2013-2014 CS Scholarships

If you are a computer science major, please consider applying for one or more of the CS scholarships that are available for Academic Year 2013-2014.  The application deadline is February 1, 2013.  More information.  [December 2012]

Undergraduate Research Internship

First year CS student Clint Cooper was awarded one of four MSU Vice-President for Research Internships. The internship will allow Clint to characterize the impact of network lag on collaborative group applications such as multiplayer games or group video chat.  Clint will work under the supervision of Professor Mike Wittie.  Congratulations, Clint!  [December 2012]

Medical Robotics Seminar

Dr. Russ Taylor of Johns Hopkins University presented a seminar on October 26 entitled Medical Robotics and Computer-Integrated Interventional Medicine. Video.  [October 2012]

Spring Semester 2013 Special Offerings

The CS Department is delighted to offer students the following special classes:

CS 204, Multimedia Development Methods, 3 credits, Hunter Lloyd - once every two years
CSCI 442, Robot Vision, 3 credits, Hunter Lloyd - once every two years
CSCI 491, Pattern Recognition, 3 credits, Bob Gunderson - one time offering
CSCI 494, Windows & .NET Internals, 1 credit, Mario Hewardt of Microsoft - one time offering
CSCI 494, iOS App Development, 1 credit, John Bender of General UI - one time offering
ESOF 522, Empirical Software Engineering, 3 credits, Clem Izurieta - once every two years
CSCI 548, Reasoning Under Uncertainty, 3 credits, John Sheppard - once every two years
CSCI 566, Advanced Networking, 3 credits, Mike Wittie - once every two years

Future of Computing Seminar

Peter Freeman, ACM Distinguished Speaker, presented a seminar entitled The Future of Computing on October 12th.  VideoSlides.  [October 2012]

Entrepreneurship Seminar

Greg Gianforte, founder and former CEO of RightNow Technologies, presented an entrepreneurship seminar at the CS Department's weekly seminar on October 8. Video.  [October 2012]

USP Scholars

Congratulations to CS undergraduate students Rachael Luhr and Derek Reimanis who both received funding from the Undergraduate Scholars Program.  Both students are working on projects in the Software Engineering Lab under Dr. Clem Izurieta's supervision.  [October 2012]

Human Nature and Social Media

The 2012 Stibitz and Wilson awards will take place on Thursday, October 4th.  Everyone is invited to spend an hour with Bob Metcalfe, father of the Ethernet, and Vic Hayes, father of WiFi, at 3:10 p.m. in EPS 103.  An awards ceremony will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the SUB Ballrooms.  More information.  [October 2012]

Local Programming Contest

The ACM Local Programming Contest will take place on Saturday, October 13th from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. in EPS 254.  The winning team will represent Montana State in the ACM Regional Programming Contest on Saturday, October 27th at The University of Utah.  If you are interested in competing, please inform John Paxton by Friday, October 12th at 5 p.m.  More information.  [September 2012]

Undergraduate Software Engineering Paper

As a result of a software engineering course project, undergraduate students Sarah Morrison-Smith, Stephen Dighans, Chad Marmon, and Talon Daniels co-authored a paper with Dr. Clem Izurieta entitled "Technical Debt Reduction Using a Game Theoretic Competitive Control Approach".  The paper will be presented at the 25th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering in New Orleans in November.  It will also appear in URH-Quarterly. Congratulations!  [September 2012]

Best Student Paper Runner Up Award

For the second year in a row, students in the CS Department's Numerical Intelligent Systems Laboratory (NISL) have been recognized for their research at the 2012 IEEE AUTOTESTCON conference in Anaheim, CA. Shane Strasser and Eben Howard received the AUTOTESTCON Best Student Paper Runner Up award for their paper titled, "An Integrated Toolset for Ontology-Guided Diagnostic Knowledge Discovery." The paper was co-authored by Dr. John Sheppard, Shane's advisor and the director of NISL. AUTOTESTCON is the world¹s premier conference focusing on new technologies for military and aerospace automatic test systems. It is sponsored jointly by the IEEE Aerospace Electronic Systems Society and the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society.  [September 2012]

Research Expenditure Record

The CS Department set a new record for research expenditures in fiscal year 2012, topping one million dollars.  The $1,008,456 represents roughly a five-fold increase during the past five years and is due to the hard work and contributions of faculty, students and staff.  Great job everyone!  [September 2012]

RoboSub

In July, an interdisciplinary team of MSU students traveled to San Diego to compete in an autonomous submarine competition.  The team that built the submarine included Computer Science M.S. student Eben Howard.  MSU article.  [August 2012]

Graduate Fellowship

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Renee Cross who was awarded a two year Graduate Fellowship by the Montana Institute on Ecosystems. Such fellowships are awarded to first and second year Ph.D. students who demonstrate an exceptional ability to perform interdisciplinary research. Renee is working with Professor Izurieta.  [July 2012]

2012 REU Site

A big welcome to Chris Chalstrom, Eric Jasso, Maggie Lagos, Kate McManus, Sarah Morrison-Smith, Samareh Shahmohammadi, Alicia Shaw, Kevin Shay, Sabina Tomkins and Christa Wimberley.  These undergraduates are spending 10 weeks with the Computer Science Department as part of an NSF REU program that focuses on green networking and computer networks.  The students are being mentored by Brendan Mumey (PI), Clem Izurieta (co-PI), Mike Wittie and Qing Yang.  One student has created a blog to describe the experience.  [June 2012]

