For undergrads interested in cutting edge research, the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Program in Nanotechnology at UMass might be for you.  The ten week lab-and-learning experience will give you a head start on a career that is truly at the forefront of knowledge--nanotechnology!

- May 28 - August 4, 2012

- Free housing in our newest dorms

- Free travel to and from campus

- Competitive stipend

- Application deadline is Feb 29, 2012

In an exciting close finish, UMBC placed 2nd with 5 points at the 2011 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, held Dec 27-30 in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX. Also advancing to the President's Cup (Final Four of College Chess) are Univ. of Texas at Dallas [UTD] (1st place with 6 points), Texas Tech (3rd place with 4.5 points), and New York Univ. (4th place with 4.5 points). Top-rated Univ. of Texas Brownsville [UTB] finished 5th with 4 points, failing to make the cut for the Final Four.  UMBC's only loss was to UTD, in Round 5.  In Round 6, UTD defeated UTB, clinching clear first place in this six-round team Swiss championship open to any university team from North, South, or Central America.

UMBC's International Grandmaster Giorgi Margvelashvili won top player on Board 2, and UMBC's  Adithya Balasubramanian won the prize for top alternate. Also playing for UMBC were GM Leonid Kritz (captain), IM Sasha Kaplan, WGM Sabina Foisor, and alternate Benjamin Krause. Supporting the UMBC team in Texas was Associate Director GM Sam Palatnik.

Twenty-eight teams entered this annual championship, known as the "World Series of College Chess." Princeton placed 16, Yale 24.  Each team comprised four players and up to two alternates. UMBC has won or tied for first place a record nine times at the Pan-Am.

For complete results, see http://swchess.com/sce/tourney/PanAms11/Colres.htm
For some of the games, see www.monroi.com

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal, Interns Are Latest Target In Battle for Tech Talent, focused on the increased interest in hiring summer interns in the Bay area.

"Bay Area tech companies, already in a fierce fight for full-time hires, are now also battling to woo summer interns. Technology giants like Google Inc. have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response—sometimes even luring candidates away from college."

The motivation for companies is simple. Their growth depends on a steady stream of new hires with good skills and work habits. Hiring prospects as summer interns is a "try before you buy" strategy, giving the company lots of information to decide whether to extend an offer for a full-time position after graduation.

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google's director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class, Ms. Mangolini says. "It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires."

While the WSJ story focused on Bay area companies, the situation is similar throughout the country and applies not only to companies, but also government agencies. It you are pursuing a computing-related program, now is the time to aggressively explore internship opportunities for the summer.

Graduate students and undergraduates who are currently juniors or seniors planning on going into graduate school will get the most interest, but there will be opportunities for current sophomores and even freshmen as well. If you want start working on lining up a great summer internship, your first stop should be the Career Services Center.

We congratulate the 114 students who graduated from our programs in December 2011. Three students received Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, 58 received M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, and 53 got B.S. degrees in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. We wish all of our new alumni happiness and success as they moved on to new challenges in 2012. Please stay in touch by keeping your contact information current on the UMBC Alumni Association site.

As a member of the Amazon development team, you’ll be given the opportunity to have direct impact on the evolution of the Amazon e-commerce platform and lead mission critical projects early in your career. Your design, code and raw smarts will contribute to solving some of the most complex technical challenges in the areas of distributed systems, data mining, optimization, scalability, security and tweaking algorithms, just to name a few.

Innovation: Are you seeking an environment where you can drive innovation? Are you interested in finding the best intersection of features vs. performance? Are you up to the task of delivering innovative technology that offers millions of unique products to thousands of suppliers, to tens of millions of customers around the world? Many of the technical challenges Amazon encounters have never been dealt with before on this scale, if at all. Come help lead the way in e-commerce innovation.

Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering or related technical discipline
• Must be currently enrolled in school or graduated within the last 12 months
• At least 2 years experience with object-oriented design and coding, to include academic experience and/or internships

Preferred Qualifications:
• Strong, object-oriented design and coding skills (C/C++ and/or Java preferably on a UNIX or Linux platform)
• Knowledge of Perl or other scripting languages a plus
• Experience with distributed (multi-tiered) systems, algorithms, and relational databases
• Experience in optimization mathematics (linear programming, nonlinear optimization)
• Ability to effectively articulate technical challenges and solutions
• Deal well with ambiguous/undefined problems; ability to think abstractly
• Previous technical internship(s) preferred
• Graduate degree a plus

In order to be considered, please apply through our website:
https://up-amazon.icims.com/jobs/122383/job?in_iframe=1

Amazon is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Amazon will also be hosting a Technical Talk/Information Session on February 23rd at 7pm on the UMBC campus.  More details can be found in UMBCworks.

