October 2006   CSE News Alumni News Student News College of Engineering News UNT News Greetings from the CSE Chairman Dear CSE Alumni and Friends, Fall 2006 has brought more students to our department. Our undergraduate program has 457 students majoring in Computer Science and 240 students majoring in Computer Engineering. This represents an increase of nearly 24% in the number of students majoring in Computer Engineering since last year. In May 2007, our first class of Computer Engineering students will graduate. In the graduate Computer Science program, there are 93 M.S. students and 28 Ph.D. students. Our strongest growth is in Computer Engineering, where there are 29 M.S. students, a 70% increase over enrollment from one year ago. In addition to our new students, we welcome several new faculty members. You can read about them and the experience they bring to our department below. I am also happy to announce that our CSE faculty has received more than $1.2 million in research grants in a nine month period from January to September 2006. Several faculty members and their research are highlighted in this newsletter. Finally, we have just learned that our CSE department is one of the finalists for the Texas Higher Education Star Award. Greg Jones is featured in our Alumni Focus in this edition. Greg graduated from our program in 1987. He worked in industry, continued his education, and eventually came back to teach in Technology and Cognition at UNT. Greg feels that our program gave him a great foundation to help him achieve his successes. We hope you feel the same way and invite you to show your support for UNT and your CSE department. Sincerely, Krishna M. Kavi Chairman

Department of Computer Science and Engineering News CSE Welcomes New Faculty Members Bill Buckles received an array of graduate degrees from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Computer Science and Operations Research. He received his Ph.D. for work in Industrial Engineering in 1981. He began teaching at the University of Texas at Arlington in 1981, moving to Tulane University in 1987, where he was the Yahoo! Founders Chair in Computer Engineering. Dr. Buckles has received his department's annual teaching award three times in the past decade plus a university-wide graduate teaching award. Once he has been honored with a national award from IEEE for outstanding leadership of a student professional society chapter. Meanwhile he has published almost 200 papers in national and international media plus one book. His research has been supported by NASA, NSF, the State of Louisiana, and, on several occasions, the Missile Defense Agency. Twice he has been honored with national technical achievement awards from NASA. He has been a visiting professor at the Techhochshule in Aachen Germany, the GMD (Germany's version of NSF), the Free University of Brussels, National Central University of Taiwan, and Fulbright Fellow at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. Nearly all of the graduate students he has advised have embarked upon academic careers leading often to distinguished service or research. For example, students with whom he has worked have been department chairs at Loyola University, University of Dayton, and Texas Tech. Twice, students with whom he has worked at the graduate level have become Associate Directors of NASA centers. He has been an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Distributed Processing, and General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems. Currently he is Vice-Chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Awards Committee. Xiaohui Yuan received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA in 2004 and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Hefei University of Technology in Hefei, China in 1996. He joined the department in 2006 as an assistant professor. Prior to that, he was a member of the Rehabilitation Medicine Department, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. He has been an active member of the IEEE since 2000 and served as reviewers for journals such as IEEE Transaction of Medical Imaging and Journal of Information Fusion. His research interests include image processing and visualization, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, data mining, and bioinformatics. He has published more than 20 papers in international journals and conferences. JungHwan Oh received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in 1997 and 2000 respectively. During his study, he also worked for the Office of Research at the University of Central Florida, where he led a project to implement relational database handling proposals, awards of grants and faculty information. As soon as he finished his Ph.D., he worked as a visiting professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Oh worked with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Texas, Arlington. His research topics include Medical Imaging, Multimedia Database Management Systems, Surveillance Video Processing, and Video Communications in Wired and Wireless Environments. He established a medical video research with the collaboration of Iowa State University and the Mayo Clinic in 2003. This research focuses on the medical video (colonoscopy, endoscopy, broncoscopy, minimal