Originally from Parnu, Estonia, Anastasia is a Computer Engineering major and a T-SITE Scholar. 

About Anastasia

When did you become interested in Computer Engineering? About two years ago while studying at community college. It was a long decision for me. At first I was majoring in Chemical Technology in Estonia and after a long break, I switched to Computer Engineering. I was always interested and successful in science and math. Understanding how computers operate on a very detailed level is very interesting to me.

What area of Computer Science interests you the most? It is a very large area of study. I do not have any actual experience working in this field, therefore it is hard to say. I think robotics and artificial intelligence sound pretty cool. In general, If I can use my knowledge to help someone, it already sounds interesting to me.

What is your dream job?I would like to work in a research and development laboratory to create new technologies for the world. To be a scientist is very fascinating!

About being a CS major

What courses are you taking? This semester, I am taking Computer Science 201, where we are learning about programming in Python. I like writing a program that actually works, such a satisfaction! It makes me wonder what else I can do?

What classes are you most excited about? I think the capstone design even though I am still far from it. I am looking forward to developing something complicated on my own in a small team.

Are you part of any on-campus clubs, organizations, teams, or labs? I am a T-SITE (Transfer Scholars in Information Technology and Engineering) scholar in the Center for Women in Technology community. I would also like to be a Golden Key honors society member next semester. It is very challenging and I hope I can keep up with it.

What is the best part about being a T-SITE? It is a gift! Besides the financial help, I have advising on any subject related to UMBC including academic and just student life related problems. I met new friends before I even attended my first class, and I felt like part of UMBC thanks to the CWIT community.

What advice would you give to other transfer students? Make sure that classes you are taking are transferable and the earlier you decide on the degree, the better. Make friends at UMBC and join some group before you even start your classes. Having someone as your friend who already had to do first steps into UMBC life and is familiar with the system will help you greatly with many unclear things.

What advice would you give to other females entering the field? Never get discouraged by the difficulty of classes. Be confident in yourself and your abilities. You are smart and can do it better than someone else (even if it doesn't seem like it to you right now!).

About life at UMBC

What is the best part about campus life at UMBC? I am commuting to UMBC and I spend a good part of my day on campus. I like how UMBC looks: very pleasant to walk around. Another great thing about UMBC is everything I might need is available right there. It's like a small town. I could even send priority mail right from campus.

What is your favorite spot on campus? The Women's Center is a great place to relax and have a cup of hot tea (I love hot tea!). There on a very cozy and comforatable couch you can relax and if you have any food with you from home, it is the best place to heat it up and eat it. It is quiet and just perfect. 

Where can you get the best coffee/lunch/ food or beverage of choice? I always go to the Commons. I like the selection that it has: sushi, Asian food, vegetarian food, Spanish, Italian, and of course American subs and burgers. That covers all tastes, I think. I tried most of it and I like it all.
 

“Minimizing Intrusiveness in Home Energy Measurement”, a paper written by CSEE Assisant Professor Nilanjan Banerjee, Computer Science graduate student David Lachut, and their colleagues at the University of San Francisco, was nominated for the best paper award at ACM's BuildSys workshop.

The paper outlines the design of a system that will analyze and manage energy use in homes. “The overarching goal of our work is to automate the process of adapting energy demand to meet supply, which requires a comprehensive understanding of home energy use,” explains the abstract. Banerjee and his collaborators have collected data on energy-consumption from six both on and off-grid homes. “Our techniques reduce the energy footprint of the system as well as the amount of physical infrastructure required, making adoption of the system more attractive, particularly to those who live in homes powered by renewable energy sources.”

You can learn more about Dr. Banerjee’s work with renewable-energy driven devices and green homes at the website for his Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor Systems Laboratory.

