News Archive Fall 2000

COM S 374 Renumbered Date: Thursday, November 30, 2000.  COM S 374 has been renumbered to COM S 474 so that it will qualify as an elective.  Those students who pre-enrolled for COM S 374 will need to enroll for COM S 474 in January.  The new CID is 889-303.  Enrollment is not limited, so there is no danger of being closed out of the course.  

Professor Morrisett Recipient of Presidential Award  Date: Monday, November 6,  2000.  Greg Morrisett, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, was one of 60 researchers to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering (PECASE) in a ceremony at the White House on October 24.  For more details about PECASE and Professor Morrisett's research go to: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct00/PECASE2000.ws.html

Why Graduate School? Date: Friday, October 26, 2000.  Barbara J. Grosz, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, will speak on Friday, November 10, on the topic of graduate education in Computer Science.  The talk, entitled "Why Graduate School (and why at Harvard?)",  will be presented in Upson 5130 at 3 pm. Professor Grosz, a Cornell alum, is the recipient of many honors and awards, including the 1999 Distinguished Service Award of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. 

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MIT Media Lab Director to Speak on Oct. 20 Date: Thursday, October 12, 2000.  Neil Gershenfield, director of the Physics and Media Group of the MIT Media Lab will present a lecture entitled "Things That Think" at noon on Friday, October 20, in room G10 of the Biotechnology Building.  Gershenfield's lecture is the first of a new distinguished lecture series sponsored by the Faculty of Computing and Information. Gershenfield holds a PhD in physics from Cornell.  Currently,  three former Computer Science undergrads are doing research at the Media Lab: Andy Wilson '93,  Eric Scheirer '93,  and Chris Kline '97.

Mentoring Service for Women in Science and Engineeering Date: Thursday, October 12, 2000.  Female engineering and science majors will be able to participate this fall in MentorNet, an electronic service that links students with mentors in business and industry.  One hundred Cornell students participated in MentorNet last year, and applications are now being accepted for the 2000-2001 academic year.  Students interested in participating should go to the MentorNet site: http://www.mentornet.net

Genomic Database A Challenge for Computational Biology Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2000.  The collaborative efforts of biologists and computer scientists at Cornell may yield insight into the structure and function of proteins, as sequenced in the human genome.  For details see:  http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/10.5.00/ss-computational_bio.html

Spring 2001 Math Offering Date: Wednesday, October 4, 2000.  MATH 424,  Wavelets and Fourier Series will be offered in Spring 2001. This 4-credit course has math prerequisites (Math 221-222, 223-224, 293-294 or permission of instructor); more details can be found in Courses of Study: http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/Courses/ 

NEW! Engineering Minor in Computer Science Date: Friday, September 29, 2000.  For eligible Engineering undergraduates in eligible fields. The CS Minor is for students who anticipate that computer science will have a prominent role to play in their academic and professional careers.  For more information on eligibility and requirements for the minor, see: http//www.cs.cornell.edu/ugrad/CSMinor.htm

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New Course Offerings for Spring 2001 Date: Friday, September 22, 2000.  The computer science department has an impressive selection of new course offerings for Spring 2001.  For course descriptions and scheduling information, see: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/ugrad/NewCourses.html

Software That Adapts and Evolves Date: Friday, September 22, 2000.  As part of its Information Technology Initiative, the National Science Foundation will fund the Adaptive Software Project, whose objective it will be to develop software  that can adjust to changing conditions in computer simulations. Keshav Pingali, Cornell Professor of Computer Science, will be the principal investigator, working with computer scientists, physicists, and engineers from Cornell as well as four other institutions. Read the full story at: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/9.21.00/adaptive_software.html

All Information N Clicks Away Date: Monday, September 18, 2000.  Computer Science Professor Jon Kleinberg has developed a new mathematical model that "might have a very practical use in helping to reduce the number of clicks needed when surfing the web, as well as helping to speed up other kinds of networks."  Reported in a recent article in Nature, Kleinberg's  model is a refinement of the earlier work of two Cornellians.  For more details on Professor Kleinberg's work see: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/8.31.00/six_degrees_sep.html.

