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CSE Tutor Reunion a Success!

"On Friday evening, April 25, 2008, CSE Tutors , old and new, came together to be recognized by the CSE Tutor Reunion. The two hour event had almost 200 attendees including a dozen attending at Google in Mountain View participating via video teleconference. The catered event was filled with laughter and nostalgia through renewing connections made long ago. Faculty reconnected with their former tutors; alumni tutors reconnected with each other, and current tutors connected with alums to get a glimpse into their own futures. A program of brief yet touching speeches were given by CSE lecturers and alumni tutors telling of stories of CSE courses back in the day. The event announced the formation of SAGE (Students Achieving Guiding Enriching), a new student organization aimed to enable more students to have a tutoring experience. If you are interested in giving to the tutor program click here

CSE Majors deliver "The Byte" at the 2008 Junkyard Derby
This year brought triumph to CSE majors Cameron Esfahani, Bhishan Hermajani, Tamir Husain, Le Shu, Bryant Chou and Trent Tai in the 2008 Junkyard Derby. Their winning entry "The Byte" took first place amongst over 50 other competitors. Sponsored by Yahoo! and the UC San Diego Triton Engineering Student Council, this tournament challenged competitors by having each team transform junk into a functional boxcar. In less than 40 hours teams were released among a campus parking lot full of junk. From a collection of items like old bicycles, rusty wheel chairs, broken toys, old kayaks and wood palates, teams made a frantic dash to collect the garbage and transform it into a vehicle. Despite the rain, teams battled for the triumph of having the fastest mode of junk-transportation that stays upright through the finish line. Hundreds of fans cheered the contestants as they drove their motley collaboration down the slope between Peterson Hall and Geisel Library. This is the first time for Computer Science students to take top prize at the Derby, which began 5 years ago.

CSE Gets New AAAI Fellow
Professor Yoav Freund has been elected as a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The AAAI Fellows Program was started in 1990 to recognize individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions--usually over at least a ten year period--to the field of artificial intelligence. Yoav was elected Fellow in recognition of his significant contributions to machine learning, including the development of practical boosting algorithms. He is the first UCSD professor to be elected as AAAI Fellow. Congratulations, Yoav!

Digital Fog Machine
CSE Graphics Faculty leave conference goers in a "fog". Professors Henrik Wann Jensen, Matthias Zwicker, and Ph.D student Wojciech Jarosz presented improved "photon mapping algorithms" at Eurographics 2008 in Crete, Greece on April 17. They have created a fog and smoke machine for computer graphics that cuts the computational cost of making realistic smoky and foggy 3-D images, such as beams of light from a lighthouse piercing thick fog. This new work is part of a shift in the computer graphics, film, animation and video game industries toward greater realism through the use of "ray tracing algorithms." Much of the realism in ray tracing technologies comes from calculating how the light in computer generated images would behave if it were set loose in the real world and followed the laws of nature. The full JSOE press release can be found here.

Computer Makeover
The world is a little more beautiful these days thanks to CSE's David Kriegman and Satya Mallick's new startup company www.taaz.com. Anyone with a digital photograph can now apply more than 4,000 makeup products with the click of a mouse. The computer scientists invented an algorithm for separating gloss from non-gloss in digital images - a technical feat crucial for taaz.com's patented approach to applying photorealistic makeup to images. It is also useful for more traditional computer vision applications like face recognition and endoscopic enhancement. For more information click here.

Dissertations Chosen for 2007 ACM Competition
Two individuals' dissertations have been chosen for submission for the 2007 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Competition by the CSE graduate committee. PhD graduate Rakesh Kumar's dissertation is entitled "Holistic Design for Multi-Core Architectures." Rakesh is now an Assistant Professor at UIUC. Nuno Bandeira's dissertation is entitled "Spectral Networks Algorithms for De Novo Interpretation of Tandem Mass Spectra." Nuno is currently a CSE Postdoc, transitioning to Project Scientist.

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