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.