Read a good book lately? Why not nominate it for the 2011 UMBC New Student Book Experience, which invites new UMBC students to read the selected book and engage in formal and informal discussions about it as the new year starts.

We are looking for books that (1) are compelling, intellectually stimulating, engaging on multiple levels and capable of generating interesting discussions; (2) address issues meaningful to students of diverse backgrounds; (3) are not widely required in Maryland high schools or made into a recent film; and (4) are available in paperback and not overly long.

You can nominate one or more using this handy Facebook app. The app uses the Google Books API to help identify books given a partial title, so it’s easy to use. After recoding your nomination, you’ll have an opportunity to make an optional post to your Facebook page like the one below, so your friends can see what you suggested. Nominations will close on October 31, 2010 and the selection will be announced in the Spring.

NOTE: The time of the CSEE graduate picnic has been changed to 1:30 to 3:30 to avoid overlapping with the UMBC Convocation.

The UMBC ACM Student Chapter and CSEE Department are hosting a Welcome/Welcome Back picnic for all new and returning CSEE graduate students, faculty and staff on Monday, 30 August.  It will be held from 1:30pm to 3:30pm in the atrium of the Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) building.  Food and drinks will be provided.

Please come out on the day before classes and enjoy some food while catching up.

Everyone is also encouraged to also attend Convocation 2010, the formal opening of the academic year at UMBC, from 3:30 to 4:30 pm in the Retriever Activities Center.  President Hrabowski will address the gathering and Wendy Salkind, Presidential Teaching Professor for 2010-13, will make brief remarks.

After Convocation, all faculty, staff and students are invited to yet another free Community Picnic on the UMBC Quad from 4:30 to 7:00pm. The rain location will be the Residence Life Dining Hall.

UMBC has established two new graduate programs in cybersecurity education, one leading to a MS degree in cybersecurity and another to a graduate certificate in cybersecurity strategy and policy. Both are designed for students and working professionals who aspire to make a difference in the security, stability, and functional agility of the national and global information infrastructure. The programs will begin in January 2011.

The Maryland Clean Energy Technology Incubator (CETI) at bwtech@UMBC will host a seminar series this Fall with focus on the Smart Grid. The series will discuss the issues and opportunities and speculate on expected business opportunities in this major restructuring of the electric grid. Huge investments (tens of billions of dollars) are committed to the Smart Grid for the coming decade.

About six seminars are planned for Fall 2010 to be held (mostly) on Wednesdays from 4-6pm and UMBC faculty, staff and students are encouraged to participate. They will include a ~45 minute presentation followed by a lively discussion and opportunity to socialize and enjoy light refreshments.

The first speaker, Peter Kelly-Detwiler leads a group at Constellation Energy that is developing new methods for data analysis and presentation. He is an “entrepreneur” within Constellation with 20 years of experience in the energy field and he has a perspective on the Smart Grid like few others.

A smart grid perspective: finding value in
the collision of energy and information

Peter Kelly-Detwiler, Constellation Energy

4-6pm Wednesday, 8 September 2010
2nd floor Courtyard Conference Room
UMBC Tech Center

Many people have heard of the term “smart grid” and there are many varying interpretations of what it means. But everybody can agree on three things:

• It involves increased and timely access to information
• There’s money in it
• It will create new and unforeseen technologies and entrepreneurial opportunities

The discussion will center around why smart grid is needed, how an energy provider views the challenges and opportunities, the forces we see gathering on the horizon, and how Constellation Energy is responding. Issues related to power grid economics, volatility, risk management, and customer elasticities and perspectives will be addressed.

Peter Kelly-Detwiler is Senior Vice President of Energy Technology Services for Constellation NewEnergy, Inc., a subsidiary of Constellation Energy Group. He and his company-wide team oversee the integration of efficiency technologies and applications that help customers better manage their total energy bills and create optimal energy solutions. Peter has 20 years of experience in the energy industry. His accomplishments include managing the development of energy efficiency projects and reviewing economic impact of energy products.

Please RSVP to Bjorn Frogner (bjorn.frogner@umbc.edu), the CETI Entrepreneur in Residence, if you plan to attend.

For the past twenty years, UMBC has had a large number of student majoring in information technology. Our Computer Science and Information Systems programs are among the largest on campus and newer ones like Computer Engineering and Bioinformatics are growing.

Last week I had a chance to look at the latest information from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which is available from NSF’s WebCASPAR site. Data from the IPEDS Completions Survey shows that UMBC is fourth among U.S. research universities in the production of IT degrees and certificates.

In this analysis, I averaged the numbers from the two most recent years available — 2007 and 2008. Here are the top ten in terms of total production in the Carnegie classification categories RU/VH and RU/H.

In this group, UMBC also ranks #2, #21 and #31 for undergraduate, MS and PhD degree production, respectively. Here’s a graph of the top 50 — click through for a larger version.

Looking at all schools shows the University of Phoenix generates the most IT grads, with an average of 3318 students over 2007 and 2008! Here are the top 15 schools of any type.