access surgery, etc.) analyses such as video segmentation, blurry frame detection, reflection detection, operational tool detection, abnormal disease detection, and multimedia database building. Also, Dr. Oh has initiated a medical multimedia information research about Wireless Capsule Endoscopy with the collaboration of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Texas. This research focuses image enhancement, blood detection, and reducing the viewing time for capsule endoscopy videos. As a result of these research projects, three proposals totaling $1,538,850 have been granted from the National Science Foundation and UTA. Dr. Oh has organized a special session on multimedia data mining, and served as a member of the program committee, and an editor of various international conferences on imaging science, systems, and information technology. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, and International Association of Science and Technology for Development (IASTED) Technical Committee on "Database". He is the author or coauthor of many journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. CSE Department Nominated for Texas Higher Education Star Award The UNT Department of Computer Science and Engineering is one of eight finalists for the Texas Higher Education Star Award. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is recognizing the CSE department for its recruiting and retention efforts. Dr. Krishna Kavi credits the recognition to two innovative programs sponsored by grants from the Texas Technology Workforce Development program. Dr. Kavi says, "We have been named a finalist based on our summer RoboCamp program for high school aged women to encourage them to consider careers in computers and technology. Also, we have been recognized for the CSEagles program where female computer science majors help at recruiting events, talk about their experiences, and serve as mentors to other students." The award will be presented at the annual conference of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Monday, November 6, 2006. NetworkWorld calls Dr. Dantu's Research Project One of the Top Ten to Know About Dr. Ram Dantu's VoIP research has been named one of the ten cutting- edge network research projects in this article in NetworkWorld published in June 2006. The article refers to a collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation which was awarded in March 2006 for a three year period. Dr. Dantu is the PI for "A Testbed for Research and Development of Secure IP Multimedia Communication Services," along with other researchers from Purdue University, Columbia University, and University of California at Davis. UNT will receive $315,000 of this $600,000 research grant. This summer Dr. Dantu received two more grants from the National Science Foundation for research projects beginning in September 2006. For the first grant, "Detecting Spam in IP Multimedia Communication Services," Dr. Dantu will collaborate with Dr. Henning Schulzrinne from Columbia University for two years. UNT will receive $131,392 of this $250,000 research grant. Dr. Dantu also received a second NSF grant for $300,000 for a three year research period for "Development of a Flexible Platform for Experimental Research in Secure IP Multimedia Communication Services." Four patents were issued recently to Dr. Dantu: Quality indicator and method for frame selection in wireless network, Co-Inventor, US Patent, 7,079,512, July 18, 2006. Wireless router and method for processing traffic in a wireless communications network, Principal Inventor, US Patent, 7,068,624, June 27, 2006. Method and system for providing wireless-specific services for a wireless access network, Principal Inventor, US Patent, 7, 058,033, June 6, 2006. Method and system for configuring wireless routers and networks, Co-Inventor, US Patent, 7,031,266, April 18, 2006. In April 2006, Dr. Dantu served as a panelist in the first IEEE Workshop on VoIP Management and Security in Vancouver, Canada. The panel topic was "Top Three Challenges in VoIP Security and Management." In June 2006, Dr. Dantu was invited as a Panelist for the National Science Foundation's CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) PI meeting in Snowbird, Utah. Dr. Dantu was selected for the panel on "CISE and Global Implications." This meeting was attended by more than one hundred PIs, various program directors, CISE divisional directors and several other NSF staff. Dr. Dantu was the lead guest editor for the IEEE Network September 2006 issue on "Voice over IP." Other co-guest-editors included Henning Schulzrinne from Columbia University and Dipak Ghosal of University of California at Davis. Also, Dr. Dantu co-authored a paper, "SS7 over IP: Signaling Interworking Vulnerabilities," which will appear in the November/December 2006 issue of IEEE Network. Dr. Dantu's co-authors for this paper were Hemant Sagar, Duminda Wijesekara, and Sushil Jajodia, all from George Mason University. Dr. Tate is PI for ASCENT A project by Professors Tate and Dantu, entitled "Collaborative Project: A Regional Partnership to Build and Strengthen IA in North Texas", was awarded $128,106 by the National Science Foundation. This project is funded through the "Capacity Building" portion of the NSF Scholarship for Service