CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno, Cybersecurity GPD and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, was a guest on WEAA’s ‘The Marc Steiner Show’ where he joined Dr. Lisa Yeo of Loyola University in discussing cybersecurity issues and best practices in light of recent high-profile data breaches such as those at the University of Maryland, Target, and Indiana University.

Listen to the segment here.

In general terms, a variable is said to be empty when it has been declared, but not assigned a value. In most languages, that equates to having a value of null. In JavaScript, unset variables are assigned a default value of undefined. Rob Gravelle presents a few functions that test a variable for emptiness using various approaches.

With the added benefit of knowing that everything will still work in the native 64-bit TypeMock now offers Isolator++ with full 64 bit support.

Mobile, Data, Reporting and Productivity Enhancements Strengthen Leading UI .NET Tools Suite for 1M-Strong Telerik Developer Community.

We want to thank everyone who came out to February’s events! To see more photos, click the links below. Wondering what’s up next? Check out our event calendar.

View more photos of CBLA’s Alvin Ailey event.

View more photos of True Grit’s Birthday Bash.

View the Down and Dirty Dawg’s Band Spirit Group Alumni Facebook album.

To stay up to date on events happening at UMBC, like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter.

RSA isn’t the only computer security conference in San Francisco this week.

On Thursday morning, Mikko Hypponen spoke to a crowd in a movie theater in downtown San Francisco, just around the corner from the RSA security conference. Hypponen, the chief research officer at Finnish security software company F-Secure, was originally scheduled to speak this week at RSA, as he’s done eight times since 2004. But he decided to boycott the conference after Reuters reported in December that the U.S. National Security Agency had a secret $10 million contract with RSA, the computer security company behind the conference, under which RSA added a faulty encryption algorithm created by the NSA to one of its computer security products in order to allow the agency to break such encryption when needed.

CSEE professor Fow-Sen Choa has been selected as a Fellow of SPIE, the International Society for Optics and Photonics.

SPIE Fellows are honored for their technical achievements and for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular. Professor Choa was cited for for achievements in the development of standoff chemical sensing using quantum cascade lasers.

In the announcement of Dr. Choa’s section, the SPIE noted that:

“Choa has contributed significantly to the advancement of standoff chemical sensing using quantum cascade lasers, achieving a greater than 41 feet standoff chemical detection distance. In addition his research on MOCVD growth and regrowth of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) has led to the development of high power QCLs, integrated widely tunable QCLs, and power scalable surface-emitting QCL arrays. He has developed large format (64×64) photon counting arrays and demonstrated current-bias-mode photon counting techniques to simplify the bias circuits for 64×64 single photon arrays. Notably, his research has extended into broadband, low crosstalk, low noise semiconductor gain materials, Photon-neuron interactions, high speed long distance (loss-limited) multimode fiber transmissions, and other technologies associated with optical networks, lasers, and integrated coherent receivers.

A prolific scientific author, Choa has published nearly 200 refereed conference papers and over 70 peer reviewed articles, has received nearly 50 grants, and has been issued 10 patents. He has also served the greater optical community by serving as an associate editor, topical editor, and reviewer for several journals and he has been recognized as for his expertise as research faculty for eight years.

Choa has made sustained contributions to the SPIE community by serving on program committees of the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing Conference. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 SPIE journal and conference publications including three invited papers.”

Read more about Dr. Choa’s work here.