News
Computer Science for Everyone
A new law will require every public high school in Delaware to offer at least one course in computer science. When Delaware Gov. John Carney signed the bill, two University of Delaware professors and advocates for computer science education attended as invited guests.
Virtual Reality On Ice
Scott Sorensen’s experiences as a computer science student at the University of Delaware were hardly typical. While he spent his share of time in windowless rooms staring at computer screens, he also made five trips to the Arctic Ocean as part of his doctoral research. And those travels put Sorensen, who received his Ph.D. from UD this past May, on a different career course than he originally imagined for himself.
Engineering’s Zhang Wins NSF Grant
Rui Zhang, an assistant professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Delaware, has received a $500,000 National Science Foundation grant to study security and privacy challenges associated with mobile cloud sensing. The grant, which is estimated to run three years, was awarded through NSF’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.
Lessons in Convergence
This academic year, the theme is rising stars in a scientific world of convergence. According to the National Science Foundation, “convergence can be characterized as the deep integration of knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks for addressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities.” The NSF has defined this as a priority area.
Impact Recognized
Associate Professor James Clause has received the ISSTA 2017 Impact Paper Award from the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, which recognizes papers published within the last 10 years that have had a significant impact on the field. The paper presents the software tool Dytan that can be used to detect and prevent attacks, enforce information policy, test software, and track how long sensitive data remains in an application.
Ecoinformatics
Professor Taufer, who has already brought her knowledge of data science to the field of medicine through collaborations with clinicians, is now teaming with ecosystem ecologist Rodrigo Vargas, associate professor in UD’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences. The two recently received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop cyberinfrastructure tools for precision agriculture in the 21st century.
Biosciences Big Data
Professor Taufer, who has already brought her knowledge of data science to the field of medicine through collaborations with clinicians, is now teaming with ecosystem ecologist Rodrigo Vargas, associate professor in UD’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences. The two recently received a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop cyberinfrastructure tools for precision agriculture in the 21st century.
Faculty Fellows and Scholars
According to Bintong Chen, director of UD’s Institute for Financial Services Analytics (IFSA), “The new scholars are excellent and research-productive faculty members from UD’s College of Engineering (COE). Their research expertise matches the program well, and they are passionate about contributing. Our program and students will benefit tremendously from the interdisciplinary training offered by the fellows and scholars.”
For the Record
A 2007 paper by Lori Pollock, Alumni Distinguished Professor, and Vijay Shanker, professor, both in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and former students David Shepherd, Zachary Fry and Emily Hill has been recognized as the Most Influential Paper over the past 10 years from the sixth International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development. The paper, “Using Natural Language Program Analysis to Locate and Understand Action-Oriented Concerns,” describes a semi-automated concern location and comprehension tool, Find-Concept. Shepherd is now senior principal scientist at ABB in Raleigh-Durham, NC; Fry is a senior scientist at GrammaTech in Ithaca, NY; and Hill is assistant professor of computer science at Drew University in Madison, NJ.
Summit for Computer Science Education
More than 75 teachers, administrators, business partners and state leaders convened at the University of Delaware on Thursday, March 23, for a daylong conference on computer science education.
Computer Science Honors
ISCB is the leading, largest and longest-standing international society for bioinformatics and computational biology, aiming to advance the understanding of living systems through computation and to communicate scientific advances worldwide. Its board comprises 26 leading international scientists in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics. “It is an honor to be nominated and elected to the board of directors and to have the opportunity to serve the field and to shape its future direction,” Shatkay says.
Shared-Use Superhighway
The project, “Secure Database-Driven Dynamic Spectrum Sharing,” addresses issues of security and privacy surrounding radio spectrum sharing.The five-year, $500,000 grant was awarded through NSF’s Division of Computer and Network Systems.