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The following information is all dedicated to issues relating to women and minorities in computer science.

Women and Minorities

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Accomplishing Reuse with a Simulation Conceptual Model

Balci O., Arthur J.D., Nance R.E., "Accomplishing Reuse with a Simulation Conceptual Model", Proceedings of the 2008 Winter Simulation Conference: IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, 12/2008.

Potential Technologies for Engineering Network-Centric Simulations

Balci O., Page E.H., "Potential Technologies for Engineering Network-Centric Simulations", Proceedings of the 2009 Summer Computer Simulation Conference: The Society for Modeling and Simulation International, San Diego, CA, 07/2009.

Quality Assurance of Simulation Studies of Complex Networked Agent Systems

Balci O., Ormsby W.F., Yilmaz L., "Quality Assurance of Simulation Studies of Complex Networked Agent Systems", Agent-directed Simulation and Systems Engineering, New York, NY, Wiley, pp. to appear, 2009.

Proceedings of the 2009 Summer Computer Simulation Conference

Balci O., Sierhuis M., Hu X., Yilmaz L., Proceedings of the 2009 Summer Computer Simulation Conference, : The Society for Modeling and Simulation International, San Diego, CA., 2009.

CS faculty highlighted in HPCwire .

Publish Date: 07/28/2009

HPCwire, “The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing,” posted a story last week by The Register, highlighting the release of the 5^th Green500 listing, a ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world. The Green500, created by CS faculty members Wu-chun Feng and Kirk Cameron, is a reorganization of the TOP500 supercomputers in accordance to their energy efficiency rankings. The Green500 list serves as a complimentary list to the annual TOP500 ranking, providing an opportunity for the high-end computing community to focus on alternative performance metrics such as power efficiency rather than speed.

For more information or to keep up to date on the project, please see www.green500.org

Virginia Tech: A Major Presence at IEEE IPDPS 2009

Publish Date: 07/24/2009

Virginia Tech, an emerging leader in high-end computing research, had a substantial presence at last month's IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IEEE IPDPS), held May 25-29, 2009, in Rome, Italy. Highlighting Virginia Tech's presence are four accepted papers in the main IPDPS conference, three papers in associated IPDPS workshops (including one on "The Green500 List"), and a keynote address by Dr. Wu Feng at the IPDPS Workshop on Communication Architecture for Clusters.

With a conference acceptance rate of only 23%, Virginia Tech was a significant presence with four papers featuring research experts from the Department of Computer Science. The presented papers were:

• “CellMR: A Framework for Supporting MapReduce on Asymmetric Cell-Based Clusters” (Rafique, Rose, Butt and Nikolopoulos). PhD candidate Muhammad Mustafa Rafique presented this paper. According to Rafique, this research serves as a “step towards proving the necessary software underpinnings to enable next generation HPC applications to utilize emerging hardware such as IBM Cell processors and graphics processors.”

• “Elastic Scaling of Data Parallel Operators in Stream Processing” (Schneider, Andrade, Gedik, Biem and Wu). PhD candidate Scott Schneider described work that he has done in collaboration with researchers at IBM. The goal is to dynamically adapt the degree of parallelism used for streaming operations, in response to both external load and changing resources.

• “Scheduling Resizable Parallel Applications” (Sudarsan and Ribbens). PhD candidate Rajesh Sudarsan described his work in run-time systems and middle-ware for more effective utilization of large parallel clusters. The experimental work reported in this paper made extensive use of Virginia Tech’s new System G supercomputer.

• “Multi-Dimensional Characterization of Temporal Data Mining on Graphics Processors” (Archuleta, Cao, Feng, Scogland). PhD Candidates Jeremy presented a paper on the potential of the graphics-processing unit (GPU) to vastly accelerate discovery and innovation across a multitude of disciplines. This research presented a characterization of a MapReduce-based data-mining application on a general-purpose GPU.

Presentations and Workshops: Dr. Feng presented a keynote address at the IPDPS Workshop on Communication Architecture for Clusters and served as co-chair of the IPDPS Workshop on High-Performance, Power-Aware Computing.

