Five UMass Lowell undergraduate students participated in the fourth annual New England Undergraduate Computer Science Symposium (NEUCS), held on April 21, 2012 at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.
NEUCS is supported by the Empowering Leadership Alliance to celebrate outstanding undergraduate accomplishments in computer science.
Five members of the Engaging Computing Group at UMass Lowell attended the conference. There were more than 140 participants from regional universities, including Brandeis, WPI, Wellesley, Tufts, and others.
Events included a career panel, a keynote presentation from MIT faculty member Fox Harrell, and student poster sessions. Students learned the market for software engineering is currently thriving—a panelist noted, “Cambridge is like a mini Silicon Valley due to the abundance of established and emerging industry.”
Three UMass Lowell undergraduates presented projects during the poster sessions. These students talked about Android applications they have developed to send data to iSENSE (Internet System for Network Sensor Experimentation)—an online system that promotes collaborative scientific analysis by providing accessible ways to upload, share, and visualize data.
The projects were:
NEUCS is supported by the Empowering Leadership Alliance to celebrate outstanding undergraduate accomplishments in computer science.
Five members of the Engaging Computing Group at UMass Lowell attended the conference. There were more than 140 participants from regional universities, including Brandeis, WPI, Wellesley, Tufts, and others.
Events included a career panel, a keynote presentation from MIT faculty member Fox Harrell, and student poster sessions. Students learned the market for software engineering is currently thriving—a panelist noted, “Cambridge is like a mini Silicon Valley due to the abundance of established and emerging industry.”
Three UMass Lowell undergraduates presented projects during the poster sessions. These students talked about Android applications they have developed to send data to iSENSE (Internet System for Network Sensor Experimentation)—an online system that promotes collaborative scientific analysis by providing accessible ways to upload, share, and visualize data.
The projects were:
- Jeremy Poulin’s Data Walk App, which “records GPS coordinates once every ten seconds and pushes it to iSENSE.”
- Evana Gizzi’s Toxic Tour App, which “facilitates data collection regarding environmental conditioning and uploads this information to the iSENSE website.”
- Michael Stowell’s Car Ramp Physics App, which “records y-accelerometer data at a rate of 20 Hz and upload it to iSENSE” for classroom physics experiments.
Full abstracts for the students’ posters are on the NEUCS site.
NEUCS provides students with the opportunity to explore diverse areas in computer science, network, and embrace a creative environment of math and science. UMass Lowell plans to continue its participation in the years to come.
UMass Lowell students at the 2012 New England Undergraduate Computing Symposium. (L-R): Jeremy Poulin, Kaitlyn Carcia, Michael Stowell, Evana Gizzi, and Alan Rosenthal.
Thanks to Kaitlyn Carcia for authoring this article.
Thanks to Kaitlyn Carcia for authoring this article.
March 29, 2012 was a great evening for 40 young women from around Massachusetts.
This was the evening that ITA Software by Google hosted the second annual Massachusetts Aspirations in Computing Affiliate Awards (MACAA) in partnership with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). The event was hosted at the new Google headquarters in Cambridge at Kendall Square.
The award ceremony included addresses by Ruthe Farmer, NCWIT Director of Strategic Initiatives, and Julie Farago, Manager of Google+.
Each award recipient was presented with the Aspirations in Computing award for herself and her school.
A featured part of the evening was the presentation by Prof. Jesse Heines (Computer Science), who awarded $10,000 scholarships to three of the 40 Aspirations in Computing recipients. These scholarships will be disbursed should the recipients come to UMass Lowell and remain in good academic standing.
These scholarships not only recognize the young women’s achievements to date, but also encourage them to apply to UMass Lowell and enhance our programs with their energy and creativity.
The three women receiving the scholarships are:
(L-R): Elizabeth Wu, Ramya Ravindrababu, Serana Thomas, and Prof. Jesse Heines.
