This Friday, Feb 19^th, you will have another awesome opportunity to meet tons of great employers! UMBC is co-sponsoring a Maryland Career Consortium Fair, hosted at Loyola University at the Reitz Arena from 10am to 2:30pm. Unfortunately the shuttle from UMBC to take you to the fair is full, but you can find directions on how to get to the area here, and you can RSVP here.

This fair will have over 150 employers! I would check out the list here. There is a wide variety of great employers to talk to, including the CIA, Baltimore County Public Schools, Americorps, Space Telescope Science Institute, Daniel Morgan Academy, and even the Baltimore Orioles Stadium! This fair will be great for anyone looking to get an internship nearby, a summer job, or a full-time job after college! Most of these organizations are right in the Maryland, DC, and Virginia area. Even if you don’t plan on staying in Baltimore after college, a lot of these companies and organizations have sites in various locations.

I highly recommend attending this fair to make some awesome connections. In addition to employers, there will be a ton of students from the Baltimore area to connect with! It can be really inspiring to discuss what your interests, frustrations, experiences, and goals are regarding school, and life in general. It can even give you some new ideas about what you can do with your major or program, or they could even refer you to a place they’ve worked/interned before! Connections are a wonderful thing.  A career fair is meant for interacting, so don’t feel reluctant to do so!

In case you missed my post on our Summer Career Fair last week, I wanted to remind you of some resources in order to make the most out of a career fair. Since there are so many employers, you’re really going to want to look through the directory, which has listed the positions they’re offering and what majors they’re looking for. This way you can get a better idea of which employers you want to visit and stand out at.

You can look at the MCC Career Fair page here, as well as our Career Center website on navigating career fairs, for tips on how to have a successful time. But here are a few important reminders:

1.     Make sure your resume looks strong before you hand it out to employers. You can look at our resume writing page on the Career Center website, or you can come get your resume reviewed beforehand! You can make an appointment at the Career Center or you can come into our drop-in hours between 2-4 Monday-Friday.

2.    Dress professionally! If you need some help, check out our helpful guide here.

3.    Network with recruiters! Talk with them, e-mail them after the fair, and consider connecting to them on LinkedIn. There will be a lot of students at the fair, so you want to be sure you stand out.

Feel free to get in touch with the Career Center via careers@umbc.edu, 410.455.2216, or stopping by Math/Psych 212. 

Leveraging Human Insights into
Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery

Ronan Le Bras, Cornell University

12:00pm 1:00pm Tuesday, 23 February 2016, ITE325b, UMBC

Most problems, from theoretical problems in combinatorics to real-world applications, comprise hidden structural properties not directly captured by the problem definition. A key to the recent progress in automated reasoning and combinatorial optimization has been to automatically uncover and exploit this hidden problem structure, resulting in a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of the problems within our reach. The most complex tasks, however, still require human abilities and ingenuity. In this talk, I will show how we can leverage human insights to effectively complement and dramatically boost state-of-the-art optimization techniques. I will demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with a series of scientific discoveries, from experimental designs to materials discovery.

Ronan Le Bras is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Cornell University. He received his M.S. and B.S. from Ecole Polytechnique Montreal in computer engineering and in software engineering. His research interests include computational methods for large-scale combinatorial optimization, reasoning, learning and human computation. His work is motivated by a range of applications, especially in the emerging field of computational sustainability. It has led to a series of scientific discoveries in areas such as graph theory, combinatorics, and discrepancy theory as well as materials science, experimental design and conservation biology. His work appears in the proceedings of AAAI, IJCAI, HCOMP, SAT, CP and VLDB.

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

From Forensics to Security: Securing Complex
Systems through Data-driven Investigation

Dr. Robert Walls
Pennsylvania State University

1:00pm Friday, 19 February 2016, ITE 325b, UMBC

The cornerstone of modern security is understanding when and how systems are abused and exploited. Gathering such knowledge is essential as decades of experience demonstrate the infeasibility of building perfectly secure systems. Yet, the systems with the greatest need of securing—such as those underpinning critical Internet services—are often the most difficult to study.

In this talk, I will focus on my research efforts in digital forensics and security to study the abuse of complex and inter-connected systems. My work has focused on multiple aspects of this endeavor, including the analysis of partially structured data, the use of semantic relationships and investigator feedback to identify relevant information, and the transition of research results into practical tools and techniques.

Robert Walls is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include systems security and digital forensics. He is currently studying the abuse of Internet infrastructure, including advertising networks and the Domain Name System (DNS). Previously, he worked with law enforcement to develop novel forensic techniques for investigating crimes. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014. He is also a recipient of the Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award.

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

From Forensics to Security: Securing Complex
Systems through Data-driven Investigation

Dr. Robert Walls
Pennsylvania State University

1:00pm Friday, 19 February 2016, ITE 325b, UMBC

The cornerstone of modern security is understanding when and how systems are abused and exploited. Gathering such knowledge is essential as decades of experience demonstrate the infeasibility of building perfectly secure systems. Yet, the systems with the greatest need of securing—such as those underpinning critical Internet services—are often the most difficult to study.

In this talk, I will focus on my research efforts in digital forensics and security to study the abuse of complex and inter-connected systems. My work has focused on multiple aspects of this endeavor, including the analysis of partially structured data, the use of semantic relationships and investigator feedback to identify relevant information, and the transition of research results into practical tools and techniques.

Robert Walls is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include systems security and digital forensics. He is currently studying the abuse of Internet infrastructure, including advertising networks and the Domain Name System (DNS). Previously, he worked with law enforcement to develop novel forensic techniques for investigating crimes. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014. He is also a recipient of the Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award.

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

Thank you all for your interest in volunteering for the Discover Engineering Family Day (DEFD) in the National Building Museum in DC! We will be offering a carpool service for this event. We will be carpooling to the nearest Metro Station and from there, we will be taking the Metro to the National Building Museum. Please dress comfortably and bring your SmartTrip card/money for your own fares, you are responsible for your own fares.

The availability of the carpool is on a first-come first-serve basis, so please sign-up! If you can drive, please help us out!

Hey Commuter! Looking for on campus breakfast?

Swing by The Commons Main Street every Tuesday 
morning, from 8:30am to 10:00am, for breakfast. It's complimentary with 
your Commuter Gold Card. Here you can meet new people, express commuter 
concerns, and learn about the latest events and activities at UMBC.

We are looking for volunteers for the Maryland State FIRST LEGO League tournament on Saturday, March 5th in the RAC. Over seventy teams of kids travel to UMBC from all over the state to compete in a thrilling competition!

We need people to help set up on the night before, March 4th and the day of competition, March 5th. 

Benefits to you: FREE FOOD! A FREE T-SHIRT! An exciting time of serving others while having fun! Did I mention FREE FOOD?

There are volunteer opportunities for everyone! Click here to find out about volunteer roles. 

To be a part of this fun event, fill out the FIRST LEGO League MD State Championship Sign-Up Form 

If you have questions about volunteering on March 5, please contact Beth Goodman, Volunteer Coordinator for the MD State Championship,  bethgood_2000@yahoo.com