Image from The New York Times

Getting away with murder? Casey Anthony found not guilty in the death of her daughter.

Back to the real world: Senate works through recess on debt deal.

It doesn’t look good. Capsized boat’s missing passengers presumed dead.

All good things must end: No more shuttles for NASA.

And, Mark Zuckerberg switches to Google+?

For the last several weeks one presidential candidate has been causing a stir without even announcing his candidacy.

After originally shooting down rumors of his intention to seek the GOP nomination, Texas governor Rick Perry has since started to reconsider the possibility. Political pundits have since kept a close eye on Perry while he thinks it over.

Some recent facts on Perry:

• He’s got a shaky past with former Texas governor and president George W. Bush.
• Leaders of the Christian Right are already rallying behind him.
• After Thursday he may have violated international law.

If and when he decides to join the race, Perry will be entering a crowded Republican field. There are already nearly a dozen candidates seeking the party’s nomination.

CIO magazine has an article that identifies what they think are the the six hottest new IT jobs. They used an admittedly unscientific method of reviewing listing on IT job sites and talking to IT executives to find the types of jobs with good growth potential and are resistant to outsourcing and economic downturns.

“IT job seekers have real reason to hope. No fewer than 10,000 IT jobs were added to payrolls in May alone, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting a steady month-over-month increase since January. And in a June survey by the IT jobs site Dice.com, 65 percent of hiring managers and recruiters said they will hire more tech professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.”

Their six are:

• Business architect
• Data scientist
• Social media architect
• Mobile technology expert
• Enterprise mobile developer
• Cloud architect

While won’t find required courses on most of these in a standard undergraduate program, doing well in any of them needs the foundation you will receive. These include programming, software engineering, statistics, systems, computer architecture, algorithms, databases, etc. UMBC does offer electives that give students the skills that will make students more competitive for these jobs, such as mobile computing, parallel programming, service oriented architectures, machine learning, data mining, security, web technology, etc.

Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Your mileage may vary.

CIO magazine has an article that identifies what they think are the the six hottest new IT jobs. They used an admittedly unscientific method of reviewing listing on IT job sites and talking to IT executives to find the types of jobs with good growth potential and are resistant to outsourcing and economic downturns.

“IT job seekers have real reason to hope. No fewer than 10,000 IT jobs were added to payrolls in May alone, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting a steady month-over-month increase since January. And in a June survey by the IT jobs site Dice.com, 65 percent of hiring managers and recruiters said they will hire more tech professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.”

Their six are:

• Business architect
• Data scientist
• Social media architect
• Mobile technology expert
• Enterprise mobile developer
• Cloud architect

While won’t find required courses on most of these in a standard undergraduate program, doing well in any of them needs the foundation you will receive. These include programming, software engineering, statistics, systems, computer architecture, algorithms, databases, etc. UMBC does offer electives that give students the skills that will make students more competitive for these jobs, such as mobile computing, parallel programming, service oriented architectures, machine learning, data mining, security, web technology, etc.

Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Your mileage may vary.

CIO magazine has an article that identifies what they think are the the six hottest new IT jobs. They used an admittedly unscientific method of reviewing listing on IT job sites and talking to IT executives to find the types of jobs with good growth potential and are resistant to outsourcing and economic downturns.

“IT job seekers have real reason to hope. No fewer than 10,000 IT jobs were added to payrolls in May alone, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting a steady month-over-month increase since January. And in a June survey by the IT jobs site Dice.com, 65 percent of hiring managers and recruiters said they will hire more tech professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.”

Their six are:

• Business architect
• Data scientist
• Social media architect
• Mobile technology expert
• Enterprise mobile developer
• Cloud architect

While won’t find required courses on most of these in a standard undergraduate program, doing well in any of them needs the foundation you will receive. These include programming, software engineering, statistics, systems, computer architecture, algorithms, databases, etc. UMBC does offer electives that give students the skills that will make students more competitive for these jobs, such as mobile computing, parallel programming, service oriented architectures, machine learning, data mining, security, web technology, etc.

Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Your mileage may vary.

This morning, we launched the first round of the Summer Dissertation House on UMBC’s campus. The day included introductions and goal-setting. Dr. Janet Rutledge, Dean of the Graduate School and Vice Provost for Graduate Education, was the afternoon speaker.  Dr. Rutledge discussed rules and regulations regarding defense preparation and graduation requirements. She also discussed the importance of putting in the work to develop a strong, professional, long-term relationship with your mentor.  In this case, your mentor is your advisor, and your relationship should be collegial and should be built to last.

MS Thesis Defense

Clinical-Genomic Analysis for Disease Prediction

Darshana Dalvi

10:00am 6 July 2011, ITE 346

Recent advances in genomic research have generated vast amounts of information that can help identify individuals who differ in their susceptibility to a particular disease or response to a specific treatment. This information may offer solutions for the treatment of complex chronic diseases that are influenced by a wide array of factors. This vast amount of information brings critical challenges in applying advanced technology to synthesize clinical-genomic patient data. Synthesizing this information is necessary to derive the knowledge that would empower physicians to provide personalized care with the best possible therapeutic interventions.

We used statistical methods and data mining approaches to understand clinical-genomic risk factors that differentiate Type II Diabetes cases from healthy controls. We investigated whether inclusion of genomic risk factors in conjunction with clinical information improves classification accuracy. We also demonstrate how a biased and an unbiased method for selection of risk associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) effect clustering along with clinical information. We determined the optimal method based on its clustering performance.

Committee members:

• Dr. Yelena Yesha (Chair)
• Dr. Michael Grasso
• Dr. Yaacov Yesha
• Dr. Milton Halem