IN THIS ISSUE

Non-profitOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDMilwaukee, WIPermit No. 628

Marquette UniversityDepartment of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer ScienceP.O. Box 1881Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881

FROM THE CHAIR

SPRING 2012 NEWSLETTER

From the Chair ....................................................1

MSCS Updates ....................................................4

Faculty News.......................................................2

Undergraduate Student News ............................3

Graduate Student News .....................................3

Graduations .........................................................4

Alumni News ......................................................4

Editor: Peter Jones

Production: Debbi Gartenberg

Telephone: (414) 288-7573

E-mail address: newslet@mscs.mu.edu

This newsletter is a publication written by students and MSCS faculty for alumni of the Marquette University Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science

MSCS Honors Achievements in Computational Sciences by Anne Clough

Our spring semester has been extremely busy, but ultimately rewarding. To the left, you’ll find a wonderful story about our very exciting computational sciences symposium. Dr. Anne Clough, the symposium

organizer, did an outstanding job bringing the elements of the event together and the department was honored by the presence of Rev. Philip J Rossi, S.J., Interim Dean of the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences and Dr. John Pauly, Provost, who each attended portions of the symposium.

Page 2 of the newsletter includes a brief collection of faculty news items, including upcoming retirements of four MSCS members, Dr. Stephen Merrill’s recent FDA appointment, and the very exciting news that Dr. John (Jack) Moyer received Marquette University’s highest teaching award, the John P. Raynor, S.J., Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. In addition, Dr. Dennis Brylow received funding from Google to conduct a three-day CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) summer workshop at Marquette University. The Google CS4HS Program is an initiative sponsored by Google to promote Computer Science and Computational Thinking in high school and middle school curriculum. This summer, Dr. Marta Magiera (MSCS) and Dr. Leigh van den Kieboom (EDPL) will conduct a week-long institute for West Allis/West Milwaukee School district mathematics teachers on the study of learning and teaching algebra and algebraic thinking. I am also happy to announce that in 2012, Dr. Daniel Rowe began his term as the inaugural chair of the American Statistics Association Section on Statistics in Imaging.

Our newsletter would not be complete without a few student highlights. On page 3, you’ll read about our upcoming summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). At the National Science Foundation Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) REU Principal Investigator Meeting in February 2012, every CISE REU site contributed highlights. Marquette’s highlight discussed a 2011 undergraduate research project that used blending and rule-based forecasting to predict hourly natural gas flow for real natural gas utilities, such as Wisconsin’s WE Energies. The summer research effort resulted in a 30% improvement in natural gas ensemble forecasts. The Marquette highlight was awarded “Honorable Mention”, which meant out of the 55 CISE directorate REU sites, the MSCS REU highlight was recognized as one of the top 5 for 2012. Additional graduate student news: Weiqiang Wang, a student in the M.S. in Computing program, was recognized in a list of students who completed the Part 2 challenge of the 2011 IBM Master the Mainframe Contest. The contest drew over 3,900 students from across the US and Canada. Part 2 Mainframe Masters were given a certificate from IBM and an invitation to upload their resumes to the IBM Student Opportunity System. Finally, it isn’t often that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America blogs about a Marquette graduate student trying to employ mathematics to aid in malaria prevention. The ELCA blog about Samson Kiware, a MSCS computational sciences student, can be found at http://tinyurl.com/kiware

I wish each of you a wonderful summer,

Gary KrenzChair

At Marquette, education and research in computational sciences is rooted

in discovery, simulation and application of models to solve real-world problems. This is the motto that the MSCS Department has adopted as our vision for ourselves and as a strategy for decision-making and growth.We displayed and celebrated our

accomplishments at an afternoon-long symposium entitled Computational Sciences at Marquette on April 2, 2012. The day began with an interactive workshop on mobile computing in healthcare presented by members of Dr. Sheik Iqbal Ahamed’s laboratory. The room was full to capacity with local industry engineers, undergraduate students in computing courses, and colleagues from Engineering, all of whom were awed to see the ability of mobile devices to collect and disseminate personalized health care measures. At the afternoon poster session more than

