Charles H. Goldberg – Norman Neff
Scholarship Prize in Computer Science
(Applications due Friday, April 7, 2023 by 12:00 PM)
The Charles H. Goldberg – Norman Neff Scholarship Prize is awarded annually by the Computer Science Department to a student(s) who has/have demonstrated academic excellence in Computer Science and who will be continuing into graduate study in Computer Science.
Eligible students are graduating Computer Science majors who have applied for admission for graduate study in Computer Science. The number of awards and the award amount are at the discretion of the Computer Science Department. The award check will be conveyed to the awardee(s) upon matriculation in a graduate program in Computer Science within one year of the announcement of the award.
CS majors Sean Elefant, Jabili Gadde, Kiera Gill, Robert Helck, Max Landry, and Jason Swick were recently accepted into Phi Beta Kappa honors society.
Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) is one of the country’s most prestigious honors societies, and only a limited number of junior and senior students are accepted each year. PBK honorees have demonstrated excellence in the liberal arts and sciences at undergraduate institutions.
For more information about Phi Beta Kappa, see: https://www.pbk.org/
Congratulations to Sean, Jabili, Kiera, Robert, Max, and Jason!
The Fall 2023 registration newsletter is now available.
Registration for Spring 2023 courses will begin on Tuesday, April 4. Please review the registration newsletter (linked below) for information on next semester’s options courses, a link to the registration wait-list, and a general listing of CS courses.
Dr. Isaac Neuhaus, Senior Director of Computational Genomics at Bristol-Myers Squibb, will give a colloquium talk, titled “CanvasXpress: A visualization tool for data analytics in a regulated environment” on Tuesday, February 21, from 12:30 – 1:30 PM in Science Complex P-101.
See below for more information about Dr. Neuhaus.
Abstract: Working as a data scientist in the pharmaceutical industry can be a challenging task due to stringent regulations that demand rigorous accountability. Fortunately, powerful visualization tools like CanvasXpress offer us an opportunity to effectively explore complex datasets while simultaneously ensuring full compliancy with regulatory standards – resulting in compelling visualizations and unparalleled reproducibility of research results.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Isaac Neuhaus is the Senior Director of Computational Genomics working at Bristol Myers Squibb. He is a self-motivated, creative bioinformaticist with over 20 years of experience. Dr. Neuhaus has a broad range of expertise in bioinformatics, transcriptional profiling, systems biology, genome analysis, sequencing, data analysis, and visualization. He is also a computer programming expert, fluent in R, Perl, JavaScript, HTML5, Oracle, and C. He authored or co-authored more than 50 scientific publications in the field of his expertise. Before joining Bristol Myers Squibb more than 22 years ago, he worked at Norvatis after his post-doctoral training in Mouse Genetics at Harvard Medical School in 1998. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of Miami Millar School of Medicine in 1995.
Over the course of the semester, Ms. Zsilavetz will be updating the CS Department white board (near the CS Office) with information about our students’ offers of employment, acceptances to graduate schools, accepted internship and summer REU opportunities, or publications. This is one way that the CS Department likes to celebrate our students’ achievements each spring semester. We encourage you to watch as the boards populate over the next few weeks and to email Ms. Zsilavetz (zsilave2@tcnj.edu) with any news that you would like us to share on the board.
Dr. Ferdous and CS Junior Co-author Research Publication
Congratulations to Dr. Sharif Shahnewaz Ferdous and Andrew Michael (Class of 2024) on their recent publication, titled “Use of Scaling to Improve Reach in Virtual Reality for People with Parkinson’s Disease”. The publication citation and abstract can be found below:
S. M. S. Ferdous, A. Michael, T. I. Chowdhury and J. Quarles, “Use of Scaling to Improve Reach in Virtual Reality for People with Parkinson’s Disease,” 2022 IEEE 10th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), Sydney, Australia, 2022, pp. 1-7, doi: 10.1109/SEGAH54908.2022.