This was the evening that ITA Software by Google hosted the second annual Massachusetts Aspirations in Computing Affiliate Awards (MACAA) in partnership with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). The event was hosted at the new Google headquarters in Cambridge at Kendall Square.
The award ceremony included addresses by Ruthe Farmer, NCWIT Director of Strategic Initiatives, and Julie Farago, Manager of Google+.
Each award recipient was presented with the Aspirations in Computing award for herself and her school.
A featured part of the evening was the presentation by Prof. Jesse Heines (Computer Science), who awarded $10,000 scholarships to three of the 40 Aspirations in Computing recipients. These scholarships will be disbursed should the recipients come to UMass Lowell and remain in good academic standing.
These scholarships not only recognize the young women’s achievements to date, but also encourage them to apply to UMass Lowell and enhance our programs with their energy and creativity.
The three women receiving the scholarships are:
- Elizabeth Wu, a junior at AMSA Charter School (Marlborough, MA)
- Ramya Ravindrababu, a junior at Shrewsbury Senior High (Shrewsbury, MA)
- Serena Thomas, a junior at Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical High School (North Brookfield, MA)
We offer all three students our congratulations on their achievements, and we wish them the best in their future careers!
(L-R): Elizabeth Wu, Ramya Ravindrababu, Serana Thomas, and Prof. Jesse Heines.
On March 14, 2012, Google held a “Pi Day Open House” event at their Kendall Square offices in Cambridge, MA. Six faculty nominated their best undergraduate and graduate students for the event, and a total of 15 UMass Lowell Computer Science students were accepted. Including these UML students, there were about 70 students in attendance, from universities including BU, BC, Wentworth, UMass Boston, MIT and others.
The program was held in the early evening. The Google Cambridge campus manager welcomed the students, and told them that Google has about 1000 employees in Cambridge (spread out across three buildings, all near the Kendall T stop). Students asked a few questions, and some basic facts about Google were clarified; e.g., that most of their revenue is from ads.
There were then five talks and demos:
Following these talks, a set of breakout sessions were offered. Topics included software engineering best practices, how to interview at Google, and information for PhD students.
In the talk for PhD students, Jon Orwant talked about how research in Google works and how it differs from research in academia. At Google, projects always originate from a product idea which could impact millions of people, and that many of the research projects actually do become products which impact millions of people.
Assoc. Prof. Fred Martin, who encouraged faculty to nominate their students for this opportunity, was delighted at the great response from UMass Lowell students, and their success in being accepted to the program.
The Pi Day event was organized by Caitlin Cooke, University Programs Coordinator at Google Cambridge.
UMass Lowell Computer Science students receiving parting gift bags after Google 3/14 Pi Day program. Front row (L-R): Chris Adoretti, Shawna Oneal, Jing Xu, Xian Pan, Mikhail Medvedev, Karen Uttecht, and Swathi Kurunji. Back row (L-R): John Huston, Chunyao Song, Brigit Schroeder, and Curran Kelleher. Also attending, but not in photo: Yinjie Chen, Simone Hill, Bo Yan, and Jie Yang.
Thanks to Curran Kelleher for authoring this article.
The program was held in the early evening. The Google Cambridge campus manager welcomed the students, and told them that Google has about 1000 employees in Cambridge (spread out across three buildings, all near the Kendall T stop). Students asked a few questions, and some basic facts about Google were clarified; e.g., that most of their revenue is from ads.
There were then five talks and demos:
- A mobile publishing platform which took existing RSS feeds (or other feed types) and generated a mobile-friendly rendering of it which can be customized by publishers was presented.
- A visualization tool showing the sharing of links through the Google Plus social network was demonstrated.
- A talk on search quality and features highlighted a few subtle search parsing tricks (like “picture of sunset” vs. “picture of dorian gray”), and live visual iterative refinement of search results.
- A “symtom search” feature for detecting when a user is searching for a disease was discussed. The speaker related a story about when he was observing live Google search logs of a person searching for “chest pain,” then “chest pain right arm,” which are the characteristic symptoms of a heart attack. He said that the experience humbled him, and gave him a strong sense of responsibility for his product.