40 graduate students and faculty from within MSCS as well from other MU departments, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Medical College of Wisconsin presented their research ranging from medical imaging, to volcanic eruptions, to designing computer operating systems. The breadth of work was impressive as many of the more than 100 attendees noted. Next time we will offer a “best poster” award as further incentive, although it is perfectly clear that

our students take great pride in their work and excel at explaining it to even a theology professor in attendance.The official portion of the symposium

culminated with a keynote address presented by Dr. Kerry Emanuel from MIT. He described his work using applied mathematics

and computational models to assess hurricane risk. He emphasized the necessity of modeling since historical data does not provide enough statistical power to predict rare-events such as hurricanes and volcanoes. Furthermore, he pointed out, modeling is imperative for predicting the role that climate change will have on future hurricane events, including the human and financial impact. It was a lively presentation, accessible to students and faculty at all levels, as indicated by the question and answer exchange involving not only undergraduate students but also the University Provost!The symposium was capped off with a

southeast Asian Indian buffet dinner that brought together all of the attendees and offered the opportunity for both scientific discussion as well as socializing with colleagues. The MSCS staff and students put together a wonderful event and it was an evening to celebrate. We look forward to a biannual reprisal of this symposium.

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FACULTY NEWS

MSCS Faculty Members Promoted

The Klingler College of Arts and Sciences has formally recognized the exceptional scholarship and teaching expertise of Dennis Brylow. He has been promoted

from Assistant to Associate Professor effective Fall 2012.As a computer scientist, Dennis’ research

focus is in real-time, embedded, interrupt-driven systems, software engineering. and computer science education. As mentioned elsewhere on this page, Paul Bankston and Karl Byleen have also been granted promotions.

Faculty Research Awards

Dr. Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed received an award from the Way Klingler College of Arts & Science for research to deploy palliative care software. The palliative care software deployment effort is in collaboration with the Marshfield Clinic and the John T. Vucurevich Cancer Care Institute. The John T. Vucurevich Cancer Care Institute works with American Indians living in South Dakota Reservations (Pine Ridge, Rosebud and Cheyenne River Sioux). In addition to potentially addressing cancer care disparities in the American Indian population and other medically under-served populations, this effort will gather data/initial results for future funding efforts. Dr. Daniel Rowe received a Marquette

University Regular Research Grant for his project entitled “Quantification of Induced Voxel Correlations by GE and SIEMENS MRI Scanner Algorithms.”

Math Education Community Convenes in South Korea

Every four years the mathematics education community convenes to discuss issues centered on teaching and learning of mathematics at all

levels. This year the International Congress on Mathematical Education was held from July 8-15 in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Marta

Magiera received a travel grant from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to attend the Congress. In Seoul she presented results of her study on

Stephen Merrill Receives FDA Appointment

Stephen J. Merrill, Professor in MSCS, is serving as Visiting Professor at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from April 2012 - April 2013 through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Dr. Merrill’s appointment is in the Center for

Devices and Radiologic Health (CDRH), Division of Biology. CDRH is responsible for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of medical devices and eliminating unnecessary human exposure to harmful materials from medical, occupational and consumer products. His work involves introducing computational and modeling aspects to problems in nanotechnology and toxicology.

Faculty Retirements

Dr. Bankston is retiring, with the rank of Professor Emeritus

Dr. Paul Bankston received his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1969 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1974, under the direction of H.J. Keisler. He joined the MSCS Department at Marquette as

an Assistant Professor in 1981, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1987 and to Professor in 1998. He has been an active researcher in the fields of Topology and Logic, having published 50 articles. During his time in our department, he has taught around 30 courses, including one in the Gaza strip.Dr. Bankston was recently awarded the rank

of Professor Emeritus. He plans to move to the United Kingdom to be nearer his family, but his research activites will continue without missing a beat.

Dr. Byleen is beginning phased retirementDr. Karl Byleen is one of the first

faculty members at Marquette to take advantage of a new program whereby half-time status can be maintained for up to three years, before full retirement takes

effect. Dr. Byleen has been with the department since 1977. He has recently been awarded the rank of Associate Professor Emeritus, effective on full retirement. Look for a fuller appreciation of his contribution when that time comes.

Mrs. Manyo is retiringMrs. Marian Manyo has

served as a faculty member of the MSCS Department since 1979, first as a part-time Lecturer, then as an Adjunct Instructor. Mrs.

Manyo obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1969 and her Master’s degree from Purdue University in 1971. She has taught a wide variety of courses, from mathematics to computer science. For the last seven years, she has served as the Assistant Chair, the primary responsibility of that position being the scheduling of courses each semester.

