Computer Science eNewsletter

Improving Educational Software Through Speech and Emotion Detection

Dr. Kristy BoyerResearchers at NC State, including CSC faculty - Drs. Kristy Boyer, James Lester and Brad Mott - have won a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to work to improve educational software by enabling it to assess body language, speech and other cues to better respond to a student’s emotional state during the learning process. The grant is for three years and focuses specifically on middle school science education, though the findings are expected to be broadly applicable to other subjects and age groups. more

CSC Department Welcomes 11 New Student Ambassadors

The NC State Computer Science Department is pleased to announce the most recent class of undergraduate students to join the NC State University Department of Computer Science Student Ambassador Program. This select group of undergraduates plays a key role in supporting the department's outreach efforts, working 39 different events totaling over 400 service hours last year. more

Advancing Artificial Intelligence for Player Goal Prediction in Gaming

Dr. James LesterDr. James Lester and other researchers from North Carolina State University have developed artificial intelligence (AI) software that is significantly better than any previous technology at predicting what goal a player is trying to achieve in a video game. The advance holds promise for helping game developers design new ways of improving the gameplay experience for players. more

New Android Software Gives Users More Privacy Control

NativeWrap, a new software developed by Dr. William Enck and other researchers at NC State, gives Android users more control over their app permissions. Android users currently have two ways to access the web from their phones: they can use a web browser, or they can use apps for sites like Facebook or Twitter. Both options have drawbacks. “We developed the NativeWrap app to give users a third option for accessing the mobile web,” says William Enck, a computer science researcher at NC State. “NativeWrap puts the user in control of app permissions. It allows the user to ‘wrap’ any website into a native app for the phone." more

Department Welcomes Venezuelan Summer Practicum for Seventh Year

For the seventh time since 2007, the NC State Computer Science Department hosted a team of 16 undergraduate students from the Universidad Católica Andres Bello (UCAB), Caracas Venezuela, for a two-week summer practicum. more

Dogs, Math and Computers: How One Researcher Gets His Ideas

Dr. Dave Roberts & Diesel, his dogDavid Roberts smiles a lot. And why not? He’s a computer scientist whose research ranges from artificial intelligence and video games to developing new technologies that better connect dogs and humans. He loves his work, and lots of people are interested in it. But what inspires the research in the first place? I know that researchers need expertise, an understanding of the scientific process and experimental design (and patience, of course). But you also need an idea to test in the first place. Where do those ideas come from? more

Park Scholars Build a Legacy of Sustainability with Solar Flora at Hunt

Members of the Park Scholarship Legacy Committee, co-led by CSC Ambassador and senior, Xavier Primus, are building a Solar Flora, a sculptural solar power system, in front of Hunt Library. The 16-foot tall, 11-foot wide Solar Flora contains six solar panel “petals” that will operate independently from the electrical grid to power a four-outlet charging station and area lighting. more

On-campus Driving Service Popularity Grows

Arjun Aravindan and Tomer Shvueli, both seniors in computer science, have entered into the world of ride sharing with their NC State based app, Campus Cruizer. Competing with Uber and Lyft has pushed the duo to release a newer, more seamless version of their previsious application. more

Fidelity Investments Speakers Series Presents Alan Dabbiere

Alan DabbierePlease join us on October 28, 2014 at 6 pm in room 1231 in Engineering Building 2 for our next Fall 2014 talk in the Fidelity Investments “Leadership in Technology” Speakers Series. Our special guest speaker will be Alan Dabbiere, Co-founder and Chairman of AirWatch. His topic will be “From Startups to Billion Dollar Exits: Principles for Building Successful Businesses.” more

Donor Giving Boosts Endowment to Record Level

Another year of extraordinary giving by NC State donors helped propel the university’s endowment to an all-time high, boosting it a remarkable 76 percent in just four years to more than $884M in the fiscal year that ended June 30. more

Departmental Gifts & Research

IBM has donated $13,200 in support of the department’s ePartners Program and the Smarter Planet Award.

