CIS Highlights & News

2. Azimuthal correlation and collective behavior in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions, Phys. Atom. Nuc. Vol. 78(3-4), 1-10 (2014).

Congratulations!

Edward Blue, a December 2014 graduate who majored in Computer Information Systems (CIS) at Fredonia, introduced R2-PC, an Astromech R2-D2 interactive droid from toymaker Hasbro that he shrewdly reconfigured into a Windows-based personal computer.

"My goal was to take a toy that was considered non-functional and convert it into a fully operational desktop PC for my son (Brendan), who had started to show interest in Star Wars'," Mr. Blue explained, "and to see if it could be done. It's a way to look at things differently, to see what things can potentially become.

Mr. Blue picked up the used R2-D2 on eBay for a mere $22. After more than a year and a half in development, it's equipped with a "Star Wars"-themed Windows 7, 4 GB Crucial RAM 800 MHz, a 160 GB laptop hard drive and HDMI as well as digital/HD audio, Bluetooth and custom LED lighting. When hooked up to a keyboard, monitor and external DVD drive, it'll perform just like any PC, but in a case from – as they say – a galaxy far, far away. Blue acquired the assorted PC components, also on eBay, for under $100.

Mode details are available in the Campus Report and Dunkirk Observer.

Two new part-time instructors joined the department to help with the increased interest in our courses.

Andrew Cavaretta graduated with Magna cum Laude in Computer Information Systems from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at State University of New York at Fredonia. He is a recipient of Maytum Scholarship for Excellence and a member of Golden Key International Honour Society. Andrew has over 7 years of support experience in media/news IT industry. Currently he is pursuing a master's degree.

Mark Mackey graduated with bachelor degree in computer science and a minor in web programming from State University of New York at Fredonia. He has over twenty years experience in the US Army, 17 of which in management. He currently holds two part-time positions at Fredonia - Veterans Affairs Coordinator and Project Manager at ITS. Mark is pursuing master's degree in information management at Syracuse University.

Welcome to the department!

Dr. Zubairi has received a grant from the Seed Grant Funding Program of the American University of Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, AED 10,000 (about US$2,722) for his proposal "Load balancing for disaster recovering and management."

Congratulations!

A Brazilian accent was added to the growing international student population at Fredonia during 2014, thanks to the Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program that places high-achieving students in U.S. colleges and universities.

Ten computer information science students from South America’s largest country were enrolled in classes in the spring and fall terms, as well as both summer sessions. What they found at Fredonia was a welcoming and enriching campus experience, first-rate professors dedicated to their students and a friendly surrounding community.

"You meet a lot of people from many different countries and you live in a place that has a completely different culture and language," said Jose E. da Silva Tenorio. "It’s awesome!" At the end of the fall semester, the students were treated to a farewell reception by the Computer and Information Sciences. At that informal gathering, John Kijinski, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, shared his thoughts on language assimilation with the students. All agreed that immersion greatly facilitates acquisition of new language skills.

The event was featured in Campus Report and in Dunkirk Observer.

The fifth Department of Computer and Information Sciences Student Expo was be held on Wednesday, Dec. 10, from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. in the first floor lounge of Houghton Hall. Students presented their work from the past year, covering research as well as projects done both in and out of class. There were 11 presentations from different areas given by 19 student-presenters.

At the end of the exposition, a survey was distributed by which the students were able to vote for several peer awards. The three categories for the awards are: Most Interesting, which is designed to recognize student projects that make others want to learn more about a particular topic; Most Impressive, which is designed to recognize student projects that display a high degree of technical skill, professionalism or creativity; and Most Fun, which is designed to recognize student projects that simply look like they were the most enjoyable to work on.

We greatly appreciate the time our guests Provost Brown, VP Kearns, Dean Kijinski, CDO Director Ms. Collingwood, and Internship Coordinator Ms. Wilkins have taken to support the event and address the students. We also thank AT&T representatives Mr. Ben Roberts and Mr. Kevin Hanna who came all the way from Buffalo to attend the event. They shared that they are very impressed by the projects.

This event is organized by Visiting Instructor Robert Olson of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and is sponsored by AT&T Inc. and Dean of Natural and Social Sciences John Kijinski’s office.

The event was featured in the Campus Report and Dunkirk Observer.

