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NewsFor more Rensselaer news, see the RPI News page or the blog The Approach. January 18, 2013 The closer you live to another person, the more likely you are to be friends with that person despite the growing use and impact of social media, according to a study that drew on data from the location-based social network provider Gowalla. The study, by researchers within the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, also showed that people tend to move in groups of friends, and that two people chosen at random at a specific event (like a concert or at a particular store) are unlikely to be friends. While the findings are seemingly common sense, the study -- and continued research on social networks -- holds a powerful message for a broad range of applications that rely on accurate predictions of how people move, such as emergency planning, infrastructure development, communications networks, and disease control. Full story ... November 30, 2012 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today announced a five-year $499,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to establish the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship in Computer Science. The initiative supports the Institute in advancing women in computer science and other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. The grant will be used to hire a female assistant professor with a research and teaching focus in the fast-paced field of mobile and distributed computing systems. The Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor will join Rensselaer as a faculty member, occupying a position that will continue in the tenure/tenure-track faculty ranks even after the five-year grant period. Full story ... November 13, 2012 The National Science Foundation today awarded a $2.5-million grant to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to enable its participation in a new international organization that will accelerate research data sharing among scientists around the globe. The grant will be used to develop a Research Data Alliance (RDA) that will allow researchers the world over to collaboratively use scientific data to speed up innovation. To date, more than 120 U.S. and international participants are helping conceptualize the organization and populate its first efforts. Along with scientific and data leaders from the United States, members from Australia and the European Union are part of the new alliance's organizational steering committee. U.S. participation will be led by Rensselaer Computer Science Professor Francine Berman. Full story ... November 12, 2012 Parallel processing expert Christopher Carothers named director of Rensselaer supercomputing center The combination of powerful new hardware, a talented new director, and a continued industry focus is set to amplify the success, reach, and impact of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute supercomputing center. Parallel and distributed computing expert Christopher Carothers has been named director of the Rensselaer Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI). In this role, Carothers is charged with making the new supercomputing resources of CCNI accessible to Rensselaer students and faculty. He is also responsible for forging new collaborations and opportunities for Rensselaer researchers to continue solving critical high-performance computing problems and creating value for the center.s partners in industry, academia, and government. Full story ... October 26, 2012 World wide web expert Jim Hendler receives inaugural Strata Big Data Award Jim Hendler, head of the Department of Computer Science and senior constellation professor in the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer, has been honored with an inaugural Strata Data Innovation Award, given to individuals who have made significant innovations in the data field. Full story ... October 17, 2012 Students attend Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was held in Baltimore Maryland this year. An annual event focused on bringing the research and career interests of technical women to the forefront, the conference hosted over 3600 technical professionals at all levels. This year, the conference featured keynotes by Dr. Anita Jones, former Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the U.S. Department of Defense, and Dr. Nora Denzel, Senior Vice President at Intuit. Two Rensselaer graduate students, Misbah Mubarak and Elsa Gonsiorowski, won the Grace Hopper Scholarship to attend the conference free of charge. In addition, with strong support and funding provided at all levels from the Dean of Science Laurie Leshin, CS Department Chair Jim Hendler to the President and the Provost of Rensselaer, 7 additional Rensselaer students (including freshman, sophomore, junior and seniors) attended the conference and experienced the tremendous inspiration and energy of the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) first-hand. Full story ... September 5, 2012 Faculty positions open in the Computer Science Department The Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. seeks to hire two faculty members to join a strong and growing faculty. The first opening, the Hamilton Chair in Computer Science, is intended for an associate professor in the area of .cyber risk,. including but not limited to information/data security, privacy, accountability, trust, and forensics for computers, networks and cyber-physical systems. Applicants for this chaired position must demonstrate an outstanding record of research accomplishments as well as a strong committment to teaching. The second position, for an assistant professor, is focused on agent-based systems, including but not limited to multi-agent systems, agent learning, collective intelligence, agents in financial markets, agent-based risk assessment, and agent-based modeling, especially for networked and distributed systems. Full story ... June 26, 2012 World wide web expert Jim Hendler named head of Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Professor Jim Hendler has been named the new head of the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Hendler is currently a senior constellation professor in the Tetherless World Constellation and program director of the