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Events

CS Alumni Speed Networking Event

The Computer Science Department held its first CS Alumni Speed Networking event on March 25, 2025.  Students were invited to introduce themselves and ask questions to learn about the careers of our alumni. Twenty one alumni connected with the students to discuss their career path and to offer professional advice. Each student completed five individual meetings with alumni.  Student participants shared their feedback on the event:

  • It was awesome. I learned a lot from each alumni and they gave me great advice that encouraged me. I will use this advice to motivate me and give me a better understanding of what I can prepare for in the future.
  • I was able to openly communicate about current trends in tech, the job market, what to expect in industry as well as solid advice for early career students like myself.
  • [One] take-away was the ability to start networking and meeting people who are in industries that I’m interested in.
  • I really enjoyed getting to talk to the alumni group, it definitely gave me a lot of insight into what the future might hold! 

    One key takeaway for me is how each alumni I talked to followed a different path to get to where they were. I found it very helpful to see all the branching paths and applications that CS was able to provide to the alumni. I felt it expanded my view and showed me different possibilities of career choices and special interests that I didn’t even know existed.

  • Always keep your options open, and never get too comfortable in one spot because you never know the opportunities that may present itself down the road.
  • Thank you for the opportunity last night to meet with TCNJ alumni. It was fantastic meeting everyone and I thank them for providing their input on the questions I had. 

The CS Alumni Speed Networking event was open to sophomores through senior majors.  It was organized and hosted by Dr. Deborah Knox.

Colloquium Talk with Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates, ACM Distinguished Speaker, March 7: “Responsible AI”

Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates, ACM Distinguished Speaker, will give a virtual colloquium presentation, titled “Responsible AI” on Friday, March 7, which will be streamed in Science Complex P101 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM.

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract:  In the first part we cover five current specific problems that motivate the needs of responsible AI: (1) discrimination (e.g., facial recognition, justice, sharing economy, language models); (2) phrenology (e.g., biometric based predictions); (3) unfair digital commerce (e.g., exposure and popularity bias); (4) stupid models (e.g., minimal adversarial AI) and (5) indiscriminate use of computing resources (e.g., large language models). These examples do have a personal bias but set the context for the second part where we address four challenges: (1) too many principles (e.g., principles vs. techniques), (2) cultural differences; (3) regulation and (4) our cognitive biases. We finish discussing what we can do to address these challenges in the near future to be able to develop responsible AI, particularly under the umbrella of the incoming regulation (European Union’s AI Act & White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights).

Speaker Bio: Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates areas of expertise are information retrieval, web search and data mining, data
science and algorithms. He is currently a Professor at Northeastern University, Silicon Valley campus, since August 2017. He is also CTO of NTENT, a semantic search technology company based in California since June 2016. Before he was VP of Research at Yahoo Labs, based in Sunnyvale, California, from August 2014 to February 2016. Before he founded and led from 2006 to 2015 the Yahoo labs in Barcelona and Santiago de Chile. Between 2008 and 2012 he also oversaw Yahoo Labs in Haifa, Israel, and started the London lab in 2012. He is part time Professor at the Dept. of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), in Barcelona, Spain, as well as at the Dept. of Computing Science (DCC) of Universidad de Chile in Santiago. During 2005, he was an
ICREA research professor at UPF.

He obtained a Ph.D. in CS from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1989. Before he obtained two masters (M.Sc. CS & M.Eng. EE) and the electronics engineer degree from the University of Chile in Santiago. He is co-author of the best-seller Modern Information Retrieval textbook, published in 1999 by Addison-Wesley with a second enlarged edition in 2011, which won the ASIST 2012 Book of the Year award. He is also co-author of the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Algorithms and Data Structures, Addison-Wesley, 1991; and co-editor of Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Data Structures, Prentice-Hall, 1992, among more than 600 other publications. Within ACM he was the Chilean site director of the regional ACM Programming Contest and member of the South American steering committee from 1998 to 2005. Later he was member of the ACM Publications Board from 2007 to 2009 and of the ACM European Council from 2010 to 2014. Finally, he was elected to the ACM Council from July 2012 to June 2016. From 2002 to 2004 he was elected to the board of governors of the IEEE Computer Society. He has received the Organization of American States award for young researchers in exact sciences (1993), the Graham Medal for innovation in computing given by the University of Waterloo to distinguished ex-alumni (2007), the CLEI Latin American distinction for contributions to CS in the region (2009), and the National Award of the Chilean Association of Engineers (2010), among other distinctions. In 2003, he was the first computer scientist to be elected to the Chilean Academy of Sciences and since 2010 is a founding member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. In 2009, he was named ACM Fellow and in 2011 IEEE Fellow.

