CSEE’s Marie desJardins recently collaborated with a group of Howard County parents and teachers to create HowGirlsCode, an educational program that “educates and inspires young girls to pursue computer related activities, courses, and careers.”

The program–originally called Computer Mania Club–is based out of Fulton Elementary School. Over the course of ten weeks, students meet for weekly two-hour sessions, working on projects such as Lego Mindstorm robots and 3D printing. Students also work with programming tools such as MIT’s Scratch program. The curriculum for the program is largely based off of materials from the Code.org website.

UMBC alumna Katie Egan and her husband Kent Malwitz have been instrumental in getting the club off the ground. Malwitz, who is the President and Chief Learning Officer for UMBC Training Centers, originally recruited Marie desJardins to participate in a brainstorming session for the club back in 2013. Professor desJardins now serves as a member of the Advisory Board for HowGirlsCode.

Bethany Meyer, Senior Web Developer at MGH, Inc., was a recent guest speaker for HowGirlsCode. During her presentation, Meyer explained how she got into coding, citing as an example a website that she created when she was 13 years old. Meyer went on to present more recent projects, such as OldBay75.com and OCOcean.com. “I think a lot of people have negative stereotypes in mind when they think of programmers,” Meyer says. “My goal was to break down some of those stereotypes by showing…[students] that the work can be really exciting and that it involves creativity and interacting with others. I hope that I inspired some of them to teach themselves to make websites. ”

A recent Baltimore Sun article notes that there has been a marked increase in student signups for HowGirlsCode since last year. More courses will be offered in the spring, due to increasing demand. At some point, the coding club could possibly expand to other schools. Currently, Egan is trying to turn HowGirlsCode into a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, charitable organization. This would allow the club to have better access to resources such as facilities, grants and funding. Ideally, she hopes to turn the club into a nonprofit by September 2015.

The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab has a similar program, called Girls Who Code. The Hopkins APL program, which is intended for middle and high school students, is based on a national nonprofit of the same name.

Only Human

UMBC professors spar onstage about math, poetry and what it means to be human.

In anticipation of a new semester, English professor Naomi Kessler introduces herself to mathematics professor Mike Pearson. They wouldn�t typically cross paths, but a new interdisciplinary requirement has the university asking all tenured faculty to teach a course with a colleague in a different department, and Naomi and Mike have been matched. The problem: when it comes to collaborating they are a painfully dysfunctional pair.

From the time they first meet, the two professors wrestle for control of the curriculum for their joint seminar on mathematics and literature, and they struggle to find common ground as thinkers and educators.

Kessler and Pearson are characters in a new play written by UMBC faculty Michele Osherow and Manil Suri, inspired by their experiences jointly teaching a freshman seminar that bridged their two areas of expertise.

Osherow, an associate professor of English, and Suri, a mathematics professor, taught �Mathematics and What it Means to be Human� in fall 2011, and later examined their own and their students� experiences in a popular Chronicle of Higher Education article series. The play was a natural outgrowth of that series, offering audiences a more personal, visceral glimpse into the seminar as a transformative experience.

The play �The Mathematics of Being Human� debuted in UMBC�s Black Box Theatre on November 4, directed by Alan Kreizenbeck, an associate professor of theatre. Suri plays Mike Pearson, Osherow performs as Naomi Kessler;
Savannah Jo Chamberlain �16, theatre, and Chaz Atkinson �16, theatre, portray seminar students.

Kessler and Pearson explore how mathematics and the humanities offer valuable perspectives on what it means to be human � perspectives that at first glance are highly distinct, but that create entry points for conversation and shared understanding over time.

�As humans, we respond not only to art and emotion and empathy, but also to logic and calculation,� Suri explains. �A primary goal of the play is to help us realize this. Kessler and Pearson respectively illustrate these two facets that we all incorporate. And yet, being human, they can�t help but exhibit the opposite characteristic as well.�

Over the course of the semester, Pearson and Kessler squabble over Euclid and King Lear, sonnets and fractals in an attempt to interest students in their respective fields. The players verbally spar over the precision and expressiveness of poetry versus non-Euclidean geometry.

While the production is full of humor, audience members are ultimately asked to explore complex questions about what makes us complete as human beings.

�I think our understanding of what it means to be human is shaped by many, many ways of thinking � ways that are often full of contradictions,� reflects Osherow. �The thoughts and beliefs we choose to privilege shape our humanity; still, denying the importance of � or disallowing the compelling nature of � other ways of thinking severely compromises that humanity.�

�Sure, I hope there are moments in the play that trigger someone to see the potential in linking mathematics and literature, but mostly I�d like the piece to encourage us to peek over our academic neighbors� fences and see how we might challenge ourselves to engage with and be influenced by what goes on beyond the boundaries we�ve chosen,� Osherow adds.

