Picture of the Month

"Throwback" Game Night

The big winner at the recent “Throwback” game night – which had a 1990s theme -- walked away with a DVD set of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” a popular sitcom from that decade. More than 100 CS and CM majors attended the retro event, which featured games, food and fun reminiscent of their childhoods. It was da bomb! View all of the photos from the event See more of CoC In Pictures at our Flickr site.

Research News

Newly Awarded Contracts for January 2008

Grants/Gifts Received for January 2008

Closed Contracts for January 2008

Newly Awarded Contracts for December 2007

Grants/Gifts Received for December 2007

Closed Contracts for December 2007

People@CoC

2008 WWW Conference Accepts Papers by Two CoC Professors

Professor Hongyuan Zha of the Computational Science and Engineering Division and Associate Professor Ling Liu of the School of Computer Science will present papers at the upcoming World Wide Web Conference to be held April 21-25 in Beijing.  Professor Zha will present the following papers:  “Finding the Right Facts in the Crowd: Factoid Question Answering over Social Media,” with CoC graduate students  J. Bian and Y. Liu, and Eugene Agichtein of Math and Computer Science at Emory University; “Learning Multiple Graphs for Document Recommendations,” with D. Zhou, S. Zhu, K. Yu, X. Song, B. Tseng, and C. L. Giles; and “Exploring Social Annotations for Information Retrieval,” with D. Zhou, S. Zheng, J. Bian, and C. L. Giles. Professor Liu will present "Supporting Anonymous Location Queries in Mobile Environments with PrivacyGrid," with CoC graduate students Bhuvan Bamba, Peter Pesti, and Ting Wang.
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Ashwin Ram to Give Keynote Address at ICML 2008 Workshop

The International Conference on Machine Learning has invited Associate Professor Ashwin Ram to give the keynote address at a workshop at the event, which will be held in Helsinki, Finland in July. The workshop is titled Planning to Learn. The 25th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2008) is the leading international machine learning conference, annually attracting about 500 participants from all over the world. Professor Ram is the author of Goal-Driven Learning (MIT Press, 1995), which brings together a diversity of research to establish a broad, interdisciplinary framework that describes the goal-driven learning process in humans and machines.
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Manisha Manohar Gajbe Selected to Attend 2008 Google Workshop for Women Engineers

Graduate student in Computer Science Manisha Manohar Gajbe was one of fewer than 150 female computer science students nationwide to be invited to attend a 3 day all-expenses paid workshop at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California on February 21-23. According to the Google website, the Workshop for Women Engineers seeks to “recognize and reward deserving women students in computer science, and inspire them to become active participants and leaders in creating technology.” The highly competitive selection process takes into consideration demonstrated academic excellence and leadership in the computing field.

John Stasko Gives Talk at Security Science Conference

Professor John Stasko was invited to give a talk at a workshop titled "Science and Application of Visual Analytics," which was sponsored by the Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Center for Security Science. The DRDC is similar to the US Dept. of Homeland Security. The workshop, which took place Feb. 2-5 in Vancouver, British Columbia, was organized to kick off the Canadian Network of Visual Analytics Centers. Professor Stasko spoke on, "Visualization for Investigative Analysis Helping to Put the Pieces Together." The Science and Technology Division of the US Dept. of Homeland Security and Canada's DRDC Center for Security Science have agreed that they would develop a Cooperative Activity Agreement (CAA) for collaborative work in
Visual Analytics.

Karen Liu Gives Talks at Conferences in Florida and Tennessee

Assistant Professor Karen Liu was invited by Lockheed Martin to speak Feb. 19 at the International Technology Trends Conference in Orlando, Fl., which spotlights information and computing technologies that are expected to make a profound impact on business and the world. At the annual event, Professor Liu presented a paper entitled “Motion Synthesis for Autonomous Virtual Human.” Two days later, Professor Liu gave a keynote address on the same topic in Chattanooga as part of that city’s activities for National Engineers Week.

Ellen Witte Zegura Awarded Alumni Achievement Award

The Engineering School at Washington University in St. Louis is giving Ellen Witte Zegura, Associate Dean of Special Programs, an Alumni Achievement Award in recognition for her accomplishments since graduating. The awards ceremony will take place April 1.

Personnel Announcements

Mike Stilman has joined CoC as Assistant Professor in IC effective 1/1/08. His email address is mstilman@cc, phone number is 5-3184, and he is located in TSRB 240.
LaCole McCain has joined CoC as a Tech Temp in Facilities effective 1/16/08. Her email address is lmccain@cc, phone number is 5-7070, and she is located at the front receptionist's desk located in CCB.
Patricia LaHay has joined CoC as an Information Specialist II in Communications effective 2/1/08. Her email address is plahay@cc, phone number is 5-3713, and she is located in CCB 132.
Sharon Williams has joined CoC as a Tech Temp in Student Services effective 2/4/08.  Her email address is swilliam@cc, and she is located in CCB 122.
James Chandler has joined CoC as a Tech Temp in TSO effective 2/4/08. His email address is edochan3@cc.
Carolyn Young has been hired permanently as an Administrative Assistant I in CSE effective 1/7/08.  Her email address is cyoung@cc, phone number is 5-3425, and she is located in KACB 1320.
Alan Glass has been hired permanently as an Academic Assistant II in Student Services effective 2/1/08.  His email address is aglass@cc, phone number is 5-4267, and he is located in CCB 122.
Elizabeth Ndongi has been promoted to an Administrative Assistant II working in Development effective 1/16/08.  Her email address is ndongi@cc, and she is located in KACB 3415.
Matthew Reynold's last day at CoC was 12/31/07.
Barbara Redding's last day at CoC was 1/31/08.
Margaret Cutler's last day at CoC was 1/31/08.
Heather Smith's last day at CoC was 2/8/08.
Teresa Lane's last day at CoC was 2/15/08.

Administrative News

New Fed-Ex and P-Card policies

Due to the new guidelines concerning P-Card usage, as of February 26, 2008 the front desk of the College of Computing Building at 801 Atlantic Drive will no longer provide walk-up Fed-Ex service. Current Georgia Tech Fed-Ex Service defaults to a pre-established P-card, which falls under newly updated polices. If you need regular access to Fed-Ex services, please contact your Financial Manager to coordinate for your area.

In response to the high profile P-Card audits that have taken place across campus, please remember the following:

1. Personal Fed-Ex Use is no longer allowed.
2. No P-Card sharing. This means that only the cardholder is allowed to use the card. Not the cardholder’s administrative assistant or anyone else.
3. No personal purchases are allowed.
4. Bundled cable services cannot be purchased with the P-Card. Only the internet component should be charged to the P-Card.
5. If you have bundled services, please process a reimbursement via check request. Goods and services purchased with the P-card must be shipped to a Georgia Tech address.