image Multimaterial Estimation" by Stephen Lombardi (Vision Lab; Advisor: Ko Nishino)
- "Protecting Peer-to-Peer Overlays through Self-Organized Topology Adaption" by Paul Snyder (Software Engineering Research Group; Advisor: Giuseppe Valetto)
- "Multi-agent Game AI for RTS Games" by Alberto Uriarte (Drexel Game AI Lab; Advisor: Santiago Ontañón)
View the pictures from the event on the CS department's Flickr or Facebook accounts. A special thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the research reception. UPE will be celebrating its 25th anniversary at Drexel in February 2014; special event details will be available later this year.
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Note from the Department Head
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Dear Alumni,
Winter term was filled with an assortment of achievements from our faculty and students. Keeping with our mission to strengthen the CS department's academic program, we're continuing our search for more faculty and this quarter featured visits from several outstanding candidates. We are fortunate that Dr. Maxwell Young has agreed to join our faculty in the fall. Dr. Young has a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo and is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. His research interest is in the area of applied algorithms in the domain of computer systems. We hope to have news of at least two more faculty hires in the next newsletter. Our department also welcomes two Drexel professors, Dr. Paul Oh (Mechanical Engineering) and Dr. Michael Wagner (Digital Media), who have joined us as affiliated members.
The winter quarter also included two significant research awards for our faculty, namely Dr. Rachel Greenstadt, who won an NSF CAREER Award, and Dr. Jeffrey Popyack, who won an NSF RET Award. Congratulations also goes out to Ph.D. Candidate Stephen Lombardi, who won the Modi Memorial Award during a heartfelt event commemorating our beloved colleague Dr. Jay Modi. Finally, we are pleased to report that our Game Design Program (co-managed with Digital Media) has been ranked by the Princeton Review as the sixth best undergraduate and the third best graduate program.
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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