Un-BEE-Lievable! Named VP Approaching Objects

[ SUMMER 2016 ] A publication of the University at BuffaloComputer Science and Engineering Department

[ FACULTY RESEARCH ] [ FACULTY NEWS ] KARTHIK DANTU IS GIVING LASER VISION TO ROBOT BEES ow do you teach robotic in- sects to see? By equipping them with tiny laser-powered sensors that act as eyes, en- abling the miniature machines to sense the size, shape and distance of Govindaraju Un-BEE-lievable! named VP approaching objects. for research “Essentially, it’s the How Might We Use and economic same technology that These Mini Machines? automakers are us- development ing to ensure that AGRICULTURE driverless cars don’t 1 Imagine a swarm crash into things,” pollinating crops. ongtime CSE faculty member Venu says Karthik Dantu, LGovindaraju was named vice presi- an assistant professor who joined CSE 2 SEARCH-AND- ACTUAL SIZE dent for research and economic devel- in 2013. “Only we need to shrink that RESCUE opment at the University at Buffalo. technology so it works on robot bees They could help find people during mudslides 3cm A SUNY Distinguished Professor of that are no bigger than a penny.” and other disasters. Computer Science and Engineering, The UB-led research project is an off- Govindaraju’s appointment was an- shoot of the RoboBee initiative, led by 3 INSPECTION nounced in January by UB President Harvard and Northeastern universi- They could be used to Satish K. Tripathi and Provost Charles ties, which aims to create insect-in- examine bridges and F. Zukoski. other hard to reach places. spired robots. “An internationally renowned expert Currently, the bees are capable of The technology could have so many in machine learning, pattern recog- tethered flight. But they lack depth nition and biometrics who has made perception. To address this, Dantu is uses, which have the potential to help transformative contributions to his equipping the bees with laser-based so many people in need.” field at a global level, Dr. Govindaraju [ CONTINUE ROBOBEES PAGE 2 ] – Karthik Dantu, assistant professor [ CONTINUE VP PAGE 2 ]

[ STUDENT NEWS ] Ready. Aim. Fire! CSE STUDENTS ENERGIZE YOUNGSTERS WITH FUN STEM EVENT

ou can tell kids that science and en- “We wanted to use our class project to Ygineering is cool. Or you can show create something that could teach the them. youngsters basic science concepts in a fun and interesting way,” said CSE stu- A team of CSE students opted for latter, dent Jacob Rutkowski. bringing a tennis ball shooting-cannon in April to Alden Middle School, He was joined by fellow CSE students Ivaylo Parankinov and Zhen Rong where dozens of budding scientists Huang, who helped the middle school- From left, CSE students: Jacob Rutowski, Bao Xu, Ivaylo learned basic scientific principles in a Parankinov, Kris Schindler (faculty advisor), Joseph Morrello fun and engaging way. [ CONTINUE SCHINDLER PAGE 2 ] and William Clark.

