UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA WILMINGTON
Fall 2011
Volume 13, Number 1
News Bytes
Teaching Research Service
In this issue:
Faculty Focus
2
Special
Congratulations
2
2011 Award
Recipients
3
Student Showcase
4
Alumni News
4
Internships
5
UPE Initiation
6
Graduates
7
Look for the
UNCW computer
science group on
Facebook and on
LinkedIn!
Last summer, as I wrote
this piece for our
newsletter, we had
submitted a 450+ page
self-study ABET in
support of our
application for
accreditation of our B.S.
in Computer Science
(Systems Option). ABET
accredits programs in
engineering, computer
science and technology,
and defines accreditation
as “assurance that a
college or university
program meets the
quality standards
established by the
profession for which it
prepares its students.”
The campus visit last
November by the ABET
evaluators, was by all
accounts, a successful
one. The evaluators
found no deficiencies in
our program, and were
complimentary of many
aspects of our
department. Following
the visit, the department
responded aggressively
to the shortcomings
identified in our
assessment practices, and
we anticipate that our
B.S. program will be
fully accredited later this
fall.
While striving to
maintain its commitment
to excellence in
undergraduate education,
the department made
significant headway in
other areas as well. As
evidenced at universities
nationwide, enrollments
in computer science
continued to grow for the
second year in a row.
The graduate program in
Computer Science and
Information Systems also
reported strong interest
in its offerings. The Face
Aging Group continued
its impressive track
record of securing
external funding for its
research.
Demonstrating their
commitment to
excellence inside and
outside the classroom,
Computer Science
faculty continue to
publish their scholarship
at international
conferences, in many
cases co-authoring
papers with their
students, as detailed in
the following pages.
Building on his record of
professional service, Dr.
Ron Vetter was
appointed as the Editor-
in-Chief of IEEE
Computer starting January
2011.
As we continue to make
our mark in teaching,
research and service, we
invite you to join us in any
way you can. Look for us
on Facebook and on
LinkedIn, and if you
happen to visit
Wilmington, we would
love for you to drop by
and say hello.
Sridhar Narayan,
Ph.D. professor and
chair
Page 2
News Bytes
Faculty Focus
Gur Adhar published
“Parallel Algorithms for
Maximum Independent
Set in Trapezoid Graphs
and their Applications” in
the Proceedings of the
ninth International
Conference on Parallel
and Distributed
Computing and Networks,
(PDCN 2010) in
Innsbruck, Austria. He
also submitted a research
paper “Performance
Driven Routing of twoterminal Signal Nets on a
Grid” to the fifth Annual
International Conference
on Combinatorial
Optimization and
Applications (COCOA
2011).
David Berman and
Norman J. Finizio
published “Splittable
Triplewhist Tournament
Designs” in Congressus
Numerantium/Utilitas,
Mathematica Publishing
Inc., Vol. 203, No. 2010,
pp. 57-64.
Ralph Bradley taught the
first Honors section of
CSC 105 which included
student presentations of
current technology events
and a team based software
development project.
Curry Guinn, Ronnie
Smith, and Nancy Green
submitted a grant proposal
entitled “A Co-constructed
Narrative Dialogue Model:
Modeling Social
Conversation with Persons
who Have Cognitive and
Linguistic Impairments
Associated with Dementia
of the Alzheimer’s Type”
to the National Science
Foundation (2010).
Clayton Ferner and
Barry Wilkinson
published “Constructing
Distributed Computations
in an Undergraduate Grid
Computing Course” for
The 2010 International
Conference on Frontiers
in Education: Computer
Science and Computer
Engineering (FECS)
2010. He also submitted
two grant proposals:
“Creating a Patient Safety
Human Simulation
Center to Improve Patient
Safety for Health Risk
Behaviors” to the Agency
for Healthcare Research
and Quality (AHRQ)
with Ruthanne Kuiper,
Mahnaz Moallem, AnneMarie Goff, Brenda
Pavill, Anne Zabriskie,
Yeoun Soo Kim-Godwin
and “Collaborative
Research: Teaching
Multicore and ManyCore Programming at a
Higher Level of
Abstraction”
to National Science
Foundation (NSF) with
Barry Wilkinson.