program, which UNT is eligible for as a result of being designed a "Center for Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education" by the National Security Agency (NSA). Additional funding was provided to the University of Texas at Arlington as part of a regional partnership on this project, and a regional alliance known as ASCENT (Alliance for Secure Computing Education in North Texas) has been created with UNT and UTA as the initial members. The funding for this project, along with additional funds from the College of Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will enable UNT to update laboratory facilities for teaching computer and network security courses, update curriculum materials to target specific audiences, develop student exercises that include students from UNT and UTA, and explore the use of new virtualization technologies to extend the existing laboratory exercises. In addition, the project will involve establishing an ongoing industry-academic partnership that will include activities to expose students to current industry practice as well as to assist in placing students in internships and careers in the computer security field. This project started on September 1, and developments can be followed at http://ascent.cse.unt.edu/. News from the LIT Research Group In summer 2006, the members of the Language and Information Technology group spent time working on exciting research, and participating in several international events. In July 2006, Rada Mihalcea (shown on right), Courtney Corley, and Carlo Strapparava presented their work on corpus-based and text-based measures of text semantic similarity at the prestigious American Association of Artificial Intelligence conference. In July 2006, a collaborative paper between Jan Wiebe (University of Pittsburgh) and Rada Mihalcea, "On Word Sense and Subjectivity," was presented at the Association of Computational Linguistics in Sydney. In August 2006, Ben Leong and Rada Mihalcea presented their recent research work on automatic generation of universal pictorial translations at the conference of the Association of the Machine Translation in the Americas. Rada Mihalcea was awarded a grant from the ARDA-AQUAINT program to work on a project led by University of Pittsburgh on "Opinions in Question Answering." This is a two-year grant, and the UNT share is $148,000. The project is scheduled to start in September. News about past LIT members: Ben Leong has graduated with a Master's degree from UNT and has now joined the Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware. Ehsan Faruque has also graduated with a Master's degree and this summer he has joined Microsoft in Seattle. CSE Trio Recognized by Homeland Security Xiaobo Peng (left) with his graduate advisor, Dr. Robert Brazile, following his recent dissertation defense. CSE faculty members, Dr. Robert Brazile and Dr. Kathleen Swigger, and graduate student, Xiaobo Peng, were recently recognized in this NT Daily article by Scott Flowerday of the Department of Homeland Security's Radiology Emergency Preparedness (REP). In September 2005, Dr. Swigger was awarded a $49,000 grant from the Digital Government Program. Flowerday contacted them to computerize Department of Homeland Security reports to help increase response time. Dr. Brazile and Dr. Swigger designed the infrastructure for the database and wrote the software for REP along with Xiaobo Peng, who served as chief programmer for the project. Flowerday thanked the trio for providing a program that would normally allow a 30 day process to be completed in only five days. The REP Database designed by these UNT programmers is now being used in FEMA region six and the Department of Homeland Security may incorporate their database into its infrastructure. Flowerday said the project could not have happened without Peng, who responded by saying he was really happy that the database received so much support. CSE Department Sponsors RoboCamp 2006 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 is the second year of a program that 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 in July at the Research Park and at the UNT Dallas Campus. Each camp was attended by 20 young women who built small robots and programmed them to use various sensors, including touch, visible light and infrared, and to perform various tasks. The students also participated in seminars on a variety of topics, including preparing for college and Women in Computer Science and Engineering. CSE students helped with the camp as teaching assistants. 