Dr. Salgian to Give Talk “Follow the Beat: Analyzing and Generating Conducting Gestures Using Computers”

Dr. Andrea Salgian will give a guest talk at the February 2025 joint meeting of the Princeton ACM & IEEE-CS chapters on Thursday, February 20 in STEM 102.  The event is open to the public and light refreshments and networking will begin at 7:30 PM, with the formal talk beginning at 8:00 PM.

Dr. Salgian’s talk is titled “Follow the Beat: Analyzing and Generating Confucting Gestures Using Computers”.  An abstract of her talk can be found below.

Abstract: Musical conducting is a unique blend of musical performance and communication. Conductors are the only musicians who can freely move their hands to create sound, without having their gestures constrained by a rigid instrument, as their instrument is the entire orchestra. The act of conducting can also be seen as communication, as the conductor is using gestures to convey information to the other musicians.

While gesture recognition is a widely researched topic in human-computer interaction, conducting hasn’t been studied too extensively. In this talk I will present some of my work on analyzing, generating, and recognizing
conducting gestures, highlighting both methods and applications.

Colloquium Talk with Mr. San Kim, Ph.D. Student in Computer Science and Engineering, on February 7: “The Harmony of Connections: Graphs and AI”

Mr. San Kim, visiting Ph.D. student at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, will give a colloquium presentation, titled “The Harmony of Connections: Graphs and AI” on Friday, February 7, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM in Science Complex P101.

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract:  Our world is deeply interconnected—whether through social networks, the internet, or even the neurons in our brains. At the heart of these connections lies the mathematical structure of graphs. This talk will provide an intuitive introduction to how graphs model real-world systems, their role in artificial intelligence, and how they relate to the way our brains process information. We will explore how Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) leverage these structures to solve complex problems, from recommendation systems to medical research. Through relatable analogies and engaging discussions, this session aims to make these concepts accessible to students from diverse backgrounds, sparking curiosity about the intersection of AI and network theory.

Speaker Bio:  San Kim is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, specializing in graph neural network-based predictions of chemical systems. His research focuses on the “form follows function” in analogy to the graph representation of real-world systems. San has experience as a startup founder and has worked on various interdisciplinary projects spanning artificial intelligence, cheminformatics, and computational neuroscience. He has published in international conferences and journals and is currently conducting research at The College of New Jersey.

Colloquium Talk with Mr. Sean McAfee, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), November 19: “Current Critical Infrastructure Landscape and Cyber Threat Trends”

Mr. Sean McAfee, of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will give a virtual colloquium presentation, titled “Current Critical Infrastructure Landscape and Cyber Threat Trends” on Tuesday, November 19, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, which will be streamed in Education 115 & 113.  

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract:  Overview of the talk:

  • Current critical infrastructure landscape and cyber threat trends
  • Career pathways, training certs, and other considerations for navigating the cyber job process post graduation
  • Q&A for the students and faculty

Speaker Bio:   Sean McAfee serves as the Section Chief for Higher Education. His roles within the section are to provide strategicplanning and program management for higher education initiatives that assist in combating the national cybersecurity workforce shortage.

Prior to re-joining the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. McAfee served Ohio’s Secretary of State as Chief Information Security Officer. He previously worked twelve years at the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. McAfee held various roles as the Department’s first Resident Cybersecurity Officer and Attaché (UK), Staff Directorof the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, and Deputy Chief for the National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Services team. Additionally, Mr. McAfee supported a regional assignment to Silicon Valley. McAfee supported many technical teams and projects with subject matter expertise in program management, vulnerability assessments, social engineering and insider threat throughout his tenure. He holds a CISO certification fromCarnegie Mellon University, a master’s degree in Forensic Psychology from Marymount University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from The Ohio State University. #GoBucks

Colloquium Talk with Dr. Ilke Demir, ACM Distiguished Speaker, on October 4: “Embattling for a Deep Fake Dystopia”

Dr. Ilke Demir, an ACM Distinguished Speaker, will give a virtual colloquium presentation, titled “Embattling for a Deep Fake Dystopia” on Friday, October 4, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, which will be streamed in Education 115 & 113.  