Marni Ferner offered a
new course, Web Design
and Development and is
developing another new
course, Database Web
Applications which will
be offered in spring 2012.
Devon Simmonds,
Douglas Kline, Bryan
Reinicke, Sarah Peck
’09, Rebecca Porterfield
and Drew Rosen
published “System
Analysis of an Assurance
Volume 13, Number 1
Special congratulations to the
following department members
for their recent accomplishments:
Ron Vetter who was appointed as the Editor-inChief of IEEE Computer effective January 1,
2011 The two-year renewable appointment is a
significant accomplishment in recognition of
Ron’s contributions to IEEE.
Karl Ricanek whose proposal submitted on behalf of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies
in Identity Sciences (ISIS) was fully awarded by
UNC’s General Administration in the amount of
$200,000 for their bio-lidar system. This will
give the group long range capability for biometric identification and high resolution 3D
capture.
Clayton Ferner whose application for promotion to Professor was approved by the UNCW
Board of Trustees.
Clayton Ferner, Eric Patterson, Laurie Patterson, Karl Ricanek, Amrutha
Sethuram and Ron Vetter who were mentioned
by one more graduating seniors as someone
“whose impact on them was significant.”
of Learning System” in
the proceedings of the
Information Systems
Educators Conference
(ISECON 2010) and
“Toward an Integrated
Tool Environment for
Static Analysis of UML
Class and Sequence
Models” in the Journal of
Universal Computer
Science (JUCS) special
issue on Foundations and
Practices of UML, Vol.
16, No. 17, pp. 24352454 with Wuliang Sun,
Eunjee Song and Paul
Grabow.
Sridhar Narayan, Gene
Tagliarini, Shelby
Morge, Mahnaz Moallem
and Chandra Roughton
published “Problembased Learning Pedagogy
(Continued on p. 3)
Page 3
News Bytes
Faculty Focus (continued from p. 2)
to Infuse Computational
and Modeling Technology
in Teaching and Learning
in the Core STEM
Curriculum” in the
Proceedings of the
American Educational
Research Association
Conference (AERA),
April 2011 and
“Developing Integrated
Learning Activities Using
Squeak-Etoys to Improve
Conceptual Understanding
of Mathematical and
Scientific Concepts” for
Squeakfest Conference,
Squeak Land Group,
Wilmington, N.C.
Sridhar Narayan, Jack
Tompkins and Gene
Tagliarini published
“Algoritharium:
Facilitating an Early
Focus on Algorithms in an
Objects-Early CS1
Course” for the
International Conference
on Frontiers in Education:
Computer Science and
Computer Engineering
(FECS ’10) July 2010.
Eric Patterson and Adam
Gaweda ’10 published
“Individual Identification
Based on Facial Dynamics
During Expressions Using
Active-Appearance-Based
Hidden Markov Models”
for the International
Workshop on Emotion
Synthesis, rePresentation,
and Analysis in
Continuous Spaces,
Proceedings of IEEE FG
2011 and “Toward Using
Facial Expressions and
Gestures as Robust
Biometrics for Person
Identification” for the
Fifth IASTED
International Conference
on. Computational
Intelligence, 2010.
Patterson also published
“Toward Accurate
Synthetic Age Progression
of Three- Dimensional
Face Models for Adult
Aging Representation” for
the same conference.
Eric Patterson, Karl
Ricanek, Wankou Yang,
Amrutha Sethuram and
Changyin Sun published
“Gender Classification
using the Profile” in the
Proceedings of the 8th
International Symposium
on Neural Networks
(ISSN), Guilin, China,
May 2011.
Karl Ricanek, Wankou
Yang, Cuixian Chen,
Changyin Sun publsihed
“Ensemble of Global and
Local Features for Face
Age Estimation” in the
Proceedings of the 8th
International Symposium
on Neural Networks
(ISSN), Guilin, China,
May 2011.
Karl Ricanek, Wankou
Yang, Changyin Sun and
Lei Zhang published
“Laplacian Bidirectional
PCA for Face
Recognition” in the
Journal of
Neurocomputing Letters,
Elsevier, Vol. 74, Issues
1-3, pp. 486-493,
December 2010.
