My Computer Science & Engineering Department

Dr. Farkas talks about cyber security to USC News:

"There is a demand to explain cyber security concepts in a way that is understandable to the general public," says Csilla Farkas, a computer science professor in the College of Engineering and Computing. "We can’t expect business leaders to become cyber security experts, but the experts can learn to express cyber security threats in such a way that business executives can make informed decisions."

If you are interested in cybersecurity, apply for our cybersecurity specialization or certificate and drop by the Cybersecurity club.

Michael Sechrest, Chris King, and Greg Croft, all alumni of the Computer Science & Engineering department, have been awarded the Scientific and Technical Academy Award for SpeedTree. Their software has been used to generate trees for movies such as Avatar, The Avengers, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Iron Man 3, Maleficent, and many others.

Full press release:

The USC News has a profile of Irene Au, who graduated in 1994 from the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department. Our current CSE department is the result of a merger between the computer part of ECE and the Computer Science department.

She started at Netscape as an interaction designer, went on to Yahoo where she established the company’s user experience and design practice, then joined Google as head of design.

With that foundation, Au built her career as a major strategist in the Web industry. Now 20 years after graduating from Carolina, she has taken another career leap as a partner for a venture capital firm, while also purposefully finding a place of balance in her life.

We are proud to announce that Sanjay Kumar Mahalingam's (MS 2014, Machine Learning and Evolution Laboratory , now at Stitch) team won the $250K Grand Prize at the Dreamforce Hackathon in San Francisco with their OmniKeyboard app. The contestants were given 42 hours build mobile apps that use Force.com, Heroku, or Force.com with Heroku. See videos below.

Our very own Dr. Beer is interviewed for this SC ETV Radio show about her research in the use of robots to help the elderly.

If you have an older parent living on their own, would you feel more comfortable if you had a way to monitor them and their living conditions from afar? Our next guest says she hopes to start testing just such a system soon by installing robot monitors in assisted living centers in the Midlands of South Carolina. Mike Switzer interviews Dr. Jenay Beer.

Our Third Annual Gamecock Computing Symposium was a great success. We are proud to announce that the winner of the student poster sessions was Xiaochuan Fan. The second place went to Nick Stiffler. If you missed the activities, you can view a slideshow of the students' posters by clicking on the image at the right.

The Computer Science & Engineering department is one of 15 academic institutions to join the Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity (BRAID) initiative, from the Anita Borg Institute, to increase the percentage of undergraduate majors that are female and students of color. Each of the departments will receive $30,000 per year for three years to help support their efforts which will leverage the experiences of other successful programs.

JJ Shepherd's research on using video games to help people learn is being featured in this WACHFOX TV news story. He explains:

"We've created education games in the past, but we want to see how to make them better. And how to actually use this where you can augment classrooms, augment therapies. And basically, better people's lives through technology."

Dr. Nelakuditi and his ARENA research lab have received an NSF grant award for their project on "Infrastructure Mobility". This research is exploring how to build and program mobile WiFi access points, on wheels, that change position to improve signal reception. Imagine a small robot that moves within the false ceiling of a large building to provide better signal to its users.

PhD student Karina Liles has been named a GEM Affiliate Fellow by the the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science. GEM's mission is to broaden participation of minorities in STEM fields at the graduate level. Liles works with Dr. Beer in the ART LAB and is studying the use of robots as teaching assistants for middle school educators.