Greetings from the CSE Chairman Dear Alumni and Friends, Welcome to our first email newsletter. We have decided to put this together to share with you the latest news from our Department of Computer Science and Engineering here at UNT. We have just celebrated our one year anniversary at UNT's College of Engineering, which was inaugurated in August 2003. In January 2004, we moved to UNT Research Park, the new home of the College of Engineering, at 3940 North Elm Street in Denton. I am also pleased to report that our B.S. degree program in Computer Science was recently reaccredited by the Computer Accreditation Commission (CAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). In Fall 2004, we have 23 faculty members in our department. There are 522 students who have declared majors in Computer Science. We also have 62 M.S. students and 34 Ph.D. students in CSCI. One year ago, we began offering a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering. I am happy to report that we now have 83 students who have declared a major in this new program We want you to be informed about our department and we want to be informed about what you are doing. If you have information that you would like to appear in a future email newsletter or in the department's Alumni Newsletter, please send an email with the details to newsletter@cs.unt.edu. If you haven't had the chance, please add your information to our Alumni Database. With this information, we can continue to send you future editions of this newsletter, as well as our mailed Alumni Newsletter. To update information you have previously entered on our website, visit Alumni Update. Periodically, we will send questionnaires asking you to evaluate our degree programs and suggest improvements. This is an essential part of our process for continuous improvement of the degree programs. Because we don't have every graduate's email address, please forward this email newsletter to any other UNT Computer Science Alumni you may know. I hope they will respond by sending their updated information to us and they can be added to our list. I hope you enjoy hearing from us. Now we want to hear from you. Tell us your accomplishments, honors, and awards. Send us your photo. What is your favorite class memory? We look forward to hearing from you soon. Be an active supporting alumni and a friend of CSE and UNT. Krishna M. Kavi Chairman

