News Archive

El Abbadi and Belding Internet to Better Rural African Life By Kathleen Tan Published on November 14, 2011 via Daily Nexus Two professors from UCSB’s Computer Science Dept. received $100,000 last week for their project to bring a low-cost communications network to Africa’s rural areas.

The VLDB Endowment has a board of 21 elected trustees, who are the legal guardians of the Endowment’s charter and activities. The trustees are elected among internationally distinguished researchers and professionals in the field of database and information systems who have contributed to the objectives of the Endowment with dedication and distinction. Prof. Divy Agrawal‘s research expertise is in the areas of database systems, distributed computing, data warehousing, and large-scale information systems.

The distinguished award recognizes individual contributions to both the practical and theoretical aspects of computing and information technology, and is given to ACM members with at least 15 years of professional experience who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field. Elizabeth’s research focuses on mobile networking, specifically multimedia, monitoring, advanced service support, and solutions for developing and underdeveloped regions.

Prof. Christopher Kruegel receives 2011 IBM Faculty Award The IBM Faculty Awards is a competitive worldwide program intended to: *Foster collaboration between researchers at leading universities worldwide and those in IBM research, development and services organizations; and *Promote courseware and curriculum innovation to stimulate growth in disciplines and geographies that are strategic to IBM.

The annual Graduate Student Workshop on Computing (GSWC11) will be held on Friday, Oct 7, from 8 to 3 in ESB 1001. The workshop features short talks and posters on our students’ research, along with keynote lectures and panel discussions, featuring some of our own past graduates. Details can be found at: http://gswc.cs.ucsb.edu/2011/

The AlloSphere Offers an Interactive Experience of Nano-sized Worlds September 6, 2011 What would it be like to dive into the veins and arteries of the human body or weave through the layers of the brain? With the AlloSphere, a 33-foot diameter sphere built inside of a three-story echo-free cube, these feats are now possible.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, one of the first browser companies, on Why Software Is Eating the World. WSJ Report

Professor Gonzalez New Editorships Appointments Professor Gonzalez has been appointed Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Computers. IEEETC is celebrating its 60th Anniversary. Professor Gonzalez has also been appointed to the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Advanced Networking and Applications (IJANA), the International Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and Networks (ACTA Press), and the International Journal of Communications and Computer Security (ACTA Press).

White Knight Cyber Hackers UC Santa Barbara computer lab trains the next generation of cyber-security warriors. The Computer Science Security Group led by Prof. Richard Kemmerer, Prof. Giovanni Vigna and Prof. Christopher Kruegel, was recently interviewed by Casey Wian at CNN.

Congratulations to Sudipto, Pegah, and Mohit on receiving our department outstanding graduate student, publication, dissertation awards. Sudipto Das–Outstanding Graduate Student Pegah Kamousi–Outstanding Publication Mohit Tiwari–Outstanding Dissertation

WhichAisle, a mobile app that helps with grocery store shopping, won the“Best Capstone Project in Computer Science” at the CS 189A/B, ECE 189A/B, and ECE 188A/B Senior Project Presentation Day. WhichAisle Team members Matt Decoteau, Steve Gala, Jacob Goren, and Conor Pawley took home the $1100 award funded by the Hass endowment and the Computer Science Chair’s Prize for their project at the June 2nd event.

Congratulations Luca Foschini, Pegah Kamousi, and Shiyuan Wang on receiving three coveted Central Continuing Student Fellowship! Luca received the Dean’s Fellowship, while both Pegah and Shiyuan received Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowships. These are very competitive campus wide awards.

UCSB COMPUTER ENGINEERING PROGRAM PRESENTS: THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011 TIME: 9:00am to 5:00pm LOCATION: Engineering Science Building (ESB) – Room 1001 and Courtyard HOST: Chris Kruegel (CMPSC 189A), Rich Wolski (CMPSC 189B), Steve Butner (ECE 189A/B), Ilan Ben-Yaacov (ECE 188A/B) SPEAKERS: CMPSC and ECE 189 / 188 Seniors TITLE: Computer Engineering Program – 2011 Capstone Project Presentation Day

Professor Gonzalez has been appointed Conference Chair for the 23rd IASTED International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS 2011). The Conference will take place December 14 – 16 in Dallas, TX.

Prof. Richard Kemmerer was interviewed by National Public Radio on Wednesday 4/27, 2011. KCBX Program Highlights: “An Evening With … Hackers: As the controversy roils over WikiLeaks, one issue becomes very obvious: There is no such thing as complete computer security. UCSB computer science professor Richard Kemmerer, says that no one can predict where the next cyber attack will emerge. ” Dick’ Interview Soundtrack.

USTODAY Report Tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft are aggressively recruiting college students in hopes of landing them before they graduate. The jump in tech hires highlights what some economists see as a bounce-back in the $805 billion U.S. tech industry that could eventually make a dent in the national unemployment rate of 8.8% (USTODAY Report).

The grand challenge of Information Network Academic Research Center is to develop science that enables the modeling, design, analysis, and prediction of behaviors of networks, and to develop fundamental underpinnings to enable humans and networks of disparate information sources to discover and optimize information and knowledge from the full range of structured and unstructured sources.

