Kathy Hollenback Retirement

After nearly 10 years of service to the Computer Science Department, Kathy (kathyh@montana.edu) will retire at the end of 2015.  We wish Kathy the best as she and her husband make the move to Roundup!  [December 2015[

@cs.montana.edu Email System being discontinued

Shortly after the end of the Fall 2015 academic semester, the @cs.montana.edu email system will be retired.  Student @cs.montana.edu email addresses will no longer work but faculty and staff addresses will be directed to @montana.edu addresses in Office 365.  For more information see the Email Systems FAQ.  [December 2015]

ACM Regional Programming Competition

52 student teams competed in the ACM Rocky Mountain Regional Programming Competition, including two Montana State University teams at the Colorado School of Mines site.  Bridger Howell, Sage Smith and Joe Whitney solved 5 of the 11 problems, finishing 15th in the region and second at the local site.  Wilson Britten, Alex Huleatt and Clayton Walker also solved 5 of the 11 problems, finishing 18th in the region and fourth at the local site.  Congratulations to both teams!  [November 2015] 

Postdoc of the Month Award

The Journal of Postdoctoral Research has selected Dr. Brittany Fasy as the December Postdoc of the Month Award recipient.  Dr. Fasy is being recognized for the outstanding work she did as a postdoctoral researcher at Tulane University before joining Montana State University.  As part of the award, she has been invited to submit an article that will be highlighted in the January issue.  Congratulations!  [November 2015]

Accreditation Site Visit

Dr. Curtis Carver, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Dr. Ala Al-Fuqaha, Professor in the Computer Science Department at Western Michigan University are on campus from October 25th through October 27th.  Every six years, a team of visitors from ABET's Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) perform a site visit to learn more about our program and to provide feedback.  Welcome!  [October 2015]

Record Computer Science Enrollment

480 students (431 majors and 49 graduate students) are studying computer science this fall.  This is a one year increase of 117 students and eclipses the previous record of 393 students, recorded at the height of the dot-com excitement in 2000.  The increase has been accelerated by our three-year demand generation initiatives that target Montana high school students and are generously supported by the Gianforte Family Foundation.  [October 2015]

Elementary School Outreach

Hunter Lloyd recently took his robotic comedy show to Meadowlark Elementary School in Billings.  More information.  [October 2015]

Tango Tablet Donation

Google is donating Tango Tablets to Hunter Lloyd for use in a robotics course.  More information.  [October 2015]

Best Paper Award Finalist

Graduate students Mehdi Assefi and Guangchi Liu, working with Dr. Clem Izurieta and Dr. Mike Wittie, received a Best Paper Finalist Award for a paper entitled An Experimental Evaluation of Apple Siri and Google Speech Recognition.  The award was conferred at the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE).  Congratulations!  [October 2015]

A Hybrid Vehicle-Cloud Solution for Robust, Cost-Efficient Road Monitoring

Dr. Mike Wittie and Dr. Stacy Patterson (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) received funding from NSF to undertake a project that assists drivers in route planning and safe driving by using a vehicle's GPS, networking capabilities, environmental sensors and performance sensors.  The project will investigate how large-scale sensing and road monitoring can address the cost and scalability limitations of centralized architectures.  Mike receives $184K for his part of the work.  Congratulations!  [October 2015]

New Traveler Website

Working with the Western Transportation Institute, Dr. Mike Wittie and Dr. Qing Yang have helped create a recently launched traveler website that facilitates travel on the I-90 and I-94 corridors.  [October 2015]

ACM Local Programming Contest

10 teams competed in a six-problem ACM Local Programming Contest on 10/3.  In first place, solving five problems: Bridger Howell, Sage Smith and Joe Whitney.  In second place, solving four problems: Zach Connelly and Wilson Britton.  In third place, also solving four problems: Clint Cooper, Miles Sorlie and Clayton Walker.  Congratulations to our top finishers and all participants!  [October 2015]

Honorary Alumni and Distinguished Faculty Awards

David Vap, an Oracle Group Vice President and a member of our advisory board, received the College of Engineering's Honorary Alumni Award as part of Montana State University's Homecoming events.  Denbigh Starkey, an emeritus professor and former department head, received the COE's Distinguished Faculty Award.  Congratulations! [September 2015]

