Registration for the 2016 Global Game Jam is open!

UMBC is once again hosting the Global Gam Jam this January. It will run from 5pm Friday, January 29th to 5pm Sunday, January 31st, just after classes start. 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, 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 UMBC fills up, other local(ish) sites include the Universities at Shady Grove and American University. If you are not near UMBC, check the Global Game Jam for a site near you.

Registration for the 2016 Global Game Jam is open!

UMBC is once again hosting the Global Gam Jam this January. It will run from 5pm Friday, January 29th to 5pm Sunday, January 31st, just after classes start. 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, 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 UMBC fills up, other local(ish) sites include the Universities at Shady Grove and American University. If you are not near UMBC, check the Global Game Jam for a site near you.

This past weekend, Dr. Rick Forno, CYBR GPD and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, joined Dr. Matt Blaze (UPenn), Dr. Jeff Foster (UMCP), and COL (Ph.D) Greg Conti (USMA) on the closing plenary panel for Schmoocon 2016 in Washington, DC.

ShmooCon is an annual east coast hacker convention offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.  The first day is a single track of speed talks called One Track Mind.  The next two days bring three tracks:  Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On.

The panel examined the current state of information security programs in academia. Along the way they discussed issues around dealing with administration and the peculiarities of information security, the current state of information security research, attracting and vetting students/faculty, and generally what it’s like to be growing the next generation of information security professionals in a time where academia frequently is placed in the position of “building the bus while going down the road.”

This past weekend, Dr. Rick Forno, CYBR GPD and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, joined Dr. Matt Blaze (UPenn), Dr. Jeff Foster (UMCP), and COL (Ph.D) Greg Conti (USMA) on the closing plenary panel for Schmoocon 2016 in Washington, DC.

ShmooCon is an annual east coast hacker convention offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.  The first day is a single track of speed talks called One Track Mind.  The next two days bring three tracks:  Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On.

The panel examined the current state of information security programs in academia. Along the way they discussed issues around dealing with administration and the peculiarities of information security, the current state of information security research, attracting and vetting students/faculty, and generally what it’s like to be growing the next generation of information security professionals in a time where academia frequently is placed in the position of “building the bus while going down the road.”

Cyber Defense Lab
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

cMix: Anonymization by High-Performance Scalable Mixing

Farid Javani
Cyber Defense Lab, CSEE Dept., UMBC

11:15am-12:30pm Friday, 29 January 2016, ITE 231

cMix is a cryptographic protocol for mix networks that uses pre-computations of a group-homomorphic encryption function to avoid all real-time public-key operations by the senders, mix nodes, and receivers. Like other mix network protocols, cMix can enable an anonymity service that accepts inputs from senders and delivers them to an output buffer, in a way that the outputs are unlinkable to the inputs. cMix’s high-performance scalable architecture, which results from its unique pre-computation approach, makes it suitable for smartphone-to-smartphone use while maintaining full anonymity sets independently per round.

Each sender establishes a shared key separately with each of the mix nodes, which is used as a seed to a cryptographic pseudorandom number generator to generate a sequence of message keys. Each sender encrypts its input to cMix with modular multiplication by message keys. cMix works by replacing the message keys, which are not known in the pre-computation, in real time with a precomputed random value.

Our presentation includes a detailed specification of cMix and simulation-based security arguments. We also give performance analysis, both modeled and measured, of our working prototype currently running in the cloud.

cMix is the core technology underlying our larger PrivaTegrity system that allows smart devices to carry out a variety of applications anonymously (including sending and receiving chat messages), with little extra bandwidth or battery usage. This talk focuses on cMix.

Joint work with David Chaum (Voting Systems Institute), Aniket Kate (Purdue Univ.), Anna Krasnova (Radboud Univ.), Joeri de Ruiter (Univ. of Birmingham), Alan T. Sherman (UMBC).  See and recent articles in Wired and Fortune for discussion.

Favid Javani is a PhD student working with Dr. Sherman. He earned a MS from the Middle Eastern Technical University, Turkey, with a thesis on lattice-based cryptography.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

Cyber Defense Lab
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

cMix: Anonymization by High-Performance Scalable Mixing

Farid Javani
Cyber Defense Lab, CSEE Dept., UMBC

11:15am-12:30pm Friday, 29 January 2016, ITE 231

cMix is a cryptographic protocol for mix networks that uses pre-computations of a group-homomorphic encryption function to avoid all real-time public-key operations by the senders, mix nodes, and receivers. Like other mix network protocols, cMix can enable an anonymity service that accepts inputs from senders and delivers them to an output buffer, in a way that the outputs are unlinkable to the inputs. cMix’s high-performance scalable architecture, which results from its unique pre-computation approach, makes it suitable for smartphone-to-smartphone use while maintaining full anonymity sets independently per round.