Information Technology and Web Science (ITWS) program at Rensselaer. He will be stepping down from his leadership of the ITWS Program to assume the department head post. Full story ... June 7, 2012 Scientists utilizing new funding to develop computers that help search out the new technologies Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have begun work on a new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) project to develop computer systems that help quickly identify emerging ideas and capabilities in technology. The research is part of the IARPA Foresight and Understanding from Scientific Exposition (FUSE) program under a team led by BAE Systems that includes Brandeis University, New York University, 1790 Analytics, and Rensselaer. Rensselaer has received $510,000 to fund its initial phase of the larger collaborative research project. As noted in the FUSE IARPA press release launching the program, the current process to scan the horizon for new technologies is done primarily with human hands and minds. The process is time consuming and exhaustive, often only finding a technology well after it has become engrained. The computer and web scientists within the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer, led by Constellation Professor Deborah McGuinness, will work with the FUSE team to help automate portions of the technological process of identifying emerging technologies. The team seeks to develop computational programs that will quickly analyze millions and even billions of pages of text for the emergence of new technological and scientific trends. The end result will be a new tool that can quickly scan collections of text in multiple languages for arising ideas. The Rensselaer focus is on making the process transparent and actionable. Full story ... June 7, 2012 Rensselaer researchers unveil prototype disaster management simulator Engineers and scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are working to develop powerful new decision-making and data visualization tools for emergency management. These tools aim to help law enforcement, health officials, water and electric utilities, and others to collaboratively and effectively respond to disasters. Today, a team of three Rensselaer researchers will demonstrate a prototype of this new technology for federal, state, and local officials, including representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and New York state. The demonstration will take place in the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), the capabilities of which are a key component of the new technology's data visualization and advanced interactive graphics. The research project is a collaboration between William "Al" Wallace '61, the Yamada Corporation Professor at Rensselaer, and a member of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE); Barbara Cutler, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science; and David Mendonça '01, associate professor in ISE. Full story ... June 5, 2012 Leading "big data" analytics firm GNS Healthcare has signed a multi-year agreement to extend and expand its membership with the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The agreement enables GNS to continue and grow its use of CCNI's massively parallel computational resources to directly support its research and operations. CCNI is a $100 million partnership between Rensselaer, IBM, and New York state. The center houses one of the world's most powerful university-based supercomputers and is a national leader in promoting the application of high-performance computing in industry. CCNI supports a network of more than 700 researchers in academia and industry across a diverse spectrum of disciplines. Full story ... June 1, 2012 Article cites RPI as a top choice for financial services companies hiring computer science majors According to Wall Street & Technology's article "How to Land a Technology Job on Wall Street: Inside an Elite Wall Street IT Education," financial services companies are hiring recent computer science graduates. The article quotes William Murphy, chief technology officer of Blackstone Group. Murphy's campus recruiting program "targets the top tech schools on the East Coast, including Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), the University of Pennsylvania (his alma mater) and, locally, the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J." Full story ... April 27, 2012 New cell graphs link tissue structure to its corresponding biological function Computer scientists and biologists in the Data Science Research Center at Rensselaer have developed a rare collaboration between the two very different fields to pick apart a fundamental roadblock to progress in modern medicine. Their unique partnership has uncovered a new computational model called .cell graphs. that links the structure of human tissue to its corresponding biological function. The tool is a promising step in the effort to bring the power of computational science together with traditional biology in the fight against human diseases such as cancer. Full story ... April 13, 2012 IBM has announced that Rensselaer computer science alumnus Balaram Sinharoy has received a prestigious IBM fellowship. The former doctoral student is one of only seven scientists to be named fellow this year. Sinharoy is the second Rensselaer computer science alumnus to receive the distinction in two years. Fellow computer science graduate David Ferrucci was also named fellow in 2011. Full story ... February 17, 2012 Doctoral student named digital forensics grand champion Can Yildizli, a doctoral student in computer science, has won the Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Crime Center (DC3) Digital Forensics Challenge 2011, placing first among 1,147 contestants worldwide. Yildizli was named "Grand Champion" with a score of 4,789-1,257 points ahead of the nearest competitor. Full story ... January 24, 2012 Computer scientist to bring programming and aviation know-how together Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer scientist Carlos Varela has received seed funding from the U.S. Air Force to help make flight data as updated, active, and accurate as possible. Varela, part of the Data Science Research Center at Rensselaer, will use the more than $100,000 grant to develop sophisticated computer