RoboGames

Congratulations to Looney the Robot, who medaled in five events at the RoboGames competition held in the Bay Area.  Looney received a gold medal in the lift-and-carry event by carrying a container of 10 batteries across an uneven surface.  Looney was programmed by Hunter Lloyd and students taking CSCI 455, Robotics. [May 2012]

COE Excellence in Research Award

Congratulations to Brendan Mumey who received the College of Engineering's Excellence in Research Award for 2011 - 2012.  Brendan spent Fall Semester as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Aalto University in Finland and Spring Semester at The University of Arizona on sabbatical.  Brendan's research areas include green networking and computational biology.  [May 2012]

Lunabotics Robot

A multidisciplinary team is preparing a robot to compete in a NASA sponsored competition later this month.  The team includes CS students Seth Berardinelli, Alison Figueria and Logan Warberg.  Hunter Lloyd is a team advisor.  The robot has been featured on the MSU front page as well as on local television.  Competition results.  [May 2012]

Graduate Student and Faculty Awards

Congratulations to the following graduate students and faculty members who won department awards for outstanding contributions during the 2011-2012 academic year.  Rafal Angryk: Outstanding Faculty Research Award.  Hunter Lloyd: Outstanding Faculty Service Award.  Adib Roy: Outstanding Teaching Assistant.  Mike Schuh and Shane Strasser: Outstanding Ph.D. Researchers.  Binhai Zhu: Student Selected Professor of the Year.  [April 2012]

Best Group Talk Award

Congratulations to undergraduate CS students Rachael Luhr and Stephani Schielke.  Rachael and Stephani were part of a six person team that received the Best Group Talk Award at the Montana Space Grant Consortium's Student Research Symposium.  The group reported on their experiences designing a high altitude balloon payload.  [April 2012]

Paper with Turing Award Winner

The Journal of Computational Biology accepted a paper entitled "Comparing Pedigree Graphs".  Collaborating authors include Binhai Zhu, former undergraduate student Bonnie Kirkpatrick who earned a Ph.D. at UC-Berkeley and is now a post-doc at the University of British Columbia, and 1985 Turing Award winner Richard Karp of UC-Berkeley.  The Turing Award is the Computer Science equivalent of a Nobel Prize.  Congratulations!  [April 2012]

Student of Achievement

Stephani Schielke will be recognized by the Women's Center with a Student of Achievement Award on March 29th.  These awards recognize women who promote diversity and equality, demonstrate leadership abilities, excel in their school work and serve as strong role models for their peers.  Stephani is AWC president, a past ACM president and regularly tutors other students.  Congratulations, Stephani!  [March 2012]

Professor Emeritus

At their March meeting, the Board of Regents conferred the title Professor Emeritus of Computer Science upon Denbigh Starkey.  Denbigh was commended for serving as Department Head for 18 years, for publishing introductory textbooks that impacted the pedagogy of the field and for being an outstanding teacher.  Congratulations, Denbigh!   [March 2012]

CRA-W Workshop

Master's degree student Melissa Dale has been selected to attend the CRA-W Graduate Cohort Workshop in Bellevue, Washington on April 13th and 14th.  Congratulations Melissa!  [March 2012]

Advisory Board Meeting

The CS Department hosts its annual advisory board meeting on Friday, February 24th.  A big thank you to our board members who will spend the day providing us with insights and suggestions for improvement!  More information.  [February 2012]

Award for Excellence

Congratulations to Nick Wills, a Computer Science senior who received an MSU Alumni Association / Bozeman Chamber of Commerce Award for Excellence.  These awards are given to the top 40 graduating seniors who combine academic excellence, campus leadership and community service.  Article.  [February 2012]

Virtual Solar Observatory

Rafal Angryk (PI), Piet Martens (co-PI) and John Paxton (co-I) have been awarded a 3 year, $1,125,000 NASA grant for Interactive Search through the Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO).  Each year, the grant can employ 2 undergraduate students, 5 graduate students and a full-time post-doctoral research associate.  Research will be conducted in the Data Mining Laboratory.  Congratulations!  [February 2012]

NSF REU Site

Brendan Mumey (PI) and Clem Izurieta (co-PI) have been awarded a 3 year, $360,000 NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) grant entitled Research in Networking and Networks with Applications to Sustainability.  For the next three summers, up to 10 undergraduate students will conduct research at Montana State University.  Congratulations Brendan and Clem!  [February 2012]

2012-2013 CS Scholarships

The CS Department is pleased to offer the following scholarship opportunities for undergraduate computer science majors: RightNow Technologies, Sonderegger, TicketPrinting.com and TicketRiver.com, yaSSL, and Zoot Enterprises.  In order to apply for any of these scholarships you must complete:

The College of Engineering application - due Friday, February 3, 2012.
The Computer Science application - due Friday, February 3, 2012.

If you are eligible, we strongly encourage you to apply.  For more information, see scholarships [January 2012]

Fall 2012 Sabbatical

Congratulations to Rafal Angryk, who has been awarded a Fall 2012 sabbatical.  Rafal will visit The University of Minnesota to co-author a textbook on spatio-temporal databases with Dr. Shashi Shekhar.  [January 2012]

Pure Gold Award

Congratulations to James Blazicevich for receiving a Pure Gold Award on January 18th for his contributions to University Printing Services.  James is a Computer Science major and is the first person affiliated with the department to receive such an award.  Information.  [January 2012]