Department of Computer Science and Engineering News New Faculty in Fall 2004 David M. Keathly is a Lecturer and Undergraduate Advisor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Mr. Keathly holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Oklahoma State University, with graduate work in Image Processing, Computer Vision and Computer Architecture. He has also published articles in conference proceedings and computer industry publications including the C USER's JOURNAL and holds a U.S. and Japanese patent in image processing. His research interests include Computer Vision, Software Engineering and Software Development Methodologies, Embedded Systems Design and Development, Web Services and Web Application Architectures. Prior to joining the faculty at UNT, Mr. Keathly served as adjunct faculty at UT-Dallas, Collin County Community College, University of Phoenix Online and DeVry University. He has also been a founding partner in several software development and technical training business ventures. His faculty website can be found at http://www.cs.unt.edu/~dkeathly. Saraju P. Mohanty earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from the College of Engineering and Technology, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubansewar, India in 1995. He received a Master of Engineering degree in Systems Science and Automation from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1999. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of South Florida in 2003. He has published several research papers in areas of VLSI design automation, VLSI design and digital watermarking. His paper was nominated for the best paper award at an international conference on VLSI Design in 2003. In 2002 and 2003, he received a certificate of recognition from the Provost of the University of South Florida for outstanding teaching. His research interests include high low power synthesis, VLSI CAD for DSM regime, low power ASIC design, and dynamic power management. Dr. Mohanty's faculty website is located at http://www.cs.unt.edu/~smohanty. Language and Information Technologies Laboratory Rada Mihalcea is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. She is one of the members of the Language and Information Technologies laboratory at the University of North Texas. Her main research area is Natural Language Processing, with research interests in lexical semantics, minimally supervised natural language learning, and multilingual natural language processing. She is currently involved in a number of research projects, including word sense disambiguation, shallow semantic parsing, (non-traditional) methods for building annotated corpora with volunteer contributions over the Web, word alignment for language pairs with scarce resources, and graph-based ranking algorithms for language processing. She has published more than fifty papers in international journals and conferences, and her research is supported by the NSF and UNT. To learn more about the current members, projects, and events of the Language and Information Technologies research group, check the group's webpage at http://lit.csci.unt.edu. UNT To Help Hospitals Provide Better Security Dr. Ram Dantu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has prepared a survey for hospitals in the United States to assist in researching and identifying solutions for security gaps in hospitals' networks. The survey deals with retrieving and securely archiving digital images (MRI, CAT scan, XRAY, Ultrasound, emergency unit, outpatient ward, operating room) for examination and preparation of reports using DICOM/HL7 protocols. The hospitals surveyed range in size from 100 to 1000 beds, and they perform 50,000 to one million examinations per year. "We are pleased to report that more than 40 hospitals have participated in the survey," said Dr. Dantu. "This provides very good visibility for our department and for UNT." The survey is located at http://secnet.unt.edu/hospitalSurvey. Dr. Dantu is in the process of compiling the data. For more information about Dr. Dantu and the Network Security Laboratory, go to http://nsl.unt.edu Timothy Roden Presents Paper at International Conference on Entertainment Computing Timothy Roden, Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, presented a paper by Roden and Dr. Ian Parberry in September at the 3rd International Conference on Entertainment Computing in Eindhoven, Holland. The paper, entitled "From Artistry to Automation: A Structured Methodology for Procedural Content Creation," describes a general methodology for building systems that create content for 3D graphics applications procedurally. Examples of such content include outdoor terrain and indoor environments. The presentation was attended by an audience of about 50 academic researchers sharing an interest in entertainment computing. Roden, who is also a Ph.D. candidate in computer science, describes his research as foundational for the future of 3D graphics. "We are making tremendous strides in the ability of software to interactively display increasingly complex 3D scenes, mostly due to more powerful hardware," said Roden. "At the same this is happening, content creation is still being done predominantly by humans who aren't doubling their output every six months. What's needed is software to create the content and that's the focus of this research." Roden's advisor is Dr. Ian Parberry. Parberry has written several books on game programming topics and has a decade of experience at UNT teaching game programming to undergraduate computer science students. Other Faculty Presentations Dr. Krishna M. Kavi presented "Improving Data Cache Performance With Integrated Use of Split Caches, Victim Cache and Stream Buffers" at the MEDEA workshop (MEmory performance: DEaling with Applications, systems and architecture) held in conjunction with PACT 2004 (Parallel Architectures and Compiler Technologies) September 29 to October 3, 2004. in Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France. Dr. Kavi co-authored this paper with his fellow UNT colleagues: Afrin Naz, Research Assistant; Mehran Rezaei, Adjunct Faculty; and Philip Sweany, Associate Professor. For more information, go to the conference website: http://www.pactconf.org. Dr. Kavi also presented a seminar for the Computer Science department at the University of Pisa on September 28, 2004. Dr. Robert J. Renka presented "A Sobolev Gradient Method for Construction of Elastic Curves in Regular Surfaces" at the Fourth World Congress of Nonlinear Analysts (WCNA-2004) held June 30 through July 7, 2004 in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Farhad Shahrokhi co-chaired the 12th international symposium on Graph Drawing held at City College of New York from September 29 to October 2, 2004. To recognize UNT's sponsorship of the symposium, one of the sessions was named for UNT. For more information on this symposium, please see the website at http://www.gd2004.org. Dr. Paul Tarau was on the program committee at the 20th International Conference on Logic Programming held in Saint-Malo, France, from September 6 to 10, 2004. Dr. Tarau made three presentations at the conference: "Orthogonal Language Constraints for Agent Oriented Logic Programming," "A Logic Programming Framework for Semantic Interpretation with WordNet and PageRank" (which he co-authored with UNT Assistant Professor, Rada Mihalcea, and Elizabeth Figa), and "Agent Oriented Programming Constructs in Jinni 2004." The conference website is http://www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2004/ICLP04/index.htm. Dr. Stephen R. Tate presented "Universally Composable Secure Mobile Agent Computation" at the 7th International Security Conference in Palo Alto, CA, from September 26 to 29, 2004. This paper was co-authored by Ke Xu, a former UNT Ph.D. student who graduated in Spring 2004. For more information on this conference, visit its website at http://isc04.uncc.edu/

Alumni News Jeff Cassels (B.S. 1984) After graduation from UNT in 1984, Jeff went to work at a tax processing firm, CLR - Fast Tax (now Thomson) in Carrollton, Texas. He wrote tax processing software in PL/1 on a IBM 360/370 environment. In 1998, Jeff left CLR for Electronic Data Systems. He was at EDS for 12 years and used a variety of technologies including COBOL and C++. Eventually, he got into Internet technologies using Perl/CGI and Oracle. Jeff moved into leadership roles and was promoted to Sr. Systems Engineer. He received his Java Programmer Certification from Sun in 1997 and the Developer Certification in 1999. Jeff left EDS for Picasso Software in 2000, where he works today. Picasso writes custom web applications for companies of all shapes and sizes. His main focus now is doing J2EE development on different application servers and databases. Renee Anderson (B.S. 2001) graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science in May 2001 and started at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas in June 2001. During her three years at LM Aero, she worked on the F-16 Avionic Test Stations and traveled overseas three times (nine weeks total) in support of those projects. In August 2004, she accepted a position at Lockheed Martin Space Operations in Houston to support the return to flight activities of the shuttles and the ongoing support of the International Space Station. Renee met Chris Nelson in January of 2003 and they were married in Fort Worth on September 18, 2004. They are now living in the Friendswood, Texas area. Renee's home email address is bastian_unt@hotmail.com. Terry Tuck (Ph.D. 2001) was hired by K2Share as Director of Enterprise Architecture in April. His primary focus will be on data collection and analysis tools for the Office of Domestic Preparedness under the Department of Homeland Security. Terry leaves Boeing / Labinal in Corinth after 16 years of service.

