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Chair's Message

From Protein Folding to Efficient Algorithms

Undergrads Contribute to Networking Research

Alumnus to Speak at UNC Doctoral Hooding Ceremony

Brandenburg Receives Distinguished Dissertation Award

Pictures from the Department Awards Luncheon

Pictures from Catherine Perry's Retirement Party

Alumni News

In Memoriam

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Department News

WELCOME

New Faculty Appointments

Jay Aikat (Ph.D. 2010) was named Research Assistant Professor in December 2011, working with the networking research group.

Derek Chiang was named Adjunct Assistant Professor in March 2012. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics.

Yun Li was named Adjunct Assistant Professor in February 2012. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics.

William Valdar was named Adjunct Assistant Professor in January 2012. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics.

New Staff

Crystal Walker joined the department in January 2012 as Proposal and Outreach Coordinator.

THANKS AND FAREWELL

Svetlana Lazebnik left the department in December 2011 to accept an assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She maintains an adjunct appointment here at UNC.

Catherine Perry retired on February 29, 2012, after 36.5 years of state service, 35 of which were in the Department of Computer Science.

CONGRATULATIONS

Faculty and Staff

Björn Brandenburg (Ph.D. 2011) and James Anderson won best paper at EMSOFT 2011. The paper is titled, “Real-Time Resource-Sharing under Clustered Scheduling: Mutex, Reader-Writer, and k-Exclusion Locks.”

Katrina Coble was the recipient of the 2011 Award in Management, given annually by the College of Arts and Sciences to recognize “outstanding accomplishments in leadership and management.” She received the award at the College’s annual managers’ lunch January 25, 2012.

IEEE named five members of the UNC Department of Computer Science as 2012 fellows. They are:

James Anderson, professor, for contributions to the implementation of soft-real-time systems on multiprocessor and multicore platforms.

Ming C. Lin, John R. and Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor, for contributions to real-time physics-based interaction and simulation for virtual environments, robotics and haptics. Lin was also named an ACM Fellow for 2012 for her contributions to geometric modeling and computer graphics.

Dinesh Manocha, Phi Delta Theta/Matthew Mason Distinguished Professor, for contributions to robot motion planning, rapid prototyping and virtual environments.

Marc Pollefeys, research professor (professor of computer science, ETH-Zurich, Switzerland), for contributions to three-dimensional computer vision.

John Poulton, adjunct professor (senior technical staff, NVIDIA Corporation), for contributions to high-speed, low-power signaling and to graphics architecture.

Russell Taylor (Ph.D. 1994) had two patents issued last year:

J. Chris Clemens, Charles Evans, Daniel Gregory, Russell M. Taylor II. U.S. Patent No. 7,875,796. “Reflector assemblies, systems, and methods for collecting solar radiation for photovoltaic electricity generation.” Issued 1/25/2011 (assigned to Megawatt Solar).

David Borland, John P. Clarke, Russell M. Taylor II. U.S. Patent No. 7,961,187. “Methods, Systems, and Computer program products for processing three-dimensional image data to render an image from a viewpoint within or beyond an occluding region of the image data.” Filed 2006, Issued 6/14/2011 (licensed to Siemens).

Graduate Students

Alexis Chan and Joohwi Lee got an honorable mention in the IEEE Visualization Design Challenge 2011 for their project Visualization of Vortex Core Differences between Ensemble Simulations. The project was part of Russell Taylor’s Visualization in the Sciences class.

Luv Kohli received runner-up for best paper at the 2012 IEEE Symposium on 3D User Interfaces. The paper title is “Redirected Touching: The Effect of Warping Space on Task Performance,” and the co-authors are Mary C. Whitton and Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

Andrew Maimone won best short paper at IEEE Virtual Reality 2012. The paper is titled, “Reducing Interference Between Multiple Structured Light Depth Sensors Using Motion,” and the co-author is Henry Fuchs.

Undergraduate Students

Two computer science major student-athletes received prestigious honors for the 2011-12 academic year. Senior Kevin Nadeau, a computer science and mathematics double major from Austin, Texas, who is a member of the UNC Fencing team, was named both an Athletic Director’s Scholar-Athlete and a Tar Heel Leader of Distinction. Senior Rebecca Crabb, a computer science major from Omaha, Neb., who is a member of the UNC Women’s Soccer team, was named an Athletic Director’s Scholar-Athlete. An Athletic Director’s Scholar-Athlete is selected from each varsity squad, representing the best of academics and athletics, and the Leader of Distinction award is the highest recognition bestowed by the Richard A. Baddour Carolina Leadership Academy following a rigorous evaluation process.

Two computer science undergraduates were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in fall 2011: Kathryne Hawthorne is a junior computer science and information science double major, and Roger Que is a senior computer science major.

UPCOMING EVENTS

UNC Science Expo - April 14, 2012, on the UNC campus. Free and open to the public. The Department of Computer Science will be showing demonstrations of past and current research.

Symposium on Computational Geometry (SOCG) 2012 - June 16-21, 2012. http://socg2012.web.unc.edu/

14th Real-Time Linux Workshop - October 18-20, 2012. https://www.osadl.org/RTLWS-2012.rtlws-2012.0.html

RECENT SPONSORED RESEARCH AWARDS

CAREER: Estimation Methods for Image Registration. PI: Marc Niethammer. National Science Foundation.

CAREER: Motion Assistance for Medical Robots. PI: Ron Alterovitz. National Science Foundation.

Interactive Large-Scaled, Heterogeneous Crowd Simulation. PI: Dinesh Manocha. KAUST - King Abdullah University of Science.

Large-scale Indexing. PI: Jan-Michael Frahm. SRI International (Prime: Air Force Research Laboratory).

Real-Time Visual SLAM for Humanoid Robots. PI: Jan-Michael Frahm. Honda Research Institute USA, Inc.

Scalable Statistical Visualization Components. PI: Russell Taylor. Sandia National Laboratory.