Ph.D. Thesis Defense Announcement

Semantically Rich, Policy Based Framework to Automate Lifecycle of Cloud Based Services

Karuna P. Joshi

10:00am 19 November 2012, ITE 325B

Managing virtualized services efficiently over the cloud is an open challenge.  Traditional models of software development are very time consuming and labor intensive for the cloud computing domain, where software (and other) services are acquired on demand. Virtualized services are often composed of pre-existing components that are assembled on an as-needed basis. We have developed a new framework to automate the acquisition, composition and consumption/monitoring of virtualized services delivered on the cloud.  We have divided the service lifecycle into five phases of requirements, discovery, negotiation, composition, and consumption and have developed ontologies to represent the concepts and relationships for each phase. These are represented in Semantic Web languages. We have developed a protocol to automate the negotiation process when acquiring virtualized services. This protocol allows complex relaxation of constraints being negotiated based on user defined policies. We have also developed detailed ontologies to define service level agreements for cloud services. To illustrate and validate how this framework can automate the acquisition of cloud services, we have built two applications from real world scenarios. The Smart cloud services application enables users to determine and procure the cloud storage application that matches most of their constraints and policies. We have also built a VCL broker application that allows users to automatically reserve the VCL Image that will best meet their requirements. We have developed a framework to measure and semi-automatically track quality of a virtualized service delivery system. The framework provides a mechanism to relate hard metrics typically measured at the backstage of the delivery process to quality related hard and soft metrics tracked at the front stage where the consumer interacts with the service. While this framework is general enough to be applied to any type of IT service, in this dissertation we have primarily concentratated on the Helpdesk service and include the performance rules we have created by mining Helpdesk data.

Thesis Committee:

• Dr. Yelena Yesha (chair)
• Dr. Tim Finin (co-chair)
• Dr. Milton Halem
• Dr. Yaacov Yesha
• Dr. Aryya Gangopadhyay

CSEE Colloquium

Active PURLs: An architecture for enterprise information interoperability

Dr. David Wood
Three Round Stones

11:00am Friday, 9 November 2012, ITE 325b, UMBC

The World Wide Web differed from other early hypertext systems in the removal of "back links" (the ability of a hyperlinked object to link back to a referring resource). The removal of back links allowed the scalability inherent in the Web's design, but sacrificed the knowledge necessary to update links when content moved. Persistent URLs (PURLs) have been used on the Web since 1995 to provide an inexpensive and partial solution to link updates via HTTP redirection: PURLs do not change their URL, but they may change the target they redirect to. Various iterations of the PURL concept have allowed Web addresses to be updated, clients notified of permanent changes of address and the provision of directions to metadata about a requested resource.

"Active" PURLs are a relatively new (2007) iteration of the PURL concept that allow PURLs to actively participate in the creation of data returned. The Callimachus Project, an Open Source Linked Data management system, now implements Active PURLs as a means to automate the collection, transformation and provision of information from distributed sources. Active PURLs are implemented in Callimachus by means of a PURL service, a new PURL type and an XML pipeline (XProc) implementation.

This talk will introduce Active PURLs and describe how they may be used to address long standing problems in enterprise architecture, especially those of distributed information interoperability, by facilitating a strong separation of concerns between data producers, publishers, administrators, librarians and consumers.

Dr. David Wood has contributed to the evolution of the World Wide Web since 1999, especially in the formation of standards and technologies for the Semantic Web. He has architected key aspects of the Web to include the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL) service and several Semantic Web databases and frameworks. David is co-chair of the W3C RDF Working Group, co-chaired the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group and is a member of the Semantic Web Coordination Group. David has represented international organizations in the evolution of Internet standards at the International Standards Organization (ISO), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium. David is a founding and contributing member of many Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects, including the Mulgara Semantic Store, Persistent URL (PURLs), Freemix and the Callimachus Project. He is the author of Programming Internet Email (O'Reilly, 1999), editor of Linking Enterprise Data (Springer, 2010) and Linking Government Data (Springer, 2011) and lead author of Linked Data (Manning, anticipated 2013).

Host: Tim FInin, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

— more information and directions: http://bit.ly/UMBCtalks —

Tomorrow, Dr. Rick Forno will be hosting a drop-in session to discuss UMBC's Graduate Cybersecurity Program. It will be held Wednesday, November 7 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm in ACIV-B WING Room 464. UMBC's Drop In sessions are a great way to meet Graduate Program Directors and chat about their programs, educational opportunities, and your interests in a given field.