- The SPDY protocol, which optimizes many aspects of HTTP, was presented. SPDY is in production use in Google Chrome and Firefox, and is being proposed as the new HTTP2 standard.
Following these talks, a set of breakout sessions were offered. Topics included software engineering best practices, how to interview at Google, and information for PhD students.
In the talk for PhD students, Jon Orwant talked about how research in Google works and how it differs from research in academia. At Google, projects always originate from a product idea which could impact millions of people, and that many of the research projects actually do become products which impact millions of people.
Assoc. Prof. Fred Martin, who encouraged faculty to nominate their students for this opportunity, was delighted at the great response from UMass Lowell students, and their success in being accepted to the program.
The Pi Day event was organized by Caitlin Cooke, University Programs Coordinator at Google Cambridge.
UMass Lowell Computer Science students receiving parting gift bags after Google 3/14 Pi Day program. Front row (L-R): Chris Adoretti, Shawna Oneal, Jing Xu, Xian Pan, Mikhail Medvedev, Karen Uttecht, and Swathi Kurunji. Back row (L-R): John Huston, Chunyao Song, Brigit Schroeder, and Curran Kelleher. Also attending, but not in photo: Yinjie Chen, Simone Hill, Bo Yan, and Jie Yang.
Thanks to Curran Kelleher for authoring this article.
A research paper by Computer Science Department doctoral student Harshavardhan Achrekar and co-authors Avinash Gandhe, Ross Lazarus, Ssu-Hsin Yu, and Benyuan Liu, Twitter improves Seasonal Influenza Prediction, has been selected as the Best Student Paper at the Fifth International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF 2012) held February 1 to 4, 2012 in Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal. Fewer than 9 percent of submitted manuscripts were accepted as full papers.
The purpose of the International Conference on Health Informatics was to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general and to the specialized support to persons with special needs in particular. Databases, networking, graphical interfaces, intelligent decision support systems and specialized programming languages were just a few of the technologies currently used in medical informatics.
Achrekar is utilizing information posted on Online Social Networks (OSNs) such as Twitter and Facebook to help improve the prediction of influenza levels within United States population and keep track of its spread. He has designed and implemented a framework called the Social Network-Enabled Flu Trends (SNEFT), which is used to continuously monitor flu-related messages, extract relevant location and user demographic information, track and predict the flu conditions in real time.
Since 2009, Achrekar has tapped into Twitter and extracted millions of influenza-related user posts to date, providing an almost-instantaneous snapshot of current epidemic conditions. Using comprehensive mathematical models, the framework can estimate nationwide as well as regional and age based flu activity with high accuracy.
This research is supported by a $200,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health under a Small Business Innovation Research Award. Results presented in this scientific publication show that these posts on Twitter closely match the number of flu-like cases reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and can significantly enhance public health preparedness against influenza and other large-scale pandemics.
Harsh Achrekar (left) and faculty adviser Prof. Benyuan Liu showcasing HEALTHINF 2012 best paper award.
The purpose of the International Conference on Health Informatics was to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general and to the specialized support to persons with special needs in particular. Databases, networking, graphical interfaces, intelligent decision support systems and specialized programming languages were just a few of the technologies currently used in medical informatics.
Achrekar is utilizing information posted on Online Social Networks (OSNs) such as Twitter and Facebook to help improve the prediction of influenza levels within United States population and keep track of its spread. He has designed and implemented a framework called the Social Network-Enabled Flu Trends (SNEFT), which is used to continuously monitor flu-related messages, extract relevant location and user demographic information, track and predict the flu conditions in real time.
Since 2009, Achrekar has tapped into Twitter and extracted millions of influenza-related user posts to date, providing an almost-instantaneous snapshot of current epidemic conditions. Using comprehensive mathematical models, the framework can estimate nationwide as well as regional and age based flu activity with high accuracy.