logic programming to help create safer and more efficient flight technology. The grant is part of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Dynamic Data-Driven Application Systems (DDDAS) program. Full story ... September 12, 2011 New supercomputer to boost Rensselaer leadership in high-performance computing A new system to be installed at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute supercomputing center will enable exciting new research possibilities across the nation and boost the university's international leadership in computational modeling and simulation, data science, high-performance computing, and web science. Funded by a $2.65 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and with additional support from Rensselaer and its Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), the new system will be a national resource for researchers in academia and industry across a wide range of disciplines. The system, scheduled to be delivered and installed in 2012, provides a balanced combination of computational power, fast data access, and visualization capabilities. It will be comprised of a powerful IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, along with a multiterabyte memory (RAM) storage accelerator, petascale disk storage, rendering cluster, and remote display wall systems. "The IBM Blue Gene/Q system is brand new, and should enable unprecedented innovations in massively parallel computing for data-intensive and multiscale research," said Christopher Carothers, professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer, and lead researcher on the new grant. "Many important research projects are hitting a bottleneck, as the amount of data they.re generating continues to grow, as does their need to interact with this data. With our new balanced system, paired with the expertise of Rensselaer faculty and students, we should be able to help researchers in academia and industry to overcome many of these challenges." Full story ... August 1, 2011 Professor James Hendler featured in New York Times Professor James Hendler shares his experiences as a frequent flier in "To Share Grievances, Microblogging the Frustrations of Flight." Full story ... July 25, 2011 Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals. "When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority," said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. "Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame." Full story ... July 19 2011 Francine Berman featured on WAMC Today on WAMC's Academic Minute program, Fran Berman, Professor of Computer Science and Vice President for Research, spoke about preservation of digital data. Full story ... July 1, 2011 Elsevier/TWC Health and Life Sciences Hackathon Professors Deborah McGuinness and Joanne Luciano teamed up with Elsevier for the Elsevier/TWC Health and Life Sciences Hackathon. The first place winner was Computer Science PhD student James McCusker. Full story ... June 30, 2011 Professor James Hendler quoted in Scientific American The Scientific American article "Social Climber: Google Challenges Facebook for Networking Supremacy" about the new Google+ network includes comments from Computer Science professor James Hendler. Full story ... June 17, 2011 Tetherless World Receives Grant from Microsoft The Tetherless World Constellation has received an unrestricted $100,000 donation from Microsoft Research Laboratories. The funding will support research within the constellation on how Semantic Web technologies can be applied to interpreting, storing, and utilizing financial data. The funding will also be utilized by researchers within the constellation to explore new ways to store data in what is known as "the cloud." Full story ... June 9, 2011 Computer Science major Peter Hajas develops popular iPhone application Mobile Notifier Computer Science major Peter Hajas has developed MobileNotifier, an iPhone application which has been downloaded by more then 250,000 people. Mobile Notifier is an open source application which was developed as part of Peter's work in the Rensselaer Center for Open Source Software, led by Professor Mukkai Krishnamoorthy. Full story ... May 6, 2011 Memorial dedication for Bob Ingalls to be held May 12 The dedication of the bench and tree in memory of Robert Ingalls will be held on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 11:00 AM in front of the Lally Building. Contact Sharon Simmons for information, or if you would like to speak, sing, play an instrument, etc. at this informal ceremony. Full story ... May 3, 2011 Alumnus David Ferrucci chosen as IBM Fellow Among the eight newly chosen IBM Fellows is Rensselaer alumnus David Ferrucci. Ferrucci was the lead developer of IBM's Watson supercomputer, a recent winner on the "Jeopardy" television show. Full story ... April 15, 2011 Student Scheduler Software Created Students and staff at Rensselaer have come together to develop an open source software called the Rensselaer Open Course Scheduler that will help students more easily plan their upcoming semester. Because the software is also open source, the developers would like other universities to benefit from their programming and use the code that they have written for Rensselaer. The scheduler was developed by a collaborative mix of students, faculty, staff, and even alumni at Rensselaer. Students from the Rensselaer honor society Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), as well as faculty and students involved in the Center for Open Source Software, worked with staff from the Division of the Chief Information Officer (DotCIO) and the Office of the Registrar to develop the application. Full story ... February 24, 2011 Computer Science Sophomore Made Key Contributions to NASA's First Human-Like Robot Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student Nathaniel Quillin has friends in high places. Some of those friends will pilot space shuttle Discovery into orbit this afternoon. Quillin, a sophomore dual majoring in computer science and computer and systems engineering, spent two semesters and two summers at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) outside Houston. He is a member of the research team that developed the first human-like robot to be sent to space. The robot, called Robonaut 2, or R2, is scheduled to