Greetings from the CSE Chairman
Dear Alumni and Friends, As cooler weather has arrived in North Texas, so this alumni newsletter arrives with all the HOT news I want to share with you about our Department of Computer Science and Engineering. We are growing as three new instructors and 63 new computer engineers and 127 new computer science majors have joined our CSE family. While national trends have shown a decline in computer science and engineering students, our number of new students has increased significantly from a year ago. We should have our first Computer Engineering graduates in a year. Our CSE department has many success stories to share. In 2004-2005, our CSE faculty received almost $650,000 in research grants and published nearly 60 papers. During the summer, one of those grants enabled us to host RoboCamp 2005, which allowed high school students to explore computer science and engineering. This newsletter also highlights several faculty members and their research. As you will read below, there are many opportunities for you to get involved in our department. You are invited to visit with us, your former professors, and network with your fellow CSE alumni at Homecoming on Saturday, November 19 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. We are seeking alumni to serve on our CSE Advisory Council. DC BEST needs alumni to serve as judges. You are invited to join in the life of our CSE department. I look forward to your continuing support of CSE and UNT. Sincerely, Krishna M. Kavi |
Department of Computer Science and Engineering NewsCSE Department Welcomes New Faculty
Dr. Bahr's research interests are reconfigurable architectures for embedded computing and software engineering for embedded simulation. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM. In Fall 2005, he is teaching CSCE 3610, Machine Structures, and CSCE 5420, Software Development. Dr. Bahr's webpage can be found at http://www.cse.unt.edu/~hab/.
His research interests include VLSI Design and CAD, FPGA Synthesis, and Electronic Design Automation. He has published several research papers in areas of VLSI Design Automation. His paper was nominated for the best paper award at the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference in 2003. He is a member of IEEE and ACM SIGDA. Dr. Li is teaching CSCE 3730, Reconfigurable Logic, this semester. His faculty website is located at http://www.cse.unt.edu/~hli.
Dr. Shields also holds a law degree from Southern Methodist University. Although he has never practiced, his studies included course work in Intellectual Property and E-Commerce. Dr. Shields values teaching and university environments very much. Facilitating and participating in the learning process is a great joy to him. This semester Dr. Shields is teaching one section of CSCE 1010, Introduction to Computers, and two sections of CSCE 1030, Computer Science I. His website is http://www.cse.unt.edu/~shields. SCOPES 2005 Hosted by UNT CSE Department
The conference drew attendees not only from the Dallas area, but also from across the United States and many parts of Europe. Keynote speakers were: Dr. Roy Ju, formerly with Intel and now with Google, Inc., who spoke about "A Programming System for Network Processors"; and Dr. Wayne Wolf from Princeton University on "Embedded Video Computation: Challenges to Software and Hardware Designers." A tutorial entitled "Code optimizations for efficient embedded systems" was held on Thursday. The sessions on Friday and Saturday included Real-Time Systems, Optimizations and Memory Systems, as well as a Panel Discussion on "Software Engineering for Embedded Systems: How useful are the new paradigms?" This was the first time the workshop has been held in the United States, having been hosted the previous eight years in Europe. There were approximately 50 people in attendance, including students from UNT and University of Texas at Dallas. The workshop also received financial support from the National Science Foundation and ARTIST2. RoboCamp 2005: A CSE Success
The Computer Science and Engineering department hosted two one-week camps this summer for 9th to 11th grade young women with a focus on Robotics and Computer Science. This program, which will be repeated again next year, was funded as part of a grant from the Texas Coordinating Board for Higher Education as part of the Technology Workforce Development Program. The camps were held at the Research Park and at the UNT Dallas Campus. The department worked with the Cross Timbers Girl Scout Council to help promote the event. Each camp was attended by approximately 17 young women who built small robots and programmed them to use various sensors, including touch, visible light and infrared, and to perform various tasks, including a student-generated idea for creating RoboArt. The students also participated in seminars on a variety of topics, including preparing for college and Women in Computer Science and Engineering. CSE students also helped with the camp as teaching assistants. The grant, awarded to Dr. Robert Akl and David Keathly, also includes components to further assist in the recruitment of women and minorities in Engineering and Computer Science. The mobile laboratory and the robots used for the camp will form the basis for a series of recruiting trips and seminars throughout the DFW area during the academic year to help foster interest in Engineering and Computer Science at local middle schools and high schools. RoboCamp was featured on page 7 of the Fall 2005 alumni magazine, The North Texan. Additional information regarding RoboCamp, including pictures from the event and video clips from CNN Coverage, can be found at http://www.cse.unt.edu/robocamp2005. Ram Dantu Researches VoIP Security
