• Champion Robot Team Prepares To Take On World Date: Friday, June 30, 2000
• New Dot.com Launch Imperatives Date: Friday, June 23, 2000
• Ron Elber becomes Associate Director of CTC Date: Thursday, June 22, 2000
• Graduation 2000 Awards Date: Tuesday, June 20, 2000
  
  
• Big Red Venture Capital Fund created Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000
• 1999-2000 Consulting Awards  Date: Friday, May 26, 2000
• Intel CEO Craig Barrett Gives Talk  Date: Monday, May 8, 2000

• ASCU Elects Officers for 2000-2001  Date: Monday, May 1, 2000

• Announcing Marx Senior Prizes Date: Monday, April 17, 2000

• Hartmanis wins CRA Distinguished Service Award  Date: Thursday, March 30, 2000
• Cornell Theory Center Nominated for Smithsonian Award  Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2000
• Five Sophs Win Lockheed Martin Research Awards  Date: Monday, March 13, 2000
• Allegra Angus '01 Wins Intel WiSE Scholarship  Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2000
  
  
• Spring Information Session to Be Held on March 13, 2000  Date: Tuesday, February 29, 2000
• BOOM '00 to Take Place on February 23, 2000  Date: Wednesday, February 2, 2000
  
  
• COM S 664 Time Change for Spring 2000  Date: Monday, January 24, 2000

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."

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.

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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.

Big Red Venture Capital Fund created Date: Tuesday, May, 30, 2000.  According to David BenDaniel, the Don and Margi Berens Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Johnson School of Management, even in the current age of dot-com millionaires, the basic elements needed to launch a successful IPO aren’t that different.  BenDaniel states that you still need the basics of “…the right idea at the right time, a thorough, well-thought-out business plan, an accurate estimate of how much money will be needed to launch the business and, sometime hardest to find, the money itself.”  Alex Ivanov and John Kyles, two Park Fellows at the Johnson School of Management, have come up with a strategy that will now make it possible for people with good ideas to capitalize on them.  Along with assistance from several other students, as well as Professor BenDaniel, Ivanov and Kyles have developed the Big Red Venture Capital Fund.  Once it is fully capitalized, BenDaniel estimates that the Fund will have upwards of $10 million dollars to invest in “…the venture ideas that look most promising.”  (complete article)

1999-2000 Consulting Awards Date: Friday, May 26, 2000. At the department's annual award ceremony on May 10th, nine undergrads were recognized for their outstanding contributions as course consultants and undergrad TAs. These students provide an invaluable service to both the teaching staff and the students enrolled in computer science courses. The 1999-2000 award winners are Brandon Bray (CS 212), Lisa Fishman (CS 100), Tony Frasso (CS 100), Henry Hsu (CS 100), Douglas Kong (CS 100), Corinna Krantz (CS 314), Adam Kravetz (CS 100), Alvin Mai (CS 100), Thomas Salter (CS 100).

Intel CEO Craig Barrett Offers High-wired View of Future Date: May 8, 2000.  Intel’s CEO Craig Barrett spoke to a “packed house” in Kennedy Hall’s David Alumni Auditorium this past Wednesday as part of his Lewis H. Durland Memorial Lecture.  His talk entitled “Education and Technology in the New Economy” brought to light issues that will have a direct impact on our country’s educational and commerce systems in the future.  Barrett recounted that while the past three decades have brought about much positive change with the introduction of networked computers, email, and the internet, we as a country need to look beyond our own geographical borders at the “big picture” to see what will become the next largest developments.  He went on to state that the global Internet community needs to find both a common language and standards to do business with one another.  Barrett said that our success in the “new economy” depends on our ability to produce a “well educated, employable populace.”  He went on to throw down the gauntlet to both private industry as well as academic institutions to become more proactive about improving the overall quality of K-through-12 system, saying that “the average 12^th grader in the United States is at the bottom of the pile in math and science comprehension.”  (complete article)

ACSU Elects Officers for 2000-2001 Date: Monday, May 1, 2000. ACSU members recently elected new officers for the upcoming academic year.  They are: President - Ayan Mandal; Vice-President - Jay Kumar; Secretary - Kate Oliver; Treasurer - Amit Gupta; Junior-at-Large - Jordan Erenrich; and Sophomore-at-Large - Priyanka Nishar.  

Announcing Marx Senior Prizes Date: Monday, April 17, 2000. Prizes of $500 each will be awarded to two graduating seniors who have majored in computer science. Winners will be selected based on demonstrated leadership qualities, extra-curricular activities (both in and out of Computer Science), and for being generally friendly and helpful to classmates and others. Additionally, all applicants must have at least a 3.0 grade average. For more information, see prize poster. Deadline for submission: May 8, 2000. Details & submission instructions.

Hartmanis wins CRA Distinguished Service Award  Date: Thursday, March 30, 2000.  The Computing Research Association's (CRA) Distinguished Service Award has been bestowed upon Juris Hartmanis, Professor of Computer Science, Cornell University,  in recognition of his leadership and service in computing research. The CRA is an association of more than 180 North American academic departments of computer science and computer engineering (CS&CE),  laboratories and centers in industry, government and academia engaging in basic computing research. 

Past Recipients of the Distinguished Service Award - 1999: Bill Joy, Sun Microsystems and Ken Kennedy, Rice University ;1998: Merrell Patrick, National Science Foundation; 1997: Anita Jones, University of Virginia; 1996: Paul Young, University of Washington; 1995:Randy Katz, University of California at Berkeley; 1994: William A. Wulf, University of Virginia; 1992: Joseph Traub, Columbia University; 1991: David Gries, Cornell University; 1990: Robert Kahn, Corporation for National Research Initiatives.

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Theory Center nominated for Smithsonian Award Date: Wednesday, March 14, 2000. An innovative approach to supercomputing at the Cornell Theory Center (CTC) will become part of the Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History on April 3.  Induction into the collection is a result of the nomination of CTC and its Advanced Cluster Computing Consortium (AC3) for a Computerworld Smithsonian Award in the education and academia category.  CTC and AC3 were nominated for the honor by Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corp.  The awards, to be presented in June, were established in 1989 to document the progress of information technology.  CTC's achievement, through AC3, is described in the official "case study" submitted to the Smithsonian as being unique in its emphasis in uniting hardware manufacturers, software producers, and users to advance the capabilities of high performance computing based solely on components that are commercially available.  This "off-the-shelf" supercomputer has been named the Velocity cluster.  In the past, such high-performance computers have been built from expensive, custom-designed and -developed technologies.  CTC created AC3 with manufacturers of personal computing hardware and software, Dell, Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.  CTC director Thomas Coleman noted that building a supercomputing environment from parts and software that are widely available "off-the-shelf"  has been an exciting technical challenge, but one that is achievable with the support of AC3 members. "Our Velocity cluster has put us on the fast path to the future of supercomputing," he said.

Five Sophs Win Lockheed Martin Research Awards Date: Monday, March 13, 2000.  Five sophomore computer science majors were recently selected as this year's recipients of the Lockheed Martin Awards for Outstanding Achievement and Academic Service.  The winners of this year's awards are:  John Blitzer, Daniel Dantas, Nidhi Kalra, Benjamin Ragheb, and Jeffrey Vinocur.