Ford Motor Company Event

Friday – April 8, 2011
From: 11:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Thanks to our former MS student, Talia Selitsky, and a current employee of Ford, we had a fantastic visit at Ford Motor Company.

The Ford field trip provided an opportunity to:
• Tour the Ford Motor Credit Company data warehousing center – Along with the tour of the center, the opportunity to enter into the environmental infrastructure support rooms (Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS, the associated batteries, chillers, pumps etc.)
• Speak with Ford IT recruiters
• Meet/Greet with Maria Flores, responsible for IT Infrastructure Operations in the Canada, Mexico and South America (CMSA) region in Ford Motor Company. As of 2009, Maria is also responsible for the Global Digital Worker Program. Within CMSA, she is involved in numerous global strategic initiatives including Data Center Consolidation, Network Upgrades, IP Telphony Deployment, and Global Help Desk. Her organization is also supporting all infrastructure needs of new plants and business growth. Her responsibility for the Global Digital Worker Program for Ford, encompasses deployment of the tools for employee collaboration and productivity globally. This program is transforming the workplace within Ford Motor Company.

In addition, we ate a yummy lunch at a local Middle Eastern restaurant, Ollie, and mingled with Ford IT personnel. And, did I mention the goodies :)

MICWIC 2011

Here goes Amber's report on MICWIC. She didn't say anything about her and Charnique running the CS unplugged games - they did an awesome job, too!

A few of the ACM-W members attended MICWIC this year and it was awesome. The conference started out with registration in which we received a nice little package compliments of the sponsors of the conference. Then each of the poster board contestants set up for the judging and allowed for everyone to view and converse with them about their projects. After that we heard remarks from the conference chair, Fatma Mili, about what to expect and what she hopes we will get out of the conference. Then everyone mingled at dinner and we were introduced to the keynote speaker, Jennifer Marsman from Microsoft, who talked to us about the different reasons why technology rocks. After that everyone had a chance to go off to different birds of a feather discussion groups that introduced different issues that women encounter in the computer science field.

To finish off the first night there was a short CS unplugged game session back at the hotel which allowed for the students, professors, committee members, and company representatives to mingle in an informal setting. We played three different rounds of the binary game. Each player was given four stacks of five bit cards. The first round allowed for the players to see the five bit cards for each stack. Numbers were called aloud and they had to flip the card over to match the numbers. Then second round, they had to flip that cards over and guess how to make the numbers that were called out aloud. The third round they were given five green and five yellow cards that represented on and off bits respectively. When they number was called out they had to remember how to turn off certain bits to make the number. We played a couple of times for each round to allow for others to win and get used to the game. At the end of the night everyone had a great time and was given it buttons for participating.

The next day we had a plenary session about computing in our future given by the session chair, Linda Ott from MTU. Then we broke out into paper and panel session that allowed for people who couldn’t make it the first day to still enjoy some of the intriguing discussions. There was also a career fair that allowed for student and prospective graduate students to talk to companies and school about their future goals. In the midst of the discussions and the career fair we took a group photo to have a reminder of the great minds of our present and future WOMEN computer science majors. Then remarks were made and we all parted back to our homes. Overall the MICWIC 2011 conference was a great learning experience and a great way to learn about the different topics that we can incorporate in to our studies and research. If you missed MICWIC you should try to go to Grace Hopper convention that is November this year in Portland, Oregon.

OCWIC 2011, February 18-19, 2011

A few of us attended Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing which took place in Ashland County, in Mohican Resort and Conference Center. As the organizers put it,
OCWIC (say Oh, Quick!) is a low cost, regionally-tailored, professional conference, modeled after the international Grace Hopper Celebration. The goal of the conference is to provide social and professional support for women in computing.
We attended a lot of lightning talks, career panels, paper presentations, and learned, learned, learned. But we also enjoyed ourselves. We came back to Detroit reinvigorated, with a reignited passion for anything and everything that is computing related - and this says a lot, given the middle of quite a winter we've had in Michigan this season.
Thank you, our Ohio neighbors for welcoming us with open arms and for creating this opportunity (and for all the cool goodies, too :)

Tea with Fahima

On Wed, October 27, Fahima shared with us her experience with the Imagine Cup competition, including her team's national finals in Washington, D.C. Her team, LifeCode, has been working on the project that "aims to combat diseases through a tele-health data-capture and analysis platform, with the potential to track patient vital signs and profiles in remote, urban, rural and developing areas."

