Category Archives: Computer Science
Malaysian father returns to Lafayette after 35 years to watch son graduate from UL, his alma mater – The Advocate
Yun Fatt Yap and Ziming Yap have more in common than a last name and an interest in computers.
The elder Yap, a 1987 graduate in electrical engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and his son, who studied computer science at UL, will share an alma mater Friday morning. Thats when the son will formally graduate with the Ray P. Authement College of Sciences at 9 a.m. at the Cajundome.
The father returned to his native Malaysia after graduation and eventually opened his own company, Advelsoft, which he has operated for more than 30 years. His son, however, will remain in Lafayette and work here after graduation at least for now.
Yun Fatt Yap said he chose to travel to Lafayette 10,000 miles from home for his higher education because in the 1980s there were few programs in Malaysia that would accommodate his interest in both engineering and computers. His course was about 50% engineering, 50% computer science.
He had been accepted at UL Lafayette, then the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and North Dakota, but opted for UL, which was more affordable for his middle-class familys budget.
But when his son was graduating from high school, there were more choices for college in his native country. The father said he did not push his son to study either in Malaysia or the United States, leaving the decision to him. UL was not only a good school, the dad said, but because he had also graduated UL, his son qualified as a legacy student, which included some scholarship money.
Ziming Yap said his initial choice for a course of study was mechanical engineering. But when he arrived in Lafayette four years ago, he saw how popular the computer science program was at UL Lafayette, and decided to enroll there.
Yun Fatt Yap said he had to make preparations for taking classes in Lafayette; English was not his native language so special study was in order. His son, however, had a better command of English when he applied to study in Louisiana.
When Yun Fatt Yap applied to school here, he knew little about the United States or Louisiana. There was no internet; he was not fully aware of what to expect. However, he found Cajun food to his liking and said local people were welcoming to him.
UL also attracted many international students, including about 600 from Asia, most of whom studied engineering and computer science. Petroleum engineering was a popular program. After completing his bachelors degree, he took a job with Seagate, an American company, in Singapore.
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Ziming Yap had an easier time in adjusting to Louisiana, although there were nonetheless some surprises. His father was a proud UL graduate and had kept up with his alma mater. There is a Ragin Cajun alumni group of some 200 people it mostly connects online in Malaysia. They stay in touch through Facebook and they meet at least once a year.
Yun Fatt Yap had not returned to Lafayette in 35 years, since his own graduation, before returning this week to celebrate his sons graduation. The campus was plenty recognizable he visited Madison Hall, where he used to attend classes, Cypress Lake and other familiar places although many buildings had been renovated. There were also some new buildings on campus he marveled at the new Student Union but he said the campus has retained its identity.
Im impressed with that, he said.
Father and son will enjoy graduation and do some traveling New Orleans and Houston in addition to their time in Lafayette. Before they leave, he said, hell enjoy his time in Lafayette.
And, he added, he needed to run by the bookstore to buy some T-shirts.
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Anonymous bulletin board app Yik Yak is revealing its users’ exact locations – The Verge
Yik Yak, an app that acts as a local anonymous message board, makes it possible to find users precise locations and unique IDs, Motherboard reports. A researcher who analyzed Yik Yak data was able to access precise GPS coordinates of where posts and comments came from, accurate within 10 to 15 feet, and says he brought his findings to the company in April.
First launched in 2013, Yik Yak was popular on college campuses, where it was often used to gossip, post updates, and cyberbully other students. After waning relevance and failed attempts at content moderation, the app shut down in 2017, only to rise from the dead last year. In November, the company said it had passed 2 million users.
Motherboard spoke with David Teather, a computer science student based in Madison, Wisconsin, who raised the security concerns to Yik Yak and went on to publish his findings in a blog post. The app shows posts from nearby users but displays only approximate location, such as around 1 mile away, up to five miles, to give users a sense of where in their nearby community updates are coming from.
Though Yik Yak promises anonymity, Teather points out that combining GPS coordinates and user IDs could de-anonymize users and find out where people live since many are likely to be using it from home and the data is accurate to within 10 to 15 feet. That combination of information could be used to stalk or watch a particular person, and Teather mentions that the risk could be higher for people living in rural areas where homes are more than 10 to 15 feet apart because a GPS location could narrow a user down to one address.
As Motherboard reports, the data is accessible to researchers like Teather, who know how to use tools and write code to extract information but the risk was real enough to prompt Teather to bring it to Yik Yaks attention.
Since user ids are persistent its possible to figure out a users daily routine of when and where they post YikYaks from, this can be used to find out the daily routine of a particular YikYak user, Teather writes. He listed other ways the data could be abused, like finding out where someone lives, monitoring users, or breaking into someones home when theyre not there.
Yik Yak did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge.
According to Motherboard, the latest version of the app released by Yik Yak no longer exposes precise location and user IDs, but Teather says he can still retrieve that information using previous versions of the app.
If YikYak did take this more seriously they would restrict these fields from being returned and break older versions and force users to upgrade to a newer version of the app, he wrote in the blog post.
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Anonymous bulletin board app Yik Yak is revealing its users' exact locations - The Verge
Middletown students to showcase science, math and art projects – Times Herald-Record
Middletown High School students showcase science, math, art projects
Middletown students & officials discuss STEAM night set for May 13, 2022. It showcases projects related to art, music, humanities, science & math.
Kelly Marsh, For the Times Herald-Record
MIDDLETOWN Blood spatter analysis, fingerprinting, gel electrophoresis these are just some of the crime-fighting skills Middletown High Schoolsenior Sunny Shi said she learned in her forensics class.
