If you are a senior planning to apply to a graduate program next year or a current graduate student early in your program of study, you should consider applying for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

NSF has opened the application for the 2014 Graduate Research Fellowship Program. These Fellowships give three years of funding to students in research based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics master’s and doctoral programs.

Funds are awarded to the student and can be used in any appropriate program. If you will be applying to graduate programs for next year, you only need describe the insititutions that you plan to apply to.

NSF's Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate is looking for strong applicants in this year’s program. The deadline for submission is November 4, 2013 and the application can be found here.  If you are interested, you should start by talking with your advisor and or other faculty members about the program and how to submit a strong application.

UMBC's Mobile, Pervasive and Sensor Systems Laboratory focuses on three key areas: renewable energy, healthcare applications and mobile phone systems. Their crowdsourcing-based technology for accurate and low cost detection of weed infestations was cited recently as one of the top ten technologies changing farm machinery by Farm Industry News.

D. Saraswat and N. Banerjee, Crowdsourcing App for Precision Agriculture Decision Making, ASABE Annual International Meeting, Dallas TX, August 2012.

The research was begun while Professor Banerjee was at the University of Arkansas, where the complex software system was  implemented by students Brenna Blackwell and Mahbub Rahman, who is continuing his PhD studies at UMBC.

Like the MPSSL Facebook page to follow their work or visit the MPSSL page

The third Mid-Atlantic Student Colloquium on Speech, Language and Learning (MASC-SLL 2013) is a one day event that will bring together faculty, researchers and students from universities in the Mid-Atlantic area doing research on speech, language or machine learning. The colloquium is an opportunity to present preliminary, ongoing or completed work and to network with other students, faculty and researchers working in related fields.

The first MASC-SLL was held in 2011 at Johns Hopkins University and the second in 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park. This year the event will be held at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Baltimore, MD from 9:30 to 5:00 on Friday, 11 October 2013. There will be no registration charge and lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Students and postdocs are encouraged to submit abstracts describing ongoing, planned, or completed research projects, including previously published results and negative results. Research in any field applying computational methods to any aspect of human language, including speech and learning, from all areas of computer science, linguistics, engineering, neuroscience, information science, and related fields, is welcome. All accepted submissions will be presented as posters and some will also be invited for short oral presentations. Student-led breakout sessions will also be held to discuss papers or topics of interest and stimulate interaction and discussion. Suggest breakout session topics via easychair.

A full-time postdoctoral research associate position is available in the Ecosynth Project funded by NSF’s Advances in Bioinformatics Program and led by UMBC Professors Erle Ellis and Marc Olano. The Ecosynth project is developing advanced tools for mapping, measuring, and visualizing vegetation in 3D using off-the-shelf digital cameras from the ground and on low-altitude hobbyist aircraft, coupled with open source and new computer vision algorithms. High resolution 3D scanning and spectral imaging are transforming ecological science, forest inventory, carbon monitoring and biodiversity assessment.

Ecosynth makes these advances accessible broadly to ecologists and citizen scientists on demand by means of low-cost portable 3D observing and visualization systems built on publicly available hardware and open-source software. For more information on the postion see the position announcement.

A full-time postdoctoral research associate position is available in the Ecosynth Project funded by NSF’s Advances in Bioinformatics Program and led by UMBC Professors Erle Ellis and Marc Olano. The Ecosynth project is developing advanced tools for mapping, measuring, and visualizing vegetation in 3D using off-the-shelf digital cameras from the ground and on low-altitude hobbyist aircraft, coupled with open source and new computer vision algorithms. High resolution 3D scanning and spectral imaging are transforming ecological science, forest inventory, carbon monitoring and biodiversity assessment.

Ecosynth makes these advances accessible broadly to ecologists and citizen scientists on demand by means of low-cost portable 3D observing and visualization systems built on publicly available hardware and open-source software. For more information on the postion see the position announcement.

A full-time postdoctoral research associate position is available in the Ecosynth Project funded by NSF’s Advances in Bioinformatics Program and led by UMBC Professors Erle Ellis and Marc Olano. The Ecosynth project is developing advanced tools for mapping, measuring, and visualizing vegetation in 3D using off-the-shelf digital cameras from the ground and on low-altitude hobbyist aircraft, coupled with open source and new computer vision algorithms. High resolution 3D scanning and spectral imaging are transforming ecological science, forest inventory, carbon monitoring and biodiversity assessment.