Unstable Slope Management Program

Dr. Upulee Kanewala and Dr. Mike Wittie have received $138K as co-PIs to undertake a $320K Western Transportation Institute project that is funded by the Federal Highway Administration.  Eli Cuelho of the WTI is the PI.  The goal of the project is to inventory and assess potentially unstable road slope conditions so that corrective action can be taken.  Congratulations! [September 2015]

Software Factory in the News

The Software Factory, founded by Dr. Clem Izurieta, is the first one in North America.  The Software Factory has recently been featured by Kanbanize and Montana State University.  [September 2015]

Mobile Internet Testbed Project

Dr. Mike Wittie received $164K from NSF for a 2-year project entitled MITATE: Mobile Internet Testbed for Application Traffic Experimentation.  Congratulations, Mike!  [August 2015]

Entrepreneurship

Montana State University is one of the best world-wide universities for entrepreneurship in computer science, technology, engineering and business.  Article.  [August 2015] 

Montana Research and Economic Development Initiative

Dr. John Sheppard and Dr. Clem Izurieta are co-PIs of an MREDI award led by Barry Jacobsen of the College of Agriculture. The project's title is Increasing Profitability by Improving Efficiency of Montana's Farm and Ranch Lands. The project's goal is to translate raw environmental and agronomic data into informed decisions about spatially explicit levels of herbicide, fertilizer, and harvest applications. John will lead efforts to make the smart decisions and Clem will lead efforts to create the architecture of the system. The two-year award provides ~$260,000 of support to CS faculty and students.  [August 2015]

ISERN Student Travel Grant

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Derek Reimanis who received a travel grant from the International Software Engineering Research Network (ISERN) to present one of only six papers at the 13th ACM IEEE Doctoral Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering in Beijing, China.  Derek's paper is entitled A Research Plan to Characterize, Evaluate and Predict the Impacts of Behavioral Decay in Design Patterns.  [August 2015]

Fall 2015 Course Update

  • ESOF 322, Software Engineering, will be taught by one of our new faculty members, Dr. Upulee Kanewala.
  • CSCI 432, Advanced Algorithms, will be taught by one of our new faculty members, Dr. Brittany Fasy.
  • CSCI 494, a 1-credit Web Development Seminar, will be taught by a recent graduate, David Householter.  David works for CrossTx.

Quality Assurance Project

Dr. Clem Izurieta (PI) received $29K in continuing support from Zoot Enterprises.  Dr. Izurieta and Ph.D. student Derek Reimanis will conduct research whose goal is to improve the quality of software engineering processes.  [July 2015]  Update: Dr. Upulee Kanewala (PI) and Dr. Clem Izurieta (co-PI) received an additional $18K from Zoot Enterprises for a project that focuses on testing techniques of software engines used for crediting solutions.  M.S. student Bonnie Enix will assist with this project. Congratulations!  [September 2015]

Landscape Ecology Presentation

Dr. Richard Sojda presented as part of the Symposium, Landscapes of the Future: Modelling Land Cover Change and Implications for Landscape Functionality and Sustainability, in Portland, OR. The talk was entitled “Modelling Landscape Conservation of Greater Sage Grouse in Relation to Oil and Gas Development” and reported recent work done as a research professor with the CS Department. [July 2015]

Hydrology Modeling Project Extension

Dr. Clem Izurieta is on a research team that recently received funding to extend a hydrology modeling project for a fifth year.  The $37K in additional funding includes support for an undergraduate computer science student.  Congratulations! [July 2015]

Pangenomics Computational Tools Project

Dr. Brendan Mumey and two collaborators at the National Center for Genomic Resources (Joann Mudge and Brendan's former PhD student Thiru Ramaraj) were awarded a two year, $241K grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new computational tools for Pangenomics. As DNA sequencing continues to decrease in cost, it is now feasible to sequence multiple genomes from the same or related species. Pangenomics sheds new light on how organisms adapt to their environment and what genomic features vary or stay the same within related species. This project deals with some of the computational challenges associated with efficiently storing and querying large pan-genomic data sets.  Congratulations! [July 2015]

Automatic Test System Framework Project

Dr. John Sheppard has received a new contract from the US Navy through TPS Associates for ~$89K to perform research and provide engineering support for the Automatic Test System Framework. The ATS Framework is an initiative of the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force to provide advanced automatic testing capabilities for weapon system maintenance using commercial standards to the maximum extent possible.  Congratulations! [July 2015]