Also in June 2005, Dr. Dantu served as a panelist for "What do you mean 'Secure VoIP?'" at the 5th International Enterprise Networking and Services Conference at Supercomm, the largest telecommunication conference, for which more information can be found at http://www.ieee-entnet.org/. At MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in July 2005, Dr. Dantu and Prakash Kolan, CSE Ph.D. student, presented "Detecting SPAM in VoIP Networks" at the SRUTI (Steps to Reduce Unwanted Traffic on the Internet) workshop, sponsored by USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association. IT reporter Tim Greene wrote about the workshop and Dr. Dantu's research here in Network World. This article also appeared here in TechWorld, an online publication in the United Kingdom, and here in ARNnet, an Australian online journal. These workshops have been very productive for writing National Science Foundation funding proposals. Dr. Dantu submitted a proposal to the NSF on research infrastructure for VoIP Security with collaborators from Columbia University, Purdue University and University of California at Davis and UNT as the lead organization. In August 2005, the NSF awarded Dr. Dantu a grant of $60,150 for conducting research in voice spamming. For an IEEE Network Magazine Special Issue on Securing Voice over IP, Dr. Dantu is serving as Guest Editor. The paper submission deadline is October 2005 and the issue will be published in 2006. For more information about submitting a paper go to this website. This Fall Dr. Dantu is teaching CSCE 5520, Wireless Networks and Protocols, and CSCE 6581, Advanced Computer Networks. For more information about Dr. Dantu's research, please visit his webpage: http://www.cse.unt.edu/~rdantu/. Rada Mihalcea Reports on the
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Hubert Bahr joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in
Summer 2005 as an Adjunct Professor. Dr. Bahr obtained his Ph.D. in
Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in 2004
and his M.S. in Computer Engineering from UCF in 1994. He received his
Professional Engineering License from Oklahoma in 1977 and his B.S.E. from
the University of Oklahoma in 1972.
Hao Li is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering
department. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from
the University of South Florida in 2004. He earned his B.E. and M.S. from
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing China in 1995
and 1999, respectively.
Charles Shields is currently a Lecturer at the University of North Texas.
He earned his B.A. degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas in
Austin, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University
of Texas at Dallas. His research interests in Computer Science include
various topics in Parallel Computation as well as Security.
Ram Dantu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering, has emerged as a leader in the field of Voice over IP
(VoIP) Security. Dr. Dantu chaired the 1st VoIP Security workshop, in
conjunction with Globecom, an IEEE conference, held in December 2004 in
Dallas. Then in June 2005, Dr. Dantu served as the Program Chair for the
2nd Securing VoIP workshop held in Washington, D.C. More than 260 people
from business, government and academia attended these two workshops
which were sponsored by Nokia, Samsung, Lucent, BearingPoint, Juniper
Networks and 10 other companies. Dr. Dantu was quoted in 
Alumni NewsAlumni Invited to Homecoming November 19You are invited to come by the Mean Green Village to the College of Engineering tent on Saturday, November 19, 2005. The tent will be open from 1:30 p.m. until the football game begins at 6:00 p.m. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering will host several activities in the tent. Come try your hand at video games developed by our CSE students or race a robot around a maze. For more information about UNT's Homecoming, go to http://www.unt.edu/development/homecoming2005/index.htm. If you are interested in networking with other CSE alumni, bring your business cards and come to the tent between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. Dr. Robert Brazile and Dr. Kathleen Swigger will be there to greet you and a few more of your former CSE professors may join the party as well. We look forward to seeing you there! Advisory Council Seeks CSE Alumni to ServeIn April 2003, the UNT Department of Computer Science and Engineering held its first Advisory Council meeting with three members present in addition to CSE faculty members. Since that time, the CSE Advisory Council has grown to 11 members and meets twice a year to offer guidance to the CSE Department. The purpose of the Advisory Council is to enhance the quality and content of the computer science and engineering research and educational programs through active practitioner-educator partnering. The primary roles of the Advisory Council are:
Current members of the CSE Advisory Council are:
If you are interested in serving as a member of the CSE Advisory Council, please contact Dr. Krishna Kavi at kavi@cs.unt.edu for more information. Alumni Focus
Steve started as the one and only programmer and has been the network administrator, systems manager, director of information technology and now the CIO. He began with a DP department of 2 and now he runs an IT staff of 30. Steve began his studies at UNT (then NTSU) as a music major in voice. One programming class was enough to convince him to change majors, but he has stayed involved with the arts in the Denton area. He has performed in musicals with the Music Theatre of Denton, and Denton Community Theatre and sung with the Denton Bach Society Choir. In July 2005, Steve had the unique opportunity of performing again on a UNT stage when he played Jesus in the Music Theatre of Denton production of Jesus Christ Superstar which was held at the RTVF theater. Interestingly, the last time he performed on that stage was in 1982 when he played the role of Jesus in the NTSU production of Godspell. Steve and his wife, Kathleen, stayed in Denton after their graduation in 1985. Kathleen graduated from UNT with a degree in Special Education, and she received her Master's degree from UNT in 1987. They have three children, two boys, 17 and 15, and one girl, 12.