This research is supported by a $200,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health under a Small Business Innovation Research Award. Results presented in this scientific publication show that these posts on Twitter closely match the number of flu-like cases reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and can significantly enhance public health preparedness against influenza and other large-scale pandemics.
Harsh Achrekar (left) and faculty adviser Prof. Benyuan Liu showcasing HEALTHINF 2012 best paper award.
Prof. Georges Grinstein and graduate students Mary Beth Smrtic and Andy Dufilie presented a new software platform, Weave (Web-based analysis and visualization environment), to more than 300 attendants and 500 webcast viewers at the fourth annual Data Day held on January 27, 2012 in Boston. This was the first public presentation of Weave—the culmination of three years of design and development work at UMass Lowell’s Institute for Visualization and Perception Research.
Weave is an interactive web-based software system that links multiple visualizations (maps, charts, graphs, etc.) and computational tools (statistics, data mining, modeling and simulation). It was designed to provide easy access to existing datasets or simple upload of local data, allowing anyone to visualize any available data anywhere.
Weave was developed with support from the Open Indicators Consortium (OIC) specifically to simplify the process of presenting and visualizing data. The 15 OIC member groups wanted a state-of-the-art high-performance web-based visualization system tailored to the needs of groups that analyze and share indicator data.
In addition, OIC members felt that the high cost of commercial software had created a financial barrier, which limited the ability of individuals and small non-profits to visually analyze and share data. For this reason, OIC seeded the initial software development activity and all agreed that the new software would be available as open source. The OIC helped identify the diverse feature requirements and its members served as the first beta test sites.
Weave is now available to the public, free and open source—one less barrier to the democratization of data.
In addition to the presentation by Grinstein and students, several OIC members demonstrated their use of Weave, which now powers websites such as the Connecticut Data Collaborative , Rhode Island’s RI DataHUB and the newly re-launched MetroBoston DataCommon.
Data Day 2012, co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation, is a one-day conference that examines innovative ways to help organizations and municipalities expand their capacity to use technology and data.
For more, see a February 8, 2012 article in Computer World.
Weave is an interactive web-based software system that links multiple visualizations (maps, charts, graphs, etc.) and computational tools (statistics, data mining, modeling and simulation). It was designed to provide easy access to existing datasets or simple upload of local data, allowing anyone to visualize any available data anywhere.
Weave was developed with support from the Open Indicators Consortium (OIC) specifically to simplify the process of presenting and visualizing data. The 15 OIC member groups wanted a state-of-the-art high-performance web-based visualization system tailored to the needs of groups that analyze and share indicator data.
In addition, OIC members felt that the high cost of commercial software had created a financial barrier, which limited the ability of individuals and small non-profits to visually analyze and share data. For this reason, OIC seeded the initial software development activity and all agreed that the new software would be available as open source. The OIC helped identify the diverse feature requirements and its members served as the first beta test sites.
Weave is now available to the public, free and open source—one less barrier to the democratization of data.
In addition to the presentation by Grinstein and students, several OIC members demonstrated their use of Weave, which now powers websites such as the Connecticut Data Collaborative , Rhode Island’s RI DataHUB and the newly re-launched MetroBoston DataCommon.
Data Day 2012, co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Indicators Project at The Boston Foundation, is a one-day conference that examines innovative ways to help organizations and municipalities expand their capacity to use technology and data.
For more, see a February 8, 2012 article in Computer World.
Prof. Georges Grinstein representing the Open Indicators Consortium and discussing Weave at Data Day at Northeastern University. (Photo courtesy Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo.)
In the Fall 2011 semester, Prof. Guanling Chen offered a project course on developing Android apps, to prepare our students on programming skills for the fast-moving mobile industry. The course attracted many interests and accommodated 15 undergraduate and 14 graduate students. The students formed four teams, each working on a different group project.
