Dean's Update, February 2010
GAME JAM
From January 29-31, SPSU was a host site as part of the Global Game Jam 2010 (GGJ). As you may recall, during a game jam, participants have 48 hours to create a computer game. CSE hosted 37 participants who created 7 games. The overall GGJ had over 3000 participants in 38 countries around the world who created over 800 games. Prizes for local "best games" awards were given out courtesy of NVIDIA and Pepper Ranch. I wanted to express my thanks to Dr Jon Preston and Dr Orlando Karam who made this possible.
RESEARCH CENTERS ESTABLISHED
In order to further highlight the research interests of faculty at SPSU, and to further encourage collaborative research, SPSU recently approved the establishment of a number of research centers. Four of these are housed primarily in CSE, namely the Center for Information Security Education and the eGov Center, both of which are well-established, as well as the Biometrics Recognition Research Center and the Center for Applied Gaming and Media Arts, both of which were established more recently. Information about research centers in general is available here, while links to information about the CSE related research centers is available here
HUNG RECOGNIZED FOR SERVICE
Dr CC Hung, Professor of Computer Science, recently received a service award from the Association for Computing Machinery for his contribution as program committee member to the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) to be held from March 12 to March 26 in Sierre Switzerland. For the last 24 years, SAC has been a top conference for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. I hope you will join me in congratulating Dr Hung on this recognition. Recognitions of this type not only reflect well on the individual faculty member, they also reflect well on the School of Computing and Software Engineering and SPSU in general.
RECONFIGURABLE LAB
Dr Dan Lo recently secured hardware and software from Xilinx Inc that has allowed him to set up a new reconfigurable computing lab for use in research and teaching at CSE. The lab consists of some hardware design tools (EDK and ISE System Edition v11.1) with 25 floating licenses and Xilinx Virtex-5 (XUPV5-LX110T) FPGA reconfigurable computers. Further information about the new lab, which should enable us to further improve our hardware related courses, is available here.
Our thanks are due to Dr Lo and the CSE lab manager Ray Walker and the CSE lab technician Micah Rowland who assisted him in setting up the lab. In times where state funding for our programs is down, initiatives such as this one, are crucial if CSE is to maintain the high quality and applied nature of its programs.
RESTART OF SPSU BATHTUB RACES
As some of the older alumni will know, in 1966 SPSU started an annual bathtub race in which student and faculty groups would race bathtubs around campus. Rumor has it that the race started as a challenge to find out which fraternity or sorority could transport a keg of beer around campus in the shortest amount of time. The bathrub races were discontinued in the early 90's because of the expansion of campus and because of increased liability and safety issues, brought on, I have been told, by the fact that students had turned their bathtubs into motorized vehicles that could achieve speeds well in excess of the posted speed limits on campus (and in some cases on I-75).
I am now pleased to announce that, thanks to the efforts of a number of people, including SPSU alumn Daryle Higginbotham and his company Marietta NDT, the bathtub races will return to campus on Saturday March 27, albeit in a non-motorized form. The race will be held on the east side of campus from the Recreation and Wellness Center through the intersection at Polytechnic Lane, beginning at 12 p.m. Nine teams comprised of current students will participate but I understand that alumni and staff teams are invited to participate as well. The campus contact is Ron Lunk, who can be reached at rlunk@spsu.edu or at ext. 4101.
I would encourage all of you to attend. The event promises to be a lot of fun.
AND FINALLY ...
If you see something in this update that you want to comment on, please send me an email at hreichge@spsu.edu or call me on 678-915-7399. Also, if you know of somebody who might be interested in receiving the Dean's updates, please ask them to send me an email. We will gladly add them to our mailing list. Finally, if you prefer not to receive the Dean's updates, please let me know as well.
Han Reichgelt
Dean, School of Computing and Software Engineering