A few important dates to keep in mind:
Tuesday, September 2: CS 598R Information Session, 11:00, 3365 TMCB
Monday, September 15: Add/Drop Deadline
Thursday, September 18: Opening Pizza Social!--6:00 pm, Kiwanis Park. All students and their families are invited to join us for a great evening with fun and lots of great food. Pick up your free tickets in the CS Department Office (3361 TMCB) by Monday, September 15
Tuesday, September 23: Career Fair Preview--12:00, 1170 TMCB--A handful of specially-selected companies will be in the department to give you information on the career opportunities they have available.
Stay tuned to the Computer Science Department Calendar for more upcoming events and important information
]]>(Note: if you wait until the 20th to sign up, you will miss the BYU merit badge counselor training on Thursday, October 16 and Friday, October 17. However, Dr. Ng will find a time to meet with you personally and show you the ropes.)
]]>In addition to the traditional pizza and pop, ACM members participated in a short programming contest. The participants were divided into three groups, according to experience and level in the CS program. The programming challenges were difficult, and the pressure was high as the contestants attempted to complete the problems before the hour-and-a half time limit was reached. Although many contestants came close to producing a working program before the time was up, four winners emerged as the champions of the first ACM programming contest of the school year.
Mirza Garibovic won the advanced division contest, with an elegant solution to a problem requiring a program to detect the depth of an arbitrary number of possibly nested triangles. Derek McDaniel won the middle division contest by creating a mini-search engine used to select sample pages by keyword matching. Chris Tensmeyer and A.J. ONeal won the lower division contest which dealt with the transformation of octal fractions. In the above picture, Mirza, Derek, and Chris are pictured after the awards ceremony. Prizes for the winners of the event were donated by Best Buy.
For information about upcoming ACM chapter activities, contact acm@byu.edu.
]]>On campus, Nathaniel, who is a computer science major, developed and launched a streamlined hiring process for students in the department. Nathaniel created a program in which professors can go online to request students who have applied for RA and TA positions. The requests are then sent to the department office and from there to the university employment office, allowing the entire hiring process to be paperless and online.
Gene Larson, former operations and systems manager for the Computer Science Department, remarked on how much easier life is with this new program.
"Students can apply and faculty can go through the selection process online," Larson said. "We used to have full-time employees keeping track of these student employees. Nathaniel's system now takes care of all this."
In addition to his contributions to the department as the student webmaster, Nathaniel has excelled in his scholastic endeavors as well. Between the 2008 Winter and Fall semesters at BYU, Nathaniel completed a prestigious internship at Microsoft with the Hotmail team located in Silicon Valley. His specific assignment was to work on the user-interface side of the email client. Upon his graduation from BYU in December, Nathaniel will go on to work full-time with the same team at Microsoft.
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In a series of courses throughout the week, Dr. Knutson touched on a variety of topics, ranging from the importance of strong parent-child relationships to the danger of online role-playing games.
The Deseret News and The Mormon Times carried articles about Dr. Knutson.
Deseret News: Internet predators after "easy targets"
Mormon Times: The spritual risks of online role-playing games
For more information about Dr. Knutson's work, and to listen to his Internet Safety Podcast, please visit his site: http://internetsafetypodcast.com
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If so, the CS 598R Senior Capstone/Undergraduate Research information session is for you.
]]>If so, the CS 598R Senior Capstone/Undergraduate Research information session is for you.
For more information, attend the meeting in 3365 TMCB (the department conference room) at 11:00 am on Tuesday, September 2. Professors will be on hand to present the projects they are investigating and will give you the chance to express your interest. This year's projects include:
If you decide to join a group, you will spend the rest of the semester meeting with the faculty advisor and your other group members. At the end of the semester, you will join other participants in presenting your work at the department capstone Demo Day and compete for great prizes.
CS 598R is a 3-hour credit class which may fulfill upper-level CS elective requirements. For more information, please speak to Kiersten Nielsen.
]]>In addition to his coursework in the Computer Science Department, Kendall is an undergraduate researcher in the department's Computational Biology Laboratory. Kendall, along with eight other students at BYU, is applying his unusual combination of skills in computer science and biology to understanding disease and making progress toward therapeutic intervention. Although researchers have long hypothesized that a point mutation in an individual’s DNA causes certain diseases, recent findings suggest that these aliments might actually be generated by a duplication of certain genes. Kendall and his fellow researchers have trained their attention on Down syndrome, one disease caused by gene duplication.
DAAD programs are meant to create goodwill and professional relationships
that will help build a solid basis for relations between Germany and North
America. DAAD scholarships are highly competitive and recipients are selected
by independent selection committees on the basis of outstanding academic
records and convincing project proposals or statements of purpose. As the German national agency for the support of international academic cooperation, the DAAD offers programs and
funding for students, faculty, researchers and others in higher education
providing financial support to over 50,000 individuals per year. DAAD also
represents the German higher education system abroad, promoting Germany as an
academic and research destination and establishes ties among institutions
around the world.
DAAD New York, which is one of 14 international branch offices, was founded in
1971 to support academic exchange between the U.S., Canada and Germany. DAAD
New York maintains three major missions: to act as a bridge between U.S.,
Canadian and German universities, higher education professionals and students
by providing information and assistance; to administer fellowships and other
programs for students and scholars in the U.S. and Canada; and to contribute to
Germany's public diplomacy by promoting Germany's academic, scientific, and
cultural achievements in the U.S. and Canada.
In the picture at right, Kendall (center) and fellow student, Nathaniel Gustafson, work with researchers to study mice afflicted with Down Syndrome
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