The first half of the course covered the basics of the Android programming, and then students started to work on their projects for about 10 weeks. To meet the challenges of the diverse student background, each project group consisted of both graduate and undergraduate students and had at least one person who did Android programming before and owned an Android device.
The goal of the group project was to deliver a non-trivial app by the end of the semester. To manage the project development, the class adopted a mini-version of agile programming method that had three project iterations, each lasting three to four weeks. The idea was to make a workable app first and then grow it more feature-rich incrementally. For each iteration, each project group had to specify clear goals, the tasks to be completed, and who was responsible for which task. Each group delivered twice-a-week meeting minutes, daily progress “burn-down” charts, and a workable demo at the end of each iteration.
Through this software engineering process and the peer support of the groups, the students successfully completed four exciting projects with the theme of “doing good to society”:
The full presentation slides, videos, and downloadable APK files for the apps are available at http://sites.google.com/site/umlandroidclass2011/.
Presentation from YouMath team. The playable Android app binary and similar presentation materials from the three other teams are available here.
The first half of the course covered the basics of the Android programming, and then students started to work on their projects for about 10 weeks. To meet the challenges of the diverse student background, each project group consisted of both graduate and undergraduate students and had at least one person who did Android programming before and owned an Android device.
The goal of the group project was to deliver a non-trivial app by the end of the semester. To manage the project development, the class adopted a mini-version of agile programming method that had three project iterations, each lasting three to four weeks. The idea was to make a workable app first and then grow it more feature-rich incrementally. For each iteration, each project group had to specify clear goals, the tasks to be completed, and who was responsible for which task. Each group delivered twice-a-week meeting minutes, daily progress “burn-down” charts, and a workable demo at the end of each iteration.
Through this software engineering process and the peer support of the groups, the students successfully completed four exciting projects with the theme of “doing good to society”:
- The YouMath team produced a fun sports game that teaches kids math skills with different difficulty levels.
- ThumbsUp took a different approach educating kids by creating a series of mini-games that tests math, logic, and memory skills.
- The ParentGuard team aimed to help parents block certain apps on their kids’ devices, so they can ban age-inappropriate apps and won’t get surprising bills.
- Tractivity team went after the goal of encouraging people to be more physically active by developing an algorithm to monitor the number of steps the user has taken (leveraging the built-in accelerometer) and integrating incentives, such as virtual walks.
The full presentation slides, videos, and downloadable APK files for the apps are available at http://sites.google.com/site/umlandroidclass2011/.
Presentation from YouMath team. The playable Android app binary and similar presentation materials from the three other teams are available here.
On November 17, 2011, Computer Science graduate student Michael K. Penta successfully defended his Master's thesis, entitled “Video Game Creation as a Platform for Mathematical Learning.” Penta had previously earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from UMass Lowell (2006).
Penta’s work was inspired by an experience he had teaching video game design in a summer camp held at the university. Two of his students were trying to position a cannon ball at the end of a cannon, which could be positioned at various angles. Near the end of a day, the students asked Penta how to do this, and he told them, “That is just a bit of trigonometry. I will show you tomorrow.”
Penta was then surprised when, the following day, the students had solved the problem on their own. As he described it:
He then evaluated three different learning environments: an in-school mathematics classroom, an after-school game design workshop, and an after-school mathematics-focused game design workshop. Using a design-based research methodology, Penta created a series of evaluation tools to measure students’ learning, and refine the learning environment in each iteration.
Ultimately, Penta argued that because of curricular constraints, in-school time is not suitable for student video game design projects. He concluded that interventions should be structured around authentic video game design with integrated, focused mathematical design challenges. Finally, he demonstrated that students developed improvements in their understanding of mathematical concepts including plotting Cartesian coordinates, using negative numbers, and finding functions from patterns.
Penta’s work was advised by Prof. Fred Martin. Douglas Prime (College of Engineering) and Prof. Marvin Stick (Mathematical Sciences) were thesis readers. A copy of the thesis is available here.