College of Engineering Awards

At an awards luncheon, John Sheppard was honored with the COE's Distinguished Professor Award and Hunter Lloyd was honored with the COE's Excellence in Teaching Award.  Congratulations! [April 2015]

New Faculty Member: Dave Millman

Dr. David Millman will join the Computer Science Department as an assistant professor in Fall Semester 2016.  Dr. Millman earned his Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina and currently works for ProductionPro in New York City.  His research interests include computational geometry and scientific computing.  Welcome, Dave! [April 2015]

StartUp Weekend Bozeman Winner

Congratulations to CS Sophomore Sam Kern, whose idea for an app that crowdsources carpooling to local ski areas took first place in StartUp Weekend Bozeman.  Sam is the co-founder and project lead at ShareLift. [April 2015]

2015 CS Department Awards

  • Outstanding Ph.D. Researcher: Nathan Fortier
  • Outstanding M.S. Researcher: Rachael Luhr
  • Outstanding GTA: Melissa Dale
  • Student Selected Professor of the Year: Patrick Donnelly
  • Outstanding Faculty Service: Clem Izurieta
  • Outstanding Faculty Research: John Sheppard

New Faculty Member: Brittany Fasy

Dr. Brittany Fasy will join the Computer Science Department as an assistant professor in August.  Dr. Fasy earned her Ph.D. from Duke University and is currently a post-doc at Tulane University.  Her research interests include computational topology and statistics.  Welcome, Brittany!  [April 2015]

New Faculty Member: Upulee Kanewala

Dr. Upulee Kanewala will join the Computer Science Department as an assistant professor in August.  Dr. Kanewala earned her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in the area of software testing.  Welcome, Upulee!  [March 2015]

ACM Spring Break Tech Road Trip

Undergraduate students Ashley Bertrand, Coltran Hophan-Nichols, Connor O'Leary, Miles Sorlie, Megan Weller, Luke Welna and faculty sponsor John Paxton will roadtrip to Boise and San Francisco to learn more the computer industry.  The Boise itinerary includes visits to Micron and Cradlepoint.  The Bay Area itinerary includes visits to Lyft, Dropbox, Sega, Mesosphere, Google, Smart Things and YouTube.  Weather permitting, biking the Golden Gate bridge is also planned!  [March 2015]

Gianforte Gift

Greg and Susan Gianforte, long time supporters of our department, announced that the Gianforte Family Foundation will be making a generous gift of one millions dollars.  The gift will help support start-up packages for three new faculty members and provide additional space for educating students in the existing engineering complex.  MSU News Article.  Bozeman Daily Chronicle Article.  A huge thank you to Greg and Susan!  [March 2015]

Software Factory

The MSU Exponent featured the recently opened Software Factory in a YouTube video.   The Software Factory was created under the leadership of Clem Izurieta and has support from Zoot Enterprises. [February 2015]

Army Corps of Engineers Project

Congratulations to Clem Izurieta and John Sheppard, who have received $150,000 from MSU's TechLink to assist the Army Corps of Engineer's Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL).  The project involves evaluating the structures, models and capabilities of CERL's Sustainment Management System (SMS). Activities include i) the development and test of a mobile-based fueling solution; ii) the quality assurance of the architecture using technical debt technology, and iii) the investigation of an analytics engine for predictive analysis.  Several CS students are supported by the project.  [February 2015]

Award for Excellence

Computer Science senior Logan Warberg was recognized as one of 40 outstanding seniors at the MSU Alumni Association / Bozeman Chamber of Commerce Awards for Excellence banquet on February 17th.  Recipients excel academically and through service.  Logan also received one of eight Torley Awards.  Logan selected Hunter Lloyd as his inspirational mentor.  Congratulations!  [February 2015]

Battlecode

A big thank you to Bovard Tiberi of Workiva who helped MSU Computer Science students compete in MIT's Battlecode tournament.  The top two teams each made it to the round of 32.  Congratulations to The Simple Soldier (David Bell, Fred Kneedland and Josh Leger) and Team O (Dominic Frost, David Marne, Mark Miller and Emmett Wester)!  [February 2015]

Homeschool Hackathon

The CS Department hosted a hackathon for homeschool students on January 10th in EPS 254.  Jason Taylor of Security Innovation conducted the four hour event that attracted 15 participants.  Participants earned points for exposing security flaws in two sandbox test sites: the Shadow Bank and the Mercury Store. [January 2015]