Premier has donated $5,000 in support of the department’s ePartners Program.

Red Hat has donated $5,000 in support of the department’s ePartners Program.

Schwab Performance Technologies has donated $10,000 in support of the department’s ePartners Program and Senior Design Center.

Interactive Intelligence has donated $2,500 in support of the department’s ePartners Program.

OnWire Consulting Group has donated $2,500 in support of the department’s ePartners Program.

FEi Systems has donated $2,500 in support of the department’s ePartners Program.

Tony Brown (BS ‘83) has donated $10,000 as part of a multi-year pledge to establish the Kathryn Eskew Brown Endowment, which will support student-defined entrepreneurial projects in the Senior Design Center.

Barbara Fearrington has donated $5,000 (plus matching gift from Wells Fargo) in support of the Fearrington Endowment Fund.

Dr. Christopher Healey has been awarded $91,749 by SAS Institute to support his research proposal entitled “Modeling Context and Sentiment to Visualize Narrative Threads in Large Document Collections.” This is the first faculty award associated with the innovative new partnership between NC State and SAS that will better enable collaborative research in the areas of computer science and data analysis. more

CSC Wolf Bytes

Dr. Blair Sullivan, assistant professor of computer science, was an invited speaker at last month’s RTP 180 on Big Data. In this 5-minute video, she brings structural graph theory and algorithms to the masses. If she ever tires of this computer science gig, she may just have a future in comedy!

The department extends best wishes to Chris Bowen, CSC IT Linux administrator, who has accepted a promotional opportunity with the NCSU Library as a Systems Programmer Analyst effective October 6th.

CSC alumna, Vidya Srinivasan (MS 2010), was on the winning team in the first ever global Microsoft Hackathon, where more than 12,000 employees hacked on innovative projects. She is also standing to the right of Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, as he takes the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge (to his right giving a thumbs up in the video. more

CSC alum, Charles D’Andrea (BS 2010), recently created and launched an augmented reality geocache game for the Raleigh-Durham area. The game can be played with a smartphone or with a pair of Epson's moverio bt-200 smartglasses. It uses the industry's latest environment tracking technology from Metaio to place virtual characters and objects into the real world, and is designed to be playable from start to finish in a single day's journey, which will take players to Duke, UNC, and NC State campuses. It all starts by visiting the geocache listing on OpenCaching here.

In response to the passing of her mother to breast cancer, CSC alumna, Dr. Bushra Anjum (PhD 2012) has led a special project team in the development of an android app with features designed to increase the International awareness of breast cancer in a culturally sensitive manner, especially important in countries where the mere mentioning of “breast” cancer is taboo. For more information, visit http://youmatterapp.weebly.com/.

Follow the Department on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter!

Alumni, students, faculty, staff, and corporate partners of the NC State Department of Computer Science, interested in networking to foster collaboration, entrepreneurship, partnerships, career development and professional growth are invited to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Personalized Job Search Agent in ePack

If you are a CSC student or recent graduate (within 12 months post-graduation) and would like to receive email notifications when new jobs are posted on ePack matching your profile, you can set up your own customized job search agent to receive just the postings you desire (intern vs. full time, etc). For a short video tutorial on how to create your own personalized job agent, click here.

The Alumni Association has partnered with the University Career Development Center to make ePACK available to NC State alumni. If you are a current Alumni Association member, update your online profile by visiting the Wolfpack Connect (alumni directory) and click on the ‘Update My Info’ tab on the upper right side of the page. Select the ‘Career Connections’ tab and then choose ‘yes’ beside the question, ‘Do you want access to ePACK?’

To access ePACK you must be a member of the Alumni Association and you must be an alumnus/alumnae of NC State. If you are not a member of the Alumni Association, you can join online. Once you have received an email confirming your membership, you will be able to register for access to ePACK.

Questions: Contact Career Services Counselor Catherine Tuttle at catherine_tuttle@ncsu.edu