RSVP for the Cybersecurity session at www.umbc.edu/rsvp/dropin

Originally from Cyprus, Sarah Khalife is a Computer Engineering major and a CWIT Affiliate.  

About Sarah

When did you become interested in Computer Engineering? I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to be. At first, Computer Engineering sounded interesting– I like computers and I like math, why not Computer Engineering? Since then, I've taken Computer Science and Computer Engineering classes and came to realize that it challenges me not only academically, but to think analytically, to be innovative, as well as to have the ability to discuss and describe my work for another person to understand. I knew I finally wanted to be a Computer Engineering major by the end of my Sophomore year.

What area of Computer Science interests you the most? Logic design seems very interesting so far. I enjoyed my CMSC 203 and COMP 212 class, and I am looking forward to taking some VLSI classes!

What are your plans after graduation?After graduation, I would like to gain some experience working, and then maybe continue on to a Master's.

What is your dream job? Dream job…I am still trying to find it! I am thinking that I will enjoy a position in engineering management, but I haven't fully experienced working within my field to have a dream job.

About being a CS major

What is the best part about being a CWIT affiliate? Networking. Networking with other students in your field or similar ones. Networking with professors and important people at UMBC. Networking with recruiters and companies that will be helpful in getting internships and jobs. Also, being a CWIT, you are a part of a community where you are in similar majors, have similar interests, and always have the opportunities to excel. 

What is your favorite course/professor and why? My favorite professor is Dawn Block! I took CMSC 104 and CMSC 201 with her and I loved those classes. She always understood what I asked her and did her best for me to understand as well! Plus, she would give out candy! She made my first computer science classes fun and very informational. I enjoyed learning Computer Science concepts and languages with Professor Block.

Are you part of any on-campus clubs, organizations, teams, or labs? I work as a Commuter Assistant for Off-Campus Student Services, where I help commuters, plan events, play games, and have/eat free food. It feels more like a club rather than work! I'm also part of Student Government Association (SGA) in the Office of Academic Affairs where I find academic related issues and try to solve, come up with, and implement initiatives that will better UMBC and the students, and in general, support students and their academic needs. I'm a Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) Affiliate, where I help to plan more events and activities, network with a variety of people, and have the opportunity to open my eyes and to see what's out there regarding my major.

What advice would you give to incoming students?

1. Talk to your professors: they are very interesting and helpful people!
2. Get a well-rounded experience at UMBC: get involved in clubs/organizations/something you care about.
3. Learn how to time-manage ASAP! Schools gets very hard when you're overwhelmed, but if you manage to create a schedule that you will follow, keeping up with homework and extra-curricular activities shouldn't be too hard!

What advice would you give to other females entering the field?

1. At UMBC, I haven't felt discriminated against because I'm female. So, don't be worried about that as a female you will be treated differently.
2. Depending on your major and classes you take, you might be one of the few females in the class. Don't be afraid/shy to step up and ask questions.

About life at UMBC

What is the best part about campus life at UMBC? UMBC has a diverse group of people, clubs/orgs, and activities. I love that you can get a snippet of different cultures at UMBC without having to travel anywhere! I love attending all the multicultural events and experiencing the traditions, dancing, food, and so on, all within UMBC.

What is your favorite spot on campus?  The Commons. There's always an event happening there!

Where can you get the best coffee/lunch/ food or beverage of choice? Administration Building Deli–best place to get breakfast and lunch, and your money's worth if you don't have a meal plan.
 

Research Proactive

A Computational Biologist and Dartmouth professor, Alumnus Gevorg Grigoryan says his undergraduate research at UMBC was crucial to his success.

Kids typically see college as a chance to get away from their parents. That wasn’t the case with alumnus Gevorg Grigoryan (B.S. CS, BioChem ’02), who did research with his dad in UMBC’s Computational Photonics Lab as an undergraduate. In 2000, the pair co-authored a paper proposing a new visualization technique for wave transmissions that uses color to represent amplitude and phase information.

