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First Monday Lunch: Jessica Baker

Jessica Baker, Butler Alum from 2001, came to visit for our First Monday Lunch on October 1st. She shared what she has been doing since leaving Butler, which included grad school at Benedictine University where she received her MBA. She now works as a consultant at Synch-Solutions, using PeopleSoft.

Thanks for visiting us Jessica!

First Monday Lunch: Jeremy Lanman

Jeremy Lanman, Butler Alum from 2001, came to visit for our First Monday Lunch on September 10th. He shared his career path with us, which included grad school at Embry-Riddle, where he got his masters degree in Software Engineering, his stint at Lockheed Martin, and his current job at MITRE. He is also finishing up his PhD at the University of Central Florida.

Way to go Jeremy!

A Metrics Tool for Multi-Language Software

The paper "A Metrics Tool for Multi-language Software," authored by Dr. Panos Linos and Butler students/recent alumni Whitney Lucas, Ezekial Maier, and Sig Myers, will appear in the Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications, November 19-21, 2007, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

You can find a copy of this paper (in PDF format) at the newly updated Ceaser website in the publications section.

The Big Dawg

Butler University is now the home of a supercomputer. Called the Big Dawg and built by Western Scientific, the final configuration of this machine will consist of 24 compute nodes, each of which will have 4 quad-core 2.0GHz AMD cpus, plus a head node, 12TB of data storage, and an Infiniband high-speed, low-latency interconnection network. The theoretical peak performance of this machine will be roughly 3 TeraFlops.

Currently, the machine has 6 of its compute nodes with dual-core processors. We expect to upgrade these nodes and purchase 18 new ones by January 2008.

Dr. Sorenson is teaching a parallel programming course using the Big Dawg in the Fall 2007 semester. In addition, faculty and students from computer science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and business will use the supercomputer for various research projects.

Special thanks go to Butler Alum Frank Levinson, of Small World Group, for his generous donation.

Peter B. Henderson, Emeritus, Retires

Dr. Peter B. Henderson retired after 8 successfull years at Butler. Before coming to Butler, he had been at SUNY Stonybrook for 20+ years. He joined Butler to become the head of the new Computer Science department when it split from Mathematics. Pete led the department in curriculum reform, especially with the freshman-year courses and the introduction of the CS151-252 sequence. He also brought the department into contact with local industry through our Advisory Board and First-Monday Lunch program, created chapters of the ACM and UPE at Butler, was the PI on a National Science Foundation grant to award scholarships to students, and took a couple pies in the face for a good cause.

Pete and his wife Carol are moving to the east coast to be closer to their grandbaby. No doubt we'll get to see him from time to time as they try to sell their house.

We'll miss you, Pete, and good luck with those diapers!

Peter B. Henderson, Emeritus Professor of CSSE

Chen Promoted to Full Professor

Dr. Zhi-Hong Chen was recently promoted to full Professor. Congrats Chen! To celebrate, we had a Chinese lunch in FB148. It was yummy.

In the picture are, left-to-right, Sherry Barks, president of our ACM Student Chapter, Lori Moore, dept. secretary, Chen, Lachin Urazov, Zeke Maier, Chris Duke (taking some General Zso's Chicken), and most of Ian Brown.

ACM Regional Programming Contest

We sent two teams of three students each to the 2005 ACM International Programming Contest, East-Central Regional, on November 5th, 2005, at the University of Cincinnati. The two teams where

Ian Brown
Zane Hrubey
Eric Wurth Eric Jones
Juan Carlos Bauza Ogazon
Chad Skates

Both teams tied for 58th place. 113 teams from 65 colleges and universities participated in the East Central Regional, which covered Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Eastern Ontario, and most of Indiana.

Celebration of Women in Computing

The first "Celebration of Women in Computing" conference was held at the University of Illinois --Urbana-Champaign from April 1 to 3. The event consists of computer related activities and speakers for girls and women of all ages. Four of our students, Ellie, Kate, Natalie and Phiyen, attended this conference. They participated the Games for Girls competition and received honorable mention. The following is a breif summary written by Phiyen:

The Women in CS conference was very enjoyable. There were women everywhere that had many different jobs and experiences in the IT world. We attended two speakers. Both were very sucessful women in different fields that utilized computer science. The first speaker spoke about using CS for research about persisten groups, mainly of animals, in particular, zebras. She used a lot of theory and math in her presentation. The second speaker was younger and worked in the gaming industry. She works in gaming development for EA Games - Electronic Arts. She talked about many aspects of her job, ranging from the hours, fellow coworkers, ups and downs, and really delved into the intricacies of gaming development. This was very interesting and a little bit more relevant for us. There was also a panel of four women, two of which were the two speakers. They fielded questions from the audience as well as predefined questions form the moderator about their academic, work, and life experiences. This was very interesting as well, because they explained how they balanced everything. Each woman was different, but they were all very successful in what they did and managed to have an active family and social life as well. The day ended with the Games for Girls competition results. We got to play the other schools' games. This was the first annual competition. Natalie is very excited for next year and is already coming up with ideas. We got honorable mention. I came away from this experience more confident that I would have my own place in the CS/IT world, even though I am a minority woman in a male dominated industry.

