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| September 2006 Edition | |
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Greetings from the CSE Chairman |
Dear CSE Students, In this Fall 2006 semester, I want to welcome all of our CSE students to our growing 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 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, 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, for the second summer, we hosted RoboCamp 2006, the product of a 2005 grant. I invite you to get involved in our CSE department. There are many opportunities for students to take an active role here. Through your professors, you can contribute to a research project. You can join our ACM and IEEE student organizations. You can become a CSEagle and act as an Ambassador for our department. Together we can work to make our CSE department one of the best in Texas. Again, I welcome you and look forward to seeing you this semester. Krishna M. KaviProfessor and Chair | |
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Department of Computer Science and Engineering News |
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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. ↑
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. ↑
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. ↑ | |
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NetworkWorld calls Dr. Dantu's Research Project One of the Top Ten to Know About |
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:
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. ↑ | |
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Dr. Tate is PI for ASCENT |
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/. ↑ | |
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News from the LIT Research Group |
In July 2006, Rada Mihalcea, 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. ↑ | |
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CSE Trio Recognized by Homeland Security |
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. ↑ | |
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CSE Department Sponsors RoboCamp 2006 |
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. ↑ | |
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More Faculty News |
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Dr. Kavi to Give Keynote Speech in CA and Seminar at IEEE Event in NY |
Dr. Kavi has been invited to give the Keynote talk at the 19th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems (PDCS-2006), to be held in San Francisco, CA, September 19-22, 2006. The title of his talk is "Is it time to revive dataflow as a model of parallel computing?" Then 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. ↑ | |
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Professor Tate and Vandana Gunupudi Present Research in Japan | |
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. ↑ | ||
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Dr. Garlick Gives Two Papers in Puerto Rico | |
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. ↑ | ||
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Student News |
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Maria Asencio Receives Two National Scholarships |
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. ↑ | |
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ACM Coding Contest on September 14 |
The past years' teams have made a name for themselves as:
Date: Thursday, September 14th Email eleusive@gmail.com for more information. ↑ | |
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Help Lab Available for CSE Students |
Other help lab staff can assist you in learning how to access and use the various computing resources available in the CSE department. A variety of different computer systems and printers are also available for your use. Be sure to make the Help Lab a regular stop throughout the semester whether you need help with a particular class or just how to make the best use of the resources available to you. ↑ | |
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Plan to Register Early for Spring 2007 Classes |
Early registration for Spring 2007 classes begins October 23 and runs until November 27. You are encouraged to register as early as possible to make sure the classes you need to take will be offered. UNT has a policy of canceling classes due to low enrollment at the end of regular registration. Undergraduate classes must have at least 12 students and graduate level courses must have a minimum of 7 students. Also, if more people are registered for a class than there are seats, then we may open another section of that class. When you register early, it helps our CSE department plan for your needs. Please help us offer the classes you need by registering as early as possible. ↑ | |
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CSE Plans for UNT Homecoming on October 7 |
The College of Engineering will participate in the Homecoming festivities this year with a tent in the Mean Green Village to showcase the accomplishments of the CENG departments. The Department of Computer Science and Engineering will be a major participant. The CSE department is seeking students to help staff the tent and interact with our alumni, parents and interested students. If you would like to volunteer for this event, please contact Dr. Ryan Garlick in the CSE office at (940) 565-2767. ↑ | |
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DC BEST Seeks Volunteers |
In 2006, faculty and student volunteers are needed as referees, judges, registration tables, trainers, and in other areas. Schools are already registered for this event and your help is needed to make it a success. The schedule for DC BEST competition is as follows:
If you can volunteer to help with DC BEST, please contact Ms. Leticia Anaya, DC BEST Assistant Director, at Lanaya@unt.edu or by calling (972) 624-5144. She will provide you with information on how to be a mentor or a referee. Please contact her as soon as possible to volunteer for DC BEST. ↑ | |
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College of Engineering News |
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College Invites Freshmen to Festival |
The College of Engineering will celebrate the largest freshman class ever by hosting an Engineering Festival for Freshmen from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on September 26, 2006 in the Research Park Lobby. The staff of the College of Engineering Undergraduate Advising Office is organizing the event to introduce freshmen to the College and provide an informal atmosphere for interaction with the Engineering Faculty and the college administrators. Students can explore different majors and academic services, student engineering organizations, and co-op and career services. For more information or for upperclassmen to volunteer, please contact Jill Fichialos at jfichialos@unt.edu or 565-4201. ↑ | |
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Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Undergraduate Program Begins |
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 which appeared in the North Texas Daily on September 5, 2006. ↑ | |
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Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering Established at UNT |
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. ↑ | |
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New Chair of Engineering Technology Welcomed |
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. ↑ | |
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The CSE Student 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. http://www.cse.unt.edu UNT Computer Science and Engineering Department - September 2006 |
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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.
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.
Dr. Ram Dantu's VoIP research has been named one of the ten cutting-
edge network research projects in 
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.
In summer 2006, the members of the Language and Information Technology
group spent time working on exciting research, and participating in
several international events.
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.
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.
Join us for a chance to test your coding chops against your classmates at UNT.
Then take on the best in the region at the ACM Regional Contest in Baton Rouge
on November 3, 2006.
Students in Computer Science and Engineering have a valuable tool
available to them just down the hall-the CSE Help Lab. Located in Room
F205 at the Research Park and open typically from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., you
will find a number of CSE Graduate and upper division students able to
help you with a variety of problems and subjects. The Teaching Assistant
or Grader for your CSE class will hold office hours in this lab at posted
times to assist you with specific course assignments.
DC BEST (Denton County Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology)
is a nonprofit organization that organizes a robotic competition among
middle and high schools. DC BEST provides free of charge to schools
the supplies, the game field, the technical support and the overall
environment where these school teams can compete in a robotics
tournament. In 2005, more than 350 students from 20 schools competed
and the winner of the DC BEST competition, Denton High School, went to
the national competition. 
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.
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. 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.