There are two articles about the team available online: one at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2010/apr10/04-20LifeCode.mspx and the other at http://media.wayne.edu/2010/04/09/wayne-state-university-students-selected-as-finalists

Fahima's team has a video available on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfEKdbiSR2U

Career Prep Series Panel

Tuesday, September 21, 2010
3:00pm Rm. 110 Purdy-Kresge Library
Job fairs, conferences, and other research and technical events have one thing in common - they all constitute the first point of contact among interested parties: employers and job/internship seekers, established researchers and Ph.D. students, experienced industry representatives and less experienced newcomers. Given the nature of such events - the short amount of time and the great number of participants - it is important to understand how to network and what makes a person stand out among others. This panel, consisting of academic and industry representatives from the greater Detroit area, will discuss the importance and techniques involved in networking and speed interviewing skills.

Student Organization Day, Sept. 15, 2010

We had a Student Organization Day on campus and Amber, Charnique, and Nariman prepared the table to represent our ACM and ACM-W. There was a poster (of course), Lego robots, Pico Crickets, and a bunch of handouts. Amber and Charnique were working the crowd like there was no tomorrow. Just look at the pictures - need I say more...

CHICAGO Trip (May 4-5)

The visit was AWESOME!

May 4: Talia organized the tour of ThoughtWorks and Ruby on Rails night! The atmosphere was fantastic! Then, some of us went networking with Ruby developers, while others opted for the night stroll of Chicago.

May 5: First, the Museum of Science and Industry. My personal favorite: Fast Forward... Inventing the Future and don't forget to check out Peter Diamandis's Laws for Life quoted below. In the afternoon, a visit to Argonne National Lab, coordinated by Monika. Since it is a government facility and some of us were not allowed in at the last moment because of nationality (watch out US government, some of us might pose a serious threat to your secure functioning), we were forced to split into two groups: Chicago walkers and Argonne visitors.

Overall, the Chicago trip was incredibly great - touristy, inspiring, educational, you name it! And of course don't forget...

Peter’s Laws
The Creed of the persistent and passionate mind
1. If anything can go wrong, Fix It!!… To hell with Murphy!
2. When given a choice… Take Both!!
3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4. Start at the top then work your way up.
5. Do it by the book… but be the author!
6. When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7. If it’s worth doing, it’s got to be done right now.
8. If you can’t win, change the rules.
9. If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
10. Perfection is not optional.
11. When faced without a challenge, make one.
12. “No” simply means begin again at one level higher
13. Don’t walk when you can run.
14. Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary.
15. When in doubt: THINK!
16. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
17. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
18. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
19. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!
20. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite.
21. You get what you incentivize.
22. If you think it is impossible, then it is… for you.
23. An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how it can’t be done.
24. The day before something is a breakthrough it’s a crazy idea.
25. If it were easy it would have been done already.
26. Without a target you’ll miss it every time.
27. Bullshit walks, hardware talks.
28. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
29. The world’s most precious resource is the passionate and committed human mind.
30. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

Grid and C&IT Tour: March 26

On Friday, March 26, we went to tour our own, WSU, grid facility. Turned out it is located in our C&IT server room so we got to see the living and breathing heart of all Wayne State operations. It was AWESOME! Big thanks to Mike Thompson and Aragorn Steiger who were our wonderful tour guides and to Grace Metri who helped me organize this tour.

The link to our grid facilities:

Tea with Nariman

On Tuesday, Mar. 2, at 5 p.m. in 400 State Hall.

Nariman presents her software engineering research and brings delightful Middle-Eastern pastries. Monika serves tea.

Our next activity will be organized by Grace - the tour of the WSU grid facility. Monika will give an intro on parallel programming and how to go about using the grid.

Organizational Meeting for March-May Activities

Will take place Th, Feb. 18, 3-4 p.m. in room 400 State Hall.