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract: Recent advances in the democratization of AI have been enabling the widespread use of generative models, causing the exponential rise of fake content. Nudification of over 680,000 women by a social bot, impersonation scams worth millions of dollars, or spreading political misinformation through synthetic politicians are just the footfall of the deep fake dystopia.

As every technology is simultaneously built with its counterpart to neutralize it, this is the perfect time to fortify our eyes with deep fake detectors. Deep fakes depend on photorealism to disable our natural detectors: we cannot simply look at a video to decide if it is real. On the other hand, this realism is not preserved in physiological, biological, and physical signals of deep fakes, yet. In this talk, I will begin with presenting our renowned FakeCatcher, which detects synthetic content in portrait videos using heart beats, as a preventive solution for the emerging threat of deep fakes. Detectors blindly utilizing deep learning are not as effective in catching fake content, as generative models keep producing formidably realistic results. My key assertion follows that such signals hidden in portrait videos can be used as an implicit descriptor of authenticity, like a generalizable watermark of humans, because they are neither spatially nor temporally preserved in deep fakes. Building robust and accurate deep detectors by exhaustively analyzing heartbeats, PPG signals, eye vergence, and gaze movements of deep fake actors reinforce our perception of reality.

Moreover, we also innovate novel models to detect the source generator of any deep fake by exploiting its heart beats to unveil residuals of different generative models. Achieving leading results over both existing datasets and our recently introduced in-the-wild dataset justifies our approaches and pioneers a new dimension in deep fake research.

Speaker Bio:  Dr. Ilke Demir’s research focuses on generative models for digitizing the real world, deep fake detection and generation techniques, analysis and synthesis approaches in geospatial machine learning, and computational geometry for synthesis and fabrication. Dr. Demir has contributed to several animated feature and VR/AR short films in Pixar Animation Studios and Intel Studios, respectively. She established the research foundations of the world’s largest volumetric capture studio at Intel, bridging the gap between the creative process and AI approaches. In addition to her publications in top-tier venues, she has organized workshops, competitions, and courses in deep learning, computer vision, and graphics such as DeepGlobe, SkelNetOn, WiCV, SUMO, DLGC, EarthVision, and OpenEDS, to name a few.

Dr. Demir has been actively involved in women in science organizations, always being an advocate for women and underrepresented minorities. Currently, she is a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Intel Corporation.

Colloquium Talk with Tomer Aberbach, March 1: How Does Google Docs Work?

Tomer Aberbach, senior software engineer at Google and CS Department alumnus, will give a technical talk, titled “How Does Google Docs Work?” on Friday, March 1, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, in Science Complex P-101.  

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract: When Google Docs was released, its real-time collaboration features were groundbreaking, but how do they work? How is a Google Doc represented and stored? How are conflicts between collaborators resolved? Come learn about the inner workings of your favorite online word processor!

Speaker Bio: Tomer Aberbach, Senior Software Engineer at Google, has been working on the Google Docs team since 2020. He has worked on features such as autocorrect, email notifications, Markdown support, and the Bard AI integration. Prior to Google, Tomer attended The College of New Jersey from 2016 to 2019 and graduated with a computer science major and math minor.

Colloquium Talk with Dr. Chloe LeGendre, February 2: Remain in Light: Realistic Augmented Imagery in the AI Era”

Dr. Chloe LeGendre, senior software engineer in Google Research, will give a virtual colloquium presentation, titled “Remain in Light: Realistic Augmented Imagery in the AI Era” on Friday, February 2, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, which will be streamed in Science Complex P-101.  

See below for more information about our speaker.

Abstract: Augmented Reality (AR) blends real-world scenery with computer and artist generated imagery to unlock novel, creative experiences. In this talk, I will describe advances towards crafting AR imagery that seamlessly blends the real and virtual together, with a focus on matching scene lighting. Given the rapid pace of recent developments in image generation models, I will also share my perspective on these generative models as applied to AR experiences.

