Graduate students, Kelli Ireland, Mike Lipschultz, Tim Luciani, and John Wenskovitch ran a hands-on introduction to animation workshop for 18 high school students on Saturday May 11th. Students learned animation from a computer science perspective, fundamentals of computer graphics, and of animation design and implementation. [May 2013]

Congratualtions to undergraduate student Jesse Thomason on receiving an Honorable Mention in the Computing Research Association's (CRA) Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award (Male) 2013.[May 2013]

Senior Lecturer George Novacky's Introduction to Computer Programming with Python Course was the focus of the Datamation article entitled, "Back to the Classroom: An IT Veteran Seeks Technical Enlightenment". [May 2013]

On April 19th, our department hosted a viewing and panel discussion of the film entitled, "She++ the Documentary" which addressed women's representation in computer science. Panelists included CS Professors Dr. Hwa and Dr. Litman, Professor Jean Carr, head of Pitt's Women's Studies Department, Theresa Dean, Engineering Director of KIT Solutions, and Julie Pagano, Co-Founder of Girl Develop It Pittsburgh.[April 2013]

Congratulations to all the high school girls who were named the 2013 NCWIT Aspirations in Computing winners! Our department chaired and hosted the first ever local affiliate of this prestigious national award. [April 2013]

Professors Chrysanthis and Labrinidis were featured in a University Times article where they talk about the recently launched Pittsburgh DataWorks Initiative, their group's Big Data projects, and about the Big Data phenomenon in general.[April 2013]

Outreach Coordinator Tasha Isenberg will be co-chairing the first ever Western and Central PA/West Virginia NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. Aspirations in Computing is a talent development pipeline initiative designed to increase women's meaningful participation in computing careers by providing encouragement, visibility, community, leadership opportunities, scholarships, and internships to high potential technically inclined young women. The event will be on Saturday, April 13th. [March 2013]

Professors Chrysanthis and Labrinidis are members of the advisory board that has founded the Pittsburgh DataWorks initiative, whose aim is to bring together organizations and people working on "big data" throughout southwestern PA, with the ultimate goal of supporting ongoing initiatives and attracting big data talent and investments to the US’s “most livable city”.[March 2013]

On October 26th Professor John Ramirez was on a panel of faculty who received the 2012 Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. You can hear from Ramirez's distinctive teaching philosophies, approaches, and classroom activities by following this link to his talk entitled, Learning Computer Science: From Idea to Mastery. [November 2012]

CS Professor Panos Chrysanthis, along with Stavros Papastavrou, and George Samaras will be presenting their research on, "Exploring Content Dependencies to Better Balance Performance and Freshness in Web Databases" at the 13th International Conference on Web Information System Engineering(WISE 2012) held in Paphos, Cyprus on November 28-30 2012.[October 2012]

CS alumni Lindsay Bieda and Julie Pagano founded the nonprofit Pittsburgh chapter of Girl Develop It, an organization that encourages women to consider careers in software development. The Tribune Review wrote an article entitled Girls Urged to Pursue Careers Involving Computer Software. The department's diversity initiatives are also included in the article. CS is a founding organizer and sponsor of this org.[September 2012]

Professors Panos K. Chrysanthis and Alexandros Labrinidis ,co- directors of The Advanced Data Management Technologies Laboratory, and Professor G. Elisabeta Marai, director of The Interdisciplinary Visualization Research Lab (iVRL) have received a new NSF CDS&E grant, together with colleagues from the School of Engineering and the Center for Simulation and Modeling. The grant is entitled, Data Management and Visualization in Petascale Turbulent Combustion Simulation. This builds upon a history of many other successful collaborations of the ADMT Lab and iVRL, with researchers in the Medical School, and Physics and Astronomy, addressing Big Data challenges.[September 2012]

Congratulations to Dr. Sangyeun Cho for winning a 2012 GRO award for Redefining DRAM Interface for Future Platforms. This achievement will build a lasting research partnership between the department and SAMSUNG. [August 2012]

The Department of Computer Science just concluded its Technology Leadership Initiative! Congratulations to the middle and high school students who completed the program! Stay tuned for new pictures![August 2012]

Congratulations to graduate student Mehmud Abliz and Professor Taieb Znati for winning the Best Paper Award on the New Approach to Mitigating Distributed Service Flooding Attacks at the Seventh International Conference on Systems held in Saint Gilles, Reunion Island from February 29-March 5, 2012. [July 2012]

As an initiative to increase diversity in our department, we are proud to be a bronze sponsor of the 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing.[June 2012]

We are pleased to announce that our department is now an Academic Alliance member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, a coalition that works to increase diversity in IT and computing. The Academic Alliance consists of over 400 distinguished representatives from the computer science and IT departments of nearly 200 colleges and universities across the country.[May 2012]

On March 29. 2012, the Obama Administration unveiled its $200M Big Data R&D Initiative. Associate Professor Alexandros Labrinidis was part of a team of leading data management researchers across the United States who co-wrote a community white paper on the Challenges and Opportunities with Big Data.The white paper, published earlier in March, will be discussed at a panel during the VLDB 2012 International Conference from August 27-31 in Istanbul. [May 2012]

CS Part-time faculty Paul Covaleski receives the Students' Choice Award from the College of General Studies Student Government. The award was presented on Friday, April 13th at the 20th Annual Excellence in CGS Reception.[April 2012]

Rami Melhem, CS faculty, is awarded the 2012 Provost's Award for Excellence in Mentoring. This award recognizes faculty members who demonstrate outstanding mentoring of graduate students seeking a research doctorate degree.[April 2012]

The Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W) and the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC), chose graduate student Chelsea Mafrica to attend the 3rd summer school workshop on Computer Architecture. Let's offer her a big congratulations! For more information on the workshop, visit: Summer School workshop on Computer Architecture. [April 2012]

Marian Iskander, Ryan Moore, and Thao Nguyen Pham, CS graduate students, received the Andrew Mellon Pre-doctoral Fellowship for the 2012-2013 academic year.[March 2012]

John Ramirez, CS Senior Lecturer, is one of 5 awarded the 2012 Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. Ramirez was recognized for having a teaching style that encourages students to pursue intellectually demanding subjects. He is the second CS faculty, along with Dr. George Novacky ('93), to receive this award.
Pitt Chronicle
University Times[February 2012]