Having learned a great deal by teaching the seminar and performing the play, Suri says one of the largest lessons of the work has been understanding the value of debate in a seminar setting. Pearson and Kessler quarrel throughout the play, exposing their students to different perspectives but not bridging them. In the end, the students make the connections that were out of reach for the faculty, who struggle to look beyond the perspectives of their individual disciplines.

�We mathematicians need to remember that our students will be working in all sorts of multidisciplinary settings where they will need skills to argue and promote their ideas to coworkers who come from different academic cultures,� Suri says. �Yes, we teach our math students to do calculations and prove theorems, but we need to also build in them the ability to interact, explain, and convince.�

The debut performances of �The Mathematics of Being Human� filled the Performing Arts and Humanities Building Black Box Theatre. The production drew attendance from UMBC faculty, students, and staff, as well as representatives from the Maryland Science Center, New York City�s Museum of Math (where Suri and Osherow have now been invited to perform the play), and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

The play will make its next appearance at the world�s largest annual gathering of mathematicians, the Joint Mathematics Meeting, in San Antonio, Texas in January 2015. It is also scheduled to be performed as part of the �Bridges 2015� conference on mathematics and art in Baltimore on July 29.

(Updated 12/16/2014)

The Information Retrieval and Machine Learning group at Oracle Labs is looking for highly motivated interns for both Spring and Summer 2015. The candidate should be proficient in Machine Learning and/or Statistical NLP.

Their current focus is in the areas of search, information extraction, including entity extraction and linking, relationship extraction, sentiment analysis as well as topic models. Other focus areas include parallel and distributed inference algorithms, deep learning and word embeddings, graphical models and transfer learning.

Research experience in any of these areas is strongly preferred. The candidate should also have good implementation skills in Java, Scala or other common language of choice.

They are located in Burlington, MA, and the candidate would need to relocate to this area. They are open to both Masters and PhD candidates, but PhD candidates are preferred. Send your CV to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. <mailto:Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. > for applications or questions about the position. Oracle is an equal opportunity employer.

UMBC has a total of nine open full-time positions for computing faculty including five tenure track professors, a professor of the practice and three lecturers.

UMBC’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department is seeking to fill five positions for the coming year. They include two tenure track positions in Computer Science, up to three full-time lecturers. See the CSEE jobs page for more information.

The College of Engineering and Information Technology has a position for a full-time lecturer or Professor of Practice to focus on the needs of incoming computing majors through teaching, advising, and helping develop programs in computing. This person will work closely with faculty in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department and Information Systems Department.

UMBC’s Information Systems department is accepting applications for three tenure track faculty positions in data science, software engineering and human-centered computing.

Ph.D. thesis defense

Paper Form Classification for Information
Systems Strengthening in Developing Countries

Huguens Jean

1:00pm Friday, 19 December 2015, ITE 325b

In developing countries, people are now more likely to have access to a mobile phone than clean water, making cellular based technology the only viable medium for collecting, aggregating, and communicating local data so that it can be turned into useful information. While mobile phones have found broad application in reporting health, financial and environmental data, many data collection methods still suffer from delays, inefficiency and difficulties maintaining quality. In environments with insufficient IT support and infrastructure, and among populations with limited education and experience with technology, paper forms rather than electronic methods remain the predominant means for data collection.

To meet the digitization needs of paper driven data collection practices in developing countries, SHREDDR proposes an end-to-end architecture that transforms paper form images into structured digital information on-demand. To facilitate the automatic extraction of input regions in form images, this thesis extends the SHREDDR architecture with the necessary capabilities to efficiently classify form images according to their template document. Specifically, it introduces a novel framework for visually identifying form templates by decomposing the template identification problem into three distinct tasks: retrieval, learning and matching (RLM).

Given a query form instance, the retrieval component finds and ranks the topmost h similar templates. If h>1, the matching component uses full image registration to conduct a more rigorous assessment of the visual similarity between the query form instance and the candidate templates. After matching, the retrieval’s preliminary ranking is adjusted, if necessary. The topmost candidate template with the highest registration score satisfying a global alignment threshold denotes the input form’s template. Based on the answer obtained from matching, the learning component updates the retrieval so that it can provide a better ranking in future searches. If h=1, the RLM bypasses matching and uses the retrieved template as the final classification.

Based on the proposed framework, the present thesis investigates form classification under the conditions of known and unknown template classes. A pilot study integrating the RLM into the SHREDDR system demonstrates its classification accuracy and its impact on digitization efficiency.

Committee: Drs. Timothy Oates (Chair), Fow-Sen Choa, Janet Rutledge, Jesus Caban, Nilanjan Banerjee

CSEE Professor Anupam Joshi has been named an IEEE Fellow, recognized for his for contributions to security, privacy and data management in mobile and pervasive systems. This designation is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors on individuals with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. No more than 0.1% of the total IEEE voting membership can be selected in a year.