On Friday, Shi who will study human development and regenerative biology at Harvard University in the fallsaid she islooking forward to teaching parents and community members these skills and more on Friday nightbefore watching them attempt tosolve a hypothetical crime.
"For (forensics class), we're planning on doinga kind of virtual escape room," the 17-year-old said."It's basicallya bunch of puzzles that you have to solve, and eventually you get all the clues. Then you establish a lineup and that's how you find the perpetrator. But it's allreal stuff that we've learned about and we, the students,were the ones that made the puzzles. I think that's really cool."
The virtual crime activity will be one of many events and exhibits at Middletown's May 13 STEAMnight, open to the public. The annual event showcases many of the numerous student projects related to art, music, the humanities, science and math - often called STEAM.
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More than 1,000 community members are expected to attendthe annual event, says Lynnette Williams, Middletown High's executive principal. STEAM night will include hands-on activities for community members to watch and participate in. Some of the presentations and interactive activities willincludea fetal pig dissection, dance performances, face painting, a robotics demonstration, a planetarium, a submarine demonstration in the pool and more.
"This is the first year that we're doing this event on this magnitude where we are pulling in all of the various arenas to really give an experience that will be like none other," Williams said.
"The vision of our superintendent (Amy Creeden) was to really showcase to the entire community that we are awesome in STEAM andour scholars are also amazing in humanities andart."
Norval Connell, Middletown Highs STEAM instructional leader, said almost everything parents, family members, friends and community members see at the event will be completely planned and executed by students.
It'salso a commercial for the community to see all the things that we're doing and all of the 21st-century skills that we're developing here, he said.
Arlyn Vasquez, a 17-year-old Middletown High senior, said she feels proud to be one of the many young women presenting at the event.
"I feel like for me personally, it will mean a lotonce I do go off to college," Vasquez said about how normalized it is for female students in Middletown to pursue STEAM subjects. In the fall, Vasquez willstudy computer science at the University of Connecticut.
At STEAM night Vasquezwill be presenting projects for her critical reading and computer science classes andperforming with the district's Blue Royalty dance team. SunnyShiwill be presenting projects related to finance, marching band, critical reading and forensics.
I think events like this are so important because we have to express that it's OK,it's normal for girls to enter STEM - (science, technology, engineeringandmathematics), Shisaid.
It's events like these that make younger people feel like Wow, they look like me and they're doing this and they're successful. And I think its really important to expose people throughout the community to that idea too.
The evening's goal, Connell said, is not onlyto show community members how talented Middletown's student population is, but also to prove to students that their work is impressive and important.
"We dream with them and we're hoping that they know they can accomplish anything after leaving here," Connell said.
When: May 13, Two sessions: 4:30-6 p.m. and 6:30-8 p.m.
Where:Middletown High School, 30 GardnerAve. Ext., Middletown
Admission: Free
Activities will be held throughout the entire building over the course of two sessions.
Erin Nolan is an investigative reporter for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach her at enolan@gannett.com
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Middletown students to showcase science, math and art projects - Times Herald-Record
Viewpoint: a wave of new MITs is key to reversing eastern Europe’s brain drain – Science Business
Schoolchildren in Bulgaria can tell you that John Vincent Atanasoff, the father of the computer, was their countryman. They also know his success came in the US, thousands of miles away.
Every year 30,000 Bulgarians follow the path trodden by Atanasoffs family to find work and opportunities abroad.
For too long, eastern Europe has been exporting its brightest minds to the west. This brain drain has cost it in lost opportunities for economic development, compounded by the pain of fractured families and hollowed out communities.
Its time for this to change. And, fittingly, it is computer science that holds the key to reversing the trend and bridging the divide between east and west.
International Innovation
Computer science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for the region to attract the worlds best scientists and researchers to eastern Europe and to bring back those who have left.
The internationalisation of technology in recent decades means Silicon Valley is as much a state of mind as a location particularly since the pandemic has further accelerated the digitisation of everything.
Innovators and their inventions dont have to migrate to the west coast of the US or the digital centres of western Europe. Hubs of excellence are springing up across the world.
Europe saw the creation of 85 tech unicorns companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more last year, compared to 17 in 2020, a sign of the growing opportunities across the continent. And investors from outside Europe are increasingly recognising the value of staying headquartered where they were first established.
Establishing Excellence
The rise of Europes new tech giants is supported by forward-looking centres of excellence, such as the Max Planck Institute, MIT, ETH Zurich and Cambridge University, which bring together computer scientists and researchers and spur the innovation that creates viable, ambitious startups.
If eastern Europe wants to encourage its brilliant computer scientists to stay in the region and attract those from outside it needs to grasp the nettle and create the conditions which will make it possible. Science needs to be seen as something you can pursue close to home rather than having to travel the world to find recognition and success.
That means tackling an academic system in eastern Europe that has been left behind by its western competitors. Its structures, recruitment, salaries and opportunities for promotion need to be reformed and the status of science in society returned to its celebrated past.
Some of the changes require a combination of state and private funding, while others such as tackling antiquated application procedures and fast-tracking visas for world-class talent will need legal and political reform.
However, with the right conditions, eastern Europe could quickly become a centre for world class research, helping the regional economy to drive a transition from service-led to IP-powered; retaining its brightest minds while building the skills needed to thrive in the 21st century.
Recipe for Success
The best international research institutions, such as MIT, Max Planck and Berkeley, share a series of common factors which can be emulated to help reinvigorate science in the east.
