Saturday, April 21, 2012 Brandeis University

The NEUCS organizing committee invites all undergraduates in computing sciences at universities, colleges, and community colleges in New England to participate in the fourth New England Undergraduate Computing Symposium. Organized annually to celebrate Excellence and Diversity in Undergraduate Computing.

Undergraduates are invited to share exciting projects they’ve been working on over the past year. These projects can be creative homework assignments from classes, independent research projects, senior honors thesis projects, software built for fun, or any other computing project including such areas as biology, physics, social networks.  Students can share their  projects during the poster sessions by presenting posters or demos on laptops. Several student talks will be selected for 10-minute presentations from submitted abstracts.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren announced today:

• Timothy J. Hickey, professor of computer science, was awarded the Lerman-Neubauer ’69 Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring.

Hickey, the 2012 recipient of the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer ‘69 and Joseph Neubauer Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring, is a professor of computer science. This prize, established by Trustee Jeanette Lerman at the time of her marriage to Joseph Neubauer, requires its recipient to be not just an exceptional teacher, but also one who has had a significant impact on students’ lives as a mentor, advisor and friend.

Hickey began teaching at Brandeis in 1984. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago after graduating summa cum laude from Brandeis in 1977. For eight years, he chaired the Brandeis Computer Science Department, and he has also chaired the School of Science Council, the Internet Studies program and the Faculty Senate. He serves on the current Strategic Planning Committee, and previously served on the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Committee, the Brandeis 2020 Committee, the University Advisory Committee, the Library and Technology Advisory Committee, the Experiential Learning Committee, the Justice Brandeis Semester Committee, and the search committee for the current Chief Information Officer. In 2008, he created the New England Computer Science Chairs Committee, which established an annual New England Undergraduate Computing Symposium at which students from a dozen computer science departments in the region present posters and talks at an event co-sponsored by the NSF Empowering Leadership Alliance.

His Brandeis courses include “Introduction to Computers,” “Introduction to Scientific Computing,” “Programming in Java and C,” “Discrete Structures,” “Introduction to 3-D Animation” and “Internet and Society.” For the last two summers, he has taught Justice Brandeis Semesters with Pito Salas, first on the topic of “Web and Mobile Applications,” and this past summer on “Mobile Game Design.” This year he created an experiential learning practicum for his 3-D animation course, through which students teach 3-D game design to Waltham High school students and K to 12 students at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club.

“When I first met Professor Hickey in the fall of my first year during my COSI 2A class, he was incredibly knowledgeable, patient, encouraging and caring about our progress in his class, as well as the sometimes difficult adjustment to college life. Even in a class of over one hundred people, he took the time to learn our names and we got to see how passionate he was about the subject. His enthusiasm shined through – putting a smile on everyone’s face,” a student nominator wrote.

In 2005, Professor Mitch Cherniack co-founded a company, Vertica, with colleagues from MIT and Brown to commercialize a column-based Database technology called C-store, and the company gifted a number of stock shares to the University. Vertica grew to be a leader in “Big Data” and in 2011, Hewlett Packard acquired Vertica, which turned the stock into an actual gift.

With the gift in hand, during the summer, we engaged with University Facilities and its external contractors to realize Jim Storer’s vision for the new space, which is heavily used by both our undergraduate and masters students every day. Photos (by Johann Larusson) from the opening reception follow the break.The opening reception, catered by Dept. Administrator Myrna Fox using Russo’s of Watertown, was well attended by faculty, staff, executives from Vertica/HP, and members of the Brandeis Administration including Dean Susan Birren and SVP Nancy Winship.

Entrepreneur Magazine did a story on Studyegg.com, a startup by three Brandeis CS students which has developed a mobile app for electronic flashcards. The students previously took CS 235 with Prof. Colon-Osorio and an independent study with Professor Hickey.

VIDEO: Rob Lindeman ’85 on “Virtual and Augmented Reality”