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. Additional information regarding RoboCamp, including the Music Video, photos, and press coverage can be found at http://www.cse.unt.edu/robocamp2006. More Faculty News Dr. Kavi Gives Keynote Speech at PDCS-2006 Dr. Krishna Kavi delivered the Keynote talk at the 19th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems (PDCS-2006), in San Francisco, CA, September 19-22, 2006. The title of his talk was "Is it time to revive dataflow as a model of parallel computing?" PDCS-2006 is a major forum to address, explore and exchange information in all areas of Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems, their modeling and simulation, design, use and performance, and their impact. Later this month, on October 18, 2006, Dr. Kavi will present a seminar on Multicore Low Power Architectures for the IEEE Long Island Section Computer Society in Farmingdale, NY. In this talk, he plans to present several research projects that are underway at UNT. He will give an overview of each project, results thus far, and discuss plans for the future. Dr. Kavi will make the same presentation for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State University on October 19, 2006. Professor Tate and Vandana Gunupudi Present Research in Japan Vandana Gunupudi and Professor Tate in Japan In early May, Dr. Steve Tate and graduate student Vandana Gunupudi traveled to Hakodate, Japan, to present their research on security for mobile agents. They presented their paper "SAgent: A Security Framework for JADE" at the 2006 Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS), the top international conference on agent research. They also presented two additional papers, "Experimental Evaluation of Security Protocols in SAgent" (co authored with former student Ke Xu) and "Exploring Data Integrity Protection in SAgent" at an accompanying workshop, the Workshop on Privacy and Security in Agent based Collaborative Environments. Dr. Garlick Gives Two Papers in Puerto Rico Dr. Garlick (second from left) with other presenters from the ICEE 2006 conference Dr. Ryan Garlick co-authored two papers with Dr. Robert Akl: "Intra Class Competitive Assignments in CS2: A One Year Study" and "Retention and Recruitment of Women in Computer Engineering." Over the summer, Dr. Garlick presented these two papers at the International Conference on Engineering Education (ICEE 2006) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Organized as an information dissemination and exchange forum, the International Conference on Engineering Education emphasizes the dissemination of information on state of the art advances in education and research, especially innovative approaches that link the two activities in addressing the education goals of new engineers of the 21st century. ICEE programming also emphasizes the importance of trans national cooperation and cross cultural networking to advance the effectiveness of engineering education. It is a conference series that highlights the worldwide progress and experiences in engineering education; it is also a platform for forging mutually beneficial collaborative efforts.

Alumni News Alumni Focus Dr. Greg Jones received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from UNT (then NTSU) in 1987. He received his Masters of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies from UNT in 1991 (Computer Science / Computer Education / Research Statistics). After studying at the UoSAT Spacecraft Engineering Research Unit, Center for Satellite Engineering Research, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, England he attended the University of Texas at Austin and completed his Ph.D. in Instructional Technology in 2001. He did his postdoctoral research with Director General Dr. Takashi Sakamoto at the National Institute for Multimedia in Education, Japan. His professional experience includes working for Compaq, Dallas Engineering as the Advanced Communications Technology Planner, and for the Dandin Group in San Jose, as Director of U.S. Wireless Technology. He is a former president of TAPR, a non-profit research and development corporation focused on packet and wireless related technologies. Greg holds a FCC advanced amateur radio license. Presently he is an Assistant Professor in Technology and Cognition at UNT where his interest is in expanding the way technology can be used to further the creation and distribution of knowledge and learning. His research focuses on the areas of emerging technologies for learning, which include visualization systems for education, games and simulations, telementoring, and multi-user 3D online learning environments (virtual environments). These technologies support learning by the distribution of interaction and feedback across both time and space via interactive forms of multimedia. Take one of his classes and you will probably be using his 3D online learning environment for the course. Greg was very active in the CS program as student chapter head of ACM and as Unix System Admin at one point. He has kept in contact with many of the faculty and staff over the years. He feels that the program offered a great experience that he has been able to build on since his graduation. When he isn't writing or doing research he can be found on his computer gaming, which is one of his research areas. 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. Alumni Invited to CENG Tent for UNT Homecoming on October 7 All alumni are invited to visit the College of Engineering tent in the Mean Green Village on Saturday afternoon, October 7. Like last year, the College of Engineering will participate in the Homecoming festivities to showcase the accomplishments of the CENG departments. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering will be a major participant. For the 2006 Homecoming, the UNT Mean Green football team will host Florida International at 6:00 p.m. at Fouts Field. For more information about the UNT Homecoming, including a map of the Mean Green Village, please go here.