Each sender establishes a shared key separately with each of the mix nodes, which is used as a seed to a cryptographic pseudorandom number generator to generate a sequence of message keys. Each sender encrypts its input to cMix with modular multiplication by message keys. cMix works by replacing the message keys, which are not known in the pre-computation, in real time with a precomputed random value.

Our presentation includes a detailed specification of cMix and simulation-based security arguments. We also give performance analysis, both modeled and measured, of our working prototype currently running in the cloud.

cMix is the core technology underlying our larger PrivaTegrity system that allows smart devices to carry out a variety of applications anonymously (including sending and receiving chat messages), with little extra bandwidth or battery usage. This talk focuses on cMix.

Joint work with David Chaum (Voting Systems Institute), Aniket Kate (Purdue Univ.), Anna Krasnova (Radboud Univ.), Joeri de Ruiter (Univ. of Birmingham), Alan T. Sherman (UMBC).  See and recent articles in Wired and Fortune for discussion.

Favid Javani is a PhD student working with Dr. Sherman. He earned a MS from the Middle Eastern Technical University, Turkey, with a thesis on lattice-based cryptography.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

Do you love creating new ways to represent and visualize data? Or are you a data science/ML/AI guru who can’t get enough of Major League Baseball?

A Baseball Analytics Hackathon will be hosted by the Baltimore Orioles and Booz Allen Hamilton from 10:00am to 7:00pm Friday, 5 February 2016 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards Baltimore. It is an opportunity to work with baseball executives and data scientists to refine your data science and analytic skills and show off your creativity by finding new ways to change the game.

Hackathon participants will work to develop innovative data science and visualization solutions using unique datasets that the hosts will provide alongside anything else that is openly available on the Internet. They hope that bringing together creative minds in a competitive environment will lead to novel solutions to some of the questions that the baseball industry is trying to answer. Projects will be judged by Orioles executives and other data scientists. Prizes will be awarded for the most impressive projects.

You may register as either an individual or group participant. Space is limited, so make sure to sign up before the deadline of January 22nd, 2016. Participants will receive notice of their acceptance by Monday, January 25th. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided.

Do you love creating new ways to represent and visualize data? Or are you a data science/ML/AI guru who can’t get enough of Major League Baseball?

A Baseball Analytics Hackathon will be hosted by the Baltimore Orioles and Booz Allen Hamilton from 10:00am to 7:00pm Friday, 5 February 2016 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards Baltimore. It is an opportunity to work with baseball executives and data scientists to refine your data science and analytic skills and show off your creativity by finding new ways to change the game.

Hackathon participants will work to develop innovative data science and visualization solutions using unique datasets that the hosts will provide alongside anything else that is openly available on the Internet. They hope that bringing together creative minds in a competitive environment will lead to novel solutions to some of the questions that the baseball industry is trying to answer. Projects will be judged by Orioles executives and other data scientists. Prizes will be awarded for the most impressive projects.

You may register as either an individual or group participant. Space is limited, so make sure to sign up before the deadline of January 22nd, 2016. Participants will receive notice of their acceptance by Monday, January 25th. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided.

Multiple Tenure-track Faculty Positions Starting Fall 2016

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering invites applications for three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to begin in Fall 2016. Exceptionally strong candidates for higher ranks may be considered. Applicants must have or be completing a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, have demonstrated the ability to pursue a research program, and have a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Candidates will be expected to build and lead a team of student researchers, obtain external research support and teach both graduate and undergraduate courses.

All areas of specialization will be considered, but we are especially interested in candidates in the following areas: information assurance and cybersecurity; mobile, wearable and IoT systems; big data with an emphasis on machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing; knowledge and database systems; hardware systems and experimental methods in circuits, devices, VLSI, FPGA, and sensors; cyber-physical systems; low-power systems; biomedical and healthcare systems; and methods and tools for hardware-software co-design.

The CSEE department is energetic, research-oriented and multi-disciplinary with programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity. Our faculty (34 tenure-track, six teaching and 15 research) enjoy collaboration, working across our specializations as well as with colleagues from other STEM, humanities and the arts departments and external partners. We have 1500 undergraduate CS and CE majors and 400 M.S. and Ph.D. students in our CS, CE, EE and Cybersecurity graduate programs. We have awarded 276 PhDs since our establishment in 1986. Our research supported by a growing and diverse portfolio from government and industrial sponsors with over $5M in yearly research expenditures. We work to help new colleagues be successful by providing startup packages, reduced teaching loads and active mentoring.