Speaker Bio: Chloe LeGendre is a senior software engineer in Google Research, where she is currently working on computational photography and high dynamic range imaging. Her research typically applies machine learning to problems in computer graphics, photography, and imaging, with a special focus on scene lighting measurement and estimation, color science, and portrait photography manipulation. As a member of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies’s Vision and Graphics Lab, Chloe graduated with a PhD in Computer Science in 2019 from the University of Southern California, where she was advised by Paul Debevec. Chloe has also worked in the R&D divisions of Netflix, L’Oréal USA, and Johnson & Johnson, focused on emerging technology development in the areas of virtual production, augmented reality, and imaging.

Spring 2024 Registration Wait-list

The registration period for Spring 2024 courses is November 7 – 17, 2023.  Some seats have been reserved for CS majors in all CSC courses.  Please review the Spring 2024 Registration Newsletter for additional information on options courses offered next semester.

After your registration window opens, if the class you need is closed, put yourself on the wait-list using the Qualtrics form below.

Be sure to read all directions and enter all requested information.

Spring 2024 Wait-list: https://tinyurl.com/ms9kcvtn

If you make changes to your schedule after entering your submission to the wait-list and need to update your information, email cs@tcnj.edu.

We will not start signing students into courses until Monday, November 20, after the registration window closes. Please do not email the department for updates before this time.  We will enroll students into any unfilled seats in order, based on their registration times and time they registered on the wait list.

Be sure that your intended course does not conflict with a course in your current schedule, and that you are willing to drop conflicting courses to make the change.  If you have a full course load or time conflict and do not indicate courses to drop on your wait-list submission, your submission will be disregarded.

As always, have a back-up plan in case you are not able to get into your preferred courses.

Please see the Advising Resources webpage for more information about submitting Mentored Research or Internship forms for Spring 2024.


Links to other School of Science Department Wait-lists can be found below:

Biology: https://biology.tcnj.edu/resources-for/current-students/waitlists/
Chemistry: https://chemistry.tcnj.edu/waitlists/
Math/Stat: https://mathstat.tcnj.edu/ (link to form posted on the menu bar)
Physics: https://physics.tcnj.edu/physics-registration-faq/

For more information on waitlists for other schools and departments, please refer to the TCNJ Waitlisting Process packet.

Colloquium Talk with Suyeon Choi, October 17: Neural Holography for Next-generation Virtual and Augmented Reality Displays

Suyeon Choi, PhD student at Stanford Computational Imaging Lab, will give a virtual colloquium presentation, titled “Neural Holography for Next-generation Virtual and Augmented Reality Displays” on Tuesday, October 17, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM, which will be streamed in Science Complex P-101 and P-117 (overflow room).  

See below for more information about Suyeon.

Abstract:  Holographic displays promise unprecedented capabilities for direct-view displays as well as virtual and augmented reality applications, including per-pixel depth, efficient light utilization, and vision correction. However, despite these capabilities, these displays always have been relegated to the status of a perpetually future technology, due to several major challenges such as large benchtop form factors, and the fundamental trade-off between algorithm runtime and achieved image quality. In this talk, I will present co-design approaches of optics and algorithms in holographic near-eye displays that address these challenges. First, I will discuss a compact display system architecture with an eyeglasses-like form factor for virtual reality that can deliver full-color 3D holographic images using a 2.5mm thick optical stack. Next, I will introduce an algorithmic CGH framework that achieves unprecedented image fidelity and real-time framerates. Our framework comprises several parts, including a novel camera-in-the-loop optimization strategy that allows us to either optimize a hologram directly or train a parameterized model of the optical wave propagation and a neural network architecture that represents the first CGH algorithm capable of generating full-color high-quality holographic images at full-HD resolution in real-time. By incorporating AI advancements into conventional optics and photonics, we can open up new possibilities and enable high-fidelity imaging and display solutions.

Speaker Bio:  Suyeon Choi is a PhD student at Stanford Computational Imaging Lab, advised by Professor Gordon Wetzstein. His research interests are centered on the co-design of optical systems and algorithms, with a focus on developing holographic display systems that incorporate machine learning for next-generation virtual and augmented reality displays. His work is supported by a Meta Research PhD Fellowship, a SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship, a Kwanjeong Scholarship, a Korean Government Scholarship, and a GPU gift from NVIDIA. Previously, he received his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, completed his undergraduate studies at Seoul National University as a recipient of The Presidential Science Scholarship.

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