The department joined the national mission to introduce 100 million students to computer science through the largest coding learning event in history: The Hour of Code, which is held the week of December 8th. First held in 2013, the Hour of Code is a major initiative of Code.org, a non-profit entity dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color.

The organization’s vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science. Its organizers believe computer science and computer programming should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses.

In one week last year, 15 million students tried computer science. The field was featured on the homepages of Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Disney. President Obama, pop music icon Shakira and actor Ashton Kutcher all kicked off the 2013 Hour of Code with videos. Over 100 partners came together to support the movement.

"Computers are everywhere, but fewer schools teach computer science than 10 years ago," said Fredonia faculty member Gregory Cole. "Women and minorities are severely underrepresented as well. The good news is, events like this can play a big role in changing that."

In addition to its own students, Fredonia’s Computer and Information Sciences faculty invite interested area K-12 schools and civic groups to contact the department, visit the campus, and join in this year’s Hour of Code event. The CS Club President Collin Preston taught the participants how to write simple programs. The student Ed Blue demonstrated a robot he developed.

The event was featured in Campus Report and Dunkirk Observer.

On September 12 the Student-Faculty Lunch and 2014 Student Expo Kick-off Party were held, organized by Prof. Szocki. Our sincere thanks to the exclusive sponsors AT&T Inc.

Prof. Olson presented the Department Student Expo which will be held in December and encouraged the students to work on projects to be presented there. Dr. Barneva introduced the forthcoming contest Hack Upstate offering $18,000 in prizes for apps that benefit Western New York community and is also sponsored by AT&T. 

The President of the CS Club Collin Preston spoke about it and invited all students to join it.

Prof. Decker was conferred the Best Teacher of the Year Award.

The department welcomed 30 freshmen in Fall 2014. This way it almost doubled the enrollment from the previous year. With respect to the last year the number of students grew with 37 to 166 which is 22% growth from last academic year - the highest at Fredonia.

The statistics also showed that the retention rate of our students is 95% - the second best at the university.

The student Jason Davison applied for the Black Hat's Student Scholarship Program and was awarded a scholarship for over $2000 which allowed him to travel to Las Vegas in August and attend the conference. He came back with invaluable experience which he shared with his fellow students.

Over the summer Prof. Olson got an Ethical Hacker Certification. Congratulations!

From Wikipedia.org:

"An ethical hacker is usually employed by an organization who trusts him or her to attempt to penetrate networks and/or computer systems, using the same methods as a hacker, for the purpose of finding and fixing computer security vulnerabilities. Unauthorized hacking (i.e., gaining access to computer systems without prior authorization from the owner) is a crime in most countries, but penetration testing done by request of the owner of the victim system(s) or network(s) is not.

A Certified Ethical Hacker has obtained a certification in how to look for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in target systems and uses the same knowledge and tools as a hacker."

Four students majoring in Computer and Information Sciences Julian Anjorin, Mohamed Sadek, Mitchell Skomra, and Daniel Sturniolo went to a Summer School at Jiaotong University of Beijing, China on a scholarship covering their tuition, room, and board, and for three of them even their airfare. More information can be found here.

The student Collin Preston was elected as the CS Club President and William Cavaretta as the Vice-President. Congratulations!

The department welcomed the new tenure-track faculty, Dr. Scialdone, who will join the department in Fall 2014.

Dr. Michael Scialdone received his Ph.D. degree in Information Science and Technology from Syracuse University in May 2014. His master's degree is in Information Design and Technology from SUNY Institute of Technology, and his B.A. is in Communication Arts from Utica College of Syracuse University. Mr. Scialdone studies how specific characteristics of information computing technologies impact people’s lives in business, higher education, and other contexts. As such technologies become increasingly ubiquitous, understanding their impact helps make better decisions about their use. Through his work, he hopes to be able to contribute actionable guidance to the design and development of computing technologies, as well as to help practitioners in organizations and education make informed decisions as to how to utilize the most appropriate tool for a given task.

Mr. Scialdone will be teaching two sections of CSIT 120 Introduction to Computer Science and one section of CSIT 107 Web Programming I in Fall.

Dr. Barneva published a book with Springer in co-authorship with Valentin Brimkov and Josef Slapal. The volume entitled "Combinatorial Image Analysis" constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis, IWCIA 2014, held in Brno, Czech Republic, in May 2014. The 20 revised full papers and 3 invited papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The topics covered include discrete geometry and topology in imaging science, new results in image representation, segmentation, grouping, and reconstruction, medical image processing.