Penta’s work was inspired by an experience he had teaching video game design in a summer camp held at the university. Two of his students were trying to position a cannon ball at the end of a cannon, which could be positioned at various angles. Near the end of a day, the students asked Penta how to do this, and he told them, “That is just a bit of trigonometry. I will show you tomorrow.”
Penta was then surprised when, the following day, the students had solved the problem on their own. As he described it:
I learned that they had gone home and introduced themselves to trigonometry by searching the web. ... These students had taken responsibility for their learning, and became self-directed problem solvers. They had taken a subject disliked by most students and [...] learned the essence of an important math concept. ... They were motivated by their own problem, a problem within a context about which they cared, the game they were making.Penta used this insight as a jumping-off point for his Master’s project. He set out to develop an intentional learning environment where students would be encouraged to build their mathematical competencies through video game creation.
He then evaluated three different learning environments: an in-school mathematics classroom, an after-school game design workshop, and an after-school mathematics-focused game design workshop. Using a design-based research methodology, Penta created a series of evaluation tools to measure students’ learning, and refine the learning environment in each iteration.
Ultimately, Penta argued that because of curricular constraints, in-school time is not suitable for student video game design projects. He concluded that interventions should be structured around authentic video game design with integrated, focused mathematical design challenges. Finally, he demonstrated that students developed improvements in their understanding of mathematical concepts including plotting Cartesian coordinates, using negative numbers, and finding functions from patterns.
Penta’s work was advised by Prof. Fred Martin. Douglas Prime (College of Engineering) and Prof. Marvin Stick (Mathematical Sciences) were thesis readers. A copy of the thesis is available here.
Video games were programmed in MIT Scratch and Game Maker. In this Scratch program snippet, a student has used knowledge of X and Y coordinate axes, and positive and negative numbers, to program a game character to move up, down, left, or right, in response to arrow key presses.
“Haunted Mansion,” a student-created game in response to the maze challenge. Student games had to have a “hero” character which moved using the arrow keys, and at least two “good” and two “bad” non-player characters (NPCs). When the hero struck a good NPC, its number of lives had to increase, and when it collided with a bad NPC, it would lose a life. When all lives were lost, the game had to end.
“Haunted Mansion,” a student-created game in response to the maze challenge. Student games had to have a “hero” character which moved using the arrow keys, and at least two “good” and two “bad” non-player characters (NPCs). When the hero struck a good NPC, its number of lives had to increase, and when it collided with a bad NPC, it would lose a life. When all lives were lost, the game had to end.
On November 15, 2011, Computer Science graduate student Derrell Lipman successfully defended his Master's thesis, entitled “LIBERATED: A fully in-browser client and server web application debug and test environment.”
Lipman’s research focused on addressing the challenge of developing client-server web systems.
He observed that traditional web-based client-server application development is accomplished in two separate pieces. There is a front-end portion which runs on the client machine, and a back-end portion which runs on the server machine. Typically, the front-end component is coded in HTML and JavaScript, while the back-end is written in PHP, ASP.net, or some another language that can interface to a database.
The skill sets required for these two pieces are different. Often, the front-end and back-end are developed and tested completely independently, based purely on an interface specification.
Lipman addressed this by developing his framework, LIBERATED, which stands for “Lipman’s In-Browser EnviRonment for Application TEsting and Development.”
In the thesis, Lipman proposed a new methodology for web-based client-server application development, in which a simulated server is built into the browser environment to run the back-end code.
This design allowed the front-end code to issue requests to the back-end in either a synchronous or asynchronous fashion, and single-step, using a debugger, directly from front-end code into back-end code, thereby completely testing both components with the desktop browser environment.
In Lipman’s system, that exact same back-end code, now fully tested in the simulated environment, is then recompiled and moved to a real server.
In the defense, Lipman presented the detailed design of LIBERATED, and described how he used it to develop the App Inventor Community Gallery, a web system created for users of Google’s App Inventor programming environment for Android phones to share their projects.
