Congratulations to Sarah Morrison-Smith, a sophomore majoring in Computer Science, who was named a finalist in a DOE undergraduate research poster competition based on work that she did while interning with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  Sarah competed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the Computational Science category and was accompanied by her advisor, Neil Tang.  More information.

Brandon Norick, Michael Paulson and Randall Reynolds represented MSU at the ACM Regional Programming Contest at Colorado University on October 31, 2009.  The team was the top team at the CU site and finished 16th out of 65 teams in the region.  Congratulations!  Final standings.

Advising for Spring Semester begins on Monday, October 26th and registration begins on Monday, November 2nd.  The CS Department is pleased to offer three new courses:

The American Computer Museum recently relocated close to the MSU campus.  The museum is operated by two long time friends of the Computer Science Department: George and Barbara Keremedjiev.  Please consider taking advantage of this fantastic resource!  Billings Gazette article.

Binhai Zhu has been awarded a $107K NSF grant to carry out a project entitled Discrete Frechet Distance and Its Biological Applications.  The project utilizes discrete Frechet distance to visualize and compare protein backbone similarities.  The grant runs from September 2009 through August 2011.  Congratulations Binhai!

Justin Krohn, a junior majoring in computer science and minoring in computer engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Defense Department SMART scholarship.  Congratulations, Justin!  MSU article.

The student ACM club conducted a local programming competition on Thursday, October 1st that was sponsored by the Bozeman branch of IGT.  The winning team of Brandon Norick, Michael Paulson and Randall Reynolds will represent MSU at the regional programming competition at The University of Colorado on October 31st.  More information. [October 2009]

Welcome to Dr. David (Hoot) Gibson of the U.S. Air Force Academy and Dr. Duncan Buell of The University of South Carolina.  They will be visiting the department from Sunday, September 13th - Tuesday, September 15th as part of an ABET accreditation visit.  Undergraduate students are encouraged to attend a meeting on Monday at 4:10 p.m. in EPS 108 to discuss their experiences in the program.  Snacks will be served. [September 2009]

Starting in Fall 2009, the CS Department is pleased to be able to offer Master's degree students a courses only option.  This option is similar to the project option, but requires 4 credits of approved coursework in the place of the 4 credits of CS 575.  The thesis option and project option will both continue to be offered.

On July 7-9, 2009, Dr. John W. Sheppard and the MSU Department of  Computer Science hosted a meeting of the Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC) subcommittee of the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 20 (SCC20) on Test and Diagnosis for Electronic Systems. The DMC holds four meetings per year at various locations around the US and Europe and is responsible for developing IEEE standards for fault diagnostic systems.

Tim Hahn will receive a Benjamin Fellowship from the College of Engineering for 2009-2010.  Congratulations to Tim and his advisor, Brendan Mumey! [April 2009]

Please see the videos that Sandeep Gurram made for the CS Department during Spring Semester 2009.  The videos feature current students, staff and faculty.  Eventually, these videos will make it onto the website in a more permanent manner.  Thanks, Sandeep! [May 2009]

Congratulations to the following 2008-2009 college-wide award winners from the CS Department [May 2009]:

• Scott Dowdle, Classified Employee Award for Excellence
• Rocky Ross, Excellence in Teaching Award
• Jian (Neil) Tang, Excellence in Research Award

Clem Izurieta successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in the area of software engineering at Colorado State University on April 29th.  Congratulations, Clem! [April 2009]

Congratulations to the following 2008-2009 award winners [April 2009]:

• Outstanding Teaching Assistant: Rance Harmon
• Outstanding Master's Student Researcher: Reggie Mead
• Outstanding Ph.D. Student Researcher: Shen Wan
• Outstanding Service: Denbigh Starkey
• Outstanding Research: Neil (Jian) Tang
• Outstanding Instructor: John Sheppard
• Outstanding Self Development: Kathy Hollenback

George Keremedjiev, director of the American Computer Museum, will receive an honorary doctorate in Computer Science at the MSU commencement on Saturday, May 9th.  Through his work at the museum, George has organized both Stibitz Awards and E.O. Wilson Awards in Bozeman.  George is also a member of the department's advisory board.  Congratulations, George! [April 2009]

John Sheppard, the RightNow Technologies Distinguished Professor, was awarded a 1-year contract from the US Navy for $181K for his proposal CASS Technical Engineering Support: ATS Framework. John is collaborating with two research affiliates, Stephyn Butcher and  Patrick Donnelly, to implement and demonstrate semantic interoperability  between multiple diagnostic reasoner applications based on an emerging  IEEE standard.

The following scholarships have been awarded to CS undergraduates for 2009-2010:

• 10 Sonderegger scholarships
• 2 RightNow Technologies scholarships
• 1 Telesoft scholarship
• 2 Zoot Enterprises scholarships

Please see this page for a list of the recipients.  Congratulations to all and many thanks to the sponsors who make this possible! [February 2009]

Rafal Angryk recently learned that NASA will fund his 4 year, $400K grant proposal entitled Solar Dynamics Observatory Science Center.  Rafal is collaborating with Dr. Petrus Martens of the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.  Congratulations, Rafal! [February 2009]

The CS Department is pleased to announce a 3 credit, Fall 2009 course entitled User Interface Design and Human Computer Interaction.  The pre-requisite for the course is CS 223 and the course can be used to help fulfill the section 2 (Computer Science Elective