On the Monday prior to her M.S. graduation in 2004, Hasina was offered a job at M-Systems Inc., a medical software company in Plano, TX. She remembers how excited she was and how difficult it was to stay calm and drive carefully from Plano back to Denton. She drove straight to her son's school and walked into his 2nd grade classroom and told him the great news. Hasina is currently a Software Engineer II for M-Systems, Inc., where she works closely with programmers, testers and customer support specialists to design, analyze and develop web-based healthcare programs, and analyze the database systems. Her work involves UNIX Systems Programming, network programming, LP distributed printing and print queue programming, working with FairCom Corporation Database Server API, and creating Postscript reports from the programs. The CSE courses that have been most helpful to Hasina were Software Development, UNIX & TCP/IP, Database, Algorithms, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Operating Systems, Automata, Programming Languages and Human Computer Interaction. She is thankful to the professors for doing a great job in teaching, making time and effort for students and being so patient and helpful. In her spare time, Hasina teaches chess to the local elementary school chess club and she also enjoys doing karate, bowling and playing golf with family. She hopes to work on her doctorate some day. Her email address is maziz@morris-systems.com. We want to hear from you! What have you been doing since graduating from UNT? Please send a few paragraphs and a picture to Genene Murphy, genene@unt.edu. |
Steve McHargue (B.S. 1985) has been with the law firm of Jackson Walker
for almost 20 years. He has seen Jackson Walker grow from 80 attorneys
in Dallas to over 300 attorneys in Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio,
Fort Worth, Richardson and San Angelo. His firm has gone from 2
minicomputers (1 for accounting and 1 for word processing) to today's
environment of virtual servers, SANS and internet technologies. 
Hasina Masha Aziz (B.S. 2001, M.S. 2004) was the single parent of
a 2-year old boy in 1998. As an undergraduate, Hasina and her little boy
struggled as she worked and studied to get her degrees. After receiving
her B.S. in 2001, she worked for the UNT libraries and then InfoMover
Inc, a moving software company in Denton. While she worked on her M.S.
degree, she served as a teaching assistant for the CSE department.
CSE Student NewsGrant Funds New Curriculum in Computational SciencesTwo CSE faculty members, Dr. Armin Mikler and David Keathly, received a grant from the Texas Coordinating Board for Higher Education to begin development of a new CSE curriculum in Computational Sciences. The first course, offered Fall 2005, is Bio-Computing. This course has been offered as a Senior-level CSE course and cross-listed as a graduate CSE course. The course is also listed at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the Biology department. The second course will be offered in the Spring of 2006 as a sophomore level CSE course. This course, tentatively titled A Survey of Computational Sciences, will introduce students to the field of Computational Science and offer a brief glimpse of Computational and Computer Science in a variety of scientific fields, including biology, chemistry, environmental science, geology, sociology, physics, epidemiology and others. Additional funding has been sought to further the development of this curriculum to develop additional depth courses in specific sciences, as well as to develop supporting curriculum and establish instructional and research laboratories in topics such as Super Computing, Cluster and Grid Computing, Computer Modeling and Simulation, and Visualization. For questions and course descriptions visit Dr. Mikler's website at http://www.cse.unt.edu/~mikler, or contact either Dr. Mikler or David Keathly by phone or email. CSE Department Ambassadors and Mentors ProgramThe Department of Computer Science and Engineering, as part of a grant awarded from the Texas Technology Workforce Development Program, will be forming a group of Ambassadors and Mentors beginning in the Fall of 2005. This group of 10 students, primarily women and minorities, will represent the department at a variety of recruiting and other events around the DFW area, serve as hosts for high school and community college visitors, and mentor incoming women and minority freshman during their first year in the College of Engineering. The students selected will be awarded a $1,000 scholarship for each year that they participate in the program. |
College of Engineering NewsDC BEST Seeks Alumni to VolunteerThe College of Engineering is hosting DC BEST (Denton County Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) in Fall 2005. BEST is a non-profit volunteer organization run by the schools and for the schools through a grass roots movement. The mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like science- and engineering-based robotics competition.
