COMPUTING SCIENCES
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TechTalk
The Department of Computing Sciences is hosting a seminar series where professionals and alumni present special topics for students.
TechTalk - IT Performance by Joe Temple
Mr. Temple will introduce the fundamentals of computer performance including utilization, work, and an extension of the well-known Amdahls' Law (Universal Scalability Law). • Joe Temple is a teaching associate for the Deparment of Computing Sciences. Before joining CCU, he worked for over 40 years in the IT industry. He retired from IBM in 2013. In 2006, he was name an IBM Distinguished Engineer.
So You Wanna Become a Linux Systems Administrator by Darell Matthews
Mr. Matthews will discuss the steps necessary to become a Linux system administrator and will also provide an example of what a “day in the life” of a sys admin is like. He’ll cover certifications and self-taught topics one needs to step into a sys admin role as well as some of the tools and environments commonly used in the field. • Darell Matthews holds a Masters degree in Information Technology from East Carolina University, as well as extensive experience teaching in the field of IT as a professor and later as department chair and dean. He has decades of experience with Linux and has been CCU’s full time CI Linux system administrator since 2018.
Public Sector / Research Internships and How to Prepare for Graduate School by William Jones
In this talk we will discuss upcoming summer 2022 public sector internships, including several that are “research-focused”. We will also discuss preparing for graduate school as well as obtaining fellowships and assistantships to help cover the cost. We’ll finish by discussing new job opportunities that arise after obtaining a masters and/or Ph.D. • Dr. Jones joined CCU in 2008 and is a senior professor of computer science. He holds joint appointments as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and as an adjunct professor at Clemson University in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is passionate about the importance of undergraduate research and the impact that it can have on career trajectory.
Malware Hunting for Fun and Profit by Cory Nance (Alumnus)
This talk provides an introduction to malware hunting through an informal technical demonstration. Topics include maintaining a safe lab environment, identifying malware, locating samples, and writing detections. Together we will walk through the process of analyzing a recent malware sample, creating a YARA rule, and hunting for similar samples. • Cory Nance is a cyber security researcher at Recorded Future, where he researches emerging malware and TTPs. Prior to joining Recorded Future, Cory was an assistant professor at The Citadel, where he helped build the BS in Cyber Operations program. Cory earned a Ph.D. in Cyber Operations from Dakota State University, and a MS and BS in Computer Science from Georgia Southern and Coastal Carolina University, respectively. Outside of work, Cory enjoys bike riding, kayaking, and spending time with his family.
Quantum Computing and VR by Qiang Guan
The growth of need for quantum computers in many domains such as machine learning, numerical scientific simulation and finance has urged the quantum computers to produce more stable and less error-prone results. However, to mitigate the impact of the noise inside each quantum device remains a present challenge. In this project, we utilize the system calibration data collected from the existing IBMQ machines, applying fidelity degradation detection to generate the fidelity degradation matrix. Based on the fidelity degradation matrix, we define multiple new evaluation metrics to compare the fidelity between qubit topology of the quantum machines fidelity of qubits on the same topology, and to search for the most error-robust machine so that users can expect the most accurate results, and study the insight of correlation between qubits that may further motivate the quantum compiler design for the qubit mapping. • Dr. Qiang Guan is an assistant professor in Department of Computer Science at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Dr. Guan is the direct of Green Ubiquitous Autonomous Networking System lab (GUANS). He is also a member of Brain Health Research Institute (BHRI) at Kent State University. He was a computer scientist in Data Science at Scale team at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining KSU. His current research interests include: fault tolerance design for HPC applications; HPC-Cloud hybrid system; virtual reality; quantum computing systems and applications.
One IT Manager's Criteria for Hiring College Graduates by Robert Juba
In this talk, Mr. Juba will share the criteria he used in hiring college graduates in his roles within IT management and offer advice to help students obtain a job. • Robert Juba has lifetime IT professional with 35+ years of experience, with Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, Master of Science degrees in Computer Science and Engineering Science and PMP certification. IT Manager and Executive with expertise in managing all aspects of IT operations, planning and financial management.
Scaling yourself: Career Development by Patrick Doring (Alumnus)
Career development should start the day you start a new job. In this talk, we will break down what building your career really means and how growing your career is more than just growing technical expertise. • Patrick Doring (class of 2011) has worked at Amazon and AWS for the past 7 years. After 4 years as a software engineer he spent the past 3 years leading and growing teams of engineers. These experiences have given him a first hand view into building his own career and those of a diverse group of software engineers.
The Push for DevOps in Federal Governement by Edward Tkacz<strong(Alumnus)
Information forthcoming.
A Class of Trees Having Near-Best Balance by Laura Monroe
Full binary trees naturally represent commutative non-associative products, such as finite-precision floating-point addition and NAND gates. Balance in such a tree is needed for performance efficiency. We introduce a new class of computational trees having near-best balance in terms of an index from mathematical phylogenetics. These trees are flexible, efficient, and easily constructed, giving needed freedom in the calculation, and allowing intelligent efficiency trade-offs. • Laura Monroe is a research scientist in the Ultrascale Systems Research Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the field of novel computing, in particular probabilistic computing for high-performance applications, resilience, error-correcting codes, combinatorics and visualization. She was named one of the seven 2019 NM Technology Council Women in Technology awardees. She has received several Defense Program Awards of Excellence and several LANL Distinguished Performance awards, both as team leader and team member, and received an R&D 100 award in 2006 as part of the PixelVizion team.
Horror or Comedy? Automatic Affective Video Indexing by Jean French
Horror or Comedy? We'll explore how the field of automatic affective video indexing can help us determine the affective content of a video -- without even watching it. [NOTICE: This talk includes horror film content. Viewer discretion is advised.] • Profesor French joined CCU in 2001 and is a Professor and the Department Chair for the Department of Computing Sciences. Her interests are in Web Development and Multimedia. Prior to joining the department as a full-time faculty member in 2007, she held the position of Web Master / Web Manager for the University.
Exploring the Tradeoff Between Reliability and Performance in HPC Systems by William Jones
In this talk, I will introduce the concept of reliability as it pertains to the largest-scale supercomputers and discuss sources of errors in such systems, particularly DRAM and SRAM. I will then focus on the impact that such errors on the performance of such systems, and explore the tradeoff space that exists between these two parameters. I will also discuss the history and ongoing status of the collaboration between CCU and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and will share some success stories of several CCU graduates that have gone on to work there full time. • Dr. Jones joined CCU in 2008 and is a senior professor of computer science. Holds a joint appointments as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and as an adjunct professor at Clemson University in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. His interests are in high performance computing, resilience and applied machine learning. He is also passionate about the importance of undergraduate research and the impact that it can have on career trajectory.
The Magic of Disney Is in a Little Chip ... an RFID Chip! By Jean French
This talk will explore RF (Radio Frequency) technology and how Disney uses this technology in unique ways from Magic Bands to Refillable Mugs. This hands-on experience includes handling examples of various RFID chips used at Disney World. • Dr. French joined CCU in 2001 and is a Professor and the Department Chair for the Department of Computing Sciences. Her interests are in Web Development and Multimedia. Prior to joining the department as a full-time faculty member in 2007, she held the position of Web Master / Web Manager for the University.