They all have long-term strategic support from government, focus on hiring only the best candidates, and pay good salaries while funding strong research programmes. They are located in attractive places to live, and are assessed solely on the quality of scientific advances that they achieve.
Most crucially, they carry out teaching and research in parallel, based on the two-century old Humboldtian principle that when scientists teach, it benefits their research, and when teachers research, their students get better quality education.
The freedom for exploration provided by those conditions have enabled the worlds best institutions to establish centres of innovation and nurture ecosystems that incubate startups, attract the worlds best scientists and draw funding from established companies looking to tap into their expertise.
Silicon Sofia
The Bulgarian government in collaboration with some of the biggest names in technology is already blazing a trail for such institutions in eastern Europe. Its goal is to turn the country into a world leader in computer science and AI research by 2032, while demonstrating the massive untapped opportunities across the wider region for innovation, skills development and economic transformation.
The poster-child for the initiative, INSAIT, will open its premises in Sofia later this year. Multi-year investment from the Bulgarian government, Google, DeepMind and Amazon Web Services will allow the new institution to offer market leading salaries to attract computer scientists and academics from around the world, while providing generous scholarships for PhDs and high-level research into AIs toughest challenges.
INSAIT will be the first institution of its kind in eastern Europe, both in terms of its 10-year $100 million endowment from the Bulgarian government and the unprecedented investment for the region from global tech giants. The project backers goal is to ensure that it is the first of many.
Bringing it Back Home
John Vincent Atanasoff, inventor of the first electronic digital computer, was the son of a Bulgarian electrical engineer who had emigrated to New York. Peter Petrov, another adopted American who worked on the US moon landings and gave us the digital watch and wireless heart monitor, was born in Brestovitsa, a village two hours southeast of Sofia.
They are both celebrated as Bulgarian technological innovators.
In future, their compatriots shouldnt need to travel to succeed. They should be able to stay and change the world from their own country, accompanied by the best minds from all over the planet.
Martin Vechev is Bulgarian national and an ETH Zurich professor in computer science. He helped launch the INSAIT artificial intelligence research centre in Sofia, and is now planning to split his time between ETH Zurich and chairing the supervisory board of INSAIT. ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne are also partners in INSAIT.
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Viewpoint: a wave of new MITs is key to reversing eastern Europe's brain drain - Science Business
Missouri S&T News and Events Michael Carlson embarks on a great journey – Missouri S&T News and Research
The first time he presented his work to a professor, Michael Carlson wasnt exactly confident. The class was Introduction to Programming, the professor was Clayton Price and Carlson was a first-year student fresh off his familys cattle farm near the town of Edina, a northeast-Missouri community of around 1,000. He was nervous.
I hadnt done a lot of coding, and I wasnt sure if I could keep up, he says. Many of the students in his classes were city kids who had gone to bigger schools with bigger budgets; Carlson, who graduated high school in a class of 38 who knew how to play defense and offense because there simply werent enough football players felt that a lot of them were already ahead.
Price, sensing his students uncertainty, pulled up his own farm, which is just outside Rolla, on Google. Then he invited Carlson to do the same, and for a few minutes the two set coding aside and compared acreage.
He considers the lesson he learned during that meeting to be one of the most enduring of the many hes learned since at S&T. He graduates on Saturday with a bachelors degree in computer science. He will also be commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Space Force, where he plans to specialize in cybersecurity.
Supply and demand
Carlson cycled through a few dream careers before choosing computer science. At one point he wanted to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. For a while he thought about becoming an athletic trainer.
I love sports, he says. I also love helping people.
But ultimately his notions of a sports career yielded to practicality. His father reminded him of the value of a degree in a field where the demand for skills is greater than the supply of those who are skilled. Computer science met the specifications. He sees his specialization in cybersecurity which hes been studying for the past couple of years as a way of helping society.
Working in cybersecurity is an important part of protecting our technological infrastructure, our military and the country, he says.
His goal is to sharpen his skills at detecting problems and deterring them before an adversary attacks.
The road to Rolla
Missouri S&T was the last school Carlson visited his senior year in high school. After a week-long college tour on a charter bus, Carlson talked with a childhood friend who was planning to attend S&T to become a nuclear engineer.
He said I should check it out, so I came for a visit, he says. It checked all the boxes, but what really did it for me was the Air Force ROTC detachment.
There, he says the colonel who met with him and his mother presented a convincing pitch for S&T.
And he did not steer me wrong, says Carlson, who believes hes grown more in his four years at S&T than in all of the 18 years prior to his arrival. Ive had so many opportunities to grow and find out what kind of leader I want to become, and then execute on it.
The emphasis on mentoring has been an important part of his S&T experience. Theres a great culture at this school, especially at the ROTC detachment, he says. Everyone wants everyone else to be the best version of themselves. As a result of that culture, Ive been able to watch myself become more compassionate and empathetic.
Carlson thinks the acceptance of failure is also an important part of the S&T culture.
As long as you get up and learn from your mistakes and go out and make it better, its not viewed as failure, he says.
In fact, learning from mistakes is one of the topics he wants to address in the book he hopes to write eventually.
We tend to want to learn from those who won, or got the top job, he says. Id like to know what the person who came in second or third learned from the experience. I think were more self-critical when we dont reach the top of the mountain.
Never stop looking for ways to improve
Carlson is always on the lookout for ways to improve. He believes he inherited his drive from his parents strong work ethic. He describes his father as a person who works from dark to dark; his mother piled all four Carlson children into the minivan and drove them 25 miles to school, where she teaches.
