Dr. Lee's Research With Her Students

Dr. Lee has been actively working to involve both graduate and undergraduate students in her research projects.  She has just returned from a trip to The 13th CUR National Conference was Undergraduate Research which was titled Transformative Practice: Developing Leaders and Solutions for a Better Society. The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) National Conference 2010 was held at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, June 19 - 22, 2010. 

Dr. Lee presented a poster titled "Accurate and Efficient Solvers for Analyzing DNA Microarray Gene Expression" and it detailed her work on recovering missing values for a given DNA microarray gene expression for complex diseases like Crohn's Disease and Type II diabetes.  This is an ongoing project for Dr. Lee and she has successfully included Fen Qin, a graduate student, into the research.  This summer, she has grants to fund not only Fen's activities, but to also include Matt Freed, an undergraduate student.  Expect to see more as this project continues . . .

One of our Graduate Students Solved a Problem in SIAM

SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) poses problems to see if readers can solve them.  Recently, they posed "A Liouville-Type Property for Differential Inequalities" and one of our graduate students was an author on one of the solutions they accepted.  Check out Fen Qin's amazing mathematical skills.

Programming Team is victorious, again!

Our programming team competed at a contest at Dickinson College this weekend.  There were fifteen teams from about seven schools including Dickinson, Gettysburg, Messiah, and Lebanon Valley College.  Phil Diffenderfer, Andrew Marx, and Keith Porter came in first place by solving all of the problems with an hour to spare.  To challenge them, the head judge gave them an extra problem that was in previous competitions but never solved.  They came close to getting that one, too!  Dane Howard, Logan Kennedy, and Rob Koch solved five problems placing in third.  Philip Hagar and David Kelly solved two problems as did Jessica Burns, Emily Bruckart, and Danielle Leonard.  Four people earned jackets (Dane Howard, Andrew Marx (though both of them should have earned theirs previously), David Kelly, and Danielle Leonard!

We travel to West Chester to compete against the other State System teams on April 10th.  I think we'll do well!

Weekly Programming Contest

The Programming Team is running a weekly programming competition that all of our students are invited to join!  You can find details at https://sites.google.com/a/cs.ship.edu/progteam/online-contest and it's an opportunity to make some money!  The contest a cumulative through the semester and the department has pledged $100 for first place, $60 for second place, and $40 for third place. The first problem has been posted and is due by 2/6, so get started!

A new semester begins

We are approaching the end of the first week of classes of spring 2010.  Here are some things to watch for:

• Our Testing & XP course will be building applications for a local business and a teacher in Chambersburg
• Our programming team will compete in two competitions.
• Our programming team is starting a weekly running competition with prizes at the end of the semester (check it out)
• Our Game Development Club is going to start development with Flash Professional
• The BROADSIDE Center will continue work with local industries
• We are making proposals to update and improve some of our lab equipment
• We have 26 seniors completing senior research projects covering a wide variety of topics

I'll try to keep you posted, but, if I get busy and forget to post news every week, NAG ME!!!

Conference Trip

I just got back from a trip to Villanova University to the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - East conference. It's a great place to see what people from campuses similar to ours are doing in their classrooms. There were faculty from other state system schools, liberal arts colleges, and the Penn State branch campuses. You can see what kinds of things we talked about at http://ccsce09.villanova.edu/index.shtml.

I was presenting the work we've done on using video phenomenography to study how student's problem solving strategies mature throughout their education. I was most pleased with two other sessions. One was by an alumnus of ours, Jeff Stone, who is teaching at Penn State Schuylkyl and is exploring what effects student's perceptions of computer science as a discipline and the other was by the Philadelphia Area Computer Science Teacher's Association and how they are working toward certification of high school computer science teachers. I agree!

I was very pleased to see that we continue to have more flexibility in our curriculum and our research as a result of the generosity of our alumni. I spoke with a colleague who was hampered in an interesting project for his CS1 students because his administration didn't have $100 for some equipment. I agree that times are tough, but our alumni continue to help us sustain a strong program that involves our students in lots of interesting project and I am grateful for that.

Our Programming Team Rocks!

In preparation for the ACM regional competition, our programming team competed in an internet contest last night. Our first team (Philip Diffenderfer, Keith Porter, and Casey Boone) solved five problems in 227 minutes coming in first place! Our second team (Logan Kennedy, Robert Koch, and Emily Bruckart) also solved five problems but took a slightly longer 312 minutes coming in second place. Our third team had two members who were competing in their first competition ( Philip Hagar, Brendan Johnston, Steve Jurnach) but still solved two problems.

Our first two teams beat Dickinson, Millersville, University of Delaware, and Washington College. We'll see them all again on November 7th at the regional competition. Here's hoping we beat them there, too!