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RoboCup Wins Again Date: Friday, September 15, 2000.  Cornell's Big Red team won its second consecutive championship in the fourth annual RoboCup tournament.  Held in Melbourne Australia earlier this year, the Small Robots competition featured 23 international teams.  According to the team's advisor, Professor Raffaello D'Andrea, new innovations in robot design and AI contributed to improved maneuverability and control.  Student team members were Bryan Audiffred '00. Michael Babish '99, Tobias Welge-Luessen '00, Josh Pollak '00, Saeed Saeed '00, Nicole Schlegel '01, Mark Schwager '00, and Will Stokes '03. For more about this year's competition and the Robocup project, see: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept00/Robocup.ws.html

Hawkins ('79) is Entrepreneur of the Year Date: Tuesday, September 12, 2000.  Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot, will be honored as the 2000 Cornell Entrepreneur of the year on Friday, September 22, at 4 pm in the Statler Auditorium.  The lecture is free and open to the public.  For more information see:  http://epe.cornell.edu

ECE 210 to be offered in Spring 2001 Date: Monday, September 11, 2000.  Professor David Delchamps' Introduction to Circuits (ECE 210) will be offered in Spring 2001, meeting on MWF 10:10 -11:00, instead of the previous and current (Fall 2000) meeting time of MWF 9:05 - 9:55.

CSUG Software Updates Fall 2000 Date: Monday, September 11, 2000.  For a list of the software currently installed in the CS Undergraduate Lab, see: http://www.csuglab.cornell.edu/Info/csuglab-software.html

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Professor Elber Leads Efforts in Computational Biology Date: Tuesday, August 29, 2000.   The Computational Biology Unit based at the Cornell Theory Center is one of three focus fields in a new biological sciences research program.  Professor Ron Elber of Cornell's Computer Science Department will lead the unit. Collaborators in the fields of chemical biology and cancer biology represent Cornell's Weill Medical College, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Rockefeller University in the new program. It is anticipated that computational biology will play a major role in decoding the human genome, as researchers try to sort out the complex nature of genetic diseases, such as schizophrenia and cancer.  For more details, read the Cornell Chronicle news brief at http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicles/8.17.00/comp_biology.html.

NEW COURSE!  CS 150 - Great Ideas From Computer Science Date: Friday, August 25, 2000.  This mini-course is for freshman (and anyone else) who anticipate that computer science will have a prominent role to play in their academic careers and beyond.  Eight expository lectures will be used to give snapshots of the field and its rapidly expanding impact.  Using the lectures and source materials, each student will identify some particular aspect of computer science that is of interest and put together a small expository website that discusses the related research challenges and/or applications.  In addition, each student will prepare an 8-semester academic plan that would successfully set the stage for graduate study or employment in the chosen area of interest.  For more information on dates, times and lecture topics, visit http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs150. 

Consultants Needed! Date: Thursday, August 24, 2000. They say that teaching is the best way to learn. Why
not check it out? Consultants are still needed for CS 100, 130, 211, and 314. Come to Upson 303. Applications are available at the front desk.

COM S 212 renumbered COM S 312  Date: Monday, July 31, 2000.  COM S 212 has been renumbered COM S 312 and is now required for the CS major.  Therefore, CS majors who have not taken COM S 410 are now required to take both COM S/ENGRD 211 and COM S 312.

In addition, COM S 410 is no longer offered.  The material has been absorbed into COM S 211 and 482.  Non-majors may take a similar course, COM S 409, which is offered in the spring.

More detailed information about these changes is available in chart form.