launch into orbit today aboard Discovery and become a permanent resident of the International Space Station (ISS). Full story ... February 23, 2011 A Semantic Sommelier: Wine Application Highlights the Power of Web 3.0 In the restaurant of the future, you will always enjoy the perfect meal with that full-bodied 2006 cabernet sauvignon, you will always know your dinner companions' favorite merlot, and you will be able to check if the sommelier's cellar contains your favorite pinot grigio before you even check your coat. These feats of classic cuisine will come to the modern dinner through the power of Semantic Web technology. Web scientist and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Tetherless World Research Constellation Professor Deborah McGuinness has been developing a family of applications for the most tech-savvy wine connoisseurs since her days as a graduate student in the 1980s -- before what we now know as the World Wide Web had even been envisioned. Full story ... February 14, 2011 Peter Fox and James Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are calling for scientists to take a few tips from the users of the World Wide Web when presenting their data to the public and other scientists in the Feb. 11 issue of Science magazine. Fox and Hendler, both professors within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, outline a new vision for the visualization of scientific data in a perspective piece titled "Changing the Equation on Scientific Data Visualization." Full story ... February 11, 2011 Alex, What's the Future of Computing, Voice Recognition, and Artificial Intelligence? Rensselaer professors and scientists, and lead developers of the IBM Watson computer, will join an audience of students and visitors to watch as Watson faces off against the two all-time Jeopardy! champions on Feb. 14, 15, and 16, and to analyze the technology that enables a computer to compete effectively with humans. Several of the scientists behind the development of Watson are Rensselaer graduates. David Ferrucci, the IBM lead scientist on the project, earned his Ph.D. at Rensselaer. Chris Welty, who earned all three of his degrees at Rensselaer and is a member of the IBM Watson algorithms team, is a former director of Rensselaer's computer science laboratory. Welty will join the Rensselaer audience at all three viewing events and discuss the technology behind Watson. He will be joined by Adam Lally, an IBM software engineer on the Watson project and a Rensselaer graduate. Full story ... February 8, 2011 Rensselaer Data Scientists Collaborate on $2 Million Grant to Study Ocean Peter Fox and Charles Stewart, data scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, are beginning a large-scale collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution (WHOI), utilizing a more than $2 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. A professor in the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, Fox is bringing his expertise in data science to the study of our immense ocean ecosystems. Stewart, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, will apply his experience in developing computer vision systems, to the analysis of images of the ocean floor and seawater. Full story ... December 10, 2010 Professor Francine Berman named fellow of IEEE Cyberinfrastructure pioneer Francine Berman, Professor of Computer Science and Vice President for Research, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In elevating her to a fellow, the IEEE cited her leadership in the areas of high performance and grid computing. Full story ... December 10, 2010 New application allows scientists easy access to important government data Government agencies around the world make billions of bits of raw data available to the public each day, but this data is often in difficult formats or so widely spread around the Web it is virtually unusable to the public and scientists who seek to use this valuable information in their research. Computer scientists within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an application to help solve the problem. A collaboration with scientific publisher Elsevier, the application utilizes the U.S. government data warehouse, Data.gov, to provide scientists with easy and direct access to government data sets relevant to their research. Full story ... November 30, 2010 Memorial plans for Bob Ingalls A memorial service for the Computer Science Department's Executive Officer, Dr. Bob Ingalls, will be held at the Chapel and Cultural Center, 2125 Burdett Avenue, Troy, NY, on Saturday, December 4, at 11:00 a.m., followed by a reception in The Great Room at the Heffner Alumni House. In addition, the Computer Science Department invites financial contributions for a physical memorial in the form of a tree, bench, and plaque, and for a memorial scholarship. Full story ... November 23, 2010 Joanne Luciano Joins Renowned Web Science Research Group at Rensselaer Joanne Sylvia Luciano has joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as research associate professor in the Tetherless World Research Constellation. Luciano.s research uses computational modeling and the World Wide Web to improve health care and advance medical discovery. Luciano is an experienced technology consultant to major hospitals, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. In addition to her nearly 30 years as a consultant, she held a joint appointment with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital for nine years, where she served as a lecturer and research scientist using computational modeling to study human disease. She joins an interdisciplinary research team within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, dedicated to advancing science and society through understanding and utilization of the World Wide Web. Full story ... November 15, 2010 Video of Barbara Liskov Talk available Turing award winner Barbara Liskov was the speaker at the Rensselaer Computer Science Department's 2010 Joseph E. Flaherty Lecture on November 11. A video of the talk is available here. November 15, 2010 The Computer Science Department's Executive Officer, Dr. Robert Ingalls, passed away on Friday, November 12, 2010. His obituary is available on the Albany Times Union web site. A memorial service is planned for December 4. November 