[ CSE LINKS | UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING | CSE.BUFFALO.EDU ] 3 [ VOICES ] [ FACES ] A Message from the WELCOME TO OUR NEW FACULTY AND STAFF Department Chair Marco Jesse GABOARDI HARTLOFF Assistant Teaching Professor Assistant PhD, University of Professor Torino and National PhD, University at Polytechnic Institute Buffalo of Lorraine Hobbies: Professional Hobbies: Hiking, firework shooter, bicycling, travelling home brewing beer Shi Jackie reetings alumni and friends, LI MARTEK The rise of the centrality of computing Assistant Staff Assistant makes this an exciting time for all of Professor MS, SUNY Buffalo Gus working in the field of computer science and PhD, Princeton State College engineering. University Hobbies: Reading, At CSE@UB, we are experiencing tremendous Hobby: Visiting parks, running growth. As you may know, we were one of the zoos and attractions early departments in the nation to establish a with family degree program in computer science, and we are very proud of our outstanding alumni in computer science and computer engineering Aziz Edward (from the previous CS and ECE departments to MOHAISEN SOBCZAK the current CSE department). For those of you Assistant Lead who haven’t visited UB lately, we now work in Professor programmer/ the new $75 million Davis Hall, located where PhD, University of analyst the trailers used to be. Next year will mark the Minnesota MA, University at department’s 50th anniversary. Hobby: Long- Buffalo It is thus my great pleasure to bring you this distance running Hobby: Playing edition of CSE Links, which spotlights the the cello outstanding work our faculty, staff, students and alumni are engaged in. You’ll also see some new faces. Please send us news about you and [ FROM SCHINDLER PAGE 1 ] our alumni and we will be happy to include them in future editions (see Page 4 for contact ers operate the cannon, and by Joseph a teacher or other adult while in grade information). Morrello and William Clark, who school and wanted to pay it forward for served on safety patrol, collecting the the next generation. They teamed up on We are planning a multi-event 50th anniversa- fired tennis balls and keeping the crowd the project as part of their computer en- ry celebration. Activities will include a yearlong gineering capstone design course, taught away from the target. Distinguished Speaker Series from fall 2016 to by Kris Schindler, teaching assistant fall 2017; a special commencement event for our All five said that they were influenced by professor in CSE. “Gold” graduates in 2017; and the main gala from Sept. 28-Oct. 1, 2017. Please keep your calendar open for the gala. I personally invite each [ FROM VP PAGE 1 ] [ FROM ROBOBEES PAGE 1 ] of you to join us as we carry on CSE’s tradition of excellent scholarship and education. Also, if has brought tremendous expertise to surveying technology called lidar. you have ideas and suggestions related to the this position…,” Tripathi said. These systems are typically the size celebration activities, or want to volunteer to Govindaraju, who had served in the of a camping lantern. Dantu wants to help, please let us know. position on an interim bases since Sep- make them much smaller. As always, your support of CSE@UB is highly tember 2014, has been the principal in- To do so, he is creating novel percep- appreciated. Let us work together to strengthen vestigator or co-principal investigator tion and navigation algorithms that the research and education programs, and on more than $65 million in research enable the bee to process and map the improve the reputation and ranking, which will funding. His work focuses on the ap- world around it. Meanwhile, Univer- be beneficial to all of us. plication of machine learning and pat- sity of Florida researchers are build- tern recognition. Yours, ing tiny sensors for the bees. Harvard “Venu is an innovative scholar with researchers will then incorporate the an ambitious vision for UB’s research technology into the robots. enterprise,” Zukoski said. “UB is fortu- Dantu’s work—reported on by Smith- nate to have an individual of such ca- sonian Magazine, NBC News, IEEE pacity in this important position.” Spectrum and dozens of other news , PhD, IEEE Fellow Chunming Qiao A graduate of the Indian Institute of outlets—may eventually be used in Professor and Chair Technology in Kharagpur, India, Govin- wearable technology, endoscopic You can contact Dr. Qiao at [email protected] daraju received master’s and doctoral tools, smartphones, tablets and other degrees in computer science from UB. mobile devices.

2 [ CSE LINKS | UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING | CSE.BUFFALO.EDU ] [ EVENTS ] Kid’s Day brings 500 students to Davis Hall EVENT ALIGNS WITH puter science concepts without using WHITE HOUSE EFFORTS TO a computer. Large squares were taped on the floor, and the children moved PROMOTE STEM around the squares by following a series of prompts to sort numbers in in- oughly 500 students and their par- creasing order. ents filled Davis Hall on Dec. 11 for a R “I liked the sorting games because we night of fun and games designed to cel- could participate in them and not just ebrate and promote computer science. have someone showing it to us. It was Dubbed “CSE Kid’s Day,” the CSE event a cool way to learn!” said Aditi Arun, featured robot demos, games designed a seventh-grader at Transit Middle to teach programming concepts and School. kid-friendly interactive projects led by Kid’s Day, which was part of UB’s cel- UB students. ebration of national Computer Science The most popular spot for families with Education Week, aligns with a White younger children was the third floor of House-sponsored initiative that aims to Davis Hall, where youngsters could pro- get more students learning how to code, gram robots to do fun things like follow a Getting one of program, script, design and harness the line, navigate a maze or dance. our robots to power of computing to solve new chal- “We got the kids excited by showing lenges. them various ways to write code and dance to music “I know that when I was growing up, I program a computer. Getting one of our was very exciting had no idea what computer science was robots to dance to music was very excit- all about,” said computer science major ing for the kids,” said Bob DeBortoli, a for the kids!” Meg Arnold. “By opening up our de- computer engineering major. – Bob DeBortoli, partment to the community, we can edu- In another activity, kids played games computer cate kids about computer science and that taught programming and com- engineering major hopefully spark their interest.”