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BRAIN Places Second in International AUV Competition Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2000. The Cornell Big Red Artificial Intelligence Navigator (BRAIN) team won second place at the third annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition held July 7-9 at Lago Dorado, on the grounds of Disney's Coronado Springs resort in Orlando, Fla. Cornell's submarine took first place in the Safety of Design, Technical Merit, and Craftsmanship categories, and tied for second place overall with the competition favorite and two-time defending winner, MIT. This is the first year Cornell students have participated in the event; the team was organized last fall by sophomores Serguei Vassilvitskii, Nidhi Kalra, and Walter Change and advised by Asst. Prof. Kevin Kornegay, EE. Read all about it at http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/news.

Cool Moves: Robocup Team 2000 Date: Wednesday, July 12, 2000. If you've ever wondered how an "omnidrive" might improve a game of robot soccer, or if you would just like to check in on how Cornell's RoboCup Team 2000 is shaping up, tune in to http://www.engineering.cornell.edu, download the RoboCup video, and see for yourself!

Champion Robot Team Prepares To Take On World Date: Friday, June 30, 2000.  A recent message from Dave Roth '90 alerted us to the fact that a video feed is now available that provides an update on the progress of this year's defending robot soccer team as they prepare for the 2000 world championships of robot soccer. The RoboSoccer team will compete in the World Robocup Championship in Sydney, Australia in August. 

As for CS alum Roth, he now works for LoudEye Technologies who produced the video clip. Roth writes, "Our VP of Production, Jim VanKerkhove [and a fellow CU engineering alum], was up on campus a few months ago to give a talk -- at the same time, he volunteered some of our production services to the engineering school."

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New "Rules" for Dot.com Start Ups Date: Friday, June 23, 2000.  According to a recent article in BusinessWeek, emerging dot.coms will have to pay attention to some new “rules” when entering the cyber fray of business on the Internet. The first is a change in the traditional dot-com mantra of B2B and B2C (a.k.a.“business-to-business” and “business-to-consumer”). Instead of expensive and long- term business plans, investors are now looking for a business’ P2P— or “Path to Profitability”. Investors want to see profitability in less than a year, (which could include staffing and marketing cuts) or they are less likely to ante up. The next rule is to find private investors. The public market has proven too unsteady and risky, so dot-com businesses are returning to venture capitalists to provide early funding until they can afford to go public.

The third new rule is to change business plans. Many companies who failed at running a web site are finding it profitable to sell services and technology to other web sites, for example. This leads to the fourth rule that says “good technology trumps glitzy marketing.” If an investor sees unique technology they are more likely to buy in.

The fifth new rule stresses the quality of customers rather than the quantity. Repeat visitors and buyers generate more profit than those who only visit once, therefore it is generally more lucrative to spend more on these loyal few than the masses. This is echoed in the stock market’s willingness to reward those companies who work to improve customer relations over other dot-com companies who do not. Analysts agree that stock market investors will begin to “sweeten up” on dot-coms, however this will only be reflected on those companies who emerge as leaders with clear Paths to Profitability. (BusinessWeek, June 19, 2000, p.101).

Ron Elber becomes Associate Director of CTC Date: Thursday, June 22, 2000.  Ron Elber, CS professor and lead on The Theory Center's (CTC's) NCRR Resource for Biomedical Scientists, has agreed to become an Associate Director of the Theory Center. Along with Assoc. Dir. Tony Ingraffea, Ron will provide valuable faculty insight and input into the strategic direction of CTC. In addition to leading CTC's structural biology emphasis, Ron also chairs Cornell's Computational Genomics Committee.

Graduation 2000 Awards Date: Tuesday, June 20, 2000. Jonathan Marx Senior Prizes were awarded to Helen C. Jen and Priya Rajan.  These prizes recognize outgoing and energetic students who are community minded. The Alan Marx Teaching Award was given to Lisa Faith Fishman, for excellence in the support of undergraduate teaching.  The Marx senior awards are provided in memory of Jonathan Marx '85 and his father Alan Marx, JD '61. 

The Computer Science Prize for Academic Excellence was given to Long Yin Ronnie Choy. This award is given annually at graduation and recognizes a student who has achieved excellence in academics, promise in the area of research (typically, published work), and a commitment to the field of Computer Science in terms of teaching and/or other leadership activities.

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