Upcoming CSE Activities CSE Logo and Slogan Contest The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, in cooperation with the ACM Student Chapter, will be conducting a contest to select a design for the first Departmental Logo and Slogan. The contest will be open to students in Computer Science and Engineering, who may team with another student not necessarily from the department. Students are encouraged to seek interdisciplinary teammates from Art, Multimedia or other similar departments. Assistance in acquiring prizes to offer to the winners of this contest would be greatly appreciated. Suggestions and donations can be forwarded to David Keathly, Undergraduate Advisor c/o the Department. UNT ACM Teams to Compete Regionally Two teams from the UNT ACM Student Chapter will travel to LSU on November 5 and 6 to participate in the South Central Regional Programming Contest. Winners from the Regional competitions will move on to the World event to be held April 2005 in Shanghai. Each team will consist of three students. A local competition was held on October 1 and the two teams representing UNT are: Team 1 - Dean Kusler, Michael Mohler, Matthew Watson; and Team 2 - John Rizzo, Mitra Mahdavian, Jack Lindamood. The Regional results will be posted in the next newsletter. The ACM Chapter website is available at http://acm.csci.unt.edu. Alumni and guests are always welcome to attend ACM Student Chapter functions and events. Please watch the website and future newsletters for details. New IEEE Computer Society Student Chapter Faculty members and students in the Computer Science and Engineering Department are working together to form a Student Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society. This chapter will sponsor speakers, programs and other events of interest to both the computer science and computer engineering undergraduates and graduates, as well as to other member of the College of Engineering and University community. Suggestions for speakers and programs from alumni and other newsletter recipients are always welcome. Comments and suggestions can be sent to David Keathly, Undergraduate Advisor, or Dr. Robert Akl, Assistant Professor c/o the CSE Department. Please watch the Department website for meeting announcements and additional information. Honor Societies to Form Faculty and Students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, as well as colleagues from the Electrical Engineering Department, will be working together to found chapters of Eta Kappa Nu and Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the honor societies for Electrical/Computer Engineering and Computer Science, respectively. Interested alumni are welcome to assist and attend future functions and events. Please watch the newsletter and departmental website at http://www.cse.unt.edu for further details.

College of Engineering News College of Engineering Awarded Approximately $1M for Electrical Engineering Program The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of North Texas College of Engineering $998,688 to establish an innovative electrical engineering curriculum. Titled "A Design- and Project-Oriented Innovative Electrical Engineering Program," the curriculum establishes modern approaches to teaching the discipline to undergraduates. Professors Oscar Garcia, Murali Varanasi, Kathy Swigger, Reza Mirshams and Jon Young are co-principal investigators in this competitive NSF award. For more information on this award, go to http://web2.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=8958. DC BEST to Host Robotics Competition DC BEST - "Denton County Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology" is being sponsored by the University of North Texas College of Engineering in October 2004. DC BEST is a non-profit organization that holds robotics contests and encourages high school students to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology. For more information or to volunteer to help with this event, contact Leticia Anaya at (940) 565-2366 or http://www.etec.unt.edu/dcbest/home.htm.

University of North Texas News UNT Event Calendar UNT Enrollment Sets New Record With 31,304 Students According to the unofficial headcount after the 2004 fall census date, the University of North Texas student population has climbed to 31,304, an increase of 239 students or 0.8 percent. For more information on this record-breaking increase, see the news release posted at http://web2.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=8964. "Got Green?" is UNT Homecoming Theme for 2004 The University of North Texas Homecoming will be held October 20-23, 2004. The Mean Green Eagles will play New Mexico State beginning at 6:05 p.m. on Saturday, October 23. To read more about all the Homecoming activities, see the UNT Homecoming page at http://www.unt.edu/development/homecoming2004/.

The CSE Email Newsletter was assembled and produced by Genene Murphy and Don Retzlaff. It is a publication of the UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department. Contact the department at csci@cs.unt.edu. http://www.cse.unt.edu UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department