The Baltimore Code Craftsmanship meetup group will hold its monthly meeting at 7:00pm on Thursday, January 16 in the ITE building on the UMBC Campus. The meetup is for the students and software developers in the Baltimore area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

This is a hands on coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your laptop equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don’t have a laptop, come anyway, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

Join the meetup and register to attend here.

UMBC chess director and CSEE Professor Alan Sherman just shared the final results of the 2013 Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Team Championship which was held over the past four days in Lubbock Texas. UMBC place second after Webster Univ. and ahead of Illinois and Teach Tech.

The top four qualifying schools from the PanAms go on to compete in the Final Four of college chess, held in the spring. The winner is considered national champion and takes home the President’s Cup.

During the championship, UMBC defeated the University of West Indies, the University of Toronto, the University of Texas, Brownsville, Webster University C, and the University of Texas, Dallas A. UMBC’s only loss was to Webster University A, in round three. UMBC Team B won the Division V prize.

The UMBC Chess Team A for the 2013 Pan-Am Champioship had the following members.

• Board 1: GM Niclas “The Dark Knight” Huschenbeth (USCF rating 2610)
• Board 2: GM Akshayraj “The Indian Knight” Kore (2519)
• Board 3: M Levan “The Georgian Gangster” Bregadze (2469)
• Board 4: IM and WGM Nazi “The Black Widow” Paikidze (2378)
• Alternate: WGM Sabina “Sunshine” Foisor (2315)

See the UMBC Chess web site more information on UMBC’s chess program or contact Dr. Sherman at 410-963-4779 or Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

The Fall 2013 edition of the Center for Women in Technology’s newsletter, CWIT Update, describes CWIT’s recent events and initiatives, highlighting accomplishments of the CWIT students, updates from CWIT alumni, and information on two scholar programs that CWIT helps to manage: Transfer Scholars in Information Technology and Engineering and Cyber Scholars.

Professor Charles Laberge, director of UMBC’s undergraduate Computer Engineering program, was recently recognized by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RCTA) for more than thirty years of service helping to develop technical standards critical to aviation safety. RTCA is a private, not-for-profit association founded in 1935 to provide a public-private partnership venue for developing consensus among diverse, competing interests on critical aviation modernization issues in an increasingly global enterprise.

Dr. Laberge’s work was cited in an article the December issue of the RTCA digest, Spotlight on Volunteers: Communications Expert Advances Aviation Safety, for his leadership and contributions to standards for aviation communication. “Chuck has been invaluable to RTCA’s work for many years – we could not have accomplished what we have without his expertise and the long hours he has spent advancing aviation safety,” said RTCA President Margaret Jenny.

“Chuck LaBerge serves as Chair of RTCA’s SC-222, Inmarsat AMS(R)S, which has been working since October 2008 to produce several guidance documents focused on satellite systems capability. Chuck is known industry-wide for his expertise in radio signal processes and interference and brings a wealth of knowledge to the Committee’s work. Chuck has a long and active history of contributing to RTCA products and first became involved with RTCA in the late 70s, helping to produce DO-177, a MOPS document focusing on Microwave Landing System (MLS) Airborne Receiving Equipment. He has made substantial contributions to 20 RTCA documents, not including document updates.”

Dr. LaBerge describes the the work of the RTCA Special Committee 222 as defining the standards for satellite communication services that allow aircraft passengers to place telephone calls and access the Internet while in flight, especially in oceanic airspace. His previous RTCA work had focused on the special constraints that support pilot and controller communications related to the safety and regularity of flight along national and international air routes.

Professor LaBerge began working on RTCA standards at the Honeywell Aerospace Research & Technology Center, where he worked from from 1975 to 2008, achieving the position of Senior Fellow. While there, he completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering at UMBC in 2003. In 2008, he joined UMBC as Professor of the Practice, where he currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in computer engineering, helps teach the popular Introduction to Engineering class (ENES 101) and directs the undergraduate computer engineering program.

This week it was revealed that Target suffered a data breach that involved more than 40 million credit and debit card accounts. Target reports that “The unauthorized access may impact guests who made credit or debit card purchases in our U.S. stores from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15, 2013.”

Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity and CSEE Professor Anupam Joshi discussed the possible consequences of the breach in video reports by local affiliates for both ABC and NBC. Dr. Joshi outlined some of the possible ways that the data breach might have happened and pointed out that while the lost data could be used to make illegal charges to the accounts, it was unlikely to lead to larger identity theft problems.

UMBC Training Centers received a $5,000 grant financed by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) that will be used to defer tuition costs for students in the Cyber Operations Program. According to Tom Sadowski, President and CEO of EAGB:

“This contribution reflects EAGB’s commitment to growing the cybersecurity industry and talent base within the Greater Baltimore region. There are thousands of cybersecurity jobs available for highly motivated and trained individuals. The students that complete the Certificate in Cyber Operations program at UMBC Training Centers Cybersecurity Academy are ready to analyze complex network architectures, determine threat exposure and implement appropriate defenses.”

The Certificate in Cyber Operations, starting on January 21, 2014, is an intensive 9-month, part-time program. Cyber Operations features a rigorous curriculum that delivers a focused set of skills reinforced by multiple industry certifications, including CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Certified Ethical Hacker. This program is closely aligned with the recent National Institute of Standards and Technology release of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework.

UMBC Training Centers received a $5,000 grant financed by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) that will be used to defer tuition costs for students in the Cyber Operations Program. According to Tom Sadowski, President and CEO of EAGB:

“This contribution reflects EAGB’s commitment to growing the cybersecurity industry and talent base within the Greater Baltimore region. There are thousands of cybersecurity jobs available for highly motivated and trained individuals. The students that complete the Certificate in Cyber Operations program at UMBC Training Centers Cybersecurity Academy are ready to analyze complex network architectures, determine threat exposure and implement appropriate defenses.”

The Certificate in Cyber Operations, starting on January 21, 2014, is an intensive 9-month, part-time program. Cyber Operations features a rigorous curriculum that delivers a focused set of skills reinforced by multiple industry certifications, including CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Certified Ethical Hacker. This program is closely aligned with the recent National Institute of Standards and Technology release of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework.

UMBC Training Centers received a $5,000 grant financed by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) that will be used to defer tuition costs for students in the Cyber Operations Program. According to Tom Sadowski, President and CEO of EAGB:

“This contribution reflects EAGB’s commitment to growing the cybersecurity industry and talent base within the Greater Baltimore region. There are thousands of cybersecurity jobs available for highly motivated and trained individuals. The students that complete the Certificate in Cyber Operations program at UMBC Training Centers Cybersecurity Academy are ready to analyze complex network architectures, determine threat exposure and implement appropriate defenses.”

The Certificate in Cyber Operations, starting on January 21, 2014, is an intensive 9-month, part-time program. Cyber Operations features a rigorous curriculum that delivers a focused set of skills reinforced by multiple industry certifications, including CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Certified Ethical Hacker. This program is closely aligned with the recent National Institute of Standards and Technology release of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education framework.