Dr. Singh's abstract "Engaging and Educating Information Systems and Computer Science Learners in Virtual World" was accepted at the 8th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference: Framing the Future: Teaching, Learning, Advancing, which will be held at Fredonia on August 18, 2014.

Dr. Barneva served as co-advisor of the doctoral student Bilyana Stoynova who successfully defended her thesis on May 22, 2014. Dr. Stoynova is an assistant professor at the Technical University, Gabrovo.

Paul Frey, a 2010 alum, who graduated with a major in Computer Science and a minor in GIS has accepted a job offer with Google to handle their aerial imagery acquisitions. He will be moving to their headquarters in Mountain View, California. Currently, he is the Lead GIS Analyst for Rochester Gas and Electric. Prior to that, he was the director of GIS for Cattaraugus County.

This is the second recent alumnus who works for Google after Devin Grady who graduated in 2008 from The State University of New York at Fredonia and got a Ph.D. degree from Rice University in 2013.

Collin Preston was elected as a President of the CS Club.

The Annual High School Contest organized by Prof. Szocki was held on May 19, 2014. Prof. Olson gave an inspirational talk why everyone should be educated about contemporary technology. Dr. Tsetse conducted the Web Programming Contest, Dr. Singh - the Spreadsheet Contest, Prof. Olson - the Programming Contest, and Prof. Decker and Dr. Singh - the Scavenger Hunt. The Quiz Show, conducted by Prof. Szocki with the help of Dr. Tsetse and Prof. Decker, was as usual a lot of fun.

President Horvath visited all contests and gave stimulating talks to the students. Dean's Office provided the delicious breakfast and lunch.

The High School Contest is a wonderful annual event which helps us make computer and information sciences popular among high school students.

The CS Team scored second among all SUNY schools at the programming contest held at the Consortium of Computing Sciences in Colleges – North Eastern Region, on April 25 and 26 at Providence College, RI.

Pictured above are Jeffrey Swift - a senior from Livonia, the CS Team coach - Dr. Gurmukh Singh, and Nicholas Freville - a junior from Mayville. The third member of the team - Patrick Hodge - a junior from Fredonia is not pictured.

Basar Koc a former student in the department defended successfully his master's degree thesis at the University of Miami. Dr. Arnavut served on his master's thesis committee.

Dr. Singh's article entitled "Azimuthal structure of charged particle emission in 28Si-Ag/Br interaction at 14.5A GeV and 32S-Ag/Br interaction at 200A GeV", in collaboration with P. Mali, A. Mukhopadhyay, and S. Sarkar, has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Modern Physics, Vol. E143, 2014.

Dr. Zubairi got two awards: $1,000 individual development award for participating in IEEE CTS conference to be held May 20-23 in Minneapolis as publication chair, workshop chair and author and presenter and $1,000 Faculty creativity and research award for summer research.

Department faculty are staying current with the new software and instructional techniques. On March 26, 2014 Dr. Barneva, Nazarenko, Singh, Tsetse, and Prof. Decker participated in a Workshop offered by Centage Learning about Skills Assessment Manager (SAM), "an interactive online learning environment that helps students master Microsoft Office skills and computer concepts that are essential to academic and career success. SAM engages students in self-paced learning of Microsoft Office applications – including Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook, as well as technology concepts and issues."

It is meant to reduce student's expenses for hard copy textbooks and provide a simulated Microsoft Office environment, through which "the computer novices and experienced users are able to practice Microsoft Office tasks at the skill level that is most appropriate for them – from an observation mode that allows students to watch the task being completed before tackling it on their own, to an apply mode that allows students to complete the task without guidance and receive feedback. With SAM Projects, students apply their skills to creating real-world projects, such as flyers, budgets, and presentations."

"A student study guide report provides personalized remediation, linking students back to simulated practice of skills they have not yet mastered and to the related section of the e-book for additional information."

Dr. Arnavut has been invited to be a co-chair of the 11th International Conference HONET 2014 which will be held December 15-17, 2014 and hosted by UNC Charlotte with the co-Sponsorship of Charlotte Research Institute (CRI) and Technical Sponsorship of IEEE.

