Professor Emeritus Arthur M. Farley has made major contributions to the field of computer science during his 37 year tenure in the Department of Computer and Information Science. Dr. Farley has published over 70 research articles in academic journals and conference proceedings in the areas of artificial intelligence and applied graph theory. Dr. Farley's research in artificial intelligence addresses problems in cognitive modeling, problem solving and planning, qualitative modeling of physical and economic systems, and argumentation. In his inter-disciplinary research, he collaborates with faculty members in departments of psychology, economics and human physiology. His research in ...»

While many people think of computer science as a field that deals only in facts, Hannah Pruse knows it's also an art that requires a great deal of creativity when designing software, algorithms, and languages. "I really enjoy challenging myself to think," says Pruse. "And computer science provides many valuable opportunities to do so both logically and creatively." Read more of this interview at http://admissions.uoregon.edu/majors/cis/hannah_pruse. ...»

University of Oregon student Vasha Dutell's work will go to the moon and back. At the recommendation of her UO physics professors, she arranged to spend a summer interning at the NASA Ames Research Center in the NASA Ames Robotics Academy. There, she worked on the student-run Lunar Micro Rover project, creating a small lunar robot that will explore and stream video from the moon’s surface. Dutell worked on the radiation mitigation team, simulating the ionizing radiation that the rover will be exposed to during the mission. "It was an incredible experience," she says. "I was able to help create something which will actually be sent to the moon." Read more of this interview at ...»

Kevin Butler has been invited to attend this year's Microsoft Research Faculty Summit to be held in Redmond, WA, USA during July 16-17, 2012. Each year, Microsoft Research hosts an annual faculty summit. Leading academic researchers and educators join with Microsoft researchers to explore the latest research results, collectively discuss the challenges faced by the community, search for the best approaches to meeting those challenges, and identify new research opportunities. The participants’ range of interests and the breadth of the technical areas covered in the program ensure a unique experience and provide a venue for meeting with colleagues and friends across the full range of ...»

A symposium entitled "Textualities in the Digital Age" was held Saturday, April 14th, 2012 in room 101 of the Knight Library. The symposium addressed a wide range of questions regarding the impacts of digital technology upon our notions of text, from writing to reading. Speakers included Dr. Richard Furuta, an early graduate of our Masters program who spearheaded development of the Cervantes site, and Prof. Stephen Fickas, who talked about Textbook 2.0 ideas. Dr. Stanley Fish, literary and law professor, who is known more recently as a Opinionator for the NYTimes, provided a keynote commentary. Please see Textualities in the Digital Age Symposium for more information and details. ...»

The Department of Computer and Information Science hosted the 2nd Annual Computer Security Day on Friday, April 20, 2012 at the University of Oregon's Jaqua Auditorium. Last year's event was a great success, with five distinguished speakers from around the country representing academia, industry, and government and 70 attendees from throughout the university, the community, and the state. This year proved to be another informative, exciting, and entertaining event. We have a great list of distinguished speakers lined up this year, which included: Radia Perlman, Intel Labs, Seattle (pictured) Paul Van Oorschot, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Drew Dean, DARPA, Washington DC Stephen ...»

Representatives from Raytheon's Security Innovation division visited the CIS department on February 23 and 24, and hosted a "capture the flag" (CtF) hacker challenge event for students interested in learning more about practical computer security skills. The challenge was a great success with 8 teams competing and some excellent scores put up by our students. Our visitors were suitably impressed. "In most of our travels, students have no clue what exploitation is about or even heard of a buffer overflow. Almost everyone we talked to at Oregon had either been exposed to the subject or had written such exploits themselves," said Raytheon software engineer Christopher Stricklan. Drawing on ...»

In 1942, when computers were human and women were underestimated, a group of female mathematicians helped win a war and usher in the computer age. Screening of "Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII" and a discussion with filmmaker LeAnn Erickson was held March 2, 2012 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. in 150 Columbia Hall, University of Oregon. LeAnn Erickson is an associate professor, Department of Film and Media Arts, Temple University, and has been an independent video and filmmaker for more than 20 years. For more details about this event, please see Center for the Study of Women in Society's web site. Sponsored in part by the UO Women in Computer Science (WICS). ...»

The Women in Computer Science (WICS) group is launching Project HATCH 2012, a 15-week effort to introduce computer science concepts to Elementary, Middle, and High School students from local schools. WICS is partnering with Willamalane Parks & Recreation and Springfield Public Schools to offer after-school classes that teach students Scratch, a drag-and-drop programming language developed at MIT that is widely used for introducing programming to people of all ages. The goals are to help young people feel empowered by technology, to open their minds to the innumerable applications of programming and computer science, and to encourage creativity, imagination, and fun! The project was ...»