Karl Ricanek, Yishi
Wang, Cuixian Chen and
Yaw Chang published
“Gender Classification
from Infants to Seniors” in
the Proceedings of the
IEEE Conference on
Biometrics: Theory,
Applications, and Systems
(BTAS), Washington,
D.C., September, 2010
and “Manifold Learning
for Gender Classification”
in the Proceedings of the
11th International
Conference on Control,
Automation, Robotics and
Vision, Singapore,
December 7, 2010. In the
same proceedings, Karl
Ricanek, Khoa Luu, Tien
Dai Bui, Ching Y. Suen
published “Combined
Local and Holistic Facial
Features for AgeDetermination.”
Laurie Patterson, Kevin
Matthews, Thomas Janicki
and Ling He submitted
“Implementation and
Assessment of an
Adaptive Learning System
to Increase Student
Feedback” to Decision
Sciences Journal of
Innovative Education,
2011.
Gene Tagliarini, Shelby
Morge, Mahnaz Moallem,
Chandra Roughton and
Karen Hill published
“Student Learning with
Squeak Etoys” for the
Society for Information
Technology & Teacher
Education International
Conference (SITE), March
2011.
Jack Tompkins taught
Summer Ventures 2010,
four week program with
gifted high school students
from around the state. He
also conducted a Squeak
Etoys Writer’s Camp for
Volume 13, Number 1
2011 Award
Recipients
Michelle Lynn Fogwell
Smith-Doss
Scholarship
James Horton
Chair’s Scholarship
Illia Ziamtsov
Construction Imaging
Systems Scholarship
Alexander Beaty
Construction Imaging
Systems Scholarship
Yuli Bonner
Fletcher R. Norris
Scholarship
one week in summer 2010
to teach middle school
students some of the joy
of programming using
Squeak to animate their
short stories.
Ron Vetter presented an
ACM Distinguished
Lecture “Building Mobile
Phone Applications” at
the University of Iowa
Computing Conference,
University, February
2011. He also published
“iTour: A System for Self
-Guided Virtual Campus
Tours” with Douglas
Kline, Bryan Reinicke,
and Camilo Alvarez ’09
in the proceedings of the
International Conference
on Wireless Networks,
July 2010.
Page 4
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Student Showcase
Alumni
News
Awesome Accomplishments
Tammy Tran ’11 and
Clayton Ferner published “Development of
an Electronic Medical
Record System for the
University of North Carolina Wilmington School
of Nursing” at the10th
International Conference
on e-Learning, eBusiness, Enterprise Information Systems, and eGovernment (EEE). They
will present their work at
the conference in Las Vegas, Nev., July 2011.
Brandon Hilton ’11 and
Ben Barbour ’11 helped
New Hanover High
School senior Will
Thornton (also department secretary Emma
Kay’s son) develop a lecture series teaching computer competency skills to
senior citizens in the Hillcrest Public Housing
Community for UNCW’s
Campus Community program.
Jeff Raynor and David
Macurak ’11 will head to
Oak Ridge National Laboratories this summer as
interns for a project
known as Artemis. Their
work will involve developing key technology that
can quickly identify the
gender and age of people
in images found on computer hard drives with the
intent of dramatically
shortening the time needed
to investigate the computers of child pornography
suspects. Their positions
were facilitated by their
work with Karl Ricanek
and UNCW’s Institute for
Interdisciplinary Studies
in Identity Sciences. Both
intend to return to UNCW
in the fall to pursue master’s degrees in the CSIS
program.
The following students
completed their directed
individual study (DIS)
topics during the 2010-11
academic year (faculty
advisor names are in parentheses):
Andrew Herrmann, “iOS
Mobile Development: Location-Based 3D Panorama Viewer,” (Eric Patterson)
Volume 13, Number 1
Lyle Scott ’10: “Setup
Cluster and Schedulers,”
(Clayton Ferner)
Chris Velado ’11: “Music
Notation System,” (Ron
Vetter)
Phillip Garriss:
“Augmenting Human
Memory Using Software,”
(Devon Simmonds)
Ed Peloquin ’11: “Using
the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) in
Business Workflow Management,” (Devon Simmonds)
Michael Shaw ’11:
“Investigation and analysis of slow-propagating
network computer
worms,” (Devon Simmonds)
Illia Ziamtsov:
“Advanced 3D Modeling,
Rendering, and Scripting,”
(Eric Patterson)
Scott Ridley: “Mobile
Device Forensics.” (Ron
Vetter.)