Industry Panel

The Department of Computer Science invites all Computer Science
Majors to the first event in its new Career Preparation Series. On
Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 3-4:20 p.m. in room 110 Purdy-Kresge
Library, we will hold an industry panel, consisting of
representatives from Ford, Chrysler, Unisys, Thomson Reuters, and
Wayne State, who will talk about dos and don'ts of proper student
technical resume writing. While computer science jobs have been
topping all kinds of best jobs lists over the years, in the highly
competitive job market of today, it is important to understand what
makes a student resume stand out among others. In fact, a resume is a
kind of a personal marketing tool and it is not enough to google
"technical resume" to get a real feel for what would impress a
potential employer in the field of computing. All interested students
need to RSVP to this event by Sunday, Jan. 31, by e-mailing Diane
Grimord.

Students who wish to have their resumes reviewed by the panel need to
understand that the review will be public and that all personal
information has to be removed from a resume before it is submitted by
a student. Students interested in such a review need to send their
resumes by Wednesday, January 27 to Monika Witoslawski.

Hope to see you there!

Link to the event recording.

Sonia's Presentation

Combining Information Retrieval and

Relevance Feedback for Concept Location

Sonia Haiduc

Wayne State University

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

3:00pm Rm. 110 Purdy-Kresge Library

Abstract:

The amount of information a person is presented with every day has come to staggering amounts. Software developers are no exception, as they are faced every day with maintaining and evolving software systems having thousands or millions lines of code. In order to be able to handle such systems, developers need tools to help them locate information fast and accurate. Most such tools depend on the ability of developers to precisely describe the target of their search in the form of queries. This often leads to a paradox: the programmer searches the software because she does not know where a piece of information is located and what form of representation it has in the software; in consequence, she can not accurately describe something she does not know. This talk presents a solution to this paradox, based on combining Information Retrieval and User Relevance Feedback for searching software and illustrates its applications in a series of case studies for locating concepts in source code during bug fixing. It also presents the main challenges of this research and proposes solutions to address them.

Recording Link: http://coursecast02.cs.wayne.edu:8080/ess/echo/presentation/84e6fdc8-79b8-41d4-b65e-a73b504f054f

Dec. 16 WIC dinner and presentations

On Wed, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 6pm to 8:30pm, we will attend Women in Engineering, Southeastern Michigan Section of IEEE, pre-holiday get-together with presentations and dinner. The topic of the presentations is "Career Success for Women," with the main speaker: Maureen Electa Monte, IBM.

Register at https://www.ieeeemcs.org/semi/regemcmeet.asp?EventID=WIE_2009_Holiday
by Dec. 14 noon and put a comment here: going + your_name, so that we go together.

For the full announcement, look here.

Thomson Reuters Visit Dec. 11

Thanksgiving Parade turned out to be LOTS of fun, fun, fun :) And a Thanksgiving Dinner was yum, yum, yum :)

As for the next activity, we are going on a field trip. The plan is to go visit Thomson Reuters, Friday, Dec. 11, noon - 2 p.m. We will tour their facility in Dexter, Mi, and have lunch and a table discussion with their women software engineers. We will eat and talk - can you imagine anything better than that? We are to discuss career related topics and go wherever the discussion takes us. BTW - here is the link to Thomson Reuters' website: http://thomsonreuters.com/about/ but better yet, here goes Thomson Reuters' promo clip.

Our group is very grateful to them for hosting this Women in Technology event. Yippee!

Thanksgiving Day Parade / Dinner

Meeting at 9 a.m. in front of DeRoy dorm to watch the parade.

Then, we will have dinner together at 5 p.m. Please, RSVP to dinner at your earliest convenience.

Nov. 20 Tea with Amal

:) Met yesterday at 4 p.m. for "Tea with Amal" :)

Amal presented her research; Zarna made Indian tea; Monika made green tea; Farhana brought a Bangladeshi dessert - still wondering what it is called?

Then, we chatted a bit about upcoming activities.

ACM - W: decided to start bloggin'

Even though we started our group a while back, only now an idea of blogging occurred to me - why not blog about our activities (duh!). Yes, Grace did have the original idea some time ago, but somehow it fell by the side-ways. Ok - so why start blogging about them. Well, I guess, I want to make sure our members, potential members, and others interested in running such groups will find it fun and informational, if you will. And - in a sense - it will serve as our little memoir. Cheers!