UMBC Computer Science alumnus Ralph Semmel (PhD. 1991) was just named as the next director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. APL has a staff of 4,600 and an annual funding level of about $980 million. Dr. Semmel’s dissertation, A knowledge-based approach to automatic query formulation, developed novel techniques to disambiguate conceptual queries against a relational database. His dissertation research was supervised by his mentor, Computer Science Professor James Mayfield. We congratulate Ralph and wish him well in his new position.

Professor Alan Sherman reports that UMBC has won the “Final Four of College Chess” for 2010:

“Undefeated, UMBC finished the President’s Cup (Final Four of College Chess) 1/2 point above the field, winning its 6th national chess title since the championship began ten years ago. The large President’s Cup perpetual trophy will return to campus for another year.

Final standings:

• 8.0 UMBC [avg USCF rating 2588)
• 7.5 UTB (Brownsville) [2580]
• 4.5 TT (Texas Tech) [2450]
• 4.0 UTD (Dallas) [2541]

In the first two rounds, UMBC gained a 1/2 point lead over UTB by defeating UTD and TT 3-1 each, whereas UTB beat UTD 3-1 but UTB beat TT only by 2.5-1.5.

Entering Round 3 with a 1/2 point lead, UMBC needed only two points to secure clear victory. In Round 3, UMBC tied UTB 2-2. Kritz lost on Board 1, Erenburg won on Board 2, and Margvelashvili and Kaplan drew on Boards 3-4. As part of its preparation, UTB hired a top Grandmaster consultant who in the months before the event helped prepare an opening trick against Kritz that contributed to Kritz’s third round defeat. Seeing that Erenburg was winning, Kaplan in a better position safely steered his game to a draw, clinching the team victory.

This weekend’s event was the strongest Final Four ever: there were seven International Grandmasters, one International Woman Grandmaster, at least ten International Masters, and 15 players rated over 2500. The event was intensely fought and played at an extremely high level of chess.

UMBC’s success was due to playing better than the opponents. The UMBC delegation included five Grandmasters, anchored by Kritz and Erenburg – each rated over 2600. At 2667, Kritz is the highest rated college player in Pan-America.

Three of the four UMBC players have perfect 4.0 GPAs (taking at least 19 credit hours per semester), and Team Captain Erenburg is a candidate for Valedictorian.”

Via Marc Olano: The Global Game Jam is into its second day at UMBC with 41 registered participants working on seven games. Keep up from home with our live video feed and games list.

UMBC will be the Baltimore site for the Global Game Jam. This is a 48 hour event, where teams from around the globe will work to each develop a complete game over one weekend. Last year, the UMBC site fielded five teams as one of 54 sites in 23 countries. This year promises to be even bigger, with 124 sites in 34 countries.

The Baltimore site and open to participants at all skill levels. It is not necessary to be a UMBC student to register. Thanks to generous support by Next Century , there is no registration fee for the Baltimore site, but you must register for this site in advance at www.globalgamejam.org. The jam will start at 5PM on Friday, January 29th in the UMBC GAIM lab, room 005a in the ITE building. At that time, the theme for this year’s games will be announced, and we’ll brainstorm game ideas and form into teams. Teams will have until 3pm on Sunday, January 31st to develop their games. We’ll have demos of each game and selection of local awards, wrapping up by 5pm Sunday.

Last year’s theme was “As long as we’re together there will always be problems”, and we had games developed using a combination of XNA, Flash, Maya, Photoshop, and the Unity Engine.

For more information, visit http://gaim.umbc.edu/jam/.

UMBC won the 2009 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship yesterday with perfect score of 6.0 points. This year’s tournament was held in South Padre Island, Texas on December 27-30

This is from the UMBC press release:

“Capping a near-flawless performance over the past four days at the tournament in South Padre Island, Texas, the Retrievers topped a team from the University of Texas-Brownsville today to secure the title outright for the first time since 2005.

Today’s win completed a perfect 6-0 match record for the tournament, known as the “World Series of college chess.” UMBC’s dominant performance is all the more impressive given the high quality of the 28-team field this year, said Alan Sherman, director of the school’s chess program.
…
Today UMBC topped UT-Brownsville’s “B” team, 4-0, to complete the march to the title. But the Retrievers most of the hard work yesterday, winning decisive matches over two of the strongest teams in college chess. The Retrievers topped UT-Dallas, 3 to 1, in the early match, and then got past UT-Brownsville’s “into today’s action. The tournament also included teams from Yale, Princeton, NYU, Stanford and University of Chicago.
…
The Pan-Am is the most celebrated intercollegiate chess tournament in the Americas. Since its 1946 inception, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The tournament is open to any college or university team from North, South, or Central America.

Since 2003, the teams representing the top four schools in the Pan-Am have met again in the spring to compete for the President’s Cup in an event sponsored by the U.S. Chess Federation — the “Final Four of Chess”. In 2010 the University of Texas Brownsville will host the final four, UMBC, UTD, UTB and Texas Tech, in April.

You can get information on the tournament and the games at monroi.