Three papers featuring VT research were presented in the associated workshops including “The Green500 List” by Dr. Feng.

C.S. Faculty Member Dr. Ali Butt to Participate in 2009 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Publish Date: 06/29/2009

Eighty-eight of the nation’s brightest young engineers have been invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 15th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. Selected from over 240 applicants, the participants highlight the exceptional engineering research and technical work being conducted in industry, academia, and government across a wide variety of disciplines.

Dr. Ali Butt, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, has been honored with an invitation to attend the 15th annual NAE Symposium. Butt’s research focuses on addressing the performance gap between computing power and storage technology for high performance computing environments. He has also been recognized for outstanding research potential though a 2008 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Development (CAREER) award.

A second CS faculty member, Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan, is also involved in the NAE event as one of the organizers for this year’s symposium. Ramakrishnan’s research interests include problem solving environments, mining scientific data, and information personalization. He recently received an award from HP’s 2009 Innovation Research Program and, in 2007, Computerworld named him to their list of ’40 under 40' innovative IT people to watch.

The symposium will be held Sept. 10-12 at the National Academies' Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine, and will examine engineering tools for scientific discovery; engineering the health care delivery system; nano/micro photonics and new applications; and resilient and sustainable infrastructures. A featured speaker will be Bradford W. Parkinson, Edward C. Wells Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Emeritus at Stanford University. Parkinson is credited with being the father of the Global Positioning System and is a recipient of the prestigious Draper Prize and a member of the NAE.

For additional Information please see:

NAE

NAE Frontiers

Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering

Spring 2009 Commencement Reception

Publish Date: 05/26/2009

On Friday, May 15, the Department of Computer Science celebrated Spring 2009 commencement at a reception honoring undergraduates, graduates, friends, families and faculty. Approximately 65 students completed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and 35 graduate degrees were awarded. Special guest at the reception was Mrs. Anne Gorsline, wife of the first department head, Dr. George Gorsline. Dr. Barbara Ryder, Head of the Department of Computer Science, welcomed the guests and spoke about the department's accomplishments in the past year. The department also recognized several undergraduate and graduate students for achievements in scholarship, research and service.

For pictures of the reception, the award winners, and the undergraduate ceremony on Saturday, May 16, please scroll down the page.

Dr. Ed Fox, Ben Scott, and Mrs. Anne Gorsline

Benjamin C. Scott was awarded the George Gorsline Memorial Scholarship. Dr. Gorsline was the first head of the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Gorsline died in 1987, and in his memory, his wife Anne and numerous grateful alumni established the George Gorsline Memorial Scholarship. True to George's spirit, this scholarship is given each year to a rising senior who has overcome obstacles to become a successful CS major. Ben was a freshman in 2001, and was also a member of the National Guard. But after a less than stellar start, Ben took some time off from VT. He returned to VT Spring 04 only to be deployed in March 2004 for two years. Ben stated "During that time a lot of things happened: I got married to my wife, Cecilia, bought a house, and matured quite a bit. I had no problem staying focused and studying from that point forward, and my grades were excellent, each semester averaging higher than a 3.0." Ben returned to VT summer 2006, but here was to be one more deployment Spring 07. Ben returned to VT summer 08, and this time his goal is in sight. It has not been quick nor easy for Ben, but we applaud his determination and perseverance to accomplish his goal of completing a degree in Computer Science.

Dr. Ed Fox and Jenny Kammer

The departmental Service Award was presented to Jennifer Kammer. Jennifer is a member of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was an undergraduate teaching assistant, president of the Association for Women in Computing, and an organizer of the annual AWC Women in Computing Day for middle school girls. Jennifer has completed multiple co-operative education terms, and was awarded the prestigious C. T. Tate Award for Outstanding Co-op Senior for 2009.

Dr. Ed Fox and Joe Bourne

The award for Scholarly Performance by a Graduating Senior was presented to Joseph Sprott Bourne, Jr. Joe is a member of the CS Honor Society Upsilon Pi Epsilon and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars. Joe has enjoyed being a Hokie Ambassador to share his love of Virginia Tech with prospective students and their families, and maintained the web site for the Ambassadors. Joe is spending his summer working for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. He will return to VT Fall 09 to complete his masters degree in CS.