HONET 2014's main theme is "Photonics for Energy (PfE)" along with its legacy scope spanning all communication technologies, networks, security and e-applications as well as emerging/enabling technologies.

Congratulations!

On March 26, 2014, Dr. Wenliang (Kevin) Du from EECS Department, Syracuse University visited the department and gave a talk entitled "Enhancing the Security of Android Phones," a topic that is very important in light of the pervasive use of Android smartphones.

In his talk Dr. Du first gave a brief tutorial on smartphone security, covering some of the key security features in iOS and Android, as well as how they can be attacked. Then he focused on the research problems that he is trying to solve with his graduate students. Dr. Du also gave information and distributed materials about the graduate programs at Syracuse University. Dean Kijinski introduced the speaker, whose lecture was very well attended by students and faculty from CIS Department and all campus.

After the talk there was there was pizza and drinks arranged by Prof. Olson and plenty of lively conversation. Many students got inspired by Dr. Du's talk to pursue a career in computer security or to continue their studies at graduate level.

Prof. Olson's course on Hacking, Surveillance, and Privacy was approved as an honor course. Congratulations!

The course will examine the many of the societal issues and concerns related to the pervasive integration of computer technology into our everyday lives. Students will be taught basic principles of IT and networking which will be quickly expanded on through the presentation of open-source, freely available computer security tools. Through tightly controlled demonstrations, students will learn why hackers frequently say that computer security is a fiction. Once students have a foundation in the mechanisms used by hackers to circumvent security, discussions will shift to a focus on the societal questions surrounding computer security such as the relationship between computer security and free speech, technological surveillance, cyber war, and privacy.

Prof. Olson and his students in the course CSIT 463: Introduction to Digital Image Processing and Computer Vision developed a music visualization tool. No MIDI files were used and each pixel is being drawn via code. The height of each bubble is determined by the frequency of the note being played and the size of each bubble is determined by the duration of the note being played. Coded in C# using Visual Studio 2012. Click on the image to see the video.

Special Thanks To: Eugene Nicks (For music translation), Donald Abdullah-Robinson (For writing an awesome drawing algorithm), Mark Mackey and Jeffrey Swift (For some great ideas realized later on).

Dr. Gurmukh Singh in co-authorship with P. Mali, A. Mukhopadhyay and S. Sarkar published the article "Wavelet analysis of shower track distribution in high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions" in the Journal of Advances in High Energy Physics, Research ID 759176, Vol. 2013, 1-13 (2013). The paper employs the technique of continuous wavelets to discover patterns in relativistic energy nuclear collisions from experiments conducted at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL), Upton, NY and the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland. The technique of continuous wavelets has also been used to recognize patterns in data communications. Wavelet technique (also called wavelet theory or just wavelets) has also attracted much attention during recent years in signal processing. Although it is not a new theory in a sense that many of the ideas and techniques involved in wavelets (sub-band coding, quadrature mirror filters, etc.) were developed independently in various signal processing applications, it has been successfully employed in a number of practical applications such as transient signal analysis, image analysis, communications systems, and other signal processing fields.

Two computer and information sciences students, Nicholas Freville and Adam Toth have assembled a Beowulf cluster, comprised of three tiny computers called Raspberry Pi's, that work in tandem to solve complex problems.

With 512 MB of memory, each computer – about the size of a credit card and encased in a hard plastic case -- is as powerful as a smart phone, Toth explained. There is no keyboard, but these devices can perform a variety of functions when hooked up to a monitor and keyboard.

A Beowulf cluster is a parallel computing system achieved by linking normally identical, commodity-grade computers into a small local area network (LAN). The result gives a huge boost of power despite using inexpensive, personal computer hardware.

"These computers are not high-performance machines, but when clustered together, their performance is boosted," explained Dr. Junaid Zubairi, who supervised the class project undertaken by Toth and Freville.

The news was featured in the Campus Report. More can be found here.

Dr. Juanid Zubairi received an Instructional Incentive Award for over $1000. Congratulations!

Dr. John Hansen designed a communication system for satellite launched into orbit. The Minotaur I rocket launched by NASA from its Virginia facility in November is carrying a unique satellite that will communicate using a digital interface system designed by Dr. Hansen.