Herding cattle taught him about developing and then using strategy to manage enormous, seemingly unmanageable animals. And watching movies about superheroes inspired him to start setting short-, medium- and long-range goals toward becoming one.
I figured out the importance of goal setting at a fairly young age, he says.
Age is a tricky thing for Carlson: Hes 22, but considers himself much older. Some people say I dress and act like a dad, and its humorous, but I do calculate how I do things, he says. I dont want to rob myself of the good moments, of course, but Im always debriefing myself, spending a lot of time in introspection.
Space Force
Carlsons interest in cybersecurity was what put Space Force on his radar initially. Intrigued, he sought out people familiar with the new military branch it was founded in 2019 and read everything he could get his hands on. He considers himself an old soul but found himself attracted to the organizations relative newness.
Space Force is still coming out with their own doctrine rather than evolving as just a branch of the Air Force, he says. And Im a person who wants to improve myself while also helping make a positive impact on the world. I want to put all that together and help Space Force become the best version of itself.
Space Force also presents opportunities to dig more deeply into technology.
Getting more involved in satellites will take computer science into a whole new spectrum, he says. Im excited about working with really cool technology and great people. I think its going to be a great journey.
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Associate Professor within Computer Science job with NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY – NTNU | 292810 – Times Higher Education
About the job
At the Department of ICT and Natural Sciences there is a position as Associate Professor in Computer Science.
The position is connected to the bachelor program in computer science (BIDATA) and the master program in Simulation and Visualization. In addition, our staff is doing research through the research group Sustainable Digital Transformation Group (SDT).
You will report to the head of Department.
Responsibilities
As an employee, you will prepare own teaching and supervise according to BIDATA-study profile and contents. The study is profession oriented and emphasizes modern teaching methods as formative assessment, algorithmic thinking, constructive teaching through enhanced use of laboratory education.
In this position you will be especially relevant for teaching in courses like: Programming, Operative Systems, Information security, Mobile applications, Computer Graphics, Algorithms and data structures. Other courses can also be relevant. You must also supervise students through their work of bachelor- and master-theses. In addition, you need to coordinate internal projects, bachelor theses and specialization projects.
It is expected that some of your work plan is related to research and development that strengthen our study programs, the strategic effort at SDT group and the department.
Requiredqualifications
You must have thequalificationsrequiredfor the position of associate professor (frsteamanuensis) in the field ofComputer Science, as outlined intheregulations concerning appointment and promotion to teaching and research posts
New employees who donotspeak aScandinavian languageby appointment is required, within three years, todemonstrate skills in Norwegian or another Scandinavian language equivalent to level three of thecourse for Norwegian for speakers of other languagesat the Department of Language and Literature at NTNU.
You must document relevant basic competenceinteaching and supervision at auniversity/higher education-level, as referenced in the Norwegian nationalRegulations.Ifthis cannot be documented, you will be required to complete an approved course in university pedagogy within two years of commencement.NTNU offers qualifying courses.
Preferred qualifications
Personal qualities
In the assessment of the best qualified person, we emphasize on education and formal competence, experience and real competence, personal skills, in addition to motivation.
We offer
Salary and conditions
The position is paid as associate professor (code 1011) depending on qualifications and seniority. As required by law, 2% of this salary will be deducted and paid into the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund.
Employment will be granted in accordance with the principles outlined in the regulations in force concerning State Employees and Civil Servants, and the acts relating to Control of the Export of Strategic Goods, Services and Technology. Candidates who by assessment of the application and attachment are seen to conflict with the criteria in the latter law will be prohibited from recruitment to NTNU. Applicants should be aware that there may be changes in the working environment after employment has commenced.
It is a prerequisite that you are able to be present and accessible at the institution daily.
Application Process
You can find more information about working at NTNU and the application processhere.
About the application
Your application and supporting documentation must be in English or Norwegian.
Please note that your application will be considered based solely on information submitted by the application deadline. You must therefore ensure that your application clearly demonstrates how your skills and experience fulfil the criteria specified above.
If, for any reason, you have taken a career break or have had an atypical career and wish to disclose this in your application, the selection committee will take this into account, recognizing that the quantity of your research may be reduced as a result.
Your application must include:
Joint work will also be considered. If it is difficult to identify your specific input to a joint project, you must include evidence of your contributions.
While considering the best-qualified applicants, we will payparticular attentionto personal qualities, your motivation forapplying forthe position, and your pedagogical skills and qualifications.Ourassessment will be based on documented pedagogical material, forms of presentation in your academic works, teaching experience, PhD, andMasterssupervision, and any other relevant pedagogical background. Both quality and scope will be taken into consideration.
NTNU isobliged bythe evaluation criteria for research quality in accordance withThe SanFranciscoDeclaration on Research Assessment DORA.This means that we will payparticular attentionto the quality and academicrangedemonstrated by your scientific work to date. We will also pay attention to research leadership and participation in research projects.Your scientific work from the last five years will be given the most weight.
Your application will beconsidered by a committee of experts. Candidates of interest will be invited to a trial lesson and an interview.
General information
NTNUspersonellpolicyemphasizes the importance ofequality and diversity. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, disability, or cultural background. NTNU is working actively to increase the number of women employed in scientific positions, and has a number ofresourcesto promote equality.
The city of lesund, with its population of 50 000, will provide you with plenty of opportunities to explore a region of Norway that is famous for its beautiful scenery with high mountains and blue fjords. lesund itself, with its Art Nouveau architecture, is by many considered to be the most beautiful city in Norway! The Norwegian welfare state, including healthcare, schools, kindergartens and overall equality, is probably the best of its kind in the world.