[ AWARDS ] FACULTY AWARDS STUDENT AWARDS Jing Gao, top right, an assistant profes- Thiru Vikram, bottom right, a former sor who joined CSE in 2012, has been CSE and electrical engineering, is presi- awarded a CAREER grant from the Na- dent and CEO of Buffalo Automation tional Science Foundation. The $500,613 Group, a startup company that won UB’s award will support her research, which Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepre- focuses on developing new systems to ac- neurship Competition in April. The com- curately mine data from mobile devices, pany, which is making autonomous navi- social media and other online platforms gation technology for boats, will receive to provide inexpensive, sustainable and $25,000 and another $27,000 in in-kind large-scale solutions that improve the ef- services. It also includes SEAS students ficiency and cost of transportation, health Alexander Zhitelzeyf, bottom middle, care and other industries. and Emile Reynolds, bottom left. Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, top left, as- CSE established this year awards to sistant professor who joined CSE in 2011, recognize outstanding undergraduate has been awarded a CAREER grant from students. Here are the inaugural class: the National Science Foundation. The Leadership/Service award: Gela Malek $555,385 award will support his research, Pour for her efforts to establish a local which focuses on developing next genera- chapter of Scientista, a national organi- tion WiFi and cellular networks that aim to zation that empowers pre-professional solve wireless traffic jams caused by the women in STEM, at UB. growing number of mobile devices and bandwidth-hungry applications. Entrepreneurship award: Thiru Vikram for his work in establishing a promising Marco Gaboardi, assistant professor who startup company, Buffalo Automation joined CSE in 2015, has been awarded a Group. $527,867 grant from the National Science Foundation. The award, part of a larger Research award (two winners): Paul grant involving researchers at Harvard Kowalski for developing algorithms for University, involves creating a collection constructing similarity graphs for mas- of tools that allow government agencies, sive DNA sequence data. Vicky Zheng banks, hospitals and other organizations to for developing algorithms to identify a set share valuable data without releasing per- of short protein sub-sequences for vac- sonal information or other sensitive data. cine designs.

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CSE is celebrating [ SPOTLIGHT ] ALUMNI NEWS th its 50 anniversary! CSE alumnus Dan Magnuszewski, left, (’05, BS) spoke at Davis Hall on March 29 on what it’s like to be an engineer navigating the world of tech startups. Magnuszewski is co-founder and CTO of Buffalo-based ACV Auctions, a dealer to dealer market- place for used vehicles.

Please keep your calendar open: Fellow CSE alumnus Bob Girardi, right, (’79, BA), president and CEO of Amherst-based SofTrek SEPT. 28- Corp., also gave a seminar at Davis Hall. He spoke OCT. 1, 2017 April 19 about agile soft- ware development, which We are planning events that will is a set of principles in which requirements highlight 50 years of excellence and solutions evolve through collabora- at CSE, and we want you join us. VISIT OUR YOUTUBE PAGE TO tion between self-organizing, cross-func- More details to come. VIEW THESE TALKS AND MORE! tional teams.

[ VIEWS ] ATTN: CSE ALUMNI We want to hear from you! Keep us updated on your personal and professional lives. Visit: bit.ly/28Iqakd and complete the “STAY IN TOUCH” survey. Also, please send in news, photos, videos, achievements, awards and more to [email protected]. We will include these items in upcoming newsletters! And don’t forget to connect with our social media sites! FACEBOOK facebook.com/ubcompsci TWITTER Nearly 50 years after its founding, CSE is stronger than ever, and our faculty and staff @UBCompsci continues to grow. Here, the department poses outside of its home, Barbara and Jack Davis Hall on UB’s North Campus.

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