Psychology Professor Carlo DiClemente has been appointed to the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The council advises and makes recommendations to the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) secretary, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) director on research program and policy matters in the field of alcohol abuse and alcoholism.

The council consists of 15 members appointed by the HHS secretary who are leaders in scientific disciplines relevant to NIAAA activities, including public health, behavioral and social sciences, public policy, law, health policy, economics, and management.

DiClemente’s research focuses on smoking cessation, motivation and stages of change for a variety of health behaviors, understanding the mechanism of change in alcohol and substance abuse, and Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) training in medical residency programs.

Last year, DiClemente received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Addictive Behaviors Special Interest Group (AB-SIG) of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT). To learn more, click here.

The National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism appointment is a four-year term. To learn more about the council, click here.

Ph.D. Proposal

Increased Autonomy with Robotics for Daily Living

Kavita Preethi Krishnaswamy

5:30pm-7:30pm, Tuesday, 9 December 2014, ITE 325B

Live Webcast: http://goo.gl/5JmjlR or http://youtu.be/qu8S6IUsCa0

Robotic technologies can provide people with disabilities invaluable tools to perform activities of daily living (ADLs). Few studies have investigated how effective and accessible the control of robotic aids is for people with severe physical disabilities with respect to their needs and current facility with technology. Though present-day robotic aids can help people with disabilities with important daily living tasks, there is still room for improvement.

What has been needed, and heretofore unavailable, is a self-directed transferring, repositioning, and personal care robotic device that is capable of increasing independence for people with physical disabilities without the assistance of caregivers. This thesis proposal will serve as the base of the research study to design and develop self-directed transferring, repositioning, and personal care robotic systems with a focus on accessible user interfaces for control that are feasible for persons with severe physical disabilities. The interface should allow local and remote control, and thus must be aware of network constraints to ensure safe and accurate control.

Committee Members: Dr. Tim Oates (Chair), Dr. Dan Ding, Dr. Tim Finin, Dr. Charles Nicholas, Dr. Yelena Yesha

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.

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.

PhD Dissertation Proposal

A quantum approach to the graph isomorphism
and knot classification problems

Omar Shehab

11:30am Monday, 08 December 2014, ITE 346

Simulating physics on a quantum computer can be reduced to solving mathematical problem using quantum mechanics. In this PhD dissertation proposal, I present two important mathematical problems to be investigated using quantum mechanical techniques. In the case of the first problem, the Graph Isomorphism problem, I, with another co-researcher, Kenneth M Zick, are able to present a quantum annealing algorithm with promising result. I am proposing to extend this idea so that we could study the Hamiltonian complexity of graph isomorphism. I propose to transform our previous work, the compact objective function, into a k-local Hamiltonian problem and investigate quantum adiabatic algorithms to solve it. In the case of the second problem, classification of knots, I present a mathematical framework with two restricted problems solved using quantum annealing. The restricted problems are defined for unknots embedded in two dimensional integer lattice. I propose to generalize them to higher dimension and complexity. I present how I envision to continue the rest of the study while writing the dissertation.

Committee: Drs. Samuel J. Lomonaco Jr. (chair), Alan T. Sherman, Yanhua Shih, William Gasarch

Psychology Professor Carlo DiClemente has been appointed to the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The council advises and makes recommendations to the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) secretary, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) director on research program and policy matters in the field of alcohol abuse and alcoholism.

The council consists of 15 members appointed by the HHS secretary who are leaders in scientific disciplines relevant to NIAAA activities, including public health, behavioral and social sciences, public policy, law, health policy, economics, and management.

DiClemente’s research focuses on smoking cessation, motivation and stages of change for a variety of health behaviors, understanding the mechanism of change in alcohol and substance abuse, and Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) training in medical residency programs.

Last year, DiClemente received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Addictive Behaviors Special Interest Group (AB-SIG) of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT). To learn more, click here.

The National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism appointment is a four-year term. To learn more about the council, click here.