The DC BEST competition will continue at Mall Day, which will be held Saturday, October 22, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Golden Triangle Mall, in Denton. The final event of DC BEST will be Game Day, which will be held Saturday, October 29, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the UNT Coliseum. The major sponsor for DC BEST is Thomas Herr from Versant LLC, a real estate developer. Other sponsors include Labinal-Corinth, Inc., Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., Peterbilt, and Forney Corporation. From The Colony, TX, sponsors are Wells Fargo Bank, Dr. David Rossen, and Texas Credit Union. If you are interested in being a judge, a mentor or a referee at DC BEST, please contact Ms. Leticia Anaya, DC BEST Director, at Let_ana@msn.com or Lanaya@unt.edu or by calling (469) 831-2453. College of Engineering Gets NSF Grant for New Mechanical and Energy Engineering Program
In August 2005, Dr. Oscar Garcia announced the receipt of a $99,954 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to plan for a new innovative baccalaureate-level interdisciplinary program in Mechanical and Energy Engineering (MEE). Reza Mirshams, UNT's associate engineering dean and project director for the grant said the program will be built on a system-level approach to ME-based design and on core fundamentals of undergraduate-level mechanical and energy engineering. UNT's College of Engineering is launching a national search for a department chair of this new program and department. UNT's College of Engineering search announcement and the grant proposal can be found at http://www.eng.unt.edu. |
University of North Texas News
UNT Enrollment Sets New RecordsIn Fall 2005, the University of North Texas student population has climbed to 32,181, which is an increase of 1,026 students or 3.3 percent. The new numbers indicate UNT has posted a new all-time high enrollment for five consecutive years and posted enrollment increases for nine consecutive years. On-site enrollment at the University of North Texas Dallas Campus is 1,450 students -- that makes 564 students in full-time equivalents (FTEs) for fall 2005. This represents a 20.8 percent increase in headcount and a 33.3 percent increase in FTE enrollment (compared to fall 2004), bringing the campus a step closer to the UNT System's goal to establish the University of North Texas at Dallas. Construction of the first building on the permanent site for UNT at Dallas began in July 2005. The schedule calls for classes to begin in the new building in January 2007. The new campus will be located on 264 acres of land located at Camp Wisdom and Houston School roads. Initial development of the land and construction of the first building for UNT at Dallas was made possible by state authorized bonds of $25.5 million in 2003. Lou Marini to Perform with One O'Clock Lab Band November 22
In John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd's 1980 cult classic The Blues Brothers, Lou played band member and saxophone soloist "Blue Lou." To this day, the remarkable popularity of the Blues Brothers Band continues. Lou and the other band members tour worldwide, giving live concerts to packed houses and hundreds of thousands of screaming fans. Lou Marini was also one of the original members of the Saturday Night Live Band, playing on the show from 1976 to 1983. Recently he recorded his own big band album, recorded on most of the horn tracks for the recent Steely Dan album Two Against Nature, and is currently touring with trumpeter Lew Soloff's quintet. In addition, Lou is touring with James Taylor, and continues to tour the world with the Blues Brothers Band. Tickets for the concert are $10.00. To purchase tickets, please call the box office at (940) 369-7802 or go here to purchase tickets online. |
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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 newsletter@cse.unt.edu. If you would like to receive this newsletter as text rather than formatted in HTML, please contact Don Retzlaff at donr@unt.edu. http://www.cse.unt.edu UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department |