The University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center is pleased to offer a summer fellowship program to support undergraduate students that are interested in cardiovascular research. Any student who is currently enrolled at any degree granting University or College is eligible to apply, with preference give to those students interested in a career in research.

Each student will be matched, based on their interests, to a laboratory that is led by a faculty member of the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center. This collection of laboratories is involved in nationally recognized research, in topics such as atherosclerosis, genetic cardiomyopathies, blood clotting disorders, cardiac arrhythmias, vascular biology and heart failure.

The stipend for 2012 will be $4000 for ten weeks of full-time work from May 29th to August 3rd, 2012.  There will be a research forum at the end of the summer in which fellows will present their work, as well as opportunities to attend research seminars throughout the summer.

CSEE Colloquium

An Integrated Machine Learning Framework for Analyzing Protein-Ligand Interaction Data

Dr. Huzefa Rangwala
Assistant Professor, Computer Science & Engineering
George Mason University

1:00 p.m., Friday, February 10, 2012, ITE 325B, UMBC

Proteins have a vast influence on the molecular machinery of life. Stunningly complex networks of proteins perform innumerable functions in every living cell.  Small organic molecules (a.k.a. ligands) can bind to different proteins and modulate (inhibit/activate) their functions. Understanding these interactions provides insight into the underlying biological processes and is useful for designing therapeutic drugs.

In this talk I will describe our work related to the analysis of information associated with proteins and their interacting molecule partners (protein-ligand activity matrix). The underlying hypothesis of our approach is that by extracting information from protein-ligand activity matrix, we are drawing bridges between the structure of chemical compounds (chemical space) and the structure of the proteins and their functions (biological space).  I will present an approach used for mining relational data, especially when the data is sparse and high dimensional. I will also present methods that are based on the principles of multi-task learning and semi-supervised learning.

Huzefa Rangwala is an Assistant Professor at the department of Computer Science & Engineering, George Mason University. He holds affiliate positions with the Department of Bioengineering and the Department of Bioinformatics & Computational Biology. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota in the year 2008. His core research interests include bioinformatics, machine learning, and high performance computing. Specifically, he is working on developing new data mining algorithms and applying them to the fields of genomics, structural bioinformatics, drug discovery and social media analysis.

Host: Dr. Marie desJardins

Summer Undergraduate Research Program in

Educational Psychology and Applied Developmental Science (EP-ADS) & Education Policy

The Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia

This fully funded 8-week internship that is designed to encourage students from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field of education research to consider careers in academic, policy, or research organizations. Rising seniors are eligible for these paid research internships at UVA during Summer 2012. Interns will work with faculty on ongoing research focusing on schools, classrooms, and other youth settings as contexts critical to child and adolescent development.They will have the opportunity to collect and analyze data, write a section of a research paper, participate in research meetings, attend a research conference, and participate in related workshops and a GRE prep course.

You can read more about our program and get the application form at http://curry.virginia.edu/SURP. The program is for students who will be entering their senior year in Fall 2012 and the deadline for applications is 2/1/12.

Dr. Finin has been a faculty member of UMBC’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department for over twenty years. A member of UMBC’s Ebiquity research group, Dr. Finin’s research is in Artificial Intelligence.

Congratulations to Dr. Tim Finin, who was just named this year’s Presidential Research Professor. The appointment, which lasts from the beginning of July 2012 through June 2015, is awarded to faculty members whose outstanding scholarship and excellent teaching have stood out at UMBC.

“I’m very honored to be selected,” says Dr. Finin of the award. He credits his research success to the collaborative research environment at UMBC and the talented students and professors that he has worked with over the years. “I feel like I’ve been lucky to be here at UMBC because having a good set of colleagues and students to work with is the reason for [this] success.”

Through his research in Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Finin is constantly searching for answers to the question: “How can we make [software] systems more intelligent?” He has applied his research to the increasingly popular areas of Mobile Computing, Social Computing and Security. Recently, Dr. Finin has been working on a project that looks at the potential of smartphones to understand a user’s context. The project– a collaborative effort with fellow CSEE professor, Dr. Joshi–is being sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). More information about Dr. Finin’s research can be found in his research profile.

Finin’s appointment as Presidential Research Professor, comes with a $2,500 allowance, and a $2,500 per semester gift to the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department, to be used towards enhancing teaching and research. A formal award ceremony will take place this Spring to celebrate Dr. Finin and the other recipients of 2012 Presidential Faculty and Staff Awards.

Attention rising Junior and Senior Undergraduate and Graduate students interested in Information Assurance: Thursday, January 12 is the deadline to apply for a scholarship through the Information Assurance Scholarship Program (IASP).

The scholarship is great for students who are interested in pursuing careers in Information Assurance for the Federal Government.  Each recipient will receive full tuition, room and board, books,and stipend.  In return, the recipient must  work for DoD (for pay) for one year for year of scholarship.  Each recipient will also engage in a summer internship at DoD  (for pay).

Interested applicants should contact Dr. Alan Sherman (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) to be guided through the application process. For more information about the program, and for an application form, visit UMBC's Center for Information Security and Assurance website.