As an employee at NTNU, you must continually maintain and improve your professional development and be flexible regarding any organizational changes.
In accordance with public law your name, age, job title, and county of residence may be made available to the public even if you have requested not to appear on the public list of applicants. For the sake of transparency, candidates will be given the expert evaluation of their own and other candidates. As an applicant you are considered part of the process and is stipulated to rules of confidentiality.
If you have any questions regarding the position, please contact the head of Department Rune Volden, tel:+47-92887753, e-mail: rune.volden@ntnu.no. If you have questions regarding the recruitment process, please contact GirtsStrazdins, e-mail:gist@ntnu.no
The application and all attachments should be submitted electronically via jobbnorge.no.
NTNU - knowledge for a better world
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) creates knowledge for a better world and solutions that can change everyday life.
Department of ICT and Natural Sciences
Our campus in lesund works in a partnership with industry that is in a class of its own among Norwegian universities. This ensures a practical focus for our study programmes, while they are firmly anchored in modern theory. The Department offers programmes in automation engineering, computer engineering, electric power systems, simulation and visualization. Our research areas include autonomous vessels, robotics, cybernetics, medical technology and health informatics, and artificial intelligence.The Department of ICT and Natural Sciencesis one of seven departments in theFaculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering.
Deadline7th June 2022EmployerNTNU - Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyMunicipalitylesundScopeFulltimeDurationPermanentPlace of servicelesund Campus
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Biology Professor Greg Pask Receives Perkins Award for Excellence in Teaching – Middlebury College News and Events
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. Faculty, staff, and students honored Greg Pask, assistant professor of biology, with the Perkins Award for Excellence in Teaching at a ceremony in Bicentennial Hall on May 4. The annual award is presented alternately to a faculty member from mathematics or thesciences.
Earlier this year, student majors and minors in the science departments were asked for nominations for the award. The winner was chosen by a selectioncommittee.
The selection committee reviewed the letters and members were deeply impressed by the level of detail students provided to describe the myriad impacts our faculty have on students in the classroom, the research lab, and beyond, said Associate Dean of Sciences Rick Bunt, who introduced Pask. While all those nominated this year were worthy of recognition, this years awardee truly stoodout.
Pask, an insect neurobiologist, studies the powerful sense of smell insects use to locate food, find mates, and communicate with others. His research focuses on the chemical language of ants and the specific genes involved in detecting socialcues.
He earned his bachelors degree in chemistry from Muhlenberg College, his PhD in biochemistry from Vanderbilt University, and completed postdoctoral work in entomology at the University of California, Riverside. Bunt noted that Pask combines all of his academic skills in his study of chemical signaling in insectswork that has earned support from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation. His research has resulted in 11 peer-reviewedpublications.
Bunt pointed out that Pask, who arrived at Middlebury in 2020, wasted no time diving into the campus community. Greg has already made quite a mark on students through his commitment and dedication to teaching excellence in the spirit of Professor LlewellynPerkins.
Students Benjamin Morris, Daphne Halley, and Aiden Masters each offered glowing remarks at the ceremony in support of Pask. The Perkins family was represented by Catherine Harris and Andrew Perkins onZoom.
Created in 1993, the Perkins Award is provided by the Professor Llewellyn R. Perkins and Dr. Ruth M.H. Perkins Memorial Research Fund, and it was made possible by a gift from Ruth Perkins, Middlebury Class of 1932, in memory of her husband, Llewellyn, who taught at Middlebury from 1914 through1941.
Their children, Marion Perkins Harris 57, a science teacher, and David Perkins, a physician, augmented the fund and expanded the scope of the award to honor their mother, Ruth, as well as their father. The award supports the recipients faculty development. It is presented in even-numbered years to a member of the mathematics or computer science department, and in odd-numbered years to a faculty member who teaches in the naturalsciences.
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Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Computer Science job with DURHAM UNIVERSITY | 292764 – Times Higher Education
Department of Computer Science
Grade 7: - 34,304 - 40,927 per annumFixed Term - Full TimeContract Duration: 33 MonthsContracted Hours per Week: 35Closing Date: 16-Jun-2022, 6:59:00 AM
Durham University
Durham University is one of the world's top universities with strengths across the Arts and Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences. We are home to some of the most talented scholars and researchers from around the world who are tackling global issues and making a difference to people's lives.
The University sits in a beautiful historic city where it shares ownership of a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Durham Cathedral, the greatest Romanesque building in Western Europe. A collegiate University, Durham recruits outstanding students from across the world and offers an unmatched wider student experience.
Less than 3 hours north of London, and an hour and a half south of Edinburgh, County Durham is a region steeped in history and natural beauty. The Durham Dales, including the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, are home to breathtaking scenery and attractions. Durham offers an excellent choice of city, suburban and rural residential locations. The University provides a range of benefits including pension and childcare benefits and the Universitys Relocation Manager can assist with potential schooling requirements.
Durham University seeks to promote and maintain an inclusive and supportive environment for work and study that assists all members of our University community to reach their full potential. Diversity brings strength and we welcome applications from across the international, national and regional communities that we work with and serve.
The Department
The Department of Computer Science is rapidly expanding it tripled in size over the last 4 years and now has around 50 academic faculty. A new building, joint with Mathematical Sciences, to house the expanded Department has recently been inaugurated, and it hosts all our academics, our students, and experimental kit. The current Department has research strengths in algorithms and complexity, in artificial intelligence and human systems, networks, scientific computing, and computer vision, visualisation, and imaging. The Department of Physics is the home department of the Institute of Computational Cosmology which is one of the international flagship research places for computational astrophysics and plays a pivotal role to obtain new scientific insight through (super-)computing. Hosted in an award-winning building, its researchers have access to the Tier-2 supercomputer COSMA as well as multiple experimental hardware cluster.
For more information, please visit our Department pages at https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/computer-science/
Durham University and Newcastle University seek to appoint a total of 9 postdoctoral researchers for the EPSRC funded project AGENCY: Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms. We invite applications of candidates from a variety of disciplines to become part of an exciting, multidisciplinary research project incorporating scholars from Computing (including AI, HCI, and Cyber Security), Sociology, Ethics, Business, and Law. The teams research aims to protect citizens and society from online harms such as hate speech, misinformation, issues around self-image, and domestic violence during a pandemic. Specifically, AGENCY researches how to provide end-users with control (agency) over their online experiences. The team will design new citizen-centred technologies, influence policy and contribute to new ethical frameworks.
See http://agencyresearch.net for more information on all available posts.
The Role
Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate.The ideal candidate for this role is a capable and independent researcher who has expert working knowledge in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML), with experience using collaborative (co-)design research methods and working with research stakeholders and intended end-users of technology design. You will also hold computer-related expertise, and have demonstrable skill in implementing, deploying, and evaluating ML models for NLP tasks. You will have a clear interest in conducting research to support the fight against harmful online content, including misinformation and cyberbullying. A completed (or nearly completed) PhD in NLP, ML, or a related subject is considered essential, and must be demonstrated in the application.
You will be based in the Artificial Intelligence and Human Systems Group (AIHS pronounced ace, https://aihs.webspace.durham.ac.uk/) of the Department of Computer Science at Durham University, resident at the brand-new state-of-the-art Mathematical Sciences and Computer Sciences building, under the supervision of Dr Stamos Katsigiannis.
As member of the AGENCY project team, you will work in an inclusive, interdisciplinary team. You will be provided with individual career support and be part of a national network of related research projects (see http://agencyresearch.net). The research will be guided by case studies, including personal health devices, digital identity management, smart homes, and online disinformation. You will help shape the specific research associated with the case studies in collaboration with a variety of external partners.
Core responsibilities
The post is fixed term for 33 months, as part of the EPSRC funded project AGENCY, which is time limited and will end on 31 March 2025.
The post-holder is employed to work on research/a research project which will be led by another colleague. Whilst this means that the post-holder will not be carrying out independent research in his/her own right, the expectation is that they will contribute to the advancement of the project, through the development of their own research ideas/adaptation and development of research protocols
Successful applicants will, ideally, be in post by 1 July 2022.
Recruiting to this post
In order to be considered for interview, candidates must evidence each of the essential criteria required for the role in the person specification above (including those listed in the section Realising Your Potential Approach). In some cases, the recruiting panel may also consider the desirable criteria, so we recommend you evidence all criteria in your application. Please note that some criteria will only be considered at interview stage.
How to apply
We prefer to receive applications online.
Please note that in submitting your application Durham University will be processing your data. We would ask you to consider the relevant University Privacy Statement https://www.dur.ac.uk/ig/dp/privacy/pnjobapplicants/ which provides information on the collation, storing and use of data.
What you are required to submit
Please ensure that you submit all documentation listed above or your application cannot proceed to the next stage.
Contact details
For further information please contact Dr Stamos Katsigiannis at stamos.katsigiannis@durham.ac.uk
At Durham University, our aim is to create an open and inclusive environment where everyone can reach their full potential and believe our staff should reflect the diversity of the global community in which we work. We welcome and encourage applications from members of groups who are under-represented in our work force including people with disabilities, women and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.We will notify you on the status of your application at various points throughout the selection process, via automated emails from our e-recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folder periodically to ensure you receive all emails.
The Requirements
Essential:
Desirable:
DBS Requirement:Not Applicable.
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2022 NSF CAREER award recipient Sihong Xie seeks to pull back the curtain on the intelligence behind AI – EurekAlert
image:Sihong Xie, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, is a 2022 recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER award. view more
Credit: Douglas Benedict/Academic Image for Lehigh University
If algorithms are going to impact nearly every aspect of our lives, they should meet the highest standards of accountability. Yet little is knownparticularly to those outside the field of computer scienceabout how these algorithms actually operate.
Making this form of artificial intelligence more transparent to the lay audience is the driving force behind the work of Lehigh University faculty memberSihong Xie. Creating accountable machine learning is the ultimate goal of our research, he says.
Xie, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, recently won support from the National Science Foundations Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program for hisproposalto make machine learning models more transparent, more robust, and more fair.
The prestigious NSF CAREER award is given annually to junior faculty members across the U.S. who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of those two pursuits. Each award provides stable support at the level of approximately $500,000 for a five-year period.
Machine learning models are capable of solving complex problems by analyzing an enormous amount of data. But how they computationally solve the problem is a mystery. Its difficult for humans to make sense of the reasoning process of the program, says Xie. How do we know that the artificial intelligence is analyzing the data like a human domain expert would analyze it?
For example, he says, scientists may turn to a machine learning model to tell them which molecular combination to experiment with in a particular experiment. The model could analyze thousands of molecules in seconds, and come up with a list of promising candidates.
So the model says, try A, B, and C. But the researchers might not be confident in that list because they dont know why they should try A, B, and C, says Xie. Conducting experiments in such a domain can be highly expensive, and I want the machine to also tell chemical engineers that A, B, and C have certain characteristics that make them more promising for whatever reason, andthatswhy they should try that combination.
He says such explainability of the machine learning algorithms will generate greater confidence and trust of the human users in the models. To establish that explainability, hell work with domain experts to combine human knowledge with machine learning programs. He'll incorporate the constraints that guide these professionals in their decision-making into the development of algorithms that more closely reflect human domain knowledge and reasoning patterns.
If the model can satisfy those constraints, then they behave pretty much like the human is expected to behave, he says. The technical intent should be general enough to apply to many different domains, including cybersecurity, computational neuroscience, and smart cities.
Ultimately, few human experts will be able to dedicate the time necessary to fully compile the constraints around any one question. To that end, Xie intends to automate the creation of such checklists by collecting relevant data from the experts instead.
They have years worth of data, so the idea is to have my machine run through it all, and create the checklist for us. And of course, thats the problem, he says. That list may not be 100 percent accurate.
It could be missing things. It could introduce noise. In short, he says, the checklist of constraints the model might develop on its owna checklist it will then use to determine the answer to something like, what combination of molecules should I study?could be too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Xie and his team will design another algorithm to find what he calls the sweet spot in this checklist creation. One that is sensitive enough to detect subtle but useful positives, but not so sensitive it generates too many false positives.
Real-world data are dirty, he says. We want the machine program to be robust enough so that if its dealing with reasonably dirty data, it will still generate reliable output.
Along with questions about accountability come concerns about algorithmic fairness: If machine learning algorithms now influence what we read in our social feeds, which job postings we see, and how our loan applications are processed, how can we be sure that choices are made ethically?
To address those concerns, Xie will utilize multiple objective optimization to find the most efficient solutions to competing perspectives on whats considered fair.
Different people, different organizations, different countries, they all have their own definition of fairness, he says. So we have to explore all the possible trade-offs between these different definitions, and thats the technical challenge, because there are so many different ways to trade off. The computer has to actually search for how much each of these fairness standards has to be respected.
He will provide algorithmic solutions that can efficiently search such trade-offs. We did recognize that trading one objective for another is a ubiquitous situation in the broader accountable machine learning, he adds, for example, trading transparency and accuracy, or multiple forms of explanations, etc.
The implications of this research could be profound. Xie says that, eventually, experts could have much more confidence in artificial intelligence, and algorithms could become more responsive to social norms.
The biggest motivation for me in conducting this research is that it has the potential to make a real social impact, he says. And because we always have humans in the loop, were going to ensure that these models inspire more confidence and treat people fairly.
Sihong Xie is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. His research interests include misinformation detection in adversarial environments, interpretable and fair graphical models, and humanmachine learning collaboration in data annotation.
Xie received his PhD from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2016. He holds bachelors and masters degrees from the School of Software Engineering at Sun Yat-Sen University in China.
Xie has published over 60 papers in major data mining conferences, such as KDD, ICDM, WWW, AAAI, IJCAI, WSDM, SDM, TKDE, with over 2000 citations and an h-index of 17. He serves on the Senior Program Committee for AAAI and is a program committee member for other ML and AI conferences, including KDD, ICLR, ICDM, and SIGIR.
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ACM celebrates technical achievements that drive far-reaching advances in technology – EurekAlert
image:Raluca Ada Popa, recipient of the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award view more
Credit: ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced the recipients of four prestigious technical awards. These leaders were selected by their peers for making contributions to groundbreaking research and practical applications that impact people using technology every day.
Raluca Ada Popa, University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the 2021 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for the design of secure distributed systems. The systems protect confidentiality against attackers with full access to servers while maintaining full functionality.
Popas fundamental work of building secure systems focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data stored on remote servers. Cloud computing makes sensitive data more accessible to hackers and insiders, despite the common faulty assumption that parts of the serversay the database or operating systemare inaccessible and can be trusted. Popas research provides confidentiality guarantees where servers only need to store encrypted data, processing it without decrypting. Thus, hackers see only encrypted data.
Computing on encrypted data, possible in theory, has been prohibitively inefficient in practice. Popa addresses this by replacing generality with building systems for a broad set of applications with common traits, and developing encryption schemes tailored to these application archetypes. In SQL databases, for example, Popa extracts a few primitive operations that support most queries, utilizes encryption schemes that efficiently support these primitives, and thus can perform most computations on encrypted databases.
Popa, as the senior researcher, has designed an astonishing number of prototype systems in different application domains, providing functionality over encrypted data. In Opaque, DORY, Metal, and CryptDB, she showed how the utilization of cryptographic schemes that efficiently support a few carefully identified primitive operations enables performant encrypted databases and file systems. The Helen and Senate prototypes she and her students contributed enable multiple organizations to collaboratively train a machine-learning model or perform data analytics over their combined encrypted data. In Delphi and MUSE, machine learning models execute on the clients input, without revealing the data to the model provider or leaking the model to the client.
The ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award is given to the outstanding young computer professional of the year, selected on the basis of a single recent major technical or service contribution. This award is accompanied by a prize of $35,000. The candidate must have been 35 years of age or less at the time the qualifying contribution was made. Financial support for this award is provided by Microsoft.
Xavier Leroy, Collge de France; Sandrine Blazy, University of Rennes 1, IRISA; Zaynah Dargaye, Nomadic Labs; Jacques-Henri Jourdan, CNRS, Laboratoire Mthodes Formelles; Michael Schmidt, AbsInt Angewandte Informatik; Bernhard Schommer, Saarland University and AbsInt Angewandte Informatik GmbH; and Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Boston College receive the ACM Software System Award for the development of CompCert, the first practically useful optimizing compiler targeting multiple commercial architectures that has a complete, mechanically checked proof of its correctness.
CompCert, initiated in 2005, is a compiler for the C programming language and the first industrial-strength compiler with a mechanically checked proof of correctness. It can be used with most computer architectures including PowerPC, ARM, RISC-V and x86 (32 and 64 bits) architectures.
When it was introduced, CompCert represented a major advance over other production compilers, because it did not experience miscompilation issues since it is formally verified using machine-assisted mathematical proofs. The code it produces is proved to behave exactly as specified by the semantics of the source C program. This level of confidence in the correctness of the compilation process enables CompCert to meet the highest levels of software assurance.
Today, CompCert continues as a research project at Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology and is available under commercial and noncommercial licenses (source code openly available for noncommercial use). Other researchers build on CompCert, and multiple corporations use it for safety-critical applications.
The ACM Software System Award is presented to an institution or individual(s) recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both. The Software System Award carries a prize of $35,000. Financial support for the Software System Award is provided by IBM.
Avrim Blum, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago; Irit Dinur, Weizmann Institute; Cynthia Dwork, Harvard University; Frank McSherry, Materialize Inc.;Kobbi Nissim, Georgetown University, and Adam Davison Smith, Boston University receive the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for their fundamental contributions to the development of differential privacy.
Differential privacy is a definition and framework for reasoning about privacy in statistical databases. While the privacy of individuals contributing to a dataset has been a long-standing concern, prior to the Kanellakis recipients work, computer scientists only knew how to mitigate several specific privacy attacks via a disparate set of techniques. The foundation for differential privacy emerged in the early 2000s from several key papers. At the ACM Symposium on the Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2003) Dinur and Nissim presented a paper which showed that any technique that allows reasonably accurate answers to a large number of queries is inherently non-private.
Later, a sequence of papers by Dwork and Nissim at the International Conference on Cryptology (Crypto 2004); as well as Blum, Dwork, McSherry, and Nissim at the ACM Symposium on the Principles of Database Systems (PODS 2005); and Dwork, McSherry, Nissim, and Smith at the Theory of Cryptology Conference (TCC 2006) further defined and studied the notion of differential privacy.
These separate but related papers formed a definition of differential privacy which captures the kind of privacy needed in statistical settings, where individual information must be protected while still allowing for discovery of common trends. These fundamental works created a vibrant and multidisciplinary area of research, leading to practical deployments of Differential Privacy in industry and by the U.S. Census Bureau, among other applications.
The authors also showed that their definition includes post-processing and composition properties that facilitate design, analysis, and applications of differentially private algorithms. The Laplace and the Gaussian noise mechanisms, which show differentially private analogs of statistical query learning algorithms, also grew out of the Kanellakis recipients work on differential privacy.
The ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award honors specific theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant and demonstrable effect on the practice of computing. This award is accompanied by a prize of $10,000 and is endowed by contributions from the Kanellakis family, with additional financial support provided by ACM's Special Interest Groups on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT), Design Automation (SIGDA), Management of Data (SIGMOD), and Programming Languages (SIGPLAN), the ACM SIG Projects Fund, and individual contributions.
Carla Gomes of Cornell University receives the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award for establishing and nurturing the field of computational sustainability and for foundational contributions to artificial intelligence.
Gomes is a leader in AI, particularly in reasoning, optimization, and the integration of learning and reasoning. She is the driving force behind the new subfield of computational sustainability, embodying the values of multidisciplinary research and social impact. Her research advances core computer science and AI while establishing rich connections to other disciplines.
Gomes has played a key role in advancing the integration of methods from AI and operations research. With collaborators, she pioneered randomized restarts and algorithm portfolios for combinatorial solvers. This work has had a tremendous practical impact on solvers for satisfiability (SAT), mixed integer programming (MIP), and satisfiability modulo theories (SMT). Gomes discovered and characterized heavy-tailed runtime distributions and backdoor variables in combinatorial search, explaining the large runtime variations of combinatorial solvers. She also introduced XOR-streamlining, a novel strategy for model counting that was a key step to further advances in efficient probabilistic inference.
Inspired by her early work on experiment design for nitrogen management and wildlife-corridor design, Gomes conceived an ambitious vision for computational sustainability: a highly interdisciplinary research area which incorporates computational thinking to solve critical sustainability challenges while.
As the lead principal investigator (PI) of two National Science Foundation (NSF) Expeditions Awards, Gomes has grown Computational Sustainability into a robust and vibrant subfield. She has shown that addressing challenges in sustainability often leads to transformative research in computer science, in addition to having a significant practical impact. Gomes and her collaborators developed a framework for computing the high-dimensional Pareto frontier of ecological and socio-economic tradeoffs of hydro dam expansion in the Amazon Rain Forest.
Gomes also pioneered the use of AI in materials discovery. Together with her team, she developed Deep Reasoning Networks, a novel computational paradigm integrating deep learning with constraint reasoning over rich prior knowledge. This framework was used to solve the crystal-structures phase-mapping problem, which led to the discovery of new solar fuel materials for sustainable energy storage.
The ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award is presented to an individual selected for career contributions that have breadth within computer science, or that bridge computer science and other disciplines. The Newell award is accompanied by a prize of $10,000, provided by ACM and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and by individual contributions.
About ACM ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the worlds largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the fields challenges. ACM strengthens the computing professions collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence.ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
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ACM celebrates technical achievements that drive far-reaching advances in technology - EurekAlert