Professor Marie desJardins received a research award from the National Science Foundation focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of computer science classes offered in Maryland and the number and diversity of students taking them.

The project, CS10K: Collaborative Research: A Structured CS Principles Approach to Professional Development for Maryland High School Teachers, is led by Dr. desJardins and will involve collaborators from the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and high school teachers from Charles County and Baltimore County. The NSF award will provide $845,000 in funding over a three year period and is part of the Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program, which aims to build a robust computing research community, a computationally competent 21st century workforce, and a computationally empowered citizenry.

The project is also part of the CS 10K community, which works to make computer science accessible in high schools. The nationwide effort has a goal of getting rigorous academic computer science courses into 10,000 schools taught by 10,000 well-prepared teachers. The project pays careful attention to the inclusion of women and minorities–groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in computing.

The project will develop and evaluate professional development activities focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science. Experienced higher education faculty and highly effective high school teachers will collaborate to train other high school teachers to develop and offer a college preparatory CS curriculum. In the first year, an initial cohort of 12 master teachers will collaborate with the project leadership team to develop standardized classroom materials based on the CS Principles curriculum and then offer the CS Principles course in their home schools. In the second year, the project staff will train less experienced teachers in the CS Principles curriculum, and in the third year, the leadership team will demonstrate scalability by supporting the delivery of multiple independently funded regional workshops. The project’s ultimate goal is to achieve significantly increased interest of Maryland students in studying and pursuing careers in computer science.

UMBC is once again hosting the Global Gam Jam this January. It will run from 5pm Friday, January 24th to 5pm Sunday, January 26th, just before classes start. Once again, thanks to a generous donation by NextCentury, registration is free. Space is limited, so sign up now! 

For anyone who hasn’t participated, the global game jam is a 48 hour game development event with hundreds of host sites around the world. At 5pm local time, introduce the jam and announce this year’s theme. Previous year’s themes have ranged from a phrase (“as long as we’re together there will always be problems”) to a word (“extinction”) to an image (ouroboros: a snake eating its tail), to a sound (the recording of a heartbeat). Participants brainstorm game ideas around the theme, form into teams, and spend the weekend building games that are designed to be both fun and express the theme.

The UMBC site is not restricted to just students. In previous years, we have had a mix of UMBC students, faculty, alumni, students from other schools, game development professionals, and just people with an interest in game development. More details at gaim.umbc.edu/global-game-jam. However, we are limited to just 40 participants, so sign up early if you want to come. If the UMBC site fills, other local(ish) sites include the Unviersity of Baltimore, American University, and George Mason University.

Professor Gymama Slaughter received a research award from the National Science Foundation to support her work on a self-powered biosensing microsystem that simultaneously generates bioelectricity and monitors glucose.

The four-year award in the amount of $400,000 is from NSF’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, which supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.

With the support from NSF, Professor Slaughter and the students in her Bioelectronics Laboratory will fabricate and characterize a self-powered biosensing microsystem that simultaneously generates bioelectricity and monitors glucose. This will be accomplished using an inertial power scavenging design by converting interstitial glucose into energy through the coupling of enzymes and three-dimensional nanowire arrays to power implantable glucose monitors.

The self-powered biosensing microsystem will monitor sugar levels and embodies two key technical contributions: it eliminates the need for a potentiostat circuit and an external power source or batteries, leading to dramatic improvements in both speed and energy efficiency, and it demonstrates an autonomous, self-powered, low-power biosensing microsystem that can be adapted for other uses. For people suffering from diabetes, continuous, self-powered monitoring of glucose will improve their quality of life and can save lives.

Professor Slaughter notes that the educational component of the project enriches and complements other programs at UMBC designed to increase minority and female participation in STEM fields. The exposure of these students to a real-world problem and its solution will enable them to better appreciate the contribution of scientific research.

UMBC is once again hosting the Global Gam Jam this January. It will run from 5pm Friday, January 24th to 5pm Sunday, January 26th, just before classes start. Once again, thanks to a generous donation by NextCentury, registration is free. Space is limited, so sign up now! 

For anyone who hasn't participated, the global game jam is a 48 hour game development event with hundreds of host sites around the world. At 5pm local time, introduce the jam and announce this year's theme. Previous year's themes have ranged from a phrase ("as long as we're together there will always be problems") to a word ("extinction") to an image (ouroboros: a snake eating its tail), to a sound (the recording of a heartbeat). Participants brainstorm game ideas around the theme, form into teams, and spend the weekend building games that are designed to be both fun and express the theme.

The UMBC site is not restricted to just students. In previous years, we have had a mix of UMBC students, faculty, alumni, students from other schools, game development professionals, and just people with an interest in game development. More details at gaim.umbc.edu/global-game-jam. However, we are limited to just 40 participants, so sign up early if you want to come. If the UMBC site fills, other local(ish) sites include the Unviersity of Baltimore, American University, and George Mason University.

Hacker School is a free, full-time, immersive school in New York for becoming a better programmer. Participants come from around the world to spend 12 weeks writing code and growing as programmers. Three sessions are run each year, with one in the summer.

Hacker School is largely unstructured, self-directed, and project-based with optional activities and structure: reading groups, mini workshops and seminars, weekly dinners and talks, group presentations, and more.

The program is tuition-free, but participants are responsible for their own living expenses. Some aid is available, including more than $150,000 from Google for need-based grants for female programmers to come to Hacker School. For more information and to apply, see the Hacker School site.