The rocket was carrying its main payload and 29 miniature satellites ("picosats") including the CAPE-2 satellite, which was constructed by students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In order to provide digital data communications, CAPE-2 contained an onboard system designed by Hansen. The satellite measures just 10 cm (4 inches) on each side and weighs just over two pounds. It is capable of converting text to speech, tweeting, sending email, repeating voice messages, transferring files and collecting data from buoys in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dr. Hansen's digital data interface system, called "TNC-X" has been used in digital communications systems in over 40 countries, often to support first responder teams preparing for disaster situations. For the Cape-2 project, Dr. Hansen modified the design so it would be appropriate for use in orbit. TNC-X interfaces with the on-board computer and the satellite's radio to provide a command and control interface to the ground command station as well as transmit telemetry, and digital communications such as email and tweets.

Dr. Hansen offers a course on Programming for Embedded Microcontrollers in which the students build a series of embedded projects of increasing complexity. He is a recipient of Teacher of the Year department Award.

From Campus Report

Prof. Robert Olson gave a workshop on C# to department faculty. He presented many features, including work with linked lists, applications for image processing and software he developed for data mining. The faculty enjoyed the workshop and found the applications very useful for their professional development.

The Department alumna Georgie Fu gave a keynote address at the recognition ceremony of the The State University of New York at Fredonia chapter of Golden Key International Honour Society which was held Nov. 10, 2013 at the Williams Center Multipurpose Room. Georgie Fu is a 2012 summa cum laude graduate, SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence recipient, and a former Golden Key chapter president. She was featured by the Campus Report.

The Department of Computer and Information Sciences became 10 year old! Prof. Cole invited the faculty to get together and celebrate the event at Applebees.

On October 12-13, 2013 six students from the department participated in the programming competition HackUpstate, sponsored by Syracuse University and SUNY Oswego and hosted at the Syracuse Technology Garden. The goal of the competition is to build the best product possible in only 24 hours and then give a presentation on it. Students from nine colleges, including Fredonia, attended as well as many professionals from various corporations. The NYS Chief Technology Officer attended all the presentations given.

In 24 hours Aaron Chan, Daniel Coffaro, Nicholas Freville, Jason Guy, Jeffrey Swift, and Robert Szkutak built a web-based video game in HTML5, CSS, and Javascript. They wrote tools to help them develop the algorithms of the game in C++. They also used PHP code hosted on the department student server Pizza to have the game send a text message to the cell phone of the person playing the game.

The presentation of the team is available here. The news was featured by Syracuse local newspapers. 

On October 4, 2013 the department held a Student-Faculty Party. It was attended by more than 40 students who mingled with the faculty and conversed informally. Drs. Barneva, Nazarenko, Tsetse; Profs. Cole, Malayny, Olson, Szocki, and Ms. Austin took part in it. They presented their scholarship and courses to the students. A special guest was Associate Dean Roger Byrne. He talked about the role of sciences in today's education, about the ever-changing area of Computer and Information Sciences, and the innovative courses the department offers. The President of the CS Club, Rob Szkutak, talked about the club activities. Prof. Cole was honored for a third time in a row with the Best Teacher of the Year Department Award. Everyone enjoyed the refreshments and the pizza provided by the main organizer - Prof. Szocki.

On October 3, 2013, Prof. Jan Pavlik from the Institute of Mathematics of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic visited the department and gave a talk on "Pareto Optimality and Its Geometric Applications." He explained the general principle of Pareto Optimality as a property of significance with respect to binary relations. Then, he showed how this universal tool can be used for description and analysis of various situations. He showed some examples and an instance of the principle in geometry. Its further investigation leads to various results which can be possibly applied in geography and related sciences.

The students Zachary Daily, Brian Rashty, Justin Soderberg and Robert Szkutak and Profs. Malayny and Olson created a program concept designed to combat bullying in classrooms by allowing teachers to collect data about bullying incidents throughout the school – data which can be used to alter classroom layouts to lessen the likelihood of a reoccurrence. They presented a paper at The 6th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2013) which was very well received. Their work is featured at The Statement Magazine.

Dr. Singh (together with Ashwini Kumar and B. K. Singh) published the article "Systematic study of multiparticle production in nucleus-nucleus interactions at 14.6 A GeV, in the Journal of Physics, Indian Academy of Sciences, Vol. 80(1), 103-1115 (2013).