Abstract: This research investigates the effect of scaling in virtual reality to improve the reach of users with Parkinson’s disease (PD). People with PD have limited reach, often due to impaired postural stability. We investigated how virtual reality (VR) can improve reach during and after VR exposure. Participants played a VR game where they smashed water balloons thrown at them by crossing their midsection. The distance the balloons were thrown at increased and decreased based on success or failure. Their perception of the distance and their hand were scaled in three counterbalanced conditions: under-scaled (scale = 0.83), not-scaled (scale = 1), and over-scaled (scale = 1.2), where the scale value is the ratio between the virtual reach that they perceive in the virtual environment (VE) and their actual reach. In each study condition, six data were measured −1. Real World Reach (pre-exposure), 2. Virtual Reality Baseline Reach, 3. Virtual Reality Not-Scaled Reach, 4. Under-Scaled Reach, 5. Over-Scaled Reach, and 6. Real World Reach (post-exposure). Our results show that scaling a person’s movement in virtual reality can help improve reach. Therefore, we recommend including a scaling factor in VR games for people with Parkinson’s disease.
Photo of Sara Aly (Class of 2024).
CS Junior Presents REU Research at IFoRE 2022
Congratulations to Sara Aly (Class of 2024) who, along with her REU research partner, presented at the International Forum on Research Excellence (IFoRE) conference hosted by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, in November 2022! Sara’s presentation, titled, “Accessible Hand Motion Data Acquisition Using Computer Vision”, won best presentation in the Undergraduate Math and Computer Science category, and she and her research partner were both inducted into Sigma Xi. Sara’s work was completed as part of a summer 2022 REU at Cleveland State University.
See below for the February dates for the CS Social Hours. Come hang out in the STEM 100 lounge and chat with fellow CS majors and faculty/staff. We’ll be alternating snack options at each event, so feel free to make some suggestions when you see us on Thursday, February 9.
The Department of Computer Science’s annual Celebration of Computing event will take place in-person on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, from 11:30 AM – 3:10 PM. Thirty-six student presentations, organized in three rooms and across three sessions, will showcase students’ internship experience and mentored research outcomes over the summer and this Fall semester.
*Please note that there is no food allowed during presentation sessions and masks must be worn.*
Students who are taking CSC 099 and CSC 199 were assigned a poster for the review. Please use the Qualtrics Survey link below to submit your response. Please note that you must identify yourself in the survey (there are fields where you can write your name) to be counted toward your course requirements.
Dr. Michael Locasto, CTO at Narf Industries, will give a colloquium talk, titled “An Operational Definition of Parsing (and its Consequences)” on Tuesday, November 15 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM in the Library Auditorium.
See below for more information about Dr. Locasto.
Abstract:Narf Industries conducts advanced R&D in the space of vulnerability analysis, reverse engineering, and exploit development. This talk presents some our work conducted under the SafeDocs research program, which is concerned with how to make complex document formats safe to parse and consume. We will share our recent research on the unaddressed data management problem inherent in parsing (i.e., input language recognition) and how the problem might be addressed by the novel concept of dynamic progressive types. Far from being of interest to Computer Science theorists, the question of safe recognition is of utmost practical importance to software developers. Many kinds of vulnerabilities occur within input-handling code. The Language-theoretic Security paradigm (LangSec) posits that this association is not merely coincidental, nor is it due to simple ad doc mistakes. Rather, vulnerabilities and exploitation continue to occur because practical software engineering finds it difficult to take advantage of core Computer Science concepts of grammar definition, parsing, and language recognition. In this way, LangSec offers a “science of insecurity” by indemnifying consistent anti-patterns across many different vulnerabilities over time. Our work under SafeDocs shows how to use the latest tools in parser combinator libraries and format-aware tracers to define, guard, and monitor safe parsing.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Michael E. Locasto serves as the CTO at Narf Industries, a cadre of cybersecurity experts tackling some of the most important cybersecurity problems facing society, industry, and government. From 2016 to 2021, Dr. Locasto was a Principal Computer Scientist at SRI International in the Infrastructure Security Group of their Computer Science Laboratory. He served as a PI for four DARPA programs, and also co-led SRI’s Internet of Things Security and Privacy Center. Prior to joining SRI, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Calgary, where he directed the Trustworthy Systems Group and conducted research in trustworthy systems, cooperative security mechanisms, and software security. Dr. Locasto has co-authored over 80 publications in the first of computer security, and he holds 14 U.S. patents related to software security and intrusion detection. He received his Ph.D., MPhil, and MSc degrees in Computer Science from Columbia University and graduated magna cum laude from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) with BSc in Computer Science.