Ecosynth makes these advances accessible broadly to ecologists and citizen scientists on demand by means of low-cost portable 3D observing and visualization systems built on publicly available hardware and open-source software. For more information on the postion see the position announcement.

The 2013 Maryland Cyber Challenge season has begun!

Last week, Challenge co-founder Dr. Richard Forno and other Challenge officials conducted a kick-off orientation webinar  (PDF) outlining the 2013 Challenge, providing a brief overview of the SAIC/Leidos competition environment (CyberNEXS), offering administrative guidance, and answering questions from prospective competitors and team advisors.

Now in its third year, the Challenge is a partnership between UMBC and SAIC/Leidos, in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance, Tech Council of Maryland, and the Governor's CyberMaryland Initiative. The first two years of the Challenge saw over 700 competitors and 115 teams from Maryland competing for over $160,000 in cash prizes, internships, and more. The finals event is held as a major aspect of the CyberMaryland 2013 conference on October 8 & 9 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Interested teams may register for the competition here.   

The UMBC Game Developers Club will hold its third annual summer game jam this coming weekend. The event will run from 5:00pm Friday August 2, 2013 until 5:00pm Sunday, August 4, 2013 in the GAIM Lab, room 005 in the Engineering building. While there are computers available in the lab, participants are encouraged to bring their personal laptops. If you plan to participate, you can register your interest by joining the Summer Game Jam Facebook event.

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

An Introduction to Quantum Computing: D-Wave Systems

Robert (Bo) Ewald and Edward (Denny) Dahl

D-Wave Systems, Inc

10:00-12:00 Tuesday, July 30, 2013, ITE 325b

Bo Ewald and Denny Dahl from D-Wave Systems, Inc. will present an introduction to quantum computing and its role in their computing systems, complex machines constructed using state of the art ideas and approaches from many different fields of science and technology. While the quantum processor itself is the heart of the machine, the infrastructure that makes the processor go is also designed, built and tested extensively by D-Wave. In 2011, D-Wave System announced the D-Wave One, "the world's first commercially available quantum computer" which incorporated their 128 qubit chip-set using quantum annealing to solve optimization problems. This year a collaboration between NASA, Google and the Universities Space Research Association was announced that will create a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at the NASA Ames Research Center that will use a 512 qubit D-Wave Two system to study how quantum computing might advance machine learning.

Bo Ewald has been Chief Revenue Officer and President of U.S. Business at D-Wave Systems Inc. since May 02, 2013. Mr. Ewald served as Chief Executive Officer of Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc., since April 9, 2007. Mr. Ewald has over 25 years experience in the high performance computing industry. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Silicon Graphics, Inc. from 2007 to 2009. He served as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Scale8 Inc. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Linux Networx, Inc. until April 3, 2007 and oversaw its strategy & direction to drive continued growth. From 1984 to 1996, he held various management and executive positions at Cray Research, Inc., including President and Chief Operating Officer since December 1994. Before joining Cray Research Inc., he served as Head of the Computing and Communications Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and was responsible for providing computing and communications services to government customers nationwide from 1980 to 1984. Mr. Ewald is involved in various industry organizations and was appointed to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee from 1997 to 2001. Mr. Ewald holds an M.S. Degree in Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado and a BS Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada.

Dr. Denny Dahl received his PhD in physics from Stanford University in 1985 after completing a thesis on Quantum Monte Carlo computational techniques. He took a postdoctoral research position at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in the Parallel Processing Project and worked on simulation, analysis and applications of neural networks. Following this, Denny joined Thinking Machines Corporation and worked in their Technical Marketing Department. He obtained a patent for novel work in routing messages through the communication fabric of the CM-2, which was a massively parallel high performance computing platform. He also helped in providing technical support to a number of customers across a range of business verticals, including the petroleum and defense industries. Following Thinking Machines, Dr. Dahl participated in a range of start-up companies and developed expertise in high volume / high complexity RDBMS environments. He worked at a number of companies (eBay, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Travelers Insurance, Western Asset Management, Williams Sonoma, Kroger, Walgreens, Teradata) providing architectural and development services related to batch and real-time data processing. Denny joined D-Wave Systems at the beginning of 2012, and has been involved in algorithm research, training, technical support for sales and communication functions within the company.