Computer Science News

 ACM Programming Contest

Students from Gonzaga’s ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Chapter competed recently in thePacific Region Programming Contest.  The Pacific Region is comprised of student chapters in Alaska, Hawaii, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, northern/central California and western Nevada. The following teams traveled to the competition on November, 15.

The contest runs for five hours, during which a team attempts to solve as many problems as possible. Contest problems are story problems, and the solution is a computer program that must produce output according to the input data and the requirements as stated in the problem. This output must be exactly correct and the program must execute quickly. Problems are typically "real world" computing tasks and often more difficult to solve than they appear.

Object Disoriented

•  Andrew Rueckert
•  Molly Van Ryn
• Reed Thompkins

Scorpion C-Strings

• Rob Nertney
• Justin Funston
• Ryan King

Attack of the Marmots

• Chris Sullins
• Jay Kudo
• Thomas Jones

08 Graduates Receive Offers

The 2008 Computer Science graduates have begun to receive outstanding offers of employment and funding for graduate education.  Several students have received offers of full funding at prestigious graduate programs. Congratulations to our students for their excellent placements.

Ryan Datteri accepted a research assistantship and two fellowship scholarships from Vanderbilt University.  He also received job offers from Boeing and Fluke and was accepted to Columbia University.

Ann Kilzer accepted full funding in the form of a teaching assistantship at the University of Texas at Austin.  She plans to work towards a PhD.  She has also accepted an internship this summer with the Platforms Group at Google and received funding offers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, University of Arizona and University of New Mexico.

Kelli Bacon accepted a tuition waiver and assistantship position with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She also received a job offer from Boeing.

Aaron Moore has been offered funding at the University of Texas at Dallas and is on the waiting list for Carnegie Mellon University.

Brandon Simons has accepted a job offer from Microsoft. He was also offered employment at Attunix and NextIT.

Jeff Browne has been offered a fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also received funding offers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Colorado and Georgia Tech.

Student Research- NASA, Google and More…

Jacob Pfeiffer, ‘08, received a paid research internship at the National Aeronautics Space Administration’s Ames Research Center after graduation. The Center is a leader in information technology research with a focus on supercomputing, networking and intelligent systems, Ames conducts the critical research and develops the enabling technologies that make NASA missions possible.  Jacob will be working on programs to improve the speed in which air traffic controllers can adjust to a new air space sector.

Ann Kilzer, ‘08, accepted a prestigious paid internship with Google Systems after graduation. The Platforms team designs and builds the software, hardware, computing platform and networking technologies that power all of Google's services.

Thomas Jones, ‘09, participated in a National Science Foundation program at the Colorado School of Mines. The REU was held in Hong Kong, giving Thomas the opportunity to study abroad this summer.

New Computer Cluster

The School of Engineering and Applied Science received a large donation of network servers and components ($778,000) from Intel. The Intel gift will be part of the Intel Corporation Computational Science Laboratory (ICCSL).  This gift will provide a state-of-the-art computational presence that undergraduate students will be able to use for research projects.

The ICSL will provide the computational tools necessary for faculty and students at Gonzaga University to fulfill their research agenda and plan larger scale research in the future.

2008 Senior Design Teams

Congratulations to the 2008 Computer Science graduates.  The students presented their Senior Design Team projects in May before Engineering Advisory Board members and industry representatives.

	Ann Kilzer, Tim Seegan, Ryan Datteri and Sean Ahern worked on an Image Labeler project.
Aaron Moore, Kyle Swift and Jeff Browne created a Web Assessment Tool.

Dr. Yerion Publishes in International Research Journal

Gonzaga Computer Science faculty, Kathie Yerion, PhD, will have an article published in the international research journal, Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications.  Her article, “A Finite Difference Method for Modeling the Formation of Animal Coat Patterns” used a math model to create patterns that might be seen in animal coats.  The results were then compared to real patterns found in various animal species.  Two GU students, Eileen Bassiri and Margaret George, are listed as co-authors and received funding through a research grant to run the computer experiments with Yerion. 