Dr. Corliss and Dr. Kaiser are also retiringDr. George Corliss is retiring

from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with the rank of Professor Emeritus. Dr. Corliss joined the MSCS Department in 1978, reaching the rank of Professor in 1990.

He transferred to the EECE Department in 2000 and was granted a secondary appointment in the MSCS Department in 2003. Since that time he has maintained a rich connection with our department.

Dr. Kate Kaiser is retiring from the Department of Management, with the rank of Associate Professor Emerita. Dr. Kaiser has held a secondary appointment in the MSCS Department since 2007.

Her interests lie in Information Technology.

{Editor’s note: judging by the gray hair that remains in the department, you should look for further episodes of this column in coming years!}

Adjunct Faculty Focus

Tyler Gillen has been a full time adjunct instructor in the department since Fall 2011. With a background in Applied Mathematics, he has taught Introduction to Computer Science, Introduction to Computer Science Programming, Data Structures for Engineers, and Elementary Statistics courses for the MSCS department. After graduating from Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota with a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics for Information Systems, Tyler received a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Iowa State University. In his spare time he trains to participate in the local triathlon circuit.Steve Vitullo began teaching in the MSCS

department in 2009 during his MU graduate career as a part-time lecturer for Elementary Statistics. He has been a full-time adjunct instructor in the department since Fall 2011. He has taught a variety of statistics courses including Data Mining, Statistical Methods, and Elementary Statistics. As a graduate student at Marquette, Steve worked in the Gas Day Lab (a software program that forecasts natural gas consumption) in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received both his Masters and Doctorate degrees from Marquette in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Summer is the season for Steve, when he retreats to the northern lakes of Canada to pursue his fishing passion.

Dr. Moyer Wins Teaching Award

On May 3, 2012, at the annual Pere Marquette Dinner, Dr. John (Jack) Moyer received a Pere Marquette Teaching Award for Teaching Excellence. These faculty awards are presented annually as recognition of their outstanding accomplishments as faculty

members and educators. Jack began his career at Marquette in 1974 in

our undergraduate teacher training program, and later as the director of the MSST (Mathematics for Secondary School Teachers) Program, an M.S. program to satisfy the need for professional training in this field. In the ensuing years he has played an active role, both locally and nationally, in training and influencing individuals who have themselves become leaders in the field. He has also volunteered to develop computer science offerings in our department and to provide computer science training for secondary education teachers.The award nomination included testimonial

letters from colleagues and former students testifying to Jack’s influence on their lives and, in turn, on the lives of their students. His philosophy is grounded in the principles of helping students learn to discover the knowledge themselves and treating each student as a unique individual.Jack joins a distinguished list of former MSCS

recipients of the award, including Miriam Connellan, Clem Hanneken, Tom Bronikowski, Hossein Hamedani, Gary Krenz, and Steve Merrill. The MSCS department heartily endorses the addition of Jack Moyer to this storied list.It is an award well earned by many years of dedicated service.

prospective teachers’ inductive reasoning in the problem solving contexts and conferred with other mathematics educators from around the world on how research in mathematics education can best inform classroom practice. Dr. Jack Moyer also presented a paper at this conference.

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UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

GRADUATE STUDENT NEWS

2012 Spring Undergraduate PartyMSCS Confers Undergraduate Awards

The MSCS department 2012 Spring Fling Undergraduate Party was the scene of celebration for the academic achievements of our students. Dr. Gary Krenz, Dr. Dennis Brylow, and Dr. John Moyer proudly presented the Outstanding Undergraduate Mathematics Award; the Outstanding Undergraduate Computer Science Award; and the Miriam Connellan Mathematics Education Award to Peter Bolgert, Michael Chimenti, and Anna Mumm, respectively.

Peter Bolgert, the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Undergraduate Mathematics Award, has been an active participant in a variety of campus activities. He has been a member of Marquette’s Cross

Country and Track Teams, representing MU in many track meets during his 5 year tenure. Music is often a partner to mathematics proficiency and that is true for Peter, who is the pianist for the Marquette Jazz Band. He is an active participant in the Marquette Physics Club, serving as its President during the 2011-2012 academic year. His academic service includes working as a Teaching Assistant and a Tutor in the Physics Department.In Fall 2012, Peter will begin his Ph.D. studies in

Plasma Physics at Princeton University.

