CSC eNewsletter

Welcome to the online edition of CSC eNews, a monthly electronic newsletter for alumni and friends of the Department of Computer Science at NC State University.

If you are a CSC alum and wish to be added to the email distribution list, click here. Corporate or individual friends of the department may be added to our distribution list by sending an email request to Ken Tate, Director of Development & External Relations for the NCSU Department of Computer Science.

September 30, 2005

$1B Campaign Launched - CoE Receives Largest Individual Gift Ever

On Friday, September 23rd, NC State University Chancellor James Oblinger and Board of Trustees Chairman Wendell Murphy launched the university's largest comprehensive fund-raising campaign - Achieve! The Campaign for NC State - announcing a goal of $1 billion. NC State is one of fewer than 50 universities in the nation to undertake a campaign of $1 billion or more. As part of the campaign kickoff festivities, Oblinger also announced two of the largest gifts ever given to the university, including a $10 million gift by Edward P. Fitts, a 1961 engineering alumnus and CEO of Dopaco, to endow and name the Department of Industrial Engineering. This is the largest gift ever received by the College of Engineering from an individual donor and the largest endowed gift to academics in NC State's history. The Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial Engineering will be the first named academic department in the history of the university. The campaign, which has been in its "quiet phase" since 2001, already has pledges totaling more than $800M. It will run through June 2008. more

CSC alumni wishing to participate in the campaign should contact Ken Tate, director of development & external relations at 919-513-4292 or kmtate2@ncsu.edu.

Departmental Research Grants, Gifts, and Support

Congratulations to Dr. Xiaosong Ma, assistant professor of computer science, who was recently awarded the prestigious Early Career Primary Investigator Award by the U.S. Department of Energy in support of her research proposal titled "Runtime DataManagement for Data-Intensive Scientific Applications". The award, valued at $300,000, will run from August 15th of this year through August 14, 2008. DOE Early Career Primary Investigator Awards are one of the highest honors given to young university faculty in science and engineering, and are the DOE's equivalent of the NSF's Career Award.

Thanks to Fujitsu, ABB, SlickEdit, Field2Base, SchoolDude and Crispin for sponsoring senior design projects this fall. These Corporate Friends, along with Super ePartners SAS Institute, Tekelec, EMC, Cisco and John Deere, have provided us a full slate of 13 sponsored projects this semester.

Hewlett-Packard has donated two fully loaded HP Workstations to the department, valued at $10,000. The equipment will be used in the Center for Visualization and Analytics.

Corporate Friend, IBM, recently awarded a 2005-06 PhD Fellowship Award to Evan Martin, valued at almost $24,000.

Congratulations to Dr. Laurie Williams, whose proposal titled "Academy for Software Engineering Educators & Trainers" has been funded for $10,000 by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award will run from September 1st of this year through August 31, 2006.

NC State has been awarded a $250,00 NSF grant over the next three years for working with other land grant and historically black institutions to develop a model curriculum for improving the ethics education of graduate students in science and engineering. Dr. Edward Gehringer, associate professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering, will coordinate the computer science and engineering module of the LANGURE (Land Grant University Research Ethics) program. The LANGURE initiative will include examples of ethical behavior from business and industry, and Super ePartner SAS Institute will collaborate with LANGURE's teams. more

Dwain and Gayle Lanier Scholarship Endowment

Computer Science Strategic Advisory Board member, Gayle Lanier (IE '82), and her husband Dwain (ACC '79), have donated $25,000 to the College of Engineering to fund scholarships. Dwain is director of Fossil Fuels at Progress Energy, and Gayle is vice president of Global Corporate Operations at Nortel Networks. Gayle also serves on the NC State University Board of Visitors and the NC State Engineering Foundation Board of Directors. The Laniers are members of NC State's Polk Society, a lifetime giving society.

Corporate Partners Among 2005 Best Places to Work in Triangle

The Triangle Business Journal recently released its 2005 list of the "Best Places to Work" in the Triangle, an honor for local companies for creating truly outstanding work environments. And without surprise, this year's list contains some very familiar names. Congratulations to award winners EMC, Cisco Systems, Network Appliance, and Epic Games, all corporate partners with the department of computer science.

New Real-time Online Wolfline Tracking System Designed by CSC Alumni Start-up

When students returned to the NC State University campus this fall, they had a new resource for navigating the Wolfline system. The University Transportation Office contracted with TransLoc, a company founded by four NC State computer science alumni, to offer real-time information on the location of each of the Wolfline buses through a website. Joshua Whiton (BSCSC '04), cofounder and chief executive officer of TransLoc, came up with the idea for an online, Web-based locator for buses while waiting for the bus with his friend and cofounder Dominique Bischof (BSCSC '03, MSCSC '04). "People had kicked around the idea for a while, but no one ever really pursued it," said Whiton. "We were standing at the bus stop and just said that it was possible and then set out to make it happen." The team, which also includes Jesse Lovelace (BSCSC '05) and Justin Harris (BSCSC '04), formed an intelligent transportation system (ITS) company to develop and market the innovative Transit Visualization System (TVS) that provides real-time tracking of multiple vehicles. more & Technician Online Article

Alumnus Wins Award

Congratulations to CSC alumnus, Robert Allison (BS 1987), for winning DM Review magazine's data visualization dashboard contest. Robert, who works at SAS Institute in Cary, is featured in the September issue of DM Review. A full-size view of his award-winning sales dashboard can be found here.