5, 2010 Rensselaer creates new Center for Data Science Research Researchers throughout Rensselaer are coming together to develop a new interdisciplinary Data Science Research Center. The center will bring together top researchers from every school within Rensselaer as well as collaborators at other universities and corporations to develop new and better ways to store, protect, share, and gain knowledge from scientific data. The Computer Science Department's Professor Bülent Yener will serve as director of the new center. Full story ... October 8, 2010 Professor Trinkle named Faculty Dean of the Residential Commons The Division of Student Life has appointed Jeff Trinkle, professor of computer science and director of the Computer Science Robotics Lab at Rensselaer, to the newly created position of faculty dean of the residential commons. In his new role -- with a three-year renewable contract -- Trinkle will serve as an academic resource for living and learning communities and theme houses. He will also work to create new opportunities for faculty involvement and student learning outside of the classroom. Full story ... October 4, 2010 Professor Jim Hendler featured in Playboy Magazine Playboy Magazine's October college issue includes a list of of the nation's 20 most innovative college professors. Included on the list is a professor from the RPI Computer Science Department. Professor Jim Hendler is described by Playboy as an "internet visionary." Full story ... September 27, 2010 Jim Hendler in London To Help Lead International Discussion on Web Science Rensselaer Constellation Professor James Hendler is in London this week to help lead an important two-day discussion on the future development of the World Wide Web. The conference was organized by Hendler, Professor Nigel Shadbolt of the University of Southampton, Professor Dame Wendy Hall of the University of Southampton, and Professor Bill Dutton of the University of Oxford Full story ... September 20, 2010 Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov to present 2010 Flaherty Lecture The 2010 Joseph E. Flaherty Lecture will take place on November, 11, 2010. The speaker will be Barbara Liskov, who is an Institute Professor at MIT and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM. She received the ACM Turing Award in 2009. The title of her talk will be "The Power of Abstraction." Full story ... August 31, 2010 Professor Mohammed Zaki has been selected for the 2010 HP Labs Innovation Research Program. HP reviewed more than 375 proposals from 202 universities across 36 countries. Rensselaer is one of only 52 universities in the world to receive a 2010 Innovation Research award. The award will allow Zaki, working with HP labs, to tackle two specific problems: graph pattern mining and graph indexing. Full story ... August 2, 2010 Graduate student Joshua Shinavier featured in article in New Scientist Graduate student Joshua Shinavier is featured in New Scientist magazine in an article titled "Google, Twitter and Facebook build the semantic web." Full story ... August 1, 2010 Alumni featured in Albany Times Union The Albany Times Union published a story about Kitware, a local company which employs many of our alumni. The article includes a photo of Amitha Perera (PhD 2003) and Roddy Collins (PhD 2004). Full story ... Alumnus Mohammad Al Hasan receives Doctoral Dissertation Award The ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) has selected Mohammad Al Hasan as the winner of the 2010 SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award. Dr. Al Hasan received his PhD from the Rensselaer Computer Science Department in 2009. His dissertation, Mining Interesting Subgraphs by Output Space Sampling, was completed under the guidance of Professor Mohammed J. Zaki. June 18, 2010 White House Cites Web Science Research The White House on May 21 cited Rensselaer for its leadership role in using the Web to promote government transparency. The announcement was made at an event in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the open government Web site Data.gov. U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra applauded Rensselaer researchers and students for developing in the past eight months more than 40 applications that use datasets from Data.gov in new and innovative ways. Full story ... May 14, 2010 Computer Science student Evan Patton wins NSF fellowship Computer Science student Evan Patton is one of three Rensselaer students to be chosen as 2010 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellows. One of the nation's most prestigious fellowship programs, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) supports outstanding individuals who are in the early stages of graduate studies in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). "These are the gold standard, the fellowships by which everything else is measured," said Stanley Dunn, vice provost and dean of graduate education. "If you are selected, you are the best of the best." Full story ... May 4, 2010 The new center, funded by a $16.75 million five-year grant from the Army Research Laboratory, will join researchers from a broad spectrum of fields -- including sociology, physics, computer science, engineering, and medicine -- in exploring social cognitive networks. The center will study the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures have been altered by technology. The goal will be a deeper understanding of social cognitive networks and a firm scientific basis for this newly arising field of network science. Full story ... May 3, 2010 The Social and Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center will open with a day of technical talks As announced in our October 22nd story, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will launch a new interdisciplinary research center devoted to the study of social and cognitive networks. The launch event will occur on Tuesday, May 4. After welcoming remarks by Rensselaer President Shirley Jackson, Provost Robert Palazzo, Vice President for Research Fran Berman, U.S. Representative Paul Tonko, Brigadier General Harold Green, and Center Director Professor Boleslaw Szymanski, there will be four scientific sessions, entitled "Social Cognitive Network Science," "Network Science: A Decade and Beyond," "Building a Nervous System for