Dr. Ed Fox and Robert Hagan

Computer Science Scholar Awards were presented to Robert Hagan and Nicholas Ryan in recognition of achieving a 4.0 in CS courses. Robert is a CS/Math double major, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and has served as president of CS Squared. Robert plans to attend graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Dr. Ed Fox and Nick Ryan

Nicholas Ryan is a CS/Math double major who has served as the CS department representative to the Student Technology Council and is in the University Honors Program. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. The department is grateful to Nick for his skill and dedication while serving as undergrad teaching assistant for the Operating Systems course. Nick will be working for Microsoft as a developer working on Excel after graduation.

Dr. Ed Fox and Robert Hagan

Robert Hagan was also recognized as the department's Outstanding Senior for 2009. In addition to his perfect 4.0 in CS courses, Robert has participated in numerous undergraduate research projects, site coordinator and president of CS Squared, president of Virginia Tech Gaming Project and president of the VT Runners Club. Robert has interned with IBM, and earned a coveted position in the IBM Extreme Blue Intern program. As mentioned above, Robert plans to attend graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Jaishankar Sundararaman and Dr. Barbara Ryder

Jaishanar obtained his MS degree under the direction of Dr. Godmar Back and now works at Google. He developed a novel software visualization system that can provide faithful and interactive visualizations of a program's runtime state. Simply stated this is like a window into how large computer programs function and is very useful for debugging and progarm understanding. This work was presented at the competitive ACM Symposium on Software Visualization in Munich.

Ashwin Aji and Dr. Barbara Ryder

Ashwin obtained his MS degree with Dr. Wu-chun Feng. He worked on genome scale sequence search, which is to take DNA sequences and quickly find their matches from a database. Before his work, algorithms for comparable tasks used to take nearly half an hour for each query, and Ashwin reduced it to 4 seconds. The novelty of his approach resulted in tremendous interest from IBM and a subsequent invention disclosure. We are also happy to report that we have reeled Ashwin back into our department and he will be re-joining us in Fall as a Ph.D. student.

Deepti Chafekar and Dr. Barbara Ryder

Deepti obtained her Ph.D. working with Dr. Anil Vullikanti and Madhav Marathe. She worked on wireless networks, specifically for applications such as cognitive radios. In particular she developed methods for estimating the capacity of these networks. Her thesis develops the first provable polynomial time approximation algorithm for optimizing latencies and throughut. If you are wondering what that means, polynomial time means "very fast" and so Deepti's results are likely to be very important and subsequently used by many in the future. She has published this work in all the top conferences in wireless and mobile networking, which have acceptance rates of less than 20%.

Rhonda Phillips and Dr. Layne Watson

Rhonda worked on her Ph.D. degree with Dr. Layne Watson. Her work is highly interdiscplinary and she developed algorithms for processing the massive amounts of data that come from remote sensed images. Her work is already being used by colleagues in forestry, civil engineering, and atomospheric sciences. She has also been extremely generous with her time in service activities for our department. She has been the social chair for the computer science
graduate council and has also been active in the CS honor society, Upsilon Pi Epsilon. She has been selected as a College of Engineering teaching fellow, a Sigma Xi Outstanding Ph.D. student, was the featured student for April 2009 by the VT graduate school, and received the first place award among all College of Engineering students at the VT annual graduate student research symposium held this year.

Matthew Schaefer and Dr. Barbara Ryder

Matthew is a highly sought after TA in our department. His teaching evaluations average at 4.9 out of a possible 5. Most recently, he was the teaching assistant for our junior level course on professionalism in computing. Not only does this course involve a tremendous amount of difficult grading, because students are required to write essays, but
this year there were some complications. One is that the course had group projects with another course here at VT and with two classes at the University of Limerick in Ireland. Matthew had to read roughly 150 discussion contributions/week for most of the semester in addition to the regular work in the course. Another point to mention is that when students performed not so well on the second writing assignment, Matthew volunteered to let them rewrite the assignment and regrade them. Needless to say, he has gone over and beyond the call of duty in providing student feedback and keeping the course organized.