Dr. Barneva gave a keynote talk "Education in computer science and the role of the teacher in the environment of open educational resources" at the 6th ESRI Conference "The Education and Scientific Research in the Information Society" which was held in Plovdiv, Bulgaria May 30-31, 2013. The conference was sponsored by the Association for the Development of Information Society, The Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Plovdiv "Paisii Hilendarski."

Open Educational Resources (OER) are a new phenomenon that may significantly impact higher education and the occupation of university professors. On the other hand, OER have a number of advantages, including adaptive learning and an automatic analysis of the learning process data that may lead to improvement of the curriculum. Dr. Barneva examined the current state-of-art in higher education and the related problems. She shared her reflections on the impact of the new means on the education in general and on the education in computer science and its specifics, in particular. Her work has been featured in Campus Report.

The new edition of the High School Contest was held on May 20, 2013. Fifty eight high school students from six regional schools participated in the event. There were contests in programming, spreadsheets, web design and a scavenger hunt. Many department faculty and students were involved. Prof. Szocki provided the overall organization and logistics, served as a coordinator and judge of the quiz show and photographer, Dr. Arnavut served as Scavenger Hunt judge, Dr. Barneva gave a presentation to teachers, Dr. Singh wrote the questions of Excel contest and served as a judge, Prof. Decker served as judge of the HTML contest and quiz show, Prof. Olson wrote the questions for the programming contest and served as a judge. Four student helpers were also involved: Jessica Niemi served as Excel judge and photographer, John Malayny wrote the HTML questions and served as judge, Patrick Hodge and Robert Szkutak served as HTML judges, and Profs. Cole and Pingitore served as high school student coaches and brought teams. The event was sponsored by Dean's Office. Some pictures of the event are below.

On May 18, 2013 the Commencement was held. This year the graduating class was unusually large: over 30 students graduated in Spring 2013 and 15 in Fall'12.

As every year the department held its Honors and Graduation party at the end of the year. The following students were honored: 
Andrew Cavaretta - Maytum scholarship 
Collin Preston - John Beck scholarship 
Andrew Morrison - Maytum scholarship 
Aaron Chan - Feng Chiang scholarship 
Amanda Sutter - Debbie J. Joy scholarship 
Robert Szkutak - Maytum scholarship 
Jaikub Smith - Maytum scholarship 
Nicholas Freville - Maytum scholarship

Prof. Olson and the students Zach Daily, John Malayny, and Rob Szkutak have the paper "Project CASSI: A Social-Graph Based Tool for Classroom Behavior Analysis and Optimization" accepted to the 2013 International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2013) in Memphis.

The University Student Research and Creativity Exposition was held on May 2, 2013. The department presented 18 projects developed by 19 students:

A Study of Rubik’s Cube and Its Implementation 
Efe Alacamli, mentor Dr. Arnavut 
 

A Study of Rubik’s Cube and Its Implementation 
Efe Alacamli, mentor Dr. Arnavut 

Survey of Biometric Recognition Systems 
Namik Berk Cakmak, mentor Dr. Arnavut 

Shortest Path Algorithms for Robotic AI 
Erdinc Masat, mentor Dr. Arnavut 

Distributed BACI Race Simulation 
Richard Parenti, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi 

Career Opportunities in Computer and Information Sciences 
Efe Alacamli, Erdinc Masat, mentor Dr. Barneva 

Developing Flight Routing Module for Distributed Flight Tracker 
Richard Parenti, Jeffrey Lewandowski, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi 

Applying K-means Clustering to the Social Graphs of Student Classrooms 
Robert Szkutak, mentor Prof. Olson 

Evaluating Classroom Diversity Using Social Networking Analysis 
Zach Daily, mentor Prof. Olson 

CASSI: Development of an Efficient Classroom Sorting Heuristic 
John Malayny, mentor Prof. Olson 

Web Interface for Education Decision Support System 
Justin Soderberg, mentor Prof. Olson 

Disk and System Performance with Bonnie++ and Nbench 
Mark Mackey, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi 

3G Sensor Transmission 
Daniel Coffaro, Robert Lavin, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi 

Interactive Applications of MS Excel and MS Visual Studio .NET 2010 
Brandon Artymowycz, mentor Dr. Gurmukh Singh 

Simulation of a Projectile and Random Theory of Rolling Dice 
Timothy Aselin, mentor Dr. Gurmukh Singh 

Game Programming, 
Jeffrey Swift, Nicholas Freville, Patrick Hodge, mentor Dr. Gurmukh Singh 

Algorithm Development to Investigate Compatibility of Three Software Systems 
Ankit Ahuja, mentor Dr. Gurmukh Singh 

Monitoring Users and Internet Service Providers for Fair Use 
Ankit Ahuja, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi 

Processor Scheduler Simulator 
Kyle Smolinski, Ankit Ahuja, mentor Dr. Junaid Zubairi

Some memorable moments. 
 