Prof. Fred Martin served as Lipman’s thesis adviser, and Dr. Mark Sheldon served as his thesis reader. Lipman’s research was supported by a grant from Google.
Lipman’s research focused on addressing the challenge of developing client-server web systems.
He observed that traditional web-based client-server application development is accomplished in two separate pieces. There is a front-end portion which runs on the client machine, and a back-end portion which runs on the server machine. Typically, the front-end component is coded in HTML and JavaScript, while the back-end is written in PHP, ASP.net, or some another language that can interface to a database.
The skill sets required for these two pieces are different. Often, the front-end and back-end are developed and tested completely independently, based purely on an interface specification.
Lipman addressed this by developing his framework, LIBERATED, which stands for “Lipman’s In-Browser EnviRonment for Application TEsting and Development.”
In the thesis, Lipman proposed a new methodology for web-based client-server application development, in which a simulated server is built into the browser environment to run the back-end code.
This design allowed the front-end code to issue requests to the back-end in either a synchronous or asynchronous fashion, and single-step, using a debugger, directly from front-end code into back-end code, thereby completely testing both components with the desktop browser environment.
In Lipman’s system, that exact same back-end code, now fully tested in the simulated environment, is then recompiled and moved to a real server.
In the defense, Lipman presented the detailed design of LIBERATED, and described how he used it to develop the App Inventor Community Gallery, a web system created for users of Google’s App Inventor programming environment for Android phones to share their projects.
Prof. Fred Martin served as Lipman’s thesis adviser, and Dr. Mark Sheldon served as his thesis reader. Lipman’s research was supported by a grant from Google.
A copy of the thesis is available at http://search.proquest.com/docview/928125360.
Block diagram of the LIBERATED architecture. The programmer uses JavaScript and the qooxdoo framework to code both the frontend and back pieces of the client-server system. The backend runs in a simulated environment in the developer’s browser, and when completed, is moved to a separate server machine. The same backend code is run in both places.
Two Computer Science majors have each won awards for their projects completed during a 54-hour Boston Startup Weekend “hackathon” held at Boston University. The event was held from Friday evening, October 14, through Sunday night, October 16, 2011.
Undergraduate Paul Senatillaka led the development of “Tabber,” an electric guitar that was augmented with LEDs in the fretboard, which would light up to teach you how to play songs. Senatillaka was the lead hardware and firmware developer, and created an Arduino-based circuit to control the LEDs, along with software using the Microsoft .NET framework to transmit song data to the guitar. Six fret positions over five strings were equipped with LEDs to display song data.
Tabber won first place for Best Technology and second place as an Overall Winner in the event. Senatillaka’s team included students and alums from Northeastern, Boston University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Separately, graduate student Amit Choudhary won a second place in User Design for his project, SponsorBar, which allows web site and event sponsors to easily create more engaging, active logos that would appear in the sponsorship logo strip at the top or bottom of a web site.
Choudhary’s system was developed in PHP using Yii framework. He directly implemented the Track Results Page, where live statistics of the number of visitors are managed.
In the Boston Startup Weekend event, individual participants dynamically form teams at when the event begins on Friday evening, and then work through the weekend to create working demonstrations of their ideas. The winners are selected by showing off their projects and making a business pitch on Sunday.
Senatillaka (foreground, with hands at keyboard) works on Tabber’s code while his teammates test and assemble hardware.
Close-up of Tabber’s fretboard, with embedded LEDs.
Screenshot from Choudhary’s SponsorBar web service. See a live demo at http://sponsorbar.fastfedora.com/yii/sponsorbar/ .
Undergraduate Paul Senatillaka led the development of “Tabber,” an electric guitar that was augmented with LEDs in the fretboard, which would light up to teach you how to play songs. Senatillaka was the lead hardware and firmware developer, and created an Arduino-based circuit to control the LEDs, along with software using the Microsoft .NET framework to transmit song data to the guitar. Six fret positions over five strings were equipped with LEDs to display song data.