UMBC is a dynamic public research university integrating teaching, research and service. As an Honors University, the campus offers academically talented students a strong undergraduate liberal arts foundation that prepares them for graduate and professional study, entry into the workforce, and community service and leadership. UMBC emphasizes science, engineering, information technology, human services and public policy at the graduate level. We are dedicated to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility and lifelong learning. The 2015 US News and World Report Best Colleges report placed UMBC fourth in the Most Innovative National Universities category and sixth in Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education named UMBC as a Great College to Work For, a recognition given to only 86 universities. Our strategic location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor puts us close to many important federal laboratories and agencies and high-tech companies, facilitating interactions, collaboration, and opportunities for sabbaticals and visiting appointments.

UMBC’s campus is located on 500 acres just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington DC, and less than 10 minutes from the BWI airport and Amtrak station. The campus includes the bwtech@UMBC research and technology park, which has special programs for startups focused on cybersecurity, clean energy, life sciences and training. We are surrounded by one of the greatest concentrations of commercial, cultural and scientific activity in the nation. Located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore has all the advantages of modern, urban living, including professional sports, major art galleries, theaters and a symphony orchestra. The city’s famous Inner Harbor area is an exciting center for entertainment and commerce. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is a great tourist attraction with its historical monuments and museums. Just ten minutes from downtown Baltimore and 30 from the D.C. Beltway, UMBC offers easy access to the region’s resources by car or public transportation.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, a brief statement of teaching and research experience and interests, a CV, and three letters of recommendation at Interfolio. Applications received by January 15, 2016 are assured full consideration and those received later will be evaluated as long as the positions remain open. Send questions to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. and see the CSEE jobs page for more information.

We are committed to inclusive excellence and innovation and welcome applications from women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. UMBC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.

Multiple Tenure-track Faculty Positions Starting Fall 2016

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering invites applications for three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to begin in Fall 2016. Exceptionally strong candidates for higher ranks may be considered. Applicants must have or be completing a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, have demonstrated the ability to pursue a research program, and have a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Candidates will be expected to build and lead a team of student researchers, obtain external research support and teach both graduate and undergraduate courses.

All areas of specialization will be considered, but we are especially interested in candidates in the following areas: information assurance and cybersecurity; mobile, wearable and IoT systems; big data with an emphasis on machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing; knowledge and database systems; hardware systems and experimental methods in circuits, devices, VLSI, FPGA, and sensors; cyber-physical systems; low-power systems; biomedical and healthcare systems; and methods and tools for hardware-software co-design.

The CSEE department is energetic, research-oriented and multi-disciplinary with programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity. Our faculty (34 tenure-track, six teaching and 15 research) enjoy collaboration, working across our specializations as well as with colleagues from other STEM, humanities and the arts departments and external partners. We have 1500 undergraduate CS and CE majors and 400 M.S. and Ph.D. students in our CS, CE, EE and Cybersecurity graduate programs. We have awarded 276 PhDs since our establishment in 1986. Our research supported by a growing and diverse portfolio from government and industrial sponsors with over $5M in yearly research expenditures. We work to help new colleagues be successful by providing startup packages, reduced teaching loads and active mentoring.

UMBC is a dynamic public research university integrating teaching, research and service. As an Honors University, the campus offers academically talented students a strong undergraduate liberal arts foundation that prepares them for graduate and professional study, entry into the workforce, and community service and leadership. UMBC emphasizes science, engineering, information technology, human services and public policy at the graduate level. We are dedicated to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility and lifelong learning. The 2015 US News and World Report Best Colleges report placed UMBC fourth in the Most Innovative National Universities category and sixth in Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education named UMBC as a Great College to Work For, a recognition given to only 86 universities. Our strategic location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor puts us close to many important federal laboratories and agencies and high-tech companies, facilitating interactions, collaboration, and opportunities for sabbaticals and visiting appointments.

UMBC’s campus is located on 500 acres just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington DC, and less than 10 minutes from the BWI airport and Amtrak station. The campus includes the bwtech@UMBC research and technology park, which has special programs for startups focused on cybersecurity, clean energy, life sciences and training. We are surrounded by one of the greatest concentrations of commercial, cultural and scientific activity in the nation. Located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore has all the advantages of modern, urban living, including professional sports, major art galleries, theaters and a symphony orchestra. The city’s famous Inner Harbor area is an exciting center for entertainment and commerce. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is a great tourist attraction with its historical monuments and museums. Just ten minutes from downtown Baltimore and 30 from the D.C. Beltway, UMBC offers easy access to the region’s resources by car or public transportation.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, a brief statement of teaching and research experience and interests, a CV, and three letters of recommendation at Interfolio. Applications received by January 15, 2016 are assured full consideration and those received later will be evaluated as long as the positions remain open. Send questions to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. and see the CSEE jobs page for more information.

We are committed to inclusive excellence and innovation and welcome applications from women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. UMBC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.