Outstanding undergraduate Hannah Pruse is one of four students selected by the University of Oregon as nominees for the nationally prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was created in 1986 to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, natural sciences, or engineering and to foster excellence in those fields. Up to 300 recipients are selected from nominations by universities and colleges across the country. In her application, Ms. Pruse described research she is doing with Dr. Kevin Butler on co-residency detection in the cloud infrastructure. This research aims to demonstrate the severity ...»

Fourth international workshop on Algebraic, Topological and Complexity Aspects of Graph Covers will convene in Eugene at the end of January. The previous three workshops in the series were held in Finse, Norway, Auckland, New Zealand, and Kralova Studna, Slovakia. The workshop's main focus is on graph coverings and their applications in different areas of theoretical computer science such as models of computation, computational complexity, and algebraic graph theory.  Invited talks by internationally renown researchers from New Zealand, Japan, USA, and Slovakia, as well as other presentations and discussions will take place in the CIS colloquium room, 220 Deschutes Thursday through ...»

Students from the Computer and Information Science Department attended the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, this year from November 9-12 in Portland, OR. The Grace Hopper Celebration is a combination technical research conference, career fair, and forum for discussion of women in computing. It is the largest conference of its kind, last year attracting over 2000 attendees from around the globe. The UO Women in Computer Science (WICS) group secured conference funding for all UO CIS graduate and undergraduate students who submitted a statement of interest. Five of the students attended the conference on a departmental scholarship that covers registration and hotel ...»

In anticipation of the 2012 Centenary Celebration of the Life and Work of Alan Turing we have a Turing-O-Lantern in our front office for the week prior to Halloween! This unique piece of pumpkin art is the work of Karen Luks, daughter of Emeritus Professor Gene Luks. And while this organic creation will ultimately be composted, it will live on exponentially in the Facebook and CIS web site realm. For more information on The Alan Turing Year, see: http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/. ...»

Eugene and clouds — they go together like Ducks and touchdowns. It is perhaps fitting, then, that computer and information science professor Allen Malony is leading a team that will install a UO cloud computing system in late spring 2012. The project will be funded by a $1.97 million National Science Foundation grant awarded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Cloud computing — shared resources and software stored on central servers that users access via the Internet — is designed to improve users — productivity while providing all their computing needs. The UO cloud, called ACISS (Applied Computational Instrument for Scientific Synthesis), ...»

Second year Masters student Nikhil Tripathi was awarded the 'Most Inspirational Intern' award at Corbis, where he recently completed his summer internship. Corbis, founded by Bill Gates, is described in its own words as "a creative resource for advertising, marketing and media professionals, providing a comprehensive selection of photography, illustration, footage, typefaces and rights clearance services." http://www.corbisimages.com/. Nikhil's work mainly focused on developing web pages for the Corbis web site, but also included solving bugs and implementing some requirements. The award mainly highlights Nikhil's ability to deliver assigned work on time, enthusiasm about each task at ...»

Dr. Kathleen Freeman Hennessy will join the instructional staff of the Computer and Information Science Department as an instructor and the Director of Undergraduate Studies starting in the fall term of the 2011-2012 academic year. Kathy received a B.S. degree in Mathematics with Honors from Bucknell University in 1982 and her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1993 from the University of Oregon. Her research investigated computational models of argumentation. She has taught a variety of undergraduate CIS classes in the Computer Science Department at the University of Oregon, including upper and lower division and introductory courses, as well as a teaching effectiveness seminar for graduate ...»

UO CIS and UO Information Services hosted the ACM Pacific Region Programming Contest at the University of Oregon in Eugene on November 5, 2011. UO was one of six sites where teams from the region compete to solve as many programming problems as they can during the five hour contest. UO teams compete in the Northwest Regionals against teams from Alaska, Hawaii, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, northern California and western Nevada. Top teams from each region are invited to the international finals which will be held in Poland in May 2012. In 2002, the UO teams competed against almost 80 other teams at DeVry University near Seattle. One of the UO teams, Buffleheads, swept ...»

Professor Kevin Butler has received a three-year, $499,500 grant from the National Science Foundation's Trustworthy Computing program to study the security of portable storage devices. Flash drives and other portable media have become virtually ubiquitous in daily life, since they are convenient to carry around and hold gigabytes of information. They pose real security risks to organizations and governments, however; in a widely-reported case, classified data leaked from military networks was exfiltrated to portable media and found its way to WikiLeaks, leading to a ban on flash drives by the Department of Defense. As principal investigator on this grant, Prof. Butler will be examining ...»