Author: karenjoh

By Karen S. Johnson, Communications Director, College of Computing

Data Science graduate student Bonnie Henderson began her master’s degree at Michigan Tech in fall 2019. From Jarrell, Texas, Henderson earned a B.A. in mathematics and French at Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas.

Henderson is a recipient of Michigan Tech’s David House Family Fellowship, which she describes as a great honor. Her research interests are in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“The fellowship has made an incredible difference in my life,” Henderson says. “As the first person in my family to go to college, it is an amazing opportunity to pursue my graduate studies fully funded.”

This January, Henderson began managing the College of Computing Learning Center (CCLC), an undergraduate learning lab staffed entirely by student coaches and available to all Michigan Tech students in Computing classes.

“I mostly work to help manage the CCLC,” Henderson says. “I help tutor students in undergraduate computer science courses during CCLC walk-in hours, help run CCLC staff meetings, and when the time comes, I’ll help manage the interviewing and hiring process for new tutors.”

Many Opportunities for Learning

Henderson says her work with the CCLC often presents computer science issues and computing problems that are not always common in data science, providing her with many opportunities for learning.

“Studying data science, I work a lot with programming,” Henderson says. “However, I often work with problems related to mathematics in programming and not always the typical undergraduate programming issues.”

What Henderson likes best about tutoring is what she learns along the way. “Since I did not complete my undergraduate degree at MTU, I’m not always familiar with the problems that students are facing when they come in for tutoring. Everyone looks at a problem a little differently, and I get the opportunity to be exposed to many different thought processes and unique solutions.”

New Methods of Virtual Support

Not surprisingly, the plans for the CCLC have changed a lot since the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this year. “Before this news, we were planning on hosting workshops and other events for students in the College of Computing and other departments, such as guided study groups, exam review sessions, and specialized support for individual classes,” Henderson says.

But since the CCLC cannot offer conventional face-to-face tutoring right now, these plans are changing and Henderson and the CCLC are responding with new methods of virtual support. “We have started sending out a weekly CCLC email to students, which shares coding tips and tricks, quizzes, and news, and we are working to encourage more student involvement, especially with the current difficulties we are all facing,” Henderson explains.

So, instead of hosting face-to-face events, CCLC walk-in hours are now being hosted through Zoom, and the Learning Center is maintaining a Canvas page where students can find help and find information on their own. They also hope to host some virtual workshops soon. Students can sign up for the CCLC Canvas page here: https://mtu.instructure.com/enroll/KWFTJ9.

Balancing Life, Work and School

Henderson says the most challenging thing about balancing life, work, and school is finding a separate time and place for each one.

“I’ll often be looking at one thing, and something in it reminds me of a problem from something else. I have a tendency to hop around a lot, and sometimes things may get lost,” she says. “It has become increasingly difficult working and studying from home, as everything is now sharing the same physical space.”

To help with that, Henderson says it’s helpful to try to have different spaces for the things she has to do. “Like one chair for working and another chair for schoolwork, even if they are in the same room. Some sort of distancing between everything is definitely needed.”

Learn More About the CCLC

Visit the CCLC website here. Visit the CCLC’s Infinite Loop: Resources to Explore, Learn, Code, Repeat.

The Dave House graduate student assistantships provide $30,000 annually for three years to each of three graduate assistants in Michigan Tech’s Master of Science in Data Science program.

About Dave House ’65, University Friend and Donor

Dave House ’65 (EE) is a longtime friend and generous donor to Michigan Tech.

“I support Michigan Tech because I believe in the critical importance of higher education, not only for the state and the nation, but most importantly for our graduates, House says in an EE department alumni profile.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution changes everything, and Michigan Tech is perfectly positioned to prepare our students for these changes. I support fellowships in data science because of the role that sensing, networking, big data, artificial intelligence and human/machine interfacing has in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Supporting graduate and research activities is critical to keeping Michigan Tech agile and at the cutting edge of this revolution.”

The Data Science Master of Science

The Data Science Master of Science degree is offered jointly by the College of Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. Associate Professor Laura Brown, Computer Science, is director of the program.

Tim Havens, associate dean for research, College of Computing, and director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems, was quoted in the article, “Artificial intelligence (AI) vs. machine learning (ML): 8 common misunderstandings,” published May 19, 2020, in the online publication, The Enterprisers Project.