Student News Maria Asencio Receives Two National Scholarships Maria Asencio, a senior computer science and mathematics major, was awarded two national scholarships last spring. In April, she was selected to be a Morris K. Udall Scholar. The Morris K. Udall Foundation was established by Congress in 1992 to honor Udall, who served 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Maria was one of 80 university students selected from the U.S. and one of three Udall Scholars selected from a Texas college or university. She is the fourth UNT student to win this scholarship. The Udall Scholarship provides a maximum of $5,000 for one year to cover tuition, fees, books, and room and board. In May, Maria was named as one of four UNT students to win a scholarship from the national Hispanic Scholarship Fund. Considered the premier national scholarship agency for sponsors of scholarships for Hispanic students, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund was founded in 1975 to double the rate of Hispanic students earning college degrees. These scholarships are open to students of Hispanic heritage who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and have completed at least 12 academic hours meeting certain grade point average requirements. In addition to being a double major, Maria is also a member of the CSEagles and also helped at 2005 RoboCamp for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. She is also a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society, League of United Latin American Citizens, Association of Latin American Students, Society of Women Engineers and the Math Club. After receiving her degree in May 2007, Maria plans to earn her master's degree in computer science or applied mathematics and work in environmental public policy. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering congratulates Maria on receiving these scholarships.

College of Engineering News New Chair of Engineering Technology Welcomed Dr. Nourredine Boubekri has joined the Department of Engineering Technology as the new Chairman. Dr. Boubekri brings many years of experience to this position. He has been Director of Manufacturing Research, Innovation and Training, of the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology at Northern Illinois University (NIU), and also served as Chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering at NIU. At the University of Miami, he founded and co-directed the University Industrial Assessment Center. Collaborating with a number of college departments, he developed the M.S. Degree in Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems, the M.S. degree in Management of Technology, and the Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering. Dr. Boubekri's advanced educational achievements include: B.S., Manufacturing Engineering, Boston University; M.E., Manufacturing Engineering, Boston University; Ph.D., Industrial/Manufacturing and Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Undergraduate Program Begins The College of Engineering is now offering an undergraduate degree in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). This program has previously been limited to graduate and doctoral students, but that has changed as of this semester. UNT is now one of only three universities in Texas to offer this undergraduate degree. Materials Science is a field which improves the items used in everyday life. Dr. Michael Kaufman, chair of the MSE department, said that a degree in materials science can lead to careers in the manufacturing, computer, automotive, aerospace, and space technology industries. For more information about this new degree, please go to the MSE department's website at http://www.mtsc.unt.edu/ or read this article that appeared in the North Texas Daily on September 5, 2006. Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering Established at UNT Dr. Stathis Michaelides was welcomed by the UNT College of Engineering in April 2006 as the first chairperson of the new Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering. Dr. Michaelides brings many years of experience to this new position. He has been the Acting Chair of Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Delaware; Head of the M.E. Department at Tulane University; and most recently served as Tulane University's Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research. Dr. Michaelides' advanced educational achievements include: B.A. (honors) Engineering Science and Economics, Oxford University; M.S., Engineering Science, Brown University; Ph.D., Engineering Science, Brown University.

University of North Texas News UNT Event Calendar UNT Names First Woman President Dr. Gretchen M. Bataille was named the 14th president of the University of North Texas by the UNT Board of Regents in August 2006. As the first woman president, Bataille will preside over the fourth largest university in the state. Before this announcement, Dr. Bataille served as the chief academic officer for the University of North Carolina system. She was also a tenured English professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Drake University and completed management development programs at Harvard University and the University of California. To learn more about UNT's new President, please read this UNT press release. UNT Enrollment Hits All-Time High Student enrollment at the University of North Texas has hit an all- time high of 33,550 students. This represents an increase of 4.7 percent. This is the sixth consecutive year UNT has posted a new all- time high enrollment. To read more about this new enrollment record and see more statistics about the UNT student population, please go to this UNT press release.

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 &mdash October 2006