'Quad' Reborn as Honors Village

On-campus residents of Honors Village, a partnership between University Housing and the University Honors Program, are reaping the benefits of an $18M renovation and construction project that began last December. Bagwell, Becton and Berry, the residence halls built in the 1920s and known as the "Quad", were completely overhauled in nine months. Honors Village Commons, a new building that will serve as a community center for the village, is scheduled to open at the end of October. more

NC State Ranks Second in Nation in Engineering BS Degrees, Third Overall

According to data released by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the College of Engineering at NC State University has moved from third to second place in the number of BS degrees awarded among all engineering colleges in the nation. These figures from ASEE cover the 2003-04 academic year. The College of Engineering at NC State routinely ranks in the top ten, usually in fifth or sixth place, but this is the first time it has climbed to second place. NC State's engineering college ranks third - just after Georgia Tech and Michigan - in the total number of degrees awarded, which includes BS, master of science (MS) and doctoral (PhD) degrees. NC State ranks seventh in MS degrees and eleventh in PhDs awarded. more

Mr. and Ms. Wuf Moonlight as Engineers

You see them at football games and basketball games, on TV and at major college events. Mr. and Ms. Wuf, the furry mascots for the Wolfpack, are arguably the busiest couple at NC State. One would never guess that they could possibly have time to pursue engineering degrees, but for chemical and biomolecular engineering seniors Julian Willoughby and Mary Andrews balancing mascot engagements and engineering studies is a way of life. (Photo: courtesy Media Relations, NC State University). more

April 28, 2006 - Save the Date!

All alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends of the department are encouraged to reserve April 28, 2006 at 3 pm in your calendar for the official dedication ceremony for EBII on Centennial Campus. This will be a very special day in the soon-to-be 40-year history of the department and we hope that you can be with us to celebrate. More details will be forthcoming in the coming months.

IBM 'Women in Technology Day'

Females in CSC, take note - On Friday, October 7th, IBM will be hosting 50 Women Engineering/Computer Science Students from local Universities in a Technology "Mini-Day". The session is scheduled to run from 9 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. in the IBM Executive Briefing Center in RTP. A few of the activities planned for the day include a briefing and demo of products by IBM's premiere internship program (Extreme Blue), a presentation from one of their women Distinguished Engineers, facility and lab tours, and a networking lunch and recruiting presentation. Since a portion of the event will be dedicated to a recruiting presentation, participants are encouraged to come with an updated resume.

Space is limited; pre-registration is required. If you wish to participate, please send an email to Alissa Feig at afeig@us.ibm.com with the following information:

Name
University
Country of Origin
Citizenship*
Date of Birth (only if not a US citizen)
Class level (i.e, sophomore, junior or faculty member)
Major
Email

*Home Land Security requires that Chinese Nationals register 3 months in advance of an on-site event. Unfortunately, because of the timing of this event we are unable to accommodate this group.

'Road to Red Hat' Events

Students, are you aware that one of the leading technology companies of the 21st century is headquartered in your backyard? Are you knowledgeable about Linux and open source? Did you know that Red Hat hosts one of the premier summer internship programs in the Triangle? And have you heard that Red Hat started a co-op program for engineering students in January 2005? Find out more by attending the monthly 'Road to Red Hat' events at Red Hat's Centennial Campus headquarters on Oct. 24th and Nov. 28th. Each event will start promptly at 5:30 pm. There will be PIZZA, guest speakers and Red Hat representatives on-site to answer your questions. In addition, Red Hat will give away an open enrollment RHCE-track class seat to one lucky attendee. See you on the 'Road to Red Hat'. more

CED's InfoTech 2005 Scheduled for October 12

Information Technology entrepreneurs, executives and investors are encouraged to attend the Council for Entrepreneurial Development's InfoTech 2005 to explore critical issues affecting entrepreneurial technology development. InfoTech is also a great place to see demos of North Carolina's hottest new technologies and is packed with current pertinent IT panel topics and expert speakers. This year's event will be held on October 12th at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center. Visit http://www.cednc.org/conferences/infotech/2005/ for program details, registration and sponsorship information. We proudly recognize the CED as one of our valued corporate friends.

CSC Faculty / Staff News

Congratulations to Dr. Annie Antón, associate professor of computer science, who was recently awarded one of four "Women of Influence" awards at the 2005 Executive Women's Forum in Phoenix, AZ. The awards are sponsored by CSO Magazine, and Dr. Anton will be featured along with the other winners in their December '05 issue. The award is given for the excellent exercise of influence - both within an organization and across the security ecosystem as a whole.

Dr. Jaewoo Kang, assistant professor of computer science, who has been selected to represent NC State University in the Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship Award Program. Congratulations to Dr. Kang, and we wish him the best as the competition continues.

Alumnus Dr. Frank Wang, now a professor at George Mason University, was featured recently in an article in the New Jersey Star Ledger, on the work he is doing to provide authorities the ability to trace Internet-based phone calls. Wang's PhD advisor at NC State, Dr. Douglas Reeves, is also cited in the article, which details the counterterrorism benefits as well as its potential threat to personal privacy and free speech. Click here to read the article.

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