Humanity," and "Predicting the Behavior of Socio-technical Systems: A Network Approach." Full story ... December 11, 2009 Computer Science Students Win International Semantic Web Challenge Several computer science students took top honors at the 2009 Semantic Web Challenge help Oct. 25-29 in Washington, D.C. Graduate students Gregory Todd Williams, Jesse Weaver, and Medha Atre, as well as Senior Constellation Professor of the Tetherless World Research Constellation James Hendler, received first place in the "Billion Triples Track" competition with research that utilized the advance capabilities of the supercomputer within the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI). Full story ... November 3, 2009 Rensselaer computer scientists and geologists create iPhone app for identification of rock samples While you might enjoy listening to little Rolling Stones or Fleetwood Mac on your iPhone during your next hike, geologists both amateur and professional will now be using the smartphone to study the original classic rocks - perhaps schist or maybe the more refined marble. One of likely the first applications to bring science to the popular device, the new MetPetDB app is allowing geoscientists to proudly declare, "I have an app for that!" Created by a team of computer scientists, geologists, and undergraduate students at Rensselaer, MetPetDB is a new-age tool in an age-old field of study. The app gives users the ability to search through thousands of rock samples without leaving their desk or, if they are on a field expedition, search through samples taken in their current location. As an example, while hiking up Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks, a search for surrounding samples would bring up photos of rock samples taken nearby as well as information on what type of rock they are, who owns them, the minerals present in the sample, metamorphic grade, and any scientific publications published related to the sample. Full story ... October 23, 2009 Francine Berman to receive Kennedy Award for Cyberinfrastructure Leadership The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) will jointly present the inaugural Ken Kennedy Award to Francine Berman, vice president for research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Berman is being recognized for her efforts to build a national cyberinfrastructure. Full story ... October 23, 2009 Hendler Appointed to Air Force Scientific Advisory Board Rensselaer Professor James Hendler recently was named to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), a 52-member federal panel of the nation.s top scientists from academia, industry, and national laboratories. Full story ... October 22, 2009 Rensselaer to lead multimillion-dollar research Center for Social and Cognitive Networks With $16.75 million in funding from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will launch a new interdisciplinary research center devoted to the study of social and cognitive networks. The Center for Social and Cognitive Networks is part of the newly created Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA) of the ARL, which includes a total of four nationwide centers focused on different aspects of the emerging field of network science. The Rensselaer center will be headed by Boleslaw Szymanski, Rensselaer's Claire & Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science. Rensselaer will receive $8.6 million of the $16.75 million in total funding to lead the new center for its first five years. An additional $18.75 million is anticipated from the ARL for a second phase, which would bring the total funding for the interdisciplinary center to $35.5 million over 10 years. Rensselaer will be joined by corporate and academic partners from IBM Corp., Northeastern University, and the City University of New York, and collaborators from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Maryland, and Indiana University. Full story ... August 19, 2009 RPI Cisco Academy becomes teaching center for 7 state area After 8 years of striving for excellence, RPI Cisco Academy has been honored with the highest designation for any Cisco Academy: Cisco Academy Teaching Center (CATC). Effective immediately RPI is the CATC for all of New England and New York including both Boston and New York City (New York City Department of Education). RPI will have ultimate technical teaching responsibility within the Academy program for 25 Regional Academies, 232 Local Academies, and 13,639 students. Full story ... August 18, 2009 Alumnus Scott Coull and Professor Boleslaw Szymanksi featured for their security research The work of Professor Boleslaw Szymanski and alumnus Scott Coull was featured in New Scientist magazine in an article titled "Internet 'immune system' could block viruses." Scott Coull received BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Rensselaer, and has since gone on to earn a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Full story ... June 8, 2009 Moon Magic: Researchers Develop New Tool To Visualize Past, Future Lunar Eclipses Professor Barbara Cutler and graduate student Theodore Yapo have developed a new method for using computer graphics to simulate and render an accurate visualization of a lunar eclipse. The model uses celestial geometry of the sun, Earth, and moon, along with data for the Earth's atmosphere and the moon's peculiar optical properties to create picture-perfect images of lunar eclipses. Full story ... May 14, 2009 Graduate student Mohammad Al Hasan wins best paper award A paper authored by Mohammad Al Hasan won the best paper award at the 13th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD), held recently (April 27-30) in Bangkok, Thailand. The paper was entitled, "Clustering with Lower Bound on Similarity", and the other authors were Saeed Salem, Benjarath Pupacdi, and Prof. Mohammed J. Zaki. February 13, 2009 Hardwick named Acting Head of Computer Science Professor of Computer Science Martin Hardwick has been named acting head of the Computer Science Department. Hardwick brings nearly a quarter-century of teaching and research experience at Rensselaer to the new role. Hardwick joined Rensselaer in 1985 as an assistant professor, coming to Rensselaer from Texas Technological University where he served as assistant professor of computer science. He received