In there article, Havens likens the way AI works to learning to ride a bike: “You don’t tell a child to move their left foot in a circle on the left pedal in the forward direction while moving your right foot in a circle… You give them a push and tell them to keep the bike upright and pointed forward: the overall objective. They fall a few times, honing their skills each time they fail,” Havens says. “That’s AI in a nutshell.”

Link to the article here.

The Enterprisers Project is a community and online publication built to discuss the evolving role of the CIO and how IT leaders drive business value in a digital world. It is a collaborative effort between Harvard Business Review and Red Hat that delivers daily analysis and advice on topics ranging from emerging technologies to IT talent. Articles in the publication are written by CIOs, for CIOs and other IT executives, who share lessons learned from innovating in true partnership with the business.

by Allison Mills, University Marketing and Communications

Adrienne Minerick, dean of the College of Computing, is president-elect of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). She will serve as president-elect from June 2020 to June 2021, a year that will surely be shaped by COVID-19 response efforts and their impacts on education, engineering industries and student lives. She will serve as president from June 2021 to June 2022, and as past-president the following year.

“ASEE is the place where engineering and engineering technology educators plan for the futures our students will encounter,” Minerick said. “I am able, willing and ready to help seed conversations that enable engineering professionals to leverage the rapid growth in computing and cybertechnologies to ensure our students engineer a bright future.”

Diversity in engineering education is key, she added. “Study after study, many by ASEE authors, has shown that increasing diversity of teams decreases engineering failures. We are in an exciting time when traditional engineering and educational practices are being re-examined from additional — and different — perspectives.”

Drawing on her research experience in microfluidics, her leadership in the College of Computing and championship of the ADVANCE program, Minerick plans to shift the governance mindset to encourage engineering access and mobility of ideas.

“I am thrilled that Adrienne will be following me as president-elect and then president of ASEE. Two women from Michigan Tech for two years in a leadership role at ASEE is fantastic,” said Sheryl Sorby, ASEE’s next president and professor in the Engineering Education Innovation Center at Ohio State University, who formerly taught in Michigan Tech’s Engineering Fundamentals program. “Adrienne shows steady, solid leadership and is insightful and visionary. She is someone who gets things done!”

Read the full story on mtu.edu/news and learn more about Michigan Tech’s contributions to ASEE.

Twenty-one Michigan Tech students on three teams finished the spring 2020 semester with impressive success at a recent National Cybersecurity League (NCL) competition. All three teams ranked in the top 100, out of 925 teams nationwide. Assistant Professor Bo Chen, Computer Science, is the faculty advisor to the teams.

Michigan Tech’s overall “Cyber Power Ranking” is 22nd nationally and 6th in the central region, as of Spring 2020. Schools are ranked based on their top team performance, their top student’s individual performance, and the aggregate individual performance of their students.

Team 1 ranked 16th in a field of 925 teams; with Alex Larkin (CS), Jack Bergman (CS), Jon Preuth (CS), Trevor Hornsby (Software), Shane Hoppe, Dakoda Patterson (CS), and Matthew Chau (Cyber).

Team 2 ranked 45th among 925 teams; with Sophia Kraus (EE), Sam Breuer (EE), Ian Hughes (Cyber/CS), Austin Doorlag (CS), Sankalp Shastry, Hunter Indermuehle (EE), and Samantha Christie (CS).

Team 3 ranked 78th of 925; with John Claassen (CS), Stu Kernstock (Cyber), Jacson Ott (Cyber), Bradley Gipson (CNSA), Ethan Frenza (CNSA), Tim Lucero (Cyber), and Anders Jacobsen (EE).

Shane Hoppe was ranked 95th among 5,357 participants in the NCL individual game.

The National Cyber League (NCL) is a biannual cybersecurity competition. Open to U.S. high school and college students, the competition consists of a series of challenges that allow students to demonstrate their ability to identify hackers from forensic data, pentest and audit vulnerable websites, recover from ransomware attacks, and more.

Every year, over 10,000 students from more than 300 colleges and universities across the U.S. participate in the NCL competitions. Student players compete in the NCL to build their skills, leverage the NCL Scouting Reports for career and professional development, and to represent their school in the national Cyber Power Rankings.

Powered by Cyber Skyline, NCL provides a platform on which students can prepare and test themselves against practical cybersecurity challenges that they will likely face in the workforce, such as identifying hackers from forensic data, pentesting and audit vulnerable websites, recovering from ransomware attacks, and more.

