In This IssueeNewsletter Archive

---

Singh Honored as Member of Research Leadership Academy

Dr. Munindar Singh, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the NC State Computer Science Department, is one of 12 faculty members to be selected for the university’s Research Leadership Academy, and the 2016-2017 Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award. The academy promotes a culture of research leadership at NC State and operates as the faculty-driven epicenter for the development and implementation of best practices in the empowerment of research faculty at all levels of the university. more

---

Study Finds Gender Bias in Open-Source Programming

A study comparing acceptance rates of contributions from men and women in an open-source software community finds that, overall, women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s – but when a woman’s gender is identifiable, they are rejected more often. “There are a number of questions and concerns related to gender bias in computer programming, but this project was focused on one specific research question: To what extent does gender bias exist when pull requests are judged on GitHub?” says Dr. Emerson Murphy-Hill, corresponding author of a paper on the study and an associate professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. more

---

Compelling "Not So Silent" Film Project a Success for NC State’s Visual Narrative Cluster

One of the newest additions to the iPearl Immersion Theatre in the Hunt Library is a collaborative exhibit that combines art, design, and computer science - the 'Not So Silent' film project. Everyone begins with the same content: clips of black and white American Western films, and Pride and Prejudice title cards. After considering the clips, visitors are able to assemble them any way they want to create their own story. Once these sequences of clips are gathered from visitors, analysis is done to eventually train algorithms that could combine small units of narrative to create richer stories. Dr. Arnav Jhala, Co-Director of the Visual Narrative Cluster and Associative Professor of Computer Science, explains the original idea behind the exhibit. “We wanted to create a system that would simultaneously allow us to gather data on how people create many types of stories from a small set of visual units in the form of an engaging and enjoyable experience.” more

---

Enck Earns Distinguished Paper Award at ASIACCS

Dr. William Enck, associate professor of Computer Science in the NC State Computer Science Department, is among a group of researchers who recently won a Distinguished Paper Award at the ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS) held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, April 2-6, 2017. The paper’s co-authors include Ruowen Wang, a PhD alumnus from the NC State Computer Science Department, Ninghui Li, professor of Computer Science at Purdue University, and Ahmed Azab, Peng Ning, Xun Chen, Wenbo Shen and Yueqiang Cheng from Samsung Research America. more

---

Lester Wins 2017 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award

IFAAMAS (the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems) has selected an article co-authored by Dr. James Lester of NC State University, Dr. Lewis Johnson of Alelo, and the late Dr. Jeff Rickel of the University of Southern California as a recipient of the 2017 Influential Paper Award. The article, entitled “Animated pedagogical agents: Face-to-face interaction in interactive learning environments”, laid the groundwork for a wide range of educational products incorporating animated agent technology. more

---

CSC Grads Challenged to Take New Computer Science Oath

More than 250 BS, MS and PhD candidates celebrated their graduation during the Computer Science Department’s Spring Diploma Ceremony held Thursday, May 11 at NC State's newly renovated William Neal Reynolds Coliseum. More than 1,500 relatives, friends and guests were on hand for the celebration, as well as thousands joining in on the live streaming broadcast. The top employers for CSC graduates in 2016-17 are Amazon, IBM, SAS, VM ware, Fidelity Investments, LexisNexis and Cisco Systems. During her remarks, guest speaker and alumna, Dr. Beth Mynatt lamented that the field of computer science lacks a professional oath to bind them together at this important moment as they embark on their careers. In the spirit of the medical field's Hippocratic oath, she challenged the graduates to join her and take an oath, as a formal recognition of the importance of our field to the wellbeing of society, and our collective responsibility to fulfill our obligations. more

---

Social, Computer Scientists Want to Share Data on Group Behavior

Computer and social scientists have collaborated to develop a large data set on how group behavior and technology influence decision-making – and they want to share that data with other researchers. The data stems from an experiment conducted by Dr. Joann Keyton and Paul Jones, a computer science Ph.D. student at NC State, designed to evaluate group interaction and how it influences individual decision-making. The work was made possible by the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS), a research partnership between NC State and the National Security Agency. more

---

Game Design Program Ranked #13!