Michael Chimenti, the recipient of the 2012 Marquette Computer Science Award, is completing his 4 year career at Marquette in the Air Force ROTC program, currently serving the cadet wing in a variety of positions.

He is a member of the Arnold Air Society as well as the academic honor societies, Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Mu Epsilon. Michael has also worked on campus as a course assistant in Linear Algebra and Statistics classes as well as a hall store manager.He will be commissioning in the Air Force in May

2012 with a captain’s rank, entering active duty

Upsilon Pi Epsilon Induction 2012

The international honor society for computing and information disciplines, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, held its annual induction ceremony on April 30 at 7:00pm in Cudahy 401. Paul Hinze (COSC ‘08) was the featured speaker, “Practices of a Modern Tech Startup,” a survey of the strategies, technologies and tricks used by the developers at Braintree to build software that processes billions of dollars in payments. Following the presentation the initiates took their pledge. The following are new members:

Matt Bajsek Corey Bost Brian Chase Farzeen Harunani Alex Hunsberger Jake Cohen Chris Sabin Mike Chimenti Kyle Persohn Mike Ziwisky

Elections for officers for next year were held.The new Upsilon Pi Epsilon Spring 2012 officers are:

Chris Sabin - President Jake Cohen - Vice President Jahnavi Archarya - Secretary/Treasurer

Pi Mu Epsilon Induction 2012

The Wisconsin Alpha Chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon Induction Ceremony was held on April 25 at 6:00pm in Cudahy 401. The meeting started with dinner and a presentation

“Imaging and Modeling the Lung” by Dr. Anne Clough. Following the presentation the initiates took their pledge. The following are new members:

Matthew Bajeck John Coleman Erin Davis Alyssa DiGilio Theresa Dobbs Daniel Jashinsky Brandon Johnson Charles Klabunde Jonathan Sobeck Wei Wu

Elections for officers for next year were held.The new Pi Mu Epsilon Spring 2012 officers are: Alyssa DiGillio - President Brandon Montalvo - Vice President John Coleman - Treasurer James Grams - Secretary

for several months. Thereafter, he will undergo undergraduate pilot training at Vance AFB in Oklahoma. Anna Mumm, the recipient of the 2012

Miriam Connellan Mathematics Education Award, is a major in Elementary Education and Mathematics for Elementary Teachers. She is a participant

in the Marquette University Wind Ensemble and the MU Pep Band. As an active member of the Campus Crusade

for Christ (CRU), she will be interning for the Milwaukee CRU organization after graduation this May.

Farzana Rahman, Computational Sciences graduate student, presented her paper titled “Looking for Needles in a Haystack: Detecting Counterfeits in Large Scale RFID

Systems Using Batch Authentication Protocol” at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (Percom 2012) in Lugano, Switzerland. She also received an all expense paid travel and accomodation grant as part of the CRA scholarship to attend the Grad Cohort Workshop 2012, in Bellevue, Washington.

Michael Ziwisky, Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate student, received a MARC (Many-core Applications Research Community) award from Intel. MARC is a community of

researchers studying how best to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the many-core architecture produced by Intel Labs. He will be developing and open-sourcing a

framework that allows researchers to interact with ‘bare metal’ hardware, i.e. to run their software directly on a chip without the support and overhead of an operating system.

Looking Forward to 2012 REU

It looks like it will be a great summer for research for ten undergraduates from across the U.S. This year, ten students from a vari-ety of institutions will be on campus to work on their NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates: Computation Across the Disciplines. It is shaping up to be a very exciting summer with students from Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—as well as two Marquette students! They will be working on research projects with faculty mentors, Drs. Dennis Brylow, George Corliss, Kim Factor, Dan Rowe, and Elaine Spiller. We’ll have information on the summer experience (and some pictures) for you in the fall 2012 newsletter.

Arnold L. Mitchem Fellow 2011-2012

In 2002, Marquette established the Arnold L. Mitchem Dissertation Fellowship Program, intended to increase the presence of underrepresented ethnic groups by supporting doctoral candidates in completing their final

academic requirement, the dissertation.One of this year’s

award recipients was Pamela Harris, a doctoral student in mathematics at UW-Milwaukee, who spent the year in the

MSCS Department. In addition to her research, Pam taught Theory of Numbers this Spring. In her so-called spare time, she has become a jiu-jitsu expert!Pam received her BS degree in mathematics

from Marquette in 2005 and her MS in mathematics from UWM in 2008. She graduated from UWM in May and has accepted a faculty position as Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

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WHERE IN THE WORLD IS DR. JONES NOW?