Now an assistant professor of Computer Science and an adjunct assistant professor of Biology at Dartmouth College, Grigoryan stresses the importance of doing research early on. As an undergraduate, he worked in not one, but three, different research labs at UMBC: the Computational Photonics Lab, the VANGOGH Lab, and Dr. Daniel Fabris’ Mass Spectrometry lab.  

“It was very easy for an undergrad to get involved in research [at UMBC],” says Grigoryan. “It’s not like that everywhere.”

Working in labs gave Grigoryan essential experience that shaped his career path. When it was time to pick a major, he knew that he wanted to do research like his dad, Vladimir Grigoryan, a Physicist who was working as a Research Scientist at UMBC at the time.

Grigoryan switched from Physics to an ambitious double major in Computer Science and Biochemistry when a professor told him about the emerging, interdisciplinary field of Computational Biology. Combining the principles of biology with computing techniques, the new field dealt with simulating and studying biological systems on the computer.

After graduating from UMBC in 2002, Grigoryan went to MIT for his Ph.D. in Computational Biology under Dr. Amy E. Keating. Later he completed his Post Doc at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School under William DeGrado. His research has focused on examining proteins in order to 1) understand their structure, and to 2) use that understanding to design new proteins that can do things like cure disease.

The analysis and design of proteins is what’s being done in Grigoryan’s research lab at Dartmouth. Specifically, Grigoryan and his students are looking at how protein structure dictates protein-protein recognition and the structural mechanisms of information transformation by allostery. In an interesting twist, Grigoryan now has undergraduate research assistants of his own.

As for collaborations with his dad, Grigoryan says that these days, formal collaborations are hard because of distance; Grigoryan works on molding minds in New Hampshire while his dad works at Ciena Corporation in Maryland. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop them from having heated scientific discussions over the phone, he says.    

Originally from Silver Spring, MD, Rebecca is a Computer Science major and an Undergraduate Research Assistant at the UMBC MAPLE (Multi-Agent Planning and Learning) Lab.

About Rebecca

When did you become interested in Computer Science? High School.

What area of Computer Science interests you the most? (Truth be told) Job Security; Feeling like a strong independent woman "fighting" for her right to be a Computer Scientist.

What is your dream job? My dream job is being a dancer or a chorus teacher (my retirement plan). My CS dream job is one where I'd be able to write programs that will make a difference in the world (either in health, education, etc.) and be able to interact with people all over the world.

Hobbies? I like to sing when no one's around to hear, dance like no one's watching, and draw.

About being a CS major

What is your favorite professor/course and why? Professor Brian Dunnigan – English 100. Off-beat class, profound wisdom. He's a cool cat. Pro Tip: You get to read graphic novels in his class (my class read V for Vendetta, which is my favorite).

What is the best part about being a CWIT Affiliate? Being exposed to all the opportunities around me. I've had a narrow path set by my family upon graduating. Thanks to CWIT, GraceHopper, and my bosses, I've learned I can do anything with my Computer Science major. Not just sitting in a cubicle, but having jobs that will allow me to travel and interact with other passionate, fun-loving people.

Are you part of any on-campus clubs, organizations, teams, or labs? I'm affiliated with UMBC's Ultimate Frisbee club, Rock Climbing club, Swing Dance club, and UMBC's CWIT (Center for Women in Technology).

Have you done any undergraduate research? I'm an Undergraduate Research Assistant at the UMBC MAPLE (Multi-Agent Planning and Learning) Lab under CE21 (Computing Education for the 21st Century) and CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) projects. We are a planning project with the goal of increasing high school computer science expertise and statewide support in Maryland for computing education. I'm responsible for all aspects of event management, including site selection, contract negotiation, proposal planning, transportation arrangements, housing, and production of meeting materials for professional CS workshops, meetings, and industry dinners.

What advice would you give to incoming students? Procrastination is death. Everyone will tell you this so take the advice: "Start your projects early." Leave the last minute panic to us oldies. Think about it: Finish a project early, eliminate stress, and go out and enjoy your life. You'll definitely be a happier person.