Every year, the President’s Commission for Women (PCW) recognizes a faculty or staff member on campus who has directly contributed to promoting women’s issues and/or eliminating gender inequality. Nominations are available and are awaiting you to nominate that awesome someone on campus. This is your chance to tell someone, “thanks for the work you’ve been doing… it hasn’t gone unnoticed!”

Nominations have been attached to this post. For additional information feel free to contact Dawn Stoute (co-chair of the PCW) at dstoute@umbc.edu.

Nominations are due January 23^rd.

If you’re at loose ends for the semester break and want to sharpen your programming slils, you might try competing in the ACM Queue Magazine online programming competition. You will program a player that will compete with others in the game of Coercion. The competition opens January 15 and closes at midnight GMT on February 12.

“The game of Coercion takes place on a square field that is divided into regions, which vary by height and slope of the field. Each player controls three movable playing pieces called pushers, using them to push little doughnut-shaped markers around. Players use the markers to claim new territory on the playing field. The player with the most territory at the end of the match wins. The game rules will describe how to control your team, score points, and win. A double elimination tournament follows the coding phase, to determine the top four places.”

You can create your entry in in C++, C#, Java, Python or JavaScript. Preliminary matches will take place during the one-month coding phase will that will let you know how well your player is doing. A final double-elimination competition among all the submitted players will decide whose player is best.

Queue is the ACM’s magazine for practicing software engineers. Written by engineers for engineers, it focuses on the technical problems and challenges that loom ahead, helping readers to sharpen their own thinking and pursue innovative solutions.

Tyler Campbell, Nick Ducq, Ryan King, Andrew Nguyen and Tim Spillman walked out of the Baltimore Convention Center elated. Their team, the Sherwood Cyber Warriors, had just won the high school division of the inaugural Maryland Cyber Challenge. Their success netted them each a $5,000 scholarship from the National Security Agency.

The entire experience was rewarding for both the students and their parents, says Steve Weiss, one of the team’s advisers. “Winning first place was the icing on the cake.”

In a conference with over 800 attendees, the excitement over the cyber competition was palpable. With scoreboards changing in real time, onlookers crowded around to see who was in the lead.

Following the competition, held October 21 and 22, eight teams from each division — professional, college and high school — walked away with scholarships and cash prizes. The scholarships for students, put up by the National Security Agency (NSA), totaled more than $84,000.

Members of first place high school and college teams took home $5,000 scholarships each. Members of second place high school and college teams took home $2,000 scholarships. Each member of the first place professional teams won $2,000 and each second place member won $1,000.

First place winners in the college and high school categories were from, respectively, the University of Maryland, College Park and Sherwood High School. Second place winners were Towson University and Poolesville High School. In the professional category Team ICF came in first, with Team Pr3tty coming in second.

The Sherwood Cyber Warriors, four seniors and a junior, are mostly undecided in their future careers, although one does plan to work cybersecurity. Jim Kirk, the team’s senior advisor, says that regardless of the their ultimate career choices, the students learned valuable skills from the competition — such as how to communicate effectively and work as a team.

The Cyber Warriors began practicing for the competition in May, often meeting twice a week. The team developed strategies to pick the low hanging fruit — what hackers go for first. That, says Kirk, includes developing strong passwords and removing unnecessary software from servers.

The challenge for the high school teams, says Rick Forno, Director of UMBC's Graduate Cybersecurity Program and an organizer of the Cyber Challenge, was purely defensive. “They were being attacked and their job was to keep services open.”

The challenge was run using CyberNEXS, a software system developed by SAIC for cybersecurity training and exercises.The system is self-contained and runs both Windows and UNIX systems.

But, more than just the chance to compete, the event gave college and high school students a taste of what cybersecurity work is like. And that, involves more than technical skills say professionals in the field.

“The cyber challenge is especially interesting to me, since all the students participating are passionate about cyber security and the teams will only excel if every member is doing their job,” says Neil Furukawa, vice president of CyberPoint International. “We’re looking for people who can lead, but who can also roll up their sleeves and get the work done.”

Phyllis Villani, Director of Talent acquisition at Northrop Grumman says that to get a job, “networking is key.” Besides honing “soft skills” like communication, Furukawa says, people should never stop their education because cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving field.

Fittingly, education is what the Maryland Cyber Challenge is all about.

Originally posted by Nicole Ruediger at November 18, 2011 1:02 PM