The math model created possible patterns for animal appearances and the frequency that certain patterns might appear in the animal kingdom.  This research created some interesting results by combining animals like zebras and raccoons into the same pattern group while showing that certain patterns on snake skins can be quite common across different genus of reptiles. 

After the coat patterns were broken into categories and studied, co-author, GU Professor Rob Bryant, worked with Yerion to create graphics from the initial research.  Dr. Yerion handled the underlying numerical method for approximating solutions to a system of nonlinear partial differential equations but credits the research team for a great outcome. Yerion said she wasn’t surprised by the study results, but was pleased that the math model worked as they hoped.  She says, “These patterns and animal images are good evidence that our model and method can produce a variety of real life animal coat patterns.” 

Datteri Chosen as Finalist

Ryan Datteri ('08) is a finalist in the prestigious Michael B. Merickel Best Student Paper competition.  Ryan’s research paper, Local Versus Global Texture Analysis for Lung Nodule Image Retrieval, was chosen from nearly 80 submissions from around the world.

Ryan worked on the medical imaging software while serving on a National Science Foundation internship at DePaul University last summer.  He built an application for radiologists to use that, when queried concerning a lung nodule that the radiologist isn't certain is cancerous, will return similar lung nodules whose results are known so the radiologist can compare the questionable nodule to them. The competition is offered by SPIE, an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light.

Dr. Crowley Receives New Grant

GU faculty, Patricia Crowley, PhD, has received a $75,000 grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.  She will work with colleagues at the University of New Mexico to  create a robust network of sensors that can be reprogrammed during a failure caused by WMD (weapons of mass destruction).   (Crowley, 3rd from left, helps Computer Science 121 students rebuild computers for elementary school children in Africa)

Dr. Crowley's research group at Gonzaga, SESL (Scalable and Embedded Systems Lab), is working on improving the framework used to program sensors to allow for reprogramming.  She says the research will focus on a sensor network that will allow military or emergency personnel better access to information during an emergency.  Currently, sensor networks send information back from crisis areas to databases in the US for processing.  If the network that moves the data back to the US is compromised, the people that are on the ground can get no information from the sensors (like the nature and path of a chemical plume for example).

Crowley states, "This new technology would hopefully allow people who are local to get information from sensors that are local when there is a failure or an emergency so that personnel can use the information to get out of harm's way.  The ultimate hope for active data management is to save lives."

The funding will equip a small sensor network laboratory and pay student researchers to complete the fundamental infrastructure needed for active data management.

Computers for Kids in Africa 

Gonzaga students combined computer science study with social justice this fall. Computer Science 121 students rebuilt donated computers for technologically-disadvantaged elementary schools in Kenya and Nambia. Assistant Professor, Patricia Crowley, came up with the idea because students expressed interest in curriculum with real-world application and meaning. She hopes this project will meet those interests while teaching students the basics of computer hardware.

She adds that one concern facing the computer science industry is the lack of women interested in the field. "One of the reasons we believe women are not choosing computer science is that they are intimidated by the machine itself." She hopes that tearing machines apart and rebuilding them, "Will demystify the machine and allow any student who is not comfortable with technology to realize that there is no magic involved; just good problem solving and a screwdriver."

Dr. Crowley Receives NASA Grant

Computer Science faculty, Patricia Crowley, Ph.D., has received a grant from NASA to conduct computer research. Dr. Crowley’s project is to create a way of handling the bulk transfer of large amounts of data using inexpensive, small machines. The $40,000 grant comes from the National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA) Small Business Innovation Research Program.  NASA selects research proposals that will meet specific research and development needs of the federal government while supporting small businesses.  The program awarded approximately $25 million to qualified projects in one year..

Dr. Crowley’s project was one of more than 200 projects chosen from 1,709 applications.  She is working with SeaFire, Inc. in Massachusetts to study Grid computing.  She says the project will, “research the efficacy and fairness of a protocol-bypass approach to offloading UDP.”  The project is important to allowing businesses to use both UDP and TCP protocol without expensive hardware.