Brandon Hilton ’11:
“iPhone and Mac GUI
Development,” (Eric Patterson)
Sorting Algorithms: Love Them or Hate Them?
Either way, you are bound to enjoy this website:
http://tinyurl.com/SortingAlgorithmsAsDances
Caroline Koska Reda
’85 was named in 2010 as
GE Hitachi Nuclear
Energy’s new President
and CEO.
Jeff Bradley ’03 has been
working in the aerospace
engineering field since
graduating and is now a
senior systems engineer at
Rockwell Collins, a major
aerospace and defense
company, based in Cedar
Rapids, IA.
Mark Lanter ’11
accepted a position in the
technology analyst
program at JPMorgan.
Chris Velado ’11 moved
to Austin, TX where he
obtained a job at
Periscope Holdings.
Ed Peloquin ’11 is a
software engineer at DAK
Americas.
Pamela Rosoff ’11 is
working at Sage Island as
a web developer.
Shawn Chivers ’11 is a
software developer
at Corning.
Jason Dudley ’11 works
at PPD as a web
developer.
Andrew Martin works as
a software engineer at
Construction Imaging.
Page 5
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Visiting Faculty Member
has Lasting Impact
The department of computer science welcomed
Dr. Richard Chapman
from Auburn University
who spent the 2010-11
academic year with us as
a visiting faculty member.
Chapman was involved in
a number of interesting
projects.
In each semester of the
2010-11 academic year,
Chapman taught a special
topics course called,
“Mobile Phone Software
Development: Google
Android.” As his students
can attest, software development for phones is considerably different from
software development for
more traditional environments such as a desktop
computer. Fortunately,
these students were able
to gain hands-on experience through a generous
donation from Verizon
Wireless of 20 Android
phones in five different
varieties giving students a
fantastic opportunity to
test and perfect their applications. See the full
article at:
http://tinyurl.com/Androi
dPhones2UNCW.
Chapman and graduate
student Jason Felds also
collaborated with the
Watson School of Education in the programming
of newly purchased Nao
robots that have humanlike characteristics and
can be programmed to do
a variety of human motions from sitting and
standing to playing Simon
Says and performing Tai
Chi. The hope is that these robots will be able to
help educate autistic children who have difficulty
with face-to-face human
interactions. Chapman
and the rest of the group
provided a demonstration
of the robots’ capabilities
to UNCW’s Board of
Trustees. Wilmington’s
StarNews covered the
story
(http://tinyurl.com/UNC
WRobotsStar) as did
WECT TV6 news
(http://tinyurl.com/UNC
WRobotsWECT.)
Volume 13, Number 1
UNCW’s ACM Student
Chapter Receives
Recognition
ACM’s Vaggelis Giannikas interviewed
UNCW’s ACM student
chapter president, Ben
Barbour ’11, for an article about the growing
numbers in UNCW’s
ACM Student Chapter.
Barbour attributes some
of the recent popularity
to the success of the student lecture series where
short (20 minute) minilectures give students
opportunities to share
expertise in non-curricular
areas for example, learning C# through the Xbox
360 and XNA. Says Barbour “It is a great honor to
have our school selected
out of hundreds of chapters as a key example of
an active ACM student
org!” Congratulations!
See the full article at:
http://tinyurl.com/UN
CWACM
Don’t miss the UNCW-ACM
website:
http://student.uncw.edu/org/acm/
According to NPR, as of March
2011, in the technology sector, undergrads have their pick of jobs, and
companies are desperate to hire.
See the full article at:
http://tinyurl.com/you-ought-to-be-a-tech-geek
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Volume 13, Number 1
Invigorating
Internships
Graduate Students:
Selin Benli
Credit Suisse Investment Bank, Raleigh,
N.C.