The Cyber Power Rankings were created by Cyber Skyline in partnership with the National Cyber League (NCL). The rankings represent the ability of student competitors to perform real-world cybersecurity tasks on the Cyber Skyline platform.

An article by Audrey Yazdanparast (2019, PhD, Electrical Engineering) and Dr. Timothy Havens, “Linear Time Community Detection by a Novel Modularity Gain Acceleration in Label Propagation,” has been accepted for publication in the journal, IEEE Transactions on Big Data.

The paper presents an efficient approach for detecting self-similar communities in weighted graphs, with applications in social network analysis, online commodity recommendation systems, user clustering, biology, communications network analysis, etc.

Paper Abstract: Community detection is an important problem in complex network analysis. Among numerous approaches for community detection, label propagation (LP) has attracted a lot of attention. LP selects the optimum community (i.e., label) of a network vertex by optimizing an objective function (e.g., Newman’s modularity) subject to the available labels in the vicinity of the vertex. In this paper, a novel analysis of Newman’s modularity gain with respect to label transitions in graphs is presented. Here, we propose a new form of Newman’s modularity gain calculation that quantifies available label transitions for any LP based community detection.

The proposed approach is called Modularity Gain Acceleration (MGA) and is simplified and divided into two components, the local and global sum-weights. The Local Sum-Weight (LSW) is the component with lower complexity and is calculated for each candidate label transition. The General Sum-Weight (GSW) is more computationally complex, and is calculated only once per each label. GSW is updated by leveraging a simple process for each node-label transition, instead of for all available labels. The MGA approach leads to significant efficiency improvements by reducing time consumption up to 85% relative to the original algorithms with the exact same quality in terms of modularity value which is highly valuable in analyses of big data sets.

Timothy Havens is director of Michigan Tech’s Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC), the associate dean for research for the College of Computing , and the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems.

View the article abstract here.

Imagine if your car could tell you when you are passing by an area occupied by rare migratory birds, or if it could listen to roads and bridges to determine when infrastructure repairs need to be made.

A recent gift of $149,518 from Mobility Research at Ford Motor Company is funding research that could make this possible.

Dr. Timothy Havens, Institute of Computing and Cybersystems, and Dr. Andrew Barnard, Great Lakes Research Center, will lead an exploration of how future connected vehicles could use AI and acoustics to detect, classify, and localize external sound events, and evaluate and monitor transportation infrastructure.

The gift will fund two graduate fellowships, a team of undergraduate students in the SENSE Enterprise, and build and develop a mobile acoustics test bed that will allow students, Havens, and Barnard to conduct cutting-edge research in AI and acoustics.

Michigan Tech would like to thank Chad Esselink (’94, Computer Science) and Tavan Eftekhar at Ford Mobility Research for making this possible.

The Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) is the research arm of the College of Computing at Michigan Tech. The ICC provides faculty and students the opportunity to work across organizational boundaries to create an environment that is a reflection of contemporary technological innovation. This collaboration allows for a convergence in communication, control and computing that mirrors today’s industry and society.

The Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) provides state-of-the-art laboratories to support research on a broad array of topics. Faculty members from many departments across Michigan Technological University’s campus collaborate on interdisciplinary research, ranging from air–water interactions to biogeochemistry to food web relationships.

In November, Michigan Tech undergraduates begin submitting research proposals to the annual competition for Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships—SURF—which are due the following February and awarded that spring.

Computer Science major Elijah Cobb was one of the many students to submit a SURF proposal this academic year. His was excellent, but so were many others, and the SURF funds were limited, so unfortunately Cobb missed out.

Enter Associate Professor Dr. Charles Wallace (Computer Science) and the College of Computing, which is providing additional funding to allow Cobb to join this summer’s cohort of SURF recipients.

Open to all Michigan Tech undergraduates who have at least one semester remaining after the summer, SURF recipients conduct a research project with a faculty mentor, prepare periodic progress reports, attend a series of professional development seminars over the summer, then present their research at Michigan Tech’s Undergraduate Research Symposium, or at a professional conference in their field. A modest stipend is also awarded.

Cobb will conduct his research project, “Designing Scaffolded Interactive Instruction in Discrete Mathematics,” with Dr. Charles Wallace, Associate Professor of Computer Science.