EPICS SAVI team awarded

Our Butler EPICS-SAVI team participated in the Second Annual EPICS Idea-to-Product (I2P) Competition held on April 1-2, 2005 at Purdue University. The SAVI team members include Juan Carlos Bauza O. (leader), Tim Debow, Jason Hamilton, Mainza Kangombe, Michael Siegfred and Akande Sina. The team gave a presentation and received an award of $500. In the picture shown receiving the award is Tim Debow, Akande, Sina and Mainza Kangombe. "It is a great experience for our students to participate in such competitions and interact with other EPICS teams " says their advisor Panos Linos who accompanied the SAVI team at Purdue.

August First Monday Lunch

We had our first of the "First Monday Lunch" of this semester on August 30. Our guests are Kevin McLaurin, Roy Stecker, and Ann Heile from Quest Information Systems (http://www.questis.com ) in Indianapolis. Both Roy and Ann are our former students. They talked about their company, the projects they are working on, and internship and part-time positions in their company.

ACM Officers Elected

At the ACM Chapter Meeting on Wednesday, April 21, the new ACM officers for 2004-2005 were elected. Holding the Presidents office is Phiyen Nguyen, the Vice-President is Sherry Barks, the Treasurer is Richard Lopez, and the Secretary is Kate Soloducha. Congratulations to the new officers.

Chris Reed Lecture

On March 31st, Mr. Chris Reed, a Senior Systems Analyst for the Global Information Security team at Eli Lilly and Company, visited the Butler ACM chapter. He discussed many topics including how to protect your PC, how worms work, what his job consists of, wireless networking, and other network security topics. Reed also answered questions from the students.

February First Monday Lunch

February 2, about 20 people enjoyed pizzas and a discussion with Mr. Tracy Barnes, software developer at Ciber Enterprise Solutions (http://www.ciber.com/enterprisesolutions/ ). Mr. Barnes is a Butler computer science graduate. He talked about his career, and works in information technology.

Showtime at the Apollo

Senior Butler CS major Kyle Reed recently was a part of Showtime at the Apollo on Tour when it came to Indianapolis. Kyle will also be going to Harlem in February to sing at the Apollo for the television show "Showtime at the Apollo".

December First Monday Lunch

December 1, about 20 people enjoyed pizzas and a discussion with Mr. Jim Hutchins, Vice President of Systems Development for re:Member Data Services Inc. (http://www.remember.com ) in Indianapolis. He talked about his career, his company, and gave recommendations for students seeking jobs in information technology.

Digital Route Panorama

Dr. Jiang Yu Zheng from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at IUPUI gave a talk entitled "Digital Route Panorama" on November 13. Digital Route Panorama is a method of capturing and displaying a visual display along a route when driving, boating, etc. Dr. Zheng illustrated several route panoramas on the IUPUI campus and near his home in Carmel.

November First Monday Lunch

November 3, about 20 people enjoyed subs and a discussion with Mr. Scott Atkin, Vice President of Bechman Coulter in Indianapolis. Mr. Atkin, a Butler graduate in chemistry and computer science founded Sagian Inc which makes robotic equipment for the life sciences industries. He talked about his career, gave recommendations for students seeking jobs in information technology, and suggested what courses might be best.

To Dream Tomorrow

The department sponsored a showing Nov 1 of the movie To Dream Tomorrow followed by a discussion by the films writers, producers and directors. The movie is about the life of Ada Byron Lovelace, whose vision in the early 1800's developed the key ideas underlying modern computer programming. Many consider her to be the first computer programmer for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Geometric Dissections Swing and Twist

Dr. Greg Frederickson visited us on October 13, 2003 from the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University gave a talk on "Geometric Dissections Now Swing and Twist". A geometric dissection is a cutting of a geometric figure into pieces that can be rearranged to form another figure. Based on his recently published book,"Hinged Dissections: Swinging & Twisting", he discussed two fundamental ways to hinge dissections of 2-dimensional figures such as regular polygons and stars and presented several techniques for designing both types of dissections and demonstrate a variety of physical models.

Leading Lights Awards

Students Sherry Barks, Ann Heile, Rachel Martin, Phiyen Nguyen and Professor Henderson attended the Women & HiTech Leading Lights Awards dinner on Sept 25, 2003 in the Indiana Roof Ballroom. A slide show of pictures taken at this event can be found HERE.

Fall 2003 Homecoming Reception

On September 20, together with the Mathematics and Actuarial Science Department, we had a reception for current students, alumni, and faculty. The reception was held in the computer lab in FB148. A slide show of pictures taken at this event can be found HERE . Thanks to all who attended and to all who helped organize the event!

Sallie Mae Foundation Gift

On April 24, Dr. Bobby Fong, Butler University President attended the presentation of a gift of $25,000 from the Sallie Mae Foundation supporting the EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) program at Butler. In addition, EPICS students gave presentations and demonstrations of their projects. See the EPICS home page for more about the program.

Advisory Board Meeting

On Friday, March 7 the Advisory Board for the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering met. The discussion focused on ways to improve the professional experiences of students through internships, mentoring, real life projects, visits to local IT companies, corporate classroom presentations and adjuncts. In addition, creative ways to attract prospective students to the new software engineering program were discussed.

In the picture, from left to right (front), Dr. Arthur Baskin, Ms. Lou Russell, Mr. Scott Atkins, (back) Mr. Robert Glass, Mr. John Moore, Mr. Eric Tinsely, Mr. David Becker, and Mr. Steve Kellan.