NC State comes in at #13 on Animation Career Review’s list of Top 25 Public Game Design Schools & Colleges! more

---

Device Allows Users to Manipulate 3-D Virtual Objects More Quickly

Researchers at North Carolina State University, including Drs. Christopher Healey and Rob St. Amant, have developed a user-friendly, inexpensive controller for manipulating virtual objects in a computer program in three dimensions. The device allows users to manipulate objects more quickly – with less lag time – than existing technologies. The device, called CAPTIVE, offers six degrees of freedom (6DoF) for users – with applications ranging from video gaming to medical diagnostics to design tools. And CAPTIVE makes use of only three components: a simple cube, the webcam already found on most smartphones and laptops, and custom software. more

---

NC State Names Class of 2021 Park Scholars

North Carolina State University’s Park Scholarships program has named 39 students to its Class of 2021. The group includes four students who intend to major in computer science - more than 10% of this year's Park Scholars! The Park Scholarships program brings exceptional students to NC State based on outstanding accomplishments and potential in scholarship, leadership, service, and character. The four-year scholarship is valued at up to $107,000 in-state and up to $186,000 out-of-state, including tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, travel, and personal expenses. Park Scholarships include opportunities for innovative enrichment activities such as grants for undergraduate research and study abroad, making this award one of the most prestigious and comprehensive undergraduate scholarships in the nation. more

---

Departmental Gifts & Research

LabCorp has donated $10,000 to the department in support of the Sr. Design Center.

American Red Cross has donated $7,500 to the department in support of the ePartners Programs and the Sr. Design Center.

Fujitsu has donated $5,000 to the department in support of the Sr. Design Center.

Charles Schwab has donated $5,000 to the department in support of the Sr. Design Center.

David & Karen Whitley made a stock gift valued at approximately $2,400 to benefit the Diversity in Computer Science Scholarship Endowment.

LexisNexis has donated $25,000, as an unrestricted faculty award to support the teaching and research efforts of Dr. Tim Menzies.

The Guiding Eyes for the Blind has donated $1,000, as an unrestricted faculty gift to support Dr. David Roberts.

Dr. Xipeng Shen has been awarded $28,296 by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to support his, and PhD student Randall Pittman's, research proposal entitled “Optimizing CNN Ensemble-based Deep Learning.” more

Dr. Min Chi has been awarded $297,754 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support her research proposal entitled “Using Real-Time Multichannel Self-Regulated Learning Data to Enhance Student Learning and Teachers’ Decision-Making with MetaDash.” more

Dr. Nagiza Samatova has been awarded $16,226 in supplemental funding by Duke University to support her research proposal entitled “Gender Differences in the Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease in ADNI-1 MCI.” Total funding for the project is now $61,226. more

Dr. Hung-Wei Tseng has been awarded $174,998 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research proposal entitled “Rethinking the FTL in SSDs – a File Translation Layer Instead of a Flash Translation Layer.” more

Drs. Arnav Jhala and Christopher Parnin have been awarded $29,999 by Lenovo to support their research proposal entitled “TrackWhere: An App for Tracking and Visualizing Communication Across Teams During Product Lifecycle.” more

Drs. Douglas Reeves and Jason King have been awarded $234,839 by the National Security Agency to support their research proposal entitled “An Innovative Curriculum for Cyber Security Education.” more

---

CSC Wolf Bytes

Congratulations to Dr. Tiffany Barnes, and her husband Okan Pala, on the birth of a healthy baby girl!

---

Follow the Department on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter!

Alumni, students, faculty, staff, and corporate partners of the NC State Department of Computer Science, interested in networking to foster collaboration, entrepreneurship, partnerships, career development and professional growth are invited to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

---

Personalized Job Search Agent in ePack

If you are a CSC student or recent graduate (within 12 months post-graduation) and would like to receive email notifications when new jobs are posted on ePack matching your profile, you can set up your own customized job search agent to receive just the postings you desire (intern vs. full time, etc). For a short video tutorial on how to create your own personalized job agent, click here.

The Alumni Association has partnered with the University Career Development Center to make ePACK available to NC State alumni. If you are a current Alumni Association member, update your online profile by visiting the Wolfpack Connect (alumni directory) and click on the ‘Update My Info’ tab on the upper right side of the page. Select the ‘Career Connections’ tab and then choose ‘yes’ beside the question, ‘Do you want access to ePACK?’

To access ePACK you must be a member of the Alumni Association and you must be an alumnus/alumnae of NC State. If you are not a member of the Alumni Association, you can join online. Once you have received an email confirming your membership, you will be able to register for access to ePACK.

Questions: Contact Manager of Alumni Career Services, Anna Velleggia at anna_velleggia@ncsu.edu