Dr. Joshi joined UMBC’s faculty in 1998 and currently is the Oros Family Professor of Technology and Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity. He previously held faculty appointments at the University of Missouri, Columbia and Purdue University. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University and a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. While at UMBC he has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in operating systems, mobile computing and security. He developed and teaches an Honors College seminar on “Privacy and Security in a Mobile Social World”. He has mentored nine Ph.D. graduates and a large number of M.S. students.

Joshi has made many contributions to the design, analysis and development of intelligent systems for mobile, social and secure computing. Twenty years ago he was one of a handful of researchers who recognized that mobility introduced new challenges for data management, security and privacy over and above those brought about by wireless connectivity. His key insight was to model mobile and pervasive systems as distributed systems that are both open, in that they do not pre-identify a set of known participants, and dynamic, in that the participants change regularly.

He observe that applications on mobile devices require greater degrees of decision making and autonomy as they become increasingly sophisticated and intelligent and can’t always assume connectivity to central servers. Entities in these pervasive computing systems must exchange information about the data and services offered and sought and their associated security and privacy policies, negotiate for information and resource sharing, be aware of their context, and monitor for and report on suspicious or anomalous behavior. Dr. Joshi has addressed these challenges across the stack, from network protocols to data management to policy controlled interactions between autonomous entities.

Much of his research has been done in collaboration with colleagues in industry such as IBM, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Qualcomm. It has been funded by not just them, but also NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, ARL, NIST and other federal agencies. Joshi has published prolifically with more than 200 publications in refereed journals and conferences, many of which are highly cited. He has served as the General or Program Chair of many key conferences including the IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics which will be held in Baltimore in May 2015.

The IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its 400,000 members in 160 countries, it is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 900 active industry standards.

One of the things that makes UMBC great is how wonderful our alumni, students, faculty, and staff are. Because of these amazing people, UMBC often finds itself “in the news,” so each week, we’ll be sharing with you a round-up of the most newsworthy achievements from our community. 

• Julie Rosenthal, Asian Studies, in The Baltimore Sun
• MLLI Faculty and Students Featured in Russia Beyond the Headlines, Voice of America
• Dale Bittinger, Admissions, Describes “House of Grit” on Midday with Dan Rodricks
• UMBC Humanities Faculty Discuss Serial in The Guardian
• Jeffrey Davis, Political Science, in The New York Times

Read more at UMBC Insights!

Christopher Corbett, English, penned an article for Baltimore Style in which he explored the nuances of “naughty or nice” in the Christmas song “Santa Claus in Coming to Town.”

In the article, Corbett examines the lyrics of the song and makes a connection to George Orwell’s 1984. He states, “‘Santa Claus is Coming (Or Comin’) to Town’ is certainly a Santa for a dystopia—an Orwell or Huxley Santa. A Santa for ‘1984’ or ‘Brave New World.'”

Click here to read “Naughty or Nice” in Baltimore Style.

Name: Jessica Moreno

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Art With a Heart | Title of Your Position: Social Media and Documentation Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Media and Communication Studies (MCS) / American Studies

Expected Graduation Year: May 2015

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service-learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

For this internship, I was assigned to travel to various sites and document the art classes that Art with a Heart offers during the summer through photography. Art with a Heart is a non-profit organization that works to enhance the lives of people in need through visual art. They bring their 7,500 visual art classes to abused, neglected and abandoned children; homeless people; battered women and their children; pregnant adolescents; mentally and physically disabled adults; low-income senior citizens; elementary, middle, and high school students; youth in after-school programs; and children receiving long-term health care. Not only did I have to travel to the art classes, I had to build relationships with the participants in order to gain their trust in order for me to photograph them and their artwork. I created numerous content such as photos and videos and managed their Instagram account.

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

I knew that I wanted to do an internship over the summer and since I am an intern at the Career Center, I knew that UMBCworks was the place to start my internship search. I searched for positions that I knew I was interested in and I applied online. Through UMBCworks, I landed my internship at Art with a Heart.

Which of the following resources did you use to find your current experience?

Career Center and UMBCworks.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

I enjoyed documenting the artwork that all the students worked on during the summer. I was able to communicate and talk to the participants and with the art teachers from Art with a Heart. I also enjoyed the editing process such as doing work on Photoshop and Sony Vegas to edit photos and create videos.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

I would say the relationships I made with the staff and the participants. The staff from Art with a Heart is doing life changing work for those in need and it was nice for me to spend time with them and learn more about the organization and its history.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

I strongly encourage students to meet with a career advisor at the Career Center if they are unsure on how to start the internship/job search process. I was worried that I would not be able to get an internship so for me, it was important to ask questions. After all, the Career Center is there to help us students succeed!

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process.

Do not be discouraged if you do not land an internship the first time. Be persistent and apply for multiple positions because in the end, you will obtain one. It just takes time and perseverance!