both his bachelor's degree and doctorate from Bristol University in the United Kingdom. He is the author of numerous papers and articles on engineering database systems and concurrent engineering. He supervised the Model Driven Intelligent Control of Manufacturing program, known as the "Super Model" Project. This program developed STEP-NC, a technology that is being evaluated by the aerospace and automotive industries as the next-generation language for control of manufacturing robots and computers. Full story ... February 3, 2009 Student Open Source Software Brings Personal Finance to the iPhone In these difficult economic times, everyone is seeking a better way to manage their personal finances. And at a time when even the newly elected president can't be separated from his wireless device, two undergraduates from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an open source solution that combines smart personal financial management with your smartphone. The computer science students, who are part of the Rensselaer Center for Open Software (RCOS), have developed an application for Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone that allows users to log, track, and manage their personal spending. Full story ... May 7, 2008 Constellation Launch Event: The Future of the World Wide Web One June 11, 2008, some of the foremost experts on the World Wide Web will come together on campus for the Tetherless World Constellation Launch Event, "The Future of the World Wide Web." Speakers will be James Hendler, Deborah McGuinness, Tim Berners-Lee, Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt, and Nova Spivack. Full story ... April 18, 2008 Student hackers win second place in computer security competition Rensselaer students Alex Radocea, Ryan Govostes, Rob Escriva, and Henry Filgueiras took second place in the Information Security Talent Search, an annual competition at the Rochester Institute of Technology which pits teams of undergraduates against each other in a battle to build the most robust server possible and to tear through as many of their competitors' servers as possible. Full story ... April 7, 2008 Computer Program Reveals Anyone's Ancestry A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can quickly trace an individual's genetic ancestry with only a small sample of their DNA. In fact, the program can trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. Full story ... February 28, 2008 Student web language gains international recognition Gregory Williams, a Rensselaer doctoral student in computer science who works in the new Tetherless World Constellation, single-handedly implemented a Web language that allows Web sites to speak and share data with one another. His language was given high marks by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and will form a baseline for other companies and researchers to build upon. Full story ... October 20, 2007 Boleslaw Szymanski named first Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor For over a quarter of a century, Rensselaer's Boleslaw Szymanski has occupied a place at the cutting edge of computer science, systems, and networks. In recognition of his accomplishments, he recently was appointed the inaugural Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor of Computer Science. Named for the Institute's 16th president and his wife, the professorship is among the highest honors awarded to a faculty member. Full story ... October 16, 2007 Web Language and Artificial Intelligence Expert Joins Tetherless World Research Constellation A leading expert in Web research, Deborah L. McGuinness, joins Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an endowed chair of the Tetherless World Research Constellation. One of the creators of the Web language that is ushering in the next generation of the World Wide Web -- the OWL Web Ontology Language -- McGuinness is widely known in her field. She joins the senior constellation chair, James A. Hendler. Together the two top Web gurus make Rensselaer a leader in Web research. Full story ... September 20, 2007 Computer program traces ancestry using anonymous DNA samples A group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and biologists from around the world have developed a computer algorithm that can help trace the genetic ancestry of thousands of individuals in minutes, without any prior knowledge of their background. The team's findings will be published in the September 2007 edition of the journal PLoS Genetics. Full story ... May 3, 2007 Petros Drineas Awarded School of Science's Emerging Researcher Award Professor Petros Drineas has been awarded the School of Science's Emerging Researcher Award. This award is given to a faculty or staff member who has worked in the School of Science 3-6 years. Professor Drineas was chosen for this award based on his many accomplishments during his four years in the Computer Science Department. Full story ... November 6, 2006 Schoffstall Gift Commitment To Establish Dr. Joseph E. Flaherty Lecture Series To honor the illustrious career of Joseph Flaherty, Rensselaer's recently retired dean of the School of Science, Martin Schoffstall '82 has made a $100,000 challenge gift commitment to establish the "Dr. Joseph E. Flaherty Lecture Series" in the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer. Full story ... November 2, 2006 Applications for Faculty Positions Invited The Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) invites applications for one or more tenure-track positions at the Assistant Professor level; exceptional candidates at all professorial levels will be considered. While all research areas of computer science will be considered, the department has special interest in security, cryptography, scientific computation, data science (mining, handling and visualization) and bioinformatics. Full story ... October, 2006 Wei Zhao Appointed Dean of Science Rensselaer has appointed Wei Zhao as dean of the School of Science. Zhao, who is currently senior associate vice president for research at Texas A&M University, will take over the position from acting dean Samuel Wait Jr. '53 in January 2007. Full story ... July 19, 2006 RPI Becomes a Founding Member of the International Technology Alliance IBM Research is leading the International Technology Alliance, a consortium of 24 