Watch the College of Computing blog, website, and social media channels for updates from Cobb and Dr. Wallace as their research moves forward.

Elijah Cobb is a fourth year Computer Science student at Michigan Tech. He describes himself as a passionate learner, and throughout his education he has challenged himself to explore learning opportunities outside of the classroom.

Cobb says he is thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in a research project with Professor Wallace. “Together, we will research and develop a new tool for undergraduate Computer Science students to use at Michigan Tech. Our research will focus on Alloy, a programming language used for modeling real-world systems.”

Because Alloy is so complex, Cobb explains that he and Wallace aim to produce an interactive drag and drop interface that will make this powerful programming language more accessible to undergraduate computer science students.

The Project: Designing Scaffolded Interactive Instruction

Discrete mathematics is a foundational Computer Science topic, and undergraduate computer science students enroll in a course at some point in their college career. The course focuses on topics including set theory, relational algebra, and predicate logic, extremely important concepts for beginning students as they form the basis of analysis in the field.

But Computer Science students typically do not get the kind of interactive practice with discrete math that they do with programming in languages like Java. As a result, misconceptions can persist, and students can develop an attitude that math has little relevance to their field.

To introduce the mathematical languages of relational algebra and predicate logic to undergraduate Computer Science students, Dr. Wallace and his colleagues have developed curriculum that uses the Alloy language and modeling tool. He notes that many progressive Computer Science departments across the nation have included programming-oriented exercises like these in their discrete math curricula.

“When I came to Michigan Tech and took discrete structures as a second-year student, the interactive element of the course with Alloy greatly benefited me in learning the course material,” confirms Cobb. “But it was also the most difficult part of the course for me. I knew what I wanted to do, but I could not replicate the thoughts in my head into the code required to run simulations.”

With his SURF project, Cobb aims to help other students with their learning of discrete math and eliminate some of the unnecessary confusion that may develop. He’ll develop a simple, easy to use graphical application that will allow undergraduate students to develop mathematical simulations without the need to fully understand the underlying programming language involved.

To introduce discrete mathematics–the mathematical languages of relational algebra and predicate logic–to undergraduate CS students, Dr. Wallace and his colleagues have developed curriculum that uses the interactive Alloy modeling tool. Wallace notes that many progressive CS departments across the nation have included interactive tools like these in their curriculum.

Alloy is both a programming language based on the mathematical languages of relational algebra and predicate logic, and an application for finding instances (situations) that follow (or break) the requirements set by an Alloy program. It is a powerful tool for “lightweight” modeling of complex systems, allowing designers to explore and gain insights early in the design process. In the classroom, Alloy can give students real-time feedback on their developing understanding of discrete math, and provide them with an authentic sense of how math is applied in the CS field.

“Alloy provides more feedback to students than traditional pencil-and-paper exercises, however the experience could be better for first-time students,” Cobb says. “When students work with Alloy, it can be daunting because as they are trying to develop models, they may encounter small, unfamiliar syntactical issues, and the error messages provided by Alloy can be confusing because they are written for experts, not first time users.”

So, first-time students need careful scaffolding to navigate the powerful Alloy tool. Cobb explains that scaffolding can be thought of as creating a base structure on which students can focus on the task at hand, without overloading them with distracting content.

Cobb’s SURF project will implement automated scaffolding to assist the student new to Alloy by:
(1) Providing a visual, block-based interface for the language, similar to introductory programming languages like Scratch and Snap! This has the potential to keep students focused on learning fundamental concepts of logic and relations, without distracting syntax problems.
(2) Developing automated detection and response for common problems in novice code. This follows from successful work in automated critique of Java programs using the WebTA tool, developed by Assistant Professor Dr. Leo Ureel for use in Michigan Tech’s introductory programming courses.

Cobb says his personal experiences have provided him with much expertise and motivation for a project like this. He notes, “After graduating high school I worked for start-up called Ampel Feedback. It was then that I learned Electron, ReactJS, Typescript, and many other technologies I aim to use for this research program.”

Cobb will begin his work in the second half of summer 2020, and continue its development in the 2020-2021 academic year, including pilot studies of the scaffolded tool. Feedback from the pilot studies will inform further development in summer 2021; Cobb and Wallace expect to introduce the new learning tool in the Michigan Tech Discrete Structures course in fall 2021.