Hacker School is a free, full-time, immersive school in New York for becoming a better programmer. Participants come from around the world to spend 12 weeks writing code and growing as programmers. Three sessions are run each year, with one in the summer.

Hacker School is largely unstructured, self-directed, and project-based with optional activities and structure: reading groups, mini workshops and seminars, weekly dinners and talks, group presentations, and more.

The program is tuition-free, but participants are responsible for their own living expenses. Some aid is available, including more than $150,000 from Google for need-based grants for female programmers to come to Hacker School. For more information and to apply, see the Hacker School site.

Hacker School is a free, full-time, immersive school in New York for becoming a better programmer. Participants come from around the world to spend 12 weeks writing code and growing as programmers. Three sessions are run each year, with one in the summer.

Hacker School is largely unstructured, self-directed, and project-based with optional activities and structure: reading groups, mini workshops and seminars, weekly dinners and talks, group presentations, and more.

The program is tuition-free, but participants are responsible for their own living expenses. Some aid is available, including more than $150,000 from Google for need-based grants for female programmers to come to Hacker School. For more information and to apply, see the Hacker School site.

The inaugural hackUMBC hackathon was a smashing success!

Held in the UMBC Skylight Room from 7:00pm Friday to 7:00pm Saturday this past weekend, UMBC’s first-ever hackathon was open to all UMBC students of any skill level, from innovators and explorers to designers and hardcore coders. Its purpose was to allow students to mingle and collaborate for 24 continuous hours of community exploration to grow technology projects from scratch while expanding their connections to other students, industry leaders, and faculty. Admission was free and attracted students from across the UMBC campus community, including CS, CE, EE, IS, Biology, Biotechnology, Math, Physics, and Media Studies.

The term ‘hackathon’ hearkens back to the original meaning of “hacker” and “hacking” in early Internet history — namely, to “hack together (create) something quickly” instead of their current interpretations typically referring to illegal cybersecurity activities.

The theme for hackUMBC 2013 was “Hacking to Improve Campus Life” with the goal of ‘hacking together’ any sort of hardware or software project that helps students, teachers, or schools. Accordingly, projects developed during the event included a textbook resale service, realtime intelligent parking space sensors, Peoplesoft interface refinements, and mobile apps to help UMBC students network, socialize, and monitor class schedules, among many others.

Throughout the event, volunteer mentors from UMBC and local industry circulated amongst the teams to offer advice and guidance on their efforts, including how to successfully ‘pitch’ their products to the judges.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski joined the festivities early Friday evening to offer words of encouragement and motivation for the nearly 100 UMBC students competing in this innovative and highly charged event.

hackUMBC was conceived by CSEE students Perry Ogwuche and Randi Williams following their summer experience as fellows at CODE2040. Assisting in the effort was Prajit Kumar Das, CS PhD student and president of UMBC’s ACM chapter, and Alexander Morrow, a senior CS student and president of UMBC’s Cryptocurrency Club. CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno served as faculty advisor to the event.

Projects were evaluated by several faculty and staff judges based on creativity, technical difficulty, polish, relevance, and usefulness. More than $2500 in prizes were awarded!

Second Place: Erill Labs (Robert Forder, Talmo Pereira, Patrick O’Neill, Sefa Kilic)

Third Place: Clever Source Solutions (Edward Mukasey, Ian Shefferman, Chinonso Ugwu)

hackUMBC Judges: Tim Oates, Rick Forno, Wesley Griffin, Dan Hood, Shawn Lupoli, Valerie Thomas, Geoffrey Weiss, and Ashwinkumar Ganesan.

hackUMBC was sponsored by Northrop Grumman, the UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, ClearEdge IT Solutions, Independent Security Evaluators, Next Century Corporation, TriTech Systems, Github, CODE2040, the UMBC BWTech Cync Program, and the UMBC Alex Brown Center.

More information can be found at the hackUMBC page.

UMBC’s ACM student chapter has a new website that will be used to announce its activities and events as well as news about computing related opportunities and resources. The chapter is open to both undergraduate and graduate students interested in computing from all majors. Joining is free and is a great way to meet other students interested in computing and to participate in activities that will help you grow as a professional.

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. It provides members with resources that advance computing both as a science and a profession. UMBC’s chapter meetings are open to all undergraduate and graduate students of any major. While you do not need to join ACM to be a part of the local chapter, the annual membership dues for students is only $19, heavily discounted from the non-student rate. See the ACM site for more information on student membership and its benefits.

For more information contact us at acmofficers AT lists.umbc.edu.

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Quantum Computing Seminar

Shor’s Algorithm Part 2

Samuel Lomonaco, CSEE, UMBC

2:30-3:00 Tuesday, 3 December 2013, ITE 325b

As requested in the last seminar, we will devote this seminar to stepping through the complete Shor algorithm (from beginning to end) to factor the “enormous” integer 21. This talk will based on the example found at the beginning of the following paper.

Quantum hidden subgroup algorithms: A mathematical perspective, AMS CONM, vol. 305, (2002), 139 – 202.

Samuel J. Lomonaco is a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is internationally known for his many contributions in mathematics and in computer science. His research interests span a wide range of subjects from knot theory, algebraic and differential topology to algebraic coding theory, quantum computation, and symbolic computation. In quantum cryptography, he has shown how quantum information theory can be used to gain a better understanding of eavesdropping with quantum entanglement. In quantum computation, he has shown how Lie groups can be used to solve problems arising in the study of quantum entanglement. In 2000 Professor Lomonoco organized the first American Mathematical Society short course on quantum computation.

Organizer: Prof. Samuel Lomonaco, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.