institutions from industry and academia in both the U.K. and the U.S. created in May 2006. The International Technology Alliance opens a new era of collaborative, multi-disciplinary research which spans multiple universities and industrial research labs. A number of leading researchers have come together to perform joint research, forming a virtual organization of some of the best minds in both countries over the next ten years. Among them, Dr. Boleslaw Szymanski of RPI is leading Project 9, one of the 12 projects of the alliance. Dr. Jim Hendler, who joins RPI in January 2007 is a participant in Project 12. Both RPI researchers are excited to be a part of this group, and are looking forward to achieving several breakthroughs in network-centric systems over the course of the next ten years. Full story ... June 14, 2006 Web Visionary James A. Hendler Will Lead Tetherless World Research Constellation James A. Hendler, a renowned computer scientist and World Wide Web researcher, has been appointed senior constellation professor of the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Hendler will join Rensselaer Jan. 1, 2007. Full story ... February 9, 2006 The Computer Science Department at Rensselaer is unable to consider applications for tenure-track faculty positions. Rensselaer's administration has recently made a strategic decision to cancel our regular faculty search in favor of searching for groups of chaired professors. Full story ... October 19, 2005 David Kotfila, RPI's Cisco Networking Academy Director, Quoted in Cisco Press Release David Kotfila, RPI's Cisco Networking Academy Director, was quoted today in a Cisco Systems press release about Cisco's expanded technology training curriculum. The story was carried by Business Wire and Yahoo Finance. Full story ... May 16, 2005 Computer Science Major Graduates at 18 and Founds Company Ryan Trinkle will receive his B.S. in Computer Science and Computer Systems Engineering from Rensselaer on May 21, 2005. He will take a year off from school to found a game development company and then will enroll in Harvard Law School. Full story ... February 7, 2005 Professor Carlos Varela Selected For NSF Career Award Carlos Varela, assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Varela will use the projected five-year, $400,000 grant to design and implement computer programming technology for use in solving complex scientific problems through high-performance grid computing. Full story ... October 20, 2004 Professor Bruce R. Donald Kicks Off Distinguished Speaker Series The Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute initiates this year a Distinguished Speaker Series, in part to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Department. The Series will bring world leading researchers in diverse areas of Computer Science to present state-of-the-art research, salient results, and future directions. The Series will be kicked off November 3 by Professor Bruce R. Donald of Dartmouth University, who will present a talk entitled Algorithmic Challenges in Structural Molecular Biology and Proteomics. Details ... May 18, 2004 New Research Project Investigates 3D Modeling and Tracking From Distributed, Mobile Sensors The Departments of Computer Science and Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering are pleased to announce the formation of a new Army research project. Led by Professor Charles Stewart, with co-Investigators Professors Daniel Freedman, Lester Gerhardt and Richard Radke, this project involves the development of algorithms to automatically construct dynamic, three-dimensional models of urban scenes using a variety of mobile, airborne and ground sensors. Work on this project, which is planned for five years at half-million dollars per year, will proceed in close association with Object Sciences Corporation of Springfield, VA. Object Sciences was founded by Dr. Glenn Tarbox, '92 who earned his Ph.D. at Rensselaer under the guidance of Professor Gerhardt. The new project will support several graduate students and will be housed in renovated space on the 3rd floor of the Materials Research Center. May 7, 2004 Two researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are creating a faster, more efficient data-mining technique to determine basic rules of how proteins form. The researchers are Mohammed Zaki, assistant professor of computer science, and Chris Bystroff, assistant professor of biology. Full story ... April 26, 2004 Rensselaer To Host Workshop on Pervasive Computing and Networking "Anytime, Anywhere" computing will be the focus of a "Workshop on Pervasive Computing and Networking" at Rensselaer this week. Scores of leading-edge researchers are coming to campus April 29 and 30 for the event, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Rensselaer Center for Pervasive Computing and Networking. Full story ... April 15, 2004 Rensselaer Researchers Developing Program to Root Out Terrorists Online In the wake of the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, it became clear to experts worldwide that international terrorist organizations - Al-Qaeda in particular - rely heavily on cybercommunications for their planning. This prompted a group of Rensselaer researchers in the departments of computer science and decision sciences and engineering systems to start developing techniques for modeling the evolution of social groups in Web chat rooms, newsgroups, and bulletin boards, with the specific goal of detecting potentially harmful groups. Full story ... April 15, 2004 ROSS.Net to be Launched in Summer '04 Chris Carothers and his team are working on an extremely light-weight model implementation framework called ROSSNet that is specifically designed for large-scale network simulation. The framework poses the question: "what do you really need to model in order to answer a particular protocol dynamics question in a large-scale scenario?" For example, are all layers in a protocol stack really necessary? Can a host just be a TCP sender or just a TCP receiver? Does the simulated host really need to be both? By asking these kinds of questions, the framework enables a single TCP connection state to be realized in just 320 bytes total (both sender and receiver) and 64 bytes per each packet-event. Full story ... |
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