Tabber won first place for Best Technology and second place as an Overall Winner in the event. Senatillaka’s team included students and alums from Northeastern, Boston University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Separately, graduate student Amit Choudhary won a second place in User Design for his project, SponsorBar, which allows web site and event sponsors to easily create more engaging, active logos that would appear in the sponsorship logo strip at the top or bottom of a web site.
Choudhary’s system was developed in PHP using Yii framework. He directly implemented the Track Results Page, where live statistics of the number of visitors are managed.
In the Boston Startup Weekend event, individual participants dynamically form teams at when the event begins on Friday evening, and then work through the weekend to create working demonstrations of their ideas. The winners are selected by showing off their projects and making a business pitch on Sunday.
Senatillaka (foreground, with hands at keyboard) works on Tabber’s code while his teammates test and assemble hardware.
Close-up of Tabber’s fretboard, with embedded LEDs.
Screenshot from Choudhary’s SponsorBar web service. See a live demo at http://sponsorbar.fastfedora.com/yii/sponsorbar/ .
Profs. Fred Martin (Computer Science) and Michelle Scribner-MacLean (Graduate School of Education) were guests at the Fifth Annual River Day, hosted by Congresswomen Niki Tsongas on September 15, 2011.
Martin and Scribner-MacLean joined Rep. Tsongas on the banks of the Concord River to describe their new four-year, $1.3M NSF award to create an internet-based platform, dubbed iSENSE, which will engage students in data-intensive science inquiry. Working with a number of school systems in the Merrimack Valley, Martin and Scribner-MacLean will support teachers in integrating the internet-based technology into their science instruction. Machine Science Inc., of Cambridge, MA, is a grant partner, and will involve schools in the Boston area in project work.
The grant also includes a partnership with the Tsongas Industrial History Center and the National Park Service. Martin and Scribner-MacLean will work with staff at these two institutions to develop a new version of their River As A Classroom field trip, which brings middle- and high-school students onto the Merrimack River to study water quality. Students and teachers who participate in the new river-based field trip will use the project’s “iSENSE” technology to record, visualize, and discuss river water quality measurements.
At the River Day event, Martin and Scribner-MacLean had the opportunity to present their work to the Lock Masters, a Lowell-based volunteer group who operates the centuries-old canal locks system in the city, and high school students from the Spindle City Corp, who volunteer their service for beautification projects in the city.
(L-R) Prof. Fred Martin, U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, and Prof. Michelle Scribner-MacLean on the banks of the Concord River behind the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center. For more information about Martin and Scribner-MacLean’s new science education award, see this story.
Martin and Scribner-MacLean joined Rep. Tsongas on the banks of the Concord River to describe their new four-year, $1.3M NSF award to create an internet-based platform, dubbed iSENSE, which will engage students in data-intensive science inquiry. Working with a number of school systems in the Merrimack Valley, Martin and Scribner-MacLean will support teachers in integrating the internet-based technology into their science instruction. Machine Science Inc., of Cambridge, MA, is a grant partner, and will involve schools in the Boston area in project work.
The grant also includes a partnership with the Tsongas Industrial History Center and the National Park Service. Martin and Scribner-MacLean will work with staff at these two institutions to develop a new version of their River As A Classroom field trip, which brings middle- and high-school students onto the Merrimack River to study water quality. Students and teachers who participate in the new river-based field trip will use the project’s “iSENSE” technology to record, visualize, and discuss river water quality measurements.
At the River Day event, Martin and Scribner-MacLean had the opportunity to present their work to the Lock Masters, a Lowell-based volunteer group who operates the centuries-old canal locks system in the city, and high school students from the Spindle City Corp, who volunteer their service for beautification projects in the city.
(L-R) Prof. Fred Martin, U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, and Prof. Michelle Scribner-MacLean on the banks of the Concord River behind the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center. For more information about Martin and Scribner-MacLean’s new science education award, see this story.
