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Senior computer science and biology double major Olena Marchenko will be representing Colby at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing this fall. She and Manasi Vartak (a student at WPI) proposed a panel discussion on computational biology featuring professors Anne Condon (U. British Columbia), Nancy Amato (Texas A & M), and Stephanie Taylor (Colby College). The proposal was accepted, and will, consequently, bring an important topic into the spotlight at a conference with over 1400 attendees.
Lena was also one of 134 (out of over 900) applicants awarded a scholarship to attend the conference. She and Professor Taylor will travel to Tuscon the last week of September.
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Brian S. Eastwood, HHMI Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science We are thrilled to welcome Brian Eastwood, who recently completed his PhD studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the fall semester he is teaching CS 231 (data structures). In the spring, he will teach an elective computer vision and image analysis course. His research interests include image analysis, scientific computing, and visualization with applications in the natural sciences. |
While Dale Skrien is on leave, we are glad to have Toni Fredette teaching Computer Organization and Dan Siff teaching Networks during the spring semester.
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Stephanie Taylor, Assistant Professor We are very excited that Stephanie Taylor is joining the department as an Assistant Professor in the fall. For the fall semester she will be teaching the labs for CS 151 and CS 231 and an elective on parallel and distributed processing. Her research interest is creating computational models of biological systems. In the '09-'10 academic year she'll be offering a two-semester sequence on computational modeling with applications to biology. |
CS will be offering a Jan-plan option in 2009. Professor Maxwell will be teaching 2D video game design (CS 269/369). The course will combine students with CS backgrounds and students without programming experience in creative teams to design a game during the 4 week Jan-plan semester.
Professor Maxwell will be working with six CS students in the summer of 2008 on four different research projects. The projects include designing both a vision system and a human-robot interaction system for a humanoid robot, developing remote robotic biology experiments in the Colby woods, visual analysis of bacterial colonies, and the integration of animal tracking and observation data with a GIS system.
Professor Dale Skrien published a new textbook Object-Oriented Design Using Java in January of 2008. Dale's students get the contents straight from the source when Dale teaches his Object-Oriented Design course. In the spring of 2008, the students designed a full-featured solitaire system with several different versions of solitaire. The students learned the value of the principles of good software design, such as using abstraction, encapsulation, strong cohesion, weak coupling, coding to interfaces, avoiding duplication, separating responsibilities, and designing for change. If they followed these guidelines, then it was easy for the students to add features to the system.
We've completed a revision of the CS curriculum. New aspects of the curriculum include a core course in data analysis and visualization, and the requirement that all majors take a fall-spring sequence of upper level electives. Each year we'll be offering a different fall spring sequence. For 2008-09, the sequence will be computer graphics and 3D video game design. For 2009-10, the sequence will focus on modeling biological systems computationally.
The new minor is designed to integrate CS more closely with a student's major. For example, minors have the option of undertaking a capstone project that integrates with a course in their major field.
As part of the curriculum change, we are using Python as the language for the first course in place of Java. Students who want to TA for CS151 in the fall semester will need to know/learn Python.
Python.org is a great place to start. There is also a list of filtered tutorials for both programmers and non-programmers.
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Bruce Maxwell, Associate Professor and Chair Bruce comes to us from Swarthmore College, where he has been teaching computer science and computer engineering. His research interests include robotics, computer vision, and computer graphics. So don't be surprised this fall if you see robots gliding up and down the hall on the 4th floor of Mudd. Some of them might even offer you a snack |
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Scott Russell, Visiting Assistant Professor Scott joins us from Boston University, where he recently finished his Ph.D. on Cryptography. So when the robots start talking with one another, you won't be able to break into their conversation. |