Wallace is looking forward to the collaboration, noting that “it is gratifying to have a student like Elijah who is able to reflect on both what has been valuable and what has been challenging in his own learning experience, and act on those reflections to help future students.”

The College of Computing presented a Convocation Ceremony on May 1, 2020, to honor and recognize Spring and Summer 2020 graduates. At the virtual event, undergraduate student achievement awards were announced, graduates were congratulated, and faculty and staff congratulatory videos were viewed.

Michigan Tech Computer Science alumnus Brian VanVoorst ’93 presented the Convocation address. VanVoorst is a Lead Scientist at BBN Technologies, a member of BBN’s Distinguished Scientists, and a Raytheon Technologies Fellow.

The College’s inaugural class of 109 graduates comprises 5 doctor of philosophy, 14 master of science, and 90 bachelor of science degrees. The College of Computing Class of 2020 is nearly 20% women, 27% of the class graduated with honors, and the average undergraduate GPA is 3.28.

View the Convocation video below and on YouTube.

Play – College of Computing Convocation 2020

See a lists of all the graduates here. Two undergraduates completed dual majors: Lucas Catron, who majored in Computer Science and Humanities, and Mark Heinonen, Electrical Engineering Technology and Audio Productions and Technology.

View faculty and staff congratulatory videos, read student and faculty profiles, and discover all things Class of 2020, on the College of Computing webpage: mtu.edu/computing/class-of-2020.

The Department of Computer Science awarded Class of 2020 undergraduate awards to the following Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) graduates:
Christina Anderson, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Keith Atkinson, CS: Award for Exceptional Community Service and Leadership
Dean Bassett, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Jack Bergman, CS: Award for Exceptional Leadership
Lucas Catron, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Crystal Fletcher, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Chris Holmes, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Mads Howard, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Jacob Jablonsky, SE: Award for Excellence in Teaching, Award for Excellence in Teaching
Maddie Le Clair, SE: Award for Exceptional Leadership
Amy Slabbekoorn, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Emily Winkleman, CS: Award for Excellence in Teaching
Parker Young, SE: Award for Exceptional Leadership and Teaching, Award for Excellence in Teaching

Award for Exceptional Community Service and Leadership: Keith Atkinson
Keith has helped older adults in the Houghton community become comfortable with digital technology through one on one tutoring through the BASIC (Building Adult Skills in Computing) program. He taught several cohorts of middle school students about computer programming through the Copper Country Coders organization, and served as president of that organization. Keith developed and deployed a food inventory system for the Husky Food Access Network, which helps combat hunger issues on Tech’s campus.

Award for Exceptional Leadership: Jack Bergman
Jack has served as the president of MTU RedTeam, a student organization dedicated to promoting cybersecurity education among Tech students. Under his leadership, RedTeam organized students to participate in national cybersecurity competitions. In Fall 2019, the MTU Red Team was ranked 8th out of 689 in the NCL cyber competition. Jack led RedTeam to host a cybersecurity competition at MTU in Spring 2020, which attracted 35 students competing on 15 different teams.

Award for Exceptional Leadership: Maddie LeClair
Maddie has been a highly effective leader of the Women in Computing Sciences (WiCS) student organization.  Under her leadership, the group has increased its visibility, holding regular events on campus to highlight the opportunities for women in computing fields.  She led the effort for the WiCS group to become affiliated as an ACM-W chapter, and she has been active in supporting departmental efforts to diversify our undergraduate student body, both individually and as a leader of WiCS.

Award for Exceptional Leadership and Teaching: Parker Young
Parker served as president of not one, but two student organizations: Copper Country Coders and the Michigan Tech Pep Band.  Under his leadership, the Coders group made great strides in its organization and sustainability through revising its charter. Parker is passionate about teaching others, whether it is young students learning to mod Minecraft at Copper Country Coders or older adults learning to Zoom with their families in the BASIC program.  His leadership skills also facilitated his Senior Design team’s  successful completion of the Dragonfly app, an offline app developed for the North Carolina Natural History Museum’s after-school program to assist children monitoring the weather and counting dragonflies.

Award for Excellence In Teaching: Christina Anderson, Crystal Fletcher, Chris Holmes | Mads Howard, Jacob Jablonsky, Parker Young
Christina, Crystal, Chris, Mads, Jacob, and Parker have been mