News & Events
IPFW Middle School Career Day 2008 a Success
On Tuesday, February 12, almost two hundred middle school students from the Fort Wayne area rotated among a series of sessions here at IPFW designed to introduce them to potential professional fields of interest. The Computer Science Department featured an interactive presentation by Interim Chair Bob Sedlmeyer, entitled "Computer Science: More Than You Think!" The students eagerly responded to questions such as "If your friend tell you she Googled something, what does she mean?" To explain the students' responses, Professor Sedlmeyer informed the middle-schoolers of the surprising diversity and vast opportunities available in the field of computer science. The Department is committed to dispelling myths that computer science is a field dominated by the stereotypical "nerdy white male," citing numerous cases in which people such as artists, basketball stars, or beauty queens choose to study computer science in college. Stay tuned to learn more of the Department's increased dedication to outreach.
Dr. Yoo Receives $7,000 IPFW Summer Grant
Dr. Jin Yoo, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has been awarded a $7,000 Summer Faculty Grant. Dr. Yoo's research will focus on developing data mining techniques to identify social networks in which people interact closely in both space and time. The identification of such social networks is important within many application domains such as homeland defense, public health, business, and ecology.
Bowling Extravaganza
As the ball rolled down the oil-slicked lane, the anticipatory crowd began a low cheer. The ball cut across the lane at a convenient angle and struck the pins in the sweet spot of victory, gaining Computer Science Limited Term Lecturer Jacques Chansavang yet another strike and an extremely rowdy cheering section. Jacques' five strikes in a row were highly lauded as one of the most skillful performances at the IPFW Fall 2007 Computer Science Department Bowling Extravaganza, the highly anticipated event of the semester that took place on Thursday, November 01 at Georgetown Bowl.
An overwhelming turnout of both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff, filled up almost ten full lanes with bowlers of widely varying skill levels. On one lane, Dr. Gyorgy Petruska casually rolled his ball down the lane after claiming that the last time he bowled, the track was made of dirt, the pins were suspended on ropes, and the ball was wooden. A few lanes down, students brought their own personal bowling shoes and balls to prove their seriousness about the sport. As the games progressed, it became clear that mostly everyone present was just playing for fun, and the laughter was rampant as faculty almost slipped and fell whilst attempting to bowl in slippery shoes and as students climbed on each other's shoulders to take photographs of themselves pointing to their scores on the mounted TV screens. Interim Chair Bob Sedlmeyer proudly reached a personal best score of 200 during the course of the evening, an ego-boosting event that led him and the head of the CS graduate program, Dr. Beomjin Kim, to challenge two students to a grudge match. Much to the chagrin of the students involved, the professors proved that skill does not deteriorate with age.
Towards the end of the night, prizes were awarded in a wide variety of categories. Current president of the IPFW student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, undergraduate Taylor Venable, took the prestigious honor of Most Fashionable Bowling Shirt, while the vice president of the same student organization, Michael Mattax, took the Most Turkeys award home. Assistant Professor of Computer Science Dr. Lubomir Stanchev leapt gleefully in the air after every successful frame he bowling, yet insisted that he deserved the Worst Score prize, an honor that ultimately went to the friend of an undergraduate student.
It was a highly enjoyable event that resulted in many a sore wrist and hoarse voice the following day. Truly a tradition in the making for the computer science department. Who's up for round two?
Dr. Stanchev to Deliver First Fall 07 UPE Colloquium
Dr. Stanchev, Associate Professor of Computer Science, will present, "Revealing the Secrets of Writing a Research Paper and Getting it Published," a compilation of wisdom by Dr. Jennifer Widom, Professor from Stanford University and extremely successful researcher. Dr. Stanchev will outline the steps necessary to prepare a paper for publication and apply them to an example involving the topic of search trees.
The talk will take place on Friday, October 26, from Noon - 1 PM in ET 114. Free pizza and pop will be provided. The talk is sponsored by the IPFW UPE Chapter and the Department of Computer Science.
Fall 07 Bowling Extravaganza!
The CS Department and the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery present the Fall 2007 Bowling Extravaganza! On Thursday, November 01, all CS/IS majors and their guests are welcome to join the Department in an evening of bowling shenanigans for only $5.95 per person. This incredibly low price includes shoes and all the games you can bowl from 8:00 to 11:00 PM. If you need more incentive to participate, a wide variety of prizes will be available for categories such as Best Score, Most Gutterballs, and Least Fashionable Bowling Shirt. To sign up, stop by ET 125 or email snyderh@ipfw.edu.
Department Receives $5,000 Gift from Raytheon
The Department recently received a $5,000 gift from Raytheon Net-Centric Systems for support of the CS 360 Software Engineering class for Fall 2007. Read more...
IPFW to Participate in "Bring IT On!" Workshop
During the weekend of October 26, three students (Karen Negron, Jason Polubinsky, and Jessica Walker) and two faculty (Bob Sedlmeyer, Tammy Toscos) will be participating in the "Bring IT On!" workshop at IU Bloomington. The goals of the workshop, which is being hosted by the School of Informatics, are to encourage computer science students from Indiana colleges to develop K-12 outreach programs for their schools, and explore research opportunities in computing for themselves. Tammy Toscos, a Ph. D. candidate in Informatics and Visiting Instructor, is a member of the organizing committee.
Erbach hosts "Lunch with a Scientist"
As part of IPFW's "Lunch with a Scientist" partnership with Fort Wayne's Science Museum, Professor David Erbach recently demonstrated a Science Olympiad model for a group of young people from fort Wayne and as far away as Indianapolis. Read more...
Department Receives $5,000 Gift from Raytheon
The Department recently received a $5,000 gift from Raytheon Net-Centric Systems for support of the CS 360 Software Engineering class for Fall 2007. The funds from this grant will be used to support specific CS 360 software and materials. It will also provide for general support to the CS Department for purchase of hardware and software to support related courses and projects. Some of the funding will also enable these software teams to showcase their projects in state and regional conferences.
CS 360 is designed specifically to enable Computer Science majors to participate in realistic software development experiences. It is part of a two-course sequence which covers the breadth of software engineering and professional ethics. It consists of a year-long team project for an external customer. Students gain experience with lifecycle activities and hone their communication skills through formal presentations, reports, and user interaction. Students also research and present an advanced topic in software engineering.
During the 2006-2007 academic year, CS students at IPFW completed two Raytheon projects named Battlespace Widgets. These projects utilized an emerging technology, widgets, to create applications that displayed and manipulated unit and weapons targeting information using a small window display and processing footprint. The results of these CS Senior Projects are now being used and demonstrated at the Raytheon MSI Capability Center in Fort Wayne.
Erbach hosts "Lunch with a Scientist"
As part of IPFW's "Lunch with a Scientist" partnership with Fort Wayne's Science Museum, Professor David Erbach recently demonstrated a Science Olympiad model for a group of young people from fort Wayne and as far away as Indianapolis. After introducing the rules for the Science Olympiad, he talked about the puzzle of lift and how it is generated. Then he discussed the question of how airplanes fly in a steady and stable way, unlike, say, a football. Finally, after showing the students how to trim balsa gliders for steady flight, he oversaw a friendly competition in which the students tried to make their gliders fly as far as possible, and stay aloft for as many seconds as possible.
The Science Olympiad is national program designed to encourage junior and senior high school students to take an interest in the sciences and technology. One of the events is the Wright Stuff. Wright Stuff participants build a light-weight rubber-powered model airplane which can be flown indoors.
Robocode Tournament
In a dimly lit room in the ETCS building on a typical Friday afternoon, mass carnage was taking place� in the digital world. The local student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery worked with the Computer Science Department to bring Robocode, an open-source educational game designed to help people learn to program in Java, to campus for an afternoon of battling bots. The Robocode website provides methods which students can use to build a virtual robot from scratch, in addition to sample bots that can simply be improved and personalized. IPFW Computer Science students Ben Aeschliman and Landan Hicks were the two brave programmers who attempted to create bots fit enough to defeat the Interim Chair of the CS Department, Bob Sedlmeyer. In the one-on-one challenge, Aeschliman�s bot �Monolith� destroyed all in its path, while Hicks� �Neo3� took the top prize in the melee competition. Sedlmeyer�s resounding defeat was taken in good humour, and he provided a one dollar prize to each bot that conquered his. Aeschliman reveled in his victory and, when asked to comment on the event, declared, �Thanks for the money.� So be careful when dealing with programmers� they might just create a tiny virtual robot with one purpose in mind: to destroy all other tiny virtual robots. And then ask for a dollar.
Techs on Turf
It was a beautiful, sunny day in September when a small group of computer scientists from IPFW embarked on the 1st Annual Computer Science Department Golf Open, entitled �Techs on Turf.� The participants were few, but the competition was fierce as students and faculty alike battled it out at Shoaff Park for the title of victors and the chance to be the proud owners of the traveling trophy, constructed from discarded computer parts. Eventually, senior CS majors Josh Elwood and Dan Schafer emerged victorious over the likes of Interim Chair Bob Sedlmeyer, the lone Information Systems major at the event, Roman White, and the CS Graduate Aide, Jason Baker, who had never set foot on a golf course before this event. With more than a few double bogeys and much camaraderie, the afternoon concluded with a celebratory feast at Pizza Hut.
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