The Computer Science Alumni Chapter has put together their calendar for the 2004-2005 academic year. The Chapter is working with the GMU Century Club to host networking events during the upcoming year. The Chapter is partnering with the GMU Century Club to offer a series of networking events. Additionally, the Chapter will continue its tradition of participating in Homecoming activities. While not all of the dates have been finalized at the time of publishing, it will be updated throughout the year.
Our inaugural Professor Spotlight is on Dr. Jana Kosecka. Earlier this year, she was awarded the National Science Foundation's (NSF) faculty early career development (CAREER) award. The prestigious $500,000 award "recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century." This Fall, Dr. Kosecka is teaching Data Structures and Analysis of Algorithms (CS 483) and Intelligent Systems for Robotics (CS 685).
In an effort to strengthen and develop research ties between industry and the university, the Computer Science Department recently launched the Computer Science Affiliates Program.
The first project that the department is seeking industry involvement is in the area of Distributed Agents Information Retrieval Systems, which explores the use of ontology derived filters to increase the relevance of the web searches.
The National Science Foundation's (NSF) rankings for Computer Sciences Research Expenditures for FY2002 have Mason ranked #67, followed by Virginia Tech at #59 and the University of Virginia at #54, which makes the newly
launched Affiliates program vital to increasing the department's visibility within the industrty to close the gap in the rankings.
The Computer Science Department wants to hear from you! The Department is interested in hearing from alumni about their interest in short course and contract course offerings during the upcoming
academic year and what types of course topics alumni would like to see offered. Short courses would be offered during the winter between the fall and spring semesters and would award credit.
Contract Courses would be offered at an employer's site. To submit your topic ideas for short courses, please e-mail the Alumni Chapter
at csalumni@gmu.edu. If your employer is interested in arranging for a contract course taught by a Computer Science Professor, please contact the George Mason University Office of Professional and Continuing Education.
The Computer Science Department is pleased to announce that Songqing Chen will be joining the CS Faculty this fall after earning his Ph.D in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary. He received a BS and MS from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. His research interests include distributed systems (Internet content delivery systems and high performance computing systems) and operating systems (memory systems and file systems).