RA Core Designation for CS 145

We are pleased to announce that the Web Design course, CS 145 / ART 145, was granted RA core designation starting in Spring Semester 2010.  The Web Design course is team-taught by the ART Department and the CS Department.  [November 2009]

National CS Education Week

The week of December 7th has been designated as National Computer Science Education Week by an act of Congress.  To celebrate, George Keremedjiev, curator of the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, will be facilitating a discussion on the impact of computing on Monday, December 7th at 4:10 p.m. in EPS 108.  In addition, admission to the American Computer Museum is free during the entire month of December.  [December 2009]

AAC Grant

Congratulations to Denbigh Starkey who  has been awarded a 10-month $135,741 research contract by Advanced Acoustic Concepts. Denbigh will be collaborating with AAC Bozeman and New York personnel and with Isaac Griffiths, an MSU Computer Science student, on software development for one of AAC’s contracts with the US Navy.  [November 2009]

DOE Poster Competition

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.  [November 2009]

ACM Regional Programming Contest

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.  [November 2009]

Spring 2010 Information

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:

CS 140 CS, Spinning Webs, 3 credits, taught by Rocky Ross.  The course will count for CS, Contemporary Issues in Science, core credit.
CS 280, Web Programming, 1 credit, taught by Michael Sutherland of the MSU Libraries.  The course will cover LAMP (Linux, Apache Tomcat, MySQL and php).  The pre-requisite for this course is CS 221.
CS 455, Computer Security, 3 credits team-taught by Year Back Yoo and Gary Harkin of RightNow Technologies. [October 2009]

American Computer Museum

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.  [October 2009]

NSF Grant

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!  [September 2009]

SMART Scholarship

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.  [September 2009]

Local Programming Contest

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]

Accreditation Visit

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]

Courses Only M.S. Option

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.  [August 2009]

IEEE Standards Meeting

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. At this meeting, ten people from organizations such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, the US Navy, and the US Army gathered to resolve comments on the recent ballot of the IEEE P1232 AI-ESTATE standard. This standard specifies data formats for diagnostic knowledge bases and software APIs for diagnostic reasoners. Currently, the US DoD is in the process of demonstrating P1232 in preparation of issuing a mandate that this standard be used in all future procurements of diagnostic technology for automatic test equipment. Dr. Sheppard is the Vice Chair of SCC20, the Secretary of the DMC, and the IEEE Computer Society's liaison between the Standards Activities Board and SCC20.  [July 2009]

Benjamin Fellowship

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]

Videos

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]

College of Engineering Award Winners

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

Dr. C

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]

Departmental Awards

Congratulations to the following 2008-2009 award winners:

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

Honorary Doctorate

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]

US Navy Contract

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.

2009-2010 CS Scholarship Award Winners

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]

NASA Grant

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]

CS 480 - User Interface Design Course

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 isCS 223 and the course can be used to help fulfill the section 2 (Computer Science Elective Courses) requirements for both the professional and interdisciplinary options.  The course will meet MWF at noon in EPS 108.  Jared Bratsky, who earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from MSU will teach the course.  Jared has 10 years of professional experience at RightNow Technologies.  His current role is Director of Product Development Client Architecture, User Interface and Analytics.  His team oversees the user interface design for all RightNow product lines.  [February 2009]

Annual Advisory Board Meeting

On Friday, February 27th, the department's annual advisory board meeting takes place.  We thank our advisory board members for taking time out of their busy schedules to help us strengthen our program.  More information.  [February 2009]

2009 Student Awards

Bovard Tiberi and Heidi Tynes, CS seniors, both received an MSU Alumni Association / Bozeman Chamber of Commerce Award for Excellence on Tuesday, February 17th.  These awards are given to top seniors who have demonstrated academic excellence, community service and campus leadership.  Bovard chose Rocky Ross as his faculty mentor and Heidi chose Denbigh Starkey as hers.  In addition, Heidi received a Student of Achievement Award from The Women's Center

NSF Career Award

Congratulations to Neil Tang who has been awarded a National Science Foundation Career Award.  The NSF Career Award is one of the most prestigious grants for an early career researcher to win and it marks the first time that someone in the CS Department has won this award.  Great job, Neil!  MSU article. NSF_Information.  [February 2009]

2009-2010 Scholarship Applications due Feb. 2

The CS Department has several scholarships that are available to undergraduate computer science majors:

2 RightNow Technologies scholarships - $6000 each
20 Sonderegger scholarships - $500 and $1000
1 Telesoft scholarship - $6000
2 Zoot scholarships - $5000 and $1000.

In order to apply for any of these scholarships you must complete

The College of Engineering application - due Monday, February 2, 2009.
The Computer Science application - due Friday, Feburary 6, 2009.

If you are eligible, we strongly encourage you to apply.  Last year there were unclaimed scholarships!  For more information, see scholarships.  [January 2009]