What advice would you give to other females entering the field? You are not alone. Really. Being an affiliate for CWIT and an undergraduate research assistant, I've been able to network with many students and professors. There are professors that truly want to push you on the path of greatness. There are students that share the same mindset and know your pain (or at least understand them). Befriend them. If you see me, say "Hi." I'll be your friend.

About life at UMBC

What is the best part about campus life at UMBC? The quaint serenity of living on a moderately small community campus. UMBC is my home, my work place, and my school. My friends are my neighbors (mainly within walking distance), my coworkers are my colleagues, classmates, and friends, and my professors are my mentors, advisers, and bosses. I have the freedom to do what I want when I want all in one little loop. Props to Campus Police and UMBC's general vicinity for making campus feel safe and cozy.

What is your favorite spot on campus? I would tell you but that would spoil its serenity.

Where can you get the best coffee/lunch/ food or beverage of choice? I'm a big fan of Fresh Fusions, Wild Greens, and Admin for healthy choices. Au Bon Pain and the Library Cafe have some pretty good smoothies. (Order a Strawberry Smoothie with whipped cream. Do it. I dare you.)

CSEE Colloquium

Modeling the dynamics of pulsed optical fiber lasers that rely on nonlinear polarization rotation

Brian Marks
Research Scientist
UMBC Computational Photonics Laboratory

1 pm Friday, 2 November 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

Ultrashort pulse lasers are important tools in time and frequency metrology, atomic spectroscopy, and medical applications. Passively modelocked fiber lasers are short pulse lasers that have many advantages over non-fiber alternatives — particularly size, weight, and cost. However, fiber lasers can drift due to environmental changes and changes in fiber properties, making robustness a problem. Although fiber modelocked lasers have been studied for decades, until recently modeling these devices has primarily been phenomenological. In this talk, I will discuss how passively modelocked fiber lasers work, improvements in the modeling effort in recent years, challenges for their robustness, and possible improvements for robustness based on our modeling work.

Brian Marks is a research scientist in the computational photonics laboratory at UMBC. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, and B.S.'s in Math and Physics from N. C. State University. He was at UMBC from 2000–2005 in the computational photonics lab, then taught math and statistics at Indiana University in Bloomington for several years, and is now back at UMBC. His research interests include modeling and simulation of photonics and communications systems.

CSEE Colloquium

Emerging Challenges in High Performance Computing: Resilience and the Science of Embracing Failure

John. T. Daly
Advanced Computing Systems Program at the Department of Defense / Center for Exceptional Computing

1:00 p.m. Friday, 9 November 2012, ITE 227, UMBC

Resilience is about keeping the application workload running to a correct solution in a timely and efficient manner in spite of system failures. Future extreme scale supercomputers are likely to suffer more frequent failures than current systems: As devices scale, they are more susceptible to upsets due to radiation and to errors due to manufacturing variances. The probability of multiple bit upsets is growing, since an event is increasingly likely to impact multiple nearby cells. The use of near-threshold voltage in order to reduce power consumption also increases error rates. Thus, we can expect more frequent hardware failures, and a significant rate of undetected soft errors. While it is desirable to have failure-free system hardware and software, this goal may not be achievable at reasonable cost as both hardened components and methodologies to design and test critical software tend to be extremely expensive. The challenge is to construct a system out of less than perfectly reliable hardware and software that nevertheless behaves as a reliable system from the perspective of the user.

John T. Daly is a computer systems researcher for the Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) Program at the Department of Defense / Center for Exceptional Computing (CEC). He is focused on the problem of keeping supercomputer applications running toward a correct solution in a timely and efficient manner in the presence of system degradations and failures. His research interests include mathematical modeling and analysis of failure, reliability, fault tolerance, calculational correctness, and throughput for applications at extreme scale. Before coming to the CEC, John was a researcher and resilience technical leader in the High Performance Computing (HPC) division at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a software engineer and application analyst for Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems. He is a nationally recognized expert in resilience with 25 years of experience developing, porting, and running applications as an early adopter of many of the world's fastest supercomputers. He holds degrees in engineering and applied science and aerospace engineering from Caltech and Princeton University.

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