GRADUATIONS ALUMNI NEWS

Mark Sheffer B.S. Computer Science ‘83Upon graduation from Marquette, he

worked as a programmer/ analyst with a real estate company and designed a database management system on the early generation of IBM PC’s. It was a project that went very well, and after training the staff to use the software he was back in the market. Taking advantage of the newly emerging personal computer industry he ‘jumped in’ and has been selling them and all their accompanying technology ever since. He was hired as the ninth sales rep of a little company called CDW way back when and had a very long and successful career there. He took a break from the technology world while his family was growing and recently returned to the ‘tech game.’ Currently, Mark is employed by a company called GHA Technologies that allows him a great deal of account management flexibility in selling the technology he so enjoys. At GHA, his focus is on helping local schools, universities and governments with technology and conservation.

Paul Hinze B.S. Computer Science ‘08A child of the Systems Lab, Paul

graduated from the Computer Science program in 2008. His favorite achievement at Marquette is being responsible for the first successful “Hello World” on a Linksys router, which paved the way for the Embedded Xinu port currently used in several courses at Marquette and other universities.After spending a few years at the

University of Iowa rejecting the trappings of civilization and graphical user interfaces, he found himself a Developer at Braintree in Chicago, where he’s been for two years. Braintree handles secure credit card payments for cool folks like GitHub, LivingSocial, and 37Signals. Paul works on a team of polyglot full-stack developers spitting mostly Ruby and bad jokes.

May 2012

M.S. BioinformaticsWendy Demos

M.S. ComputingSayem AhamedBrock Babcock

M.S. MSCS (Computer Science)Erik Musselman

M.S. MSCS (Computational Sciences)Ivan Paez

M.S. MSCS (Mathematics)Robert Pileggi

M.S. MSCS Mohammad AdibuzzamanNiharika Jain

B.S. Elementary/Middle Education andB.A. Mathematics for Elementary School TeachersKelly Boylan Anna MummAnna Karissa Reyes

B.S. Middle/Secondary Education and MathematicsJustine Cabaj Lindsay MaglioccoPhillip Schmidt Daniel StarrCourtney Weibel

B.S. Computer Science Matthew BeineVictor Blas

B.S. Computational MathematicsMichael Chimenti

B.S. MathematicsPeter Bolgert Kathleen GodfreyKathryn Koegler Sean MoseyTimothy Pflugrad Hayley VanHandelAkamangwa Tungtang

We would like to know where you are and what you are doing.

Please send news and current address updates to:

newslet@mscs.mu.edu

MSCS UPDATES

Students Receive Computational Science Summer Research Program (CSSRP) Award

The MSCS department and the Wehr Fund, awarded support to the following students for Summer 2012 computational sciences research: Meryem Karaman, A Mathematical Model for Analyzing Temporal Processing Effects of Fourier Encoding Anomalies and their Correction in fMRI Data.

Farzana Rahman, I am not a goldfish in a bowl: Privacy Preservation in RFID based Ubiquitous Healthcare Systems.

Md. Osman Gani, Infrastructure-less Localization on Smartphone Using Wireless Technology.

Niharika Jain, Physiological Monitors of Emotions

Ferdaus Kawsar, Estimation of Health Risk from the Measurement of Physical Activity from Accellerometer and Plantar Pressure Data

A.K.M. Jahangir Majumder, Towards a Novel, Real Time Smartphone Fall Prevention System

Rizwana Rizia, Location Based Service Using Social Knowledge.

MSCS Faculty and Staff Celebrate Service Anniversaries

Congratulations to MSCS Faculty and Staff for a combined 80 years of service to the Marquette community.

In the last issue, Dr. Jones was jumping into Crater Lake in Oregon (yes, it was cold). The picture below was taken in Fremantle, Australia, reflecting the joys of newly married life, perhaps?

Stephen Merrill, Professor, 35 years of service

Naveen Bansal, Professor. 25 years of service

Kim Factor, Associate Professor, 10 years of service

Sherry Scott, Assistant Professor, 5 years of service

Debbi Gartenberg, Office Assistant, 5 years of service