Virginia Tech ACM ICPC World Finals Team Update

June 17, 2015June 23, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

The Virginia Tech ACM ICPC Programming Team competed in the 39th ICPC World Finals in Morocco on May 16 to 21, 2015. The field of competition was highly selective. A total of 128 teams of three were chosen (from a field of 38,160 contestants from 2,534 universities in 101 countries on six continents) to compete for the chance to win medals and become the world champion. The Virginia Tech team consisted of Scott Pruett (computer science), Nick Sharp (computer science), and Aziz Yusupov (computer science and business economics), with Dr. Godmar Back (computer science) as their coach.

The competition took place over two days and consisted of 13 challenging problems posed to teams. For the first time in the history of the competition, the winning team from St. Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics, and Optics (ITMO) managed to solve all of the problems. The top 12 teams, that solved 9 or more problems, received medals. The scoreboard can be viewed here.

The Virginia Tech team solved 4 problems and placed 92 out of 128 teams. The new season will start soon and the team will face strong opponents in the region, including the University of Virginia who is yearning for a chance to regain the spot Virginia Tech took from them last year!

According to their website, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is the premier global programming competition conducted by and for the world’s universities. The competition operates under the auspices of ACM, is sponsored by IBM, and is headquartered at Baylor University. For nearly four decades, the ICPC has grown to be a game-changing global competitive educational program that has raised aspirations and performance of generations of the world’s problem solvers in the computing sciences and engineering.

CS Ph.D. student co-authors paper garnering top award

June 10, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

A paper co-authored by Saurav Ghosh, a Ph.D. student in the Discovery Analytics Center (DAC), received the 2015 Best Research Paper Award at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Data Mining conference in Vancouver. READ MORE

Six students honored for innovation and entrepreneurship | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech

May 6, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

Congratulations to CS@VT students Cody Short and Joe Acanfora.

Source: Six students honored for innovation and entrepreneurship | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech

Computer Science Faculty Receive Dean’s Awards for Excellence

May 6, 2015June 8, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

May 4, 2015 – At the eighteenth annual Virginia Tech College of Engineering faculty reception, awards were presented to engineering professors for teaching innovation, research, service, and outreach for 2015. Five outstanding new assistant professors were recognized and certificates of teaching excellence were also awarded.

The Dean’s Awards for Teaching Excellence were presented to: Clifford Shaffer of computer science, Sungwan “Sunny” Jung of biomedical engineering and mechanics, and John P. Shewchuk of industrial and systems engineering.

The Dean’s Awards for Research Excellence were awarded to: Wenjing Lou of computer science, Chang Lu of chemical engineering, Amy Pruden of civil and environmental engineering, Pamela VandeVord of biomedical engineering and mechanics, and Chenming “Mike” Zhang, of biological systems engineering.

The College of Engineering Faculty Fellows, an award that carries an annual $5000 account for the next three fiscal years to support his or her research, were presented to: Eli Tilevich of computer science, Jennifer Irish of civil and environmental engineering, Kray Luxbacher of mining and minerals engineering, Holly Matusovich of engineering education, Michael Ruohoniemi of electrical and computer engineering, and Christopher Williams of mechanical engineering. Read more here.

Join the department in congratulating Wenjing Lou, Cliff Shaffer and Eli Tilevich.

17th Annual Women in Computing Day

April 24, 2015May 4, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

Last Friday, April 24th, the Association for Women in Computing (AWC) held the 17th Annual Women in Computing Day at Virginia Tech. 60 local 7th grade girls from Blacksburg, Pulaski, Dublin and Floyd participated. Terri Mitchell, the vice-president of TMS Integration at IBM, opened the event with an introduction to women in computing. Following Mrs. Mitchell, the girls were separated into small groups and rotated through four exciting and interactive activities that exposed them to computers and computational thinking from different perspectives. These workshops included “Decoding your DNA” focused on code as it occurs in nature. “Be the data”, which was a data analytic and visualization activity held in the Cube at the Moss Art Center. “Squishy circuits” allowed the girls to create circuits using conductive play-dough, LEDs and batteries, and “Do it yourself Apps are a Snap!” introduced them to the Snap! Programming environment.

The girls and volunteers were given t-shirts that resulted from the annual AWC design competition. Women in Computing Day was organized by sophomore Aarathi Raghuraman and junior Divya Sharma. WCD has been supported by the Department of Computer Science and Computer Science Research Consortium for 17 years, and this year was aided by ICAT.

The day culminated a year of student-led activities from the AWC. Opportunities for both graduate and undergraduates to get involved with the AWC and shape next year to their own ideas can be pursued by sending email to awc@listserv.vt.edu.

Scott McCrickard selected as Faculty Scholar of the Week

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

The Office of the Vice President for Research recognizes Scott McCrickard for his work at the interface between people and computers. Scott,an associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, works at the interface of multitaskers and their cell phones and computerized devices. Click here to read the full VT News article.

Donald Scott McCrickard, Associate Professor Department of Computer Science

Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan’s work highlighted in Newsweek article

April 3, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

The work of Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan and colleagues at the Discovery Analytics Center was recently published in a Newsweek article. The full article about the EMBERS project can be read here.

4th Annual Aspirations in Computing Event

April 1, 2015April 2, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

The National Center for Women In Technology (NCWIT) Award for Aspirations in Computing honors young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Winners are selected for their computing and IT aptitude, leadership ability, academic history, and plans for post-secondary education. NCWIT has local and national affiliates. The CS department continues to support this and other diversity efforts designed to identify and recruit women into the field. Dr. Barbara G. Ryder (Department Computer Science – Head) and Libby Bradford (CS Director of Undergraduate Studies) chair the Virginia and Washington, DC affiliate and manage the annual awards ceremony. Microsoft hosted the event this year where twenty high school students were recognized. The event was sponsored by Bank of America, Eastman Chemical Company, Microsoft, NetApp, Northrop Grunman, SWIFT and Virginia Tech. Dr. Barbara G. Ryder said, “We are truly honored to recognize these outstanding young women from across Virginia and the District for their achievements in computing and leadership. They are pacesetters and set an example that girls may accomplish great things in the technology field”. To view a full list of winners and learn more about NCWIT visit here.

Dr. Kirk Cameron and alumnus Joe Turner receive patent

April 1, 2015April 2, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

Dr. Kirk Cameron and CS alumnus Joe Turner successfully completed the patent approval process. Dr. Cameron and Mr. Turner are co-founders of a power management software startup company MiserWare. This is a patent that MiserWare licensed from Virginia Tech while conducting research for the university. Dr. Cameron said, “This patent describes methods and techniques to guarantee performance constraints are met when computer power management is enabled. The resulting software is used in laptops, desktops, and data center environments where performance is critical and power management is required for cost-cutting. This technology is at the core of the Granola software that was downloaded more than half a million times from over 160 countries.”

Dr. Kirk Cameron selected to participate in a leadership science policy institute

April 1, 2015April 2, 2015 laurie Leave a comment

Dr. Kirk Cameron has been selected to participate in the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI) in Washington, DC. The LiSPI selection committee evaluated each nomination based on record of accomplishment, proven ability to communicate, and promise. The mission of LiSPI is to “Develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community”. According to LiSPI’s website, the policy institute endeavors to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. Please visit to learn more. This is the third faculty member from the CS department who has attended the LiSPI. Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan and Dr. Madhav Marathe participated in the past.