Nnamdi Ihenacho
New Hanover Community Health Center
Amy Wells
GE Nuclear Power
Zach Wilson
GE Nuclear Power
Undergraduates:
Alexander Beatty
Progress Energy
Upsilon Pi Epsilon’s three officers for 2010-11, Brandon Hilton, Ben
Barbour and Pamela Rosoff (pictured above) inducted 18 new
members into the local chapter of the international computer science
honor society. Congratulations to Colin Barefoot, Lauren Beyel, Yuli
Bonner, Nancy Bordelon, Adam Browne, Candice Burwell, Michelle
Fogwell, Elizabeth Haller, Andrew Herrmann, Adalia Hiltabeitel,
James Horton, Cameron Jackson, Thomas Lovette, Pamela Maloney,
Paul Martin, Anton Nikolov, Michael Nipper and Michelle Wilcox
(all pictured below.)
David Brown
Steve Woodard, Inc.
Phillip Covington
Corning
Justin Cowen
Proteus Technologies
Michelle Fogwell
Corning
Michael Lancaster
Credit Suisse
Pamela Rosoff
Corning
Ricardo Santamaria
UNCW ITSD
James Smith
New Potato
Looking for a job?
The following two websites might help:
http://www.tech-centric.net
http://www.telecomm-jobs.com
Page 7
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Volume 13, Number 1
Squeak News 2010
The 2010 UseIT Summer
Institute (photo at right)
was a huge success last
June. Project teachers
from Brunswick, New
Hanover and Pender
County Schools accompanied selected students for
a four-day exploration in
the use of the Squeak media authoring environment
to model concepts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Each day students were
presented with new challenges using Squeak to
create models to explain
complex concepts. While
at UNCW, students also
had the opportunity to
meet professors and professionals working and
researching in the STEM
areas.
In addition, the 2010
Squeakfest annual international conference was
hosted by UNCW last
July. The theme for the
conference was “Etoys in
the STEM classroom.”
Two notable keynote
speakers inspired their
audiences: Julian Lombardi from Duke University and Walter Bender
from MIT Media Labs.
Congratulations to Our Recent Graduates!
Spring and Summer 2011 Graduates
Master’s Degrees:
Fall 2010 Graduates
Master’s Degrees:
Micah Justad, “A Centralized Integration Interface Repository,” Devon Simmonds, advisor.
Shun Jiang, “Optimizing Join Query in Distributed Database,” Clayton Ferner, advisor.
Jason Dudley, “Building a Real Time Bus Tracking Data
Display System,” Ron Vetter, advisor.
Andrew Martin, “CMobile: A Mobile Photo Capture Application for Construction Imaging,” Ron Vetter, advisor.
Edward J. Peloquin, “Implementing a Workflow Management System – Using Aspects,” Devon Simmonds, advisor.
Brian Alton Bullard, “AUTOTAGIT: A System For The
Automation Of Image Tagging In The Facebook Architecture,” Karl Ricanek, advisor.
Shawn Thomas Chivers, “Finding Minimal Cost Proofs
For Cost-Based Abduction,” Gene Tagliarini, advisor.
Bachelor’s Degrees: Benjamin Eldon Barbour, Gage Michael Bowdon, Jeffrey Stephen Bruce, Philip Daniel Covington magna cum laude, Justin Matthew Cowen summa
cum laude, Charles Bennett Davis, Nathan Wesley Fowler,
Christopher Michael Gore, Keith Logan Haertel, Joseph
Brandon Hilton cum laude, Antonio Tevelle Keith, Mark
David Lanter, David Willis Lupton, David Daniel Macurak cum laude, Michael Louis Page, Jeffrey Nathen Raynor, Pamela Lyn Rosoff cum laude, Ricardo Santamaria,
Michael Stokes Shaw, James Richard Smith, Kyle Robert
Snell, Tammy Nguyen Tran, magna cum laude and University Honors, Christopher Fernando Velado and Ashley
Brooke Young.
Bachelor’s Degrees: Jarod Lee Blakeman, Gregory
Adam Gaweda, “Individual Identification Using Dynamic Facial Expressions With Active Appearance-Based
Hidden Markov Models Interface,” Eric Patterson, advisor.
Andrew Braden, Devin Sheldon Dixon, Michael Lee
Lancaster, Erik Lee Langston and Lyle Scott.
Alumni and Friends:
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
CAROLINA WILMINGTON
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Department of Computer Science
Phone: 910.962.7182
Fax: 910.962.7457
Email: cscdept@uncw.edu
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