Congratulations to Liangjun Zhang

Please congratulate Liangjun, who won the university's Linda Dysktra Distinguished Dissertation Award.

WWW2010 Developers Track CfP

WWW2010 - April 26 - 30 in Raleigh, NC

WWW2010 Developers Track - Call For Proposals http://www2010.org
Submission Details

Submission deadline: February 26, 2010 (9pm Eastern (US) Time)

Notification date: March 14th, 2010

The Developers Track focuses on the general WWW development community. Participants are invited to present new trends and interesting ideas, code and APIs of applications, platforms and emerging standards. Demonstrations of technical "nitty-gritty" are strongly encouraged. Focus areas include, but are not limited to, Browsers and Plugins, Web Metrics, Health, Science and Education, Web Social Impact, Information Integration and Mash-ups, Web Software and Tools, Information Mining and Reporting, Mobile Web, Monetization, Multimedia, Scalable System and Cloud Computing, Search, Security, Semantic Web, Social Network, Standards and Protocols, User Interface, Open Source (FLOSS) Development for the Web.

This track is an ideal venue for short reports of both industry and academic technical works.

This year, the proceedings of the Developers Track will be published online; the authors of the accepted works will have the option to publish a 3-page report.

Please submit abstracts and papers via the WWW2010 Conference Management site: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/WWW2010/Default.aspx

New York City based SeedStart 2010 Summer Program-$20k for up to 10 startups for the summer

**** I have no idea how legit this might be *****

SeedStart will offer promising teams the chance to build a technology product and launch a company with the assistance of seed investment capital, mentorship and other resources. Companies will be selected through a competitive application process and each company will receive a $20,000 investment. Throughout the summer, companies will also receive mentorship from experienced New York City based venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, legal and business guidance, administrative help and technical assistance. At the end of the summer venture capitalists and angel investors will be invited to an Investor Day where each team will present their product and launch their company. SeedStart will run for 8 weeks beginning in June of 2010.



SeedStart is a joint effort among Contour Venture Partners, IA Ventures, NYC Seed, RRE Ventures and Polaris Venture Partners, and also includes Fish & Richardson, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and Silicon Valley Bank. The program has begun accepting applications and teams of at least two founders can apply at http://www.nycseed.com/seedstart.html by February 28, 2010 to be considered. For information, contact Owen Davis at owen@nycseed.com. http://bit.ly/5FU4Mb

Grad-Level Entrepreneurship Classes Available

Grad Students, Faculty and Staff:

Graduate-level Intro to Entrepreneurship Courses in the Arts, Sciences and Social Venturing

Explore entrepreneurial opportunities or get help launching a new venture or non-profit by enrolling in an entrepreneurship course this spring semester:

· Artistic Entrepreneurship (BUSI 701, M/W 4:00-5:15pm) more info

· Scientific Entrepreneurship (PLCY 575, T/TH 5:00-6:15pm) more info

· Social Entrepreneurship (MBA 866, M 6:00-9:00pm) more info

These courses are offered as a part of UNC’s Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and are available to UNC graduate students, doctoral candidates, post-docs, faculty and staff.

This program is sponsored by the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative.

Writing Center ESL services, Spring 2010

In keeping with the Writing Center's mission, we have renewed our focus on writing and language support for students (and especially graduate students, since they represent the largest ESL population at UNC). We also welcome exchange students and postdoctoral scholars to take advantage of our services, when appropriate.

Starting in January, I will be teaching a series of free, non-credit ESL mini-courses in grammar, writing, vocabulary, presentation skills, and pronunciation. Information is on the attached flyer.

We are also expanding our facilitated ESL writing groups, which have been very very effective for students and postdocs with substantial writing projects (papers, proposals, dissertations, and publications). Sign up will begin on the first day of classes.

In addition, we will be leading workshops, organizing speaking groups, recording more online video presentations, and participating in the International Coffee Hour.

Details and registration are on the Writing Center's new ESL resources webpages at:
http://www.unc.edu/writingcenter/esl

If you have any questions or suggestions, or would like to discuss ways that we can support your ESL students and postdocs, please do not hesitate to contact me or my colleague, Gigi Taylor (vgtaylor@unc.edu).

Happy holidays from the ESL specialists at the Writing Center!

Nigel Caplan

ESL Specialist, The Writing Center
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tel: (919) 843-9604; email: nacaplan@unc.edu

http://www.unc.edu/writingcenter/esl
(Writing Center ESL Resources Homepage)
http://eslonthehill.wordpress.com
(ESL On the Hill Language-Learning Blog)

NVIDIA CUDA Superhero Challenge

The 2nd NVIDIA CUDA Superhero Challenge has started in partnership with TopCoder!

Following on the heels of last week's hugely successful SuperComputing'09 - where anyone who's anyone was talking about CUDA and GPU Computing - we are pleased to launch the new NVIDIA Superhero Challenge for developers around the world.

The Challenge

Challenge #2 builds on one of the most well-known computing problems - the "travelling salesman", but with an added twist - chasing airplanes! (The Travelling salesman problem is one known to be computationally exceptionally difficult and is used as a benchmark for many optimization methods. It has several applications such as planning, logistics, the manufacture of microchips and DNA sequencing.)
In Challenge #2, contestants are asked to determine the best possible route that a mobile aircraft servicing crew should take to service a fleet of planes continually flying around the globe.


What You Can Do
Please let your programmer friends know that they can participate in the CUDA Superhero Challenge and win some serious cash - plus it's a great excuse to learn about CUDA C. There's no entry fee, and they can use TopCoder's Tesla-powered servers to run and debug their code.

Here is the link:

http://www.topcoder.com/news/2009/11/23/5000-nvidia-cuda-superhero-challenge-2-has-now-begun/

Within the first 48 hours of the contest, there are already over 260 registrants and 100 test submissions; the leader score table is changing rapidly. The competition is expected to be hot and heavy until the final day, December 7th.

Computer programming opportunity from the Chart Project for the UNC community

Computer students & others:
Get experience working on a humanitarian Internet service!
Join the Chart Project

We are creating a large database for on-line discussions which use a modified flow-chart. This could give you experience, satisfaction, and lead to paid work with us.

We hope to go on-line soon by finishing the work started by a college class in Canada. They say the programming needed is not too advanced. Can we become a world-wide sensation and make money at this? Yes, because it is a very innovative plan and fills a huge gap.

On-line discussions now, you might have noticed, can be very frustrating. They get illogical, over-long, petty, repetitious, circular, distracted, irrelevant, and hard-to-follow. Our plan will ameliorate all those problems to allow the public to try to settle all disagreements and conflicts on all topics.

Ask us for more to see if you'd like to work on this.

Korky Day
korkyday@yahoo.com
Telephone in Chapel Hill
919-929-0923