The paper "Lossless Compression of Dithered Images" of Dr. Ziya Arnavut and the former double major in Computer Science and Computer Information Systems Basar Koc was accepted for publication in IEEE Photonics Journal.

On April 11-13, 2013, the CS Programming Team participated in the CCSC North East programming contest led by Dr. Singh. Prof. Olson mentored two student works accepted for presentation at student poster session at CCSCNE.

Pictured from left to right: The CS Team and its mentor Dr. Gurmukh Singh, Nicholas Freville, Jeff Swift, Patrick Hodge. Zach Daily presents his poster.

On March 26, 2013, members of the Silver Creek Cub Scout Pack 252 visited the department of Computer and Information Sciences. The scouts earned the Computer Belt Loop and Computer Academic Pin by completing a series of required activities and had the chance to get acquainted with Fredonia computer facilities. Scouts did the activities under the guidance of Prof. Greg Cole.

Pictured from left to right at the front line: David Sheldon, Jeffrey Brown, Faith Sheldon, Nico Crino, and in the back Mr. Greg Cole, and Trevor Cole.

On March 22, 2013, Ms. Amy Leclair, Fredonia's Coordinator of Advising and Liberal Arts, gave an advising workshop to the department advisors. "According to the National Study of Student Engagement in 2005, the quality of academic advising is the single, most powerful predictor of satisfaction with the campus environment at 4-year colleges," Ms. Leclair said. She considered various topics, including advising students with academic difficulties and international students.

The department understands that advising is a team effort and takes undergraduate student advising very seriously. Faculty were excited to learn new information and how to handle some special cases.

On March 8, 2013, Dr. Daisuke Hara gave a talk at a join department seminar and CS Club meeting entitled "A Probabilistic Approach to the Syllable Formation of Japanese Sign Language." Dr. Hara is a professor at Toyota Technological Institute - Japan. He got his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago under the mentorship of the famous professor John A. Goldsmith. He is the author of several publications in the field of linguistics.

The talk was attended by Drs. Barneva, Singh, Profs. Olson, Szocki, and several students.

On March 2, 2013, faculty and students of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences participated in the first Science Day organized by the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Barneva presented the programs and Dr. Zubairi gave a talk on Cyber Security. The President of the CS Club, Rob Szkutak, spoke about student experience on campus and about his research. Nick Freville presented his work with Blender on infinite cities for the purposes of game development.

Dr. Singh has his work "Developmental Education through Digital Technologies and Techniques in Natural Sciences" accepted as a poster presentation at the 22nd Annual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT 2013) to be held May 21-24, 2013 on the campus of SUNY IT, Utica, NY. He has been awarded a scholarship by the SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching & Technology (FACT2) and the CIT Planning Committee, toward the conference registration.

Dr. Barneva served as invited speaker at the 15th International Conference "Humans and Computers" held on February 11-12, 2013 at the University of Shizuoka, Japan. The conference attracted participants from three continents - America, Asia, and Europe. There were two sessions in satellite sites – at the University of Aizu, Japan and Düsseldorf University of Applied Science, Germany.

Dr. Barneva's talk was on Space and Time Efficient Algorithms in Imaging Sciences. Currently, due to the expansion of digital image acquisition, there exist large databases and digital warehouses of images in medicine, security, geosciences, astronomy, metallurgy, and many other fields. In order to take maximal advantage of these huge databases, time- and space-efficient algorithms are required. She considered some examples of such algorithms in imaging sciences. More information can be found in the Campus Report.

Prof. Mendez received a grant from Carnahan Jackson Foundation to develop free textbook for the students in the courses Web Programming I and II. The grantor's desire is to save students money on textbooks purchase and make the courses more affordable. Prof. Mendez is with the department since 2008 and he has been teaching the courses on web programming very successfully in a traditional classroom or online.