The 2011 National Engineers Week Committee (NEWC) is pleased to announce the 10 winners of the outstanding engineering student competition. Alexander Hsu is among the 10 winners. Each of the winners received $1,200 to support their academic endeavor. The scholarships were presented during the annual NEW banquet at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on March 3, 2011.

Prof. Ben Hardekopf’s paper, titled “Flow-Sensitive Pointer Analysis for Millions of Lines of Code,” wins the Best Paper Award at CGO’11 (Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization).

The Computer Science Department at UCSB has a perfect sweep of ALL the academic senate awards in 2011:

The Distinguished Teaching Award acknowledges the efforts of Senate faculty members who have successfully united teaching and research. More to come.

Ph.D. student Bryce Boe has been awarded the UCSB Academic Senate’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for 2010-2011. The Academic Senate Graduate Council’s Committee on Distinguished Teaching Awards is charged with recognizing and enhancing teaching on this campus.

The UCSB Academic Senate has bestowed Prof. Agrawal with the honor of 2011 Academic Senate Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award. Prof. Agrawal has mentored more than 30 PhD students over the period of twenty four years in his capacity as a Professor at the Department of Computer Science at UCSB. Many of the students mentored by Prof. Agrawal (and his longtime colleague Prof. El Abbadi) have established themselves as respected professors, researchers, and entrepreneurs. It is a great honor and is thoroughly deserved. Congratulations!

Prof. Matthew Turk to receive the 2011-2012 Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies

The faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara has bestowed its highest honor on Linda R. Petzold, an internationally recognized researcher who is a professor of Computer Science and of Mechanical Engineering at UCSB. Petzold has been named Faculty Research Lecturer for 2011.

The paper entitled “Hyder — A Transactional Record Manager for Shared Flash”, co-authored by Ph.D. student Sudipto Das (with Philip Bernstein and Colin Reid at Microsoft), was given the Best Paper Award at the 5th Biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) 2011.

The security group at UCSB will present the paper “Detecting Spammers on Social Networks”, authored by Gianluca Stringhini, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna. It received the best student paper award at ACSAC 2010. This work shows the results of a one year observation of spamming profiles on three major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace).

Three local tech CEOs, Tech mavens Kevin O’Connor, founder of DoubleClick; Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale; and Brian Donahoo, CEO of AppFolio, talked today at CNBC about why Santa Barbara is a great place for tech businesses – UCSB engineering is highlighted.

Prof. Divy Agrawal will serve on the Advisory Board of the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), a graduated NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) at the University of Southern California (USC). IMSC was founded as an NSF Engineering Research Center in 1996 by Professor Max Nikias, now president of USC, and since then has taken a leading role in the fields of multimedia, graphics, computer vision, and geospatial databases, and related fields.

Congratulations!

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA (UCSB)

Scrutinizing Facebook Spam Researchers downloaded 3.5 million profiles to see how accounts are used to send out spam. By Tom Simonite (MIT Technology Review) A study that involved downloading more than three million Facebook profiles has provided the largest-ever snapshot of the methods used by spammers on the world’s biggest online social network.

Aydin Buluç, 2010 Alvarez Fellow As the 2010 Luis W. Alvarez Fellow, Aydin Buluç, a 2010 graduate, will apply his expertise in combinational scientific computing primarily to increasing the reliability of the electrical grid and improve the nation’s ability to respond to energy disruptions as a member of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s High Performance Computing Research Department (HPCRD). His research interests include parallel computing, combinatorial scientific computing, high performance graph analysis and sparse matrix computations.

UCSB Computer Scientist Develops New Security Software to Neutralize Established Viruses By Santa Barbara Independent Consider the common cold. You can take active measures to avoid catching one, but if the virus manages to invade your system, you are powerless to keep it from running its course.

Spreading Technology UCSB Prof Improving Internet in Africa Tuesday, October 12, 2010 By Chris Salcedo, Santa Barbara Independent Internet access is a fundamental human right. Right?

Prof. Matthew Turk delivered a keynote presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems (BTAS 2010). The conference, held in Washington, D.C. on September 27-29, 2010, is the premier conference for research in biometrics, focusing on advances in fundamental pattern recognition techniques, new algorithms, and new technologies for biometrics-based authentication. Prof. Turk’s lecture was entitled “Grand Challenges in Biometrics.”

Computer Science at UCSB Jumps into the Top 10 Santa Barbara, California, October 18, 2010—The National Research Council (NRC) has released its rankings on a broad range of university graduate programs. The College of Engineering at UCSB, and in particular, the Department of Computer Science, has shown an impressive rise in the rankings; moving from 48th in the nation in 1995 to a top 10 department–an unprecedented move.

The computer science department at UCSB has received four TR35 awards in the past decade: Prof. E. Belding (2002), Prof. H. Zheng (2005), Prof. B. Zhao (2006), and Prof. C. Kruegel (2010). The department is among top-4 computer science programs that received the highest number of TR35 awards.