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Computer Science eNewsletter

Sentiment Sleuths

Photo of Tweet Viz graphicDr. Christopher Healey's 'Tweet Viz' tool offers a new way to assess the Presidential Debates, allowing users to gauge the overall public sentiment based on Twitter activity! While Healey created customized tools for the presidential and vice-presidential debates, the tool can be used for almost any topic, from strife in Syria to Super Bowl games to Lindsay Lohan’s latest exploits. “Twitter Viz brings to life the types of things you can learn from computer science,” Healey says. “And getting the general public interested in what we study – and why – is an important component of what we do as academics and computer scientists.” more

New Tool Aims to Ensure Software Security Policies Reflect User Needs

Led by Dr. Tao Xie, researchers from NC State University and IBM Research have developed a new natural language processing tool that businesses or other customers can use to ensure that software developers have a clear idea of the security policies to be incorporated into new software products. more

Fidelity Investments Speakers Series Presents James Stikeleather

Photo of James StikeleatherPlease join us on November 15th at 6 pm in Lecture Hall 1231 EBII for our next fall 2012 talk in the Fidelity Investments “Leadership in Technology” Executive Speakers Series. Our special guest speaker will be James Stikeleather, Executive Strategist, Innovation for Dell Computer. His talk topic will be “How to Bolster the Impact of Today’s CIO – Moving Beyond Faster, Better, Cheaper.” more

Zhang Receives IBM Ph.D. Watson Solutions Scholarship

Congratulations to Zhe Zhang, a graduate student in the computer science department at NC State University, who was recently awarded a prestigious IBM Ph.D. Watson Solutions Scholarship valued at $10,000. more

Researchers Unveil New Technique to Detect Bots in Casual Online Games

Casual online games, such as FarmVille and Fantastic Contraption, have thousands of enthusiastic followers – but the use of automated “bots” to give some players an advantage is short-changing the companies behind the games. Now researchers from NC State have developed a new technique to help companies identify these bots, and take action against them. more

Young and Buie Named 2012 NC State Libraries Faculty Award Winners

Photo of Tim Buie & Michael YoungDr. R. Michael Young (pictured at right in photo), Professor in the Computer Science Department, and Mr. Tim Buie, Associate Professor in the Department of Graphic and Industrial Design at NC State University, have been named the 2012 NC State Libraries Faculty Award Winners. This is the second year in a row that a faculty member from the Computer Science Department has been recognized. In 2011, Dr. Douglas Reeves, Director of Computer Science Graduate Programs and Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State, was the recipient. more

Students Perform Well at ACM “Battle of the Brains” Qualifier

Several NC State Computer Science students finished strong in the ACM ICPC North American Qualifier Competition last month. These students, now competing in teams of three, will advance to the Mid-Atlantic Regionals to be held on November 10th. more

State of the University

Chancellor Randy Woodson praised students, faculty and staff at his annual State of the University address in Stewart Theatre and highlighted NC State’s successes in research, faculty investment, academic excellence, economic impact and more. more

Ford Receives 2012 Facebook Grace Hopper Scholarship

Photo of Denae Ford.Congratulations to Denae Ford, a junior in the NC State Computer Science Department, on being one of 25 recipients worldwide of a 2012 Facebook Grace Hopper Scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. In addition to attending the conference October 3-6 in Baltimore, Maryland, Ford also has the opportunity to go to Facebook’s New York engineering office to meet Facebook engineers and attend tech talks. more

Poultry Science Receives $10 Million Naming Gift

Thanks to a $10M transformational gift, NC State’s Department of Poultry Science will be renamed the Prestage Family Department of Poultry Science in honor of Bill and Marsha Prestage and their family, longtime supporters of NC State and owners of Prestage Farms, a poultry and pork production company headquartered in Clinton, N.C. This becomes the 2nd named department at NC State. more

Departmental Gifts & Research

Jesse Fearrington Jr. (B.S. CSC ‘73) and his wife Barbara, have donated $3,000 plus a matching corporate gift, as unrestricted support for the department.

Tekelec has donated $25,000 to the department in support of student scholarships, the Sr. Design Center and the ePartners Program.

Deutsche Bank Global Technology has donated $25,000 to the department in support of the Sr. Design Center and the ePartners Program.

Dr. Will Enck has received an award of $167,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research proposal titled “Characterizing the Security Limitations of Accessing the Mobile Web.” more

Congratulations to Dr. Tao Xie who has been awarded over $100,000 to fund two research proposals. The first award, from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is valued at $60,000 and supports his proposal titled “Differential Analysis on Changes in Medical Device Software.” The second award, from the US Department of Commerce (DOC)/NIST, is valued at $50,000 and supports his research proposal titled “Diagraph method in Detecting Rule Faults for Attribute Based Access Control Policies.” more

Drs. Emerson Murphy-Hill and Sarah Heckman have received an award of $250,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support their research proposal titled “Expressive and Scalable Notifications from Program Analysis Tools.” more

Drs. Xuxian Jiang and Peng Ning have received an award of $150,000 from the US Army - ARO to support their research proposal titled “A Hybrid Computing Testbed for Mobile Threat Detection and Enhanced Research and Education in Information Assurance.” more

Dr. Xiaosong Ma has been awarded $14,703 in supplemental funding by the UT-Battelle, LLC to support her joint faculty appointment with NC State and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL). Total funding for the project is $80,868, and the award runs through August 15, 2013. more

CSC Wolf Bytes

The department welcomes new staff additions: Ms. Tenille Naumann joins the department as our new Financial Officer. Tenille has been with NC State University for over 7 years, most recently with the ECE department. Mr. Tyler Reece (B.S. CSC ’12) joins the CSC IT team as a part-time Assistant Linux Administrator.

Congratulations to Dr. Yao Liu for being named Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida. She received her Ph.D in Computer Science from NC State in 2012 under the guidance of Dr. Peng Ning.

Dr. Rada Chirkova has been named senior member of the ACM effective October 22, 2012.

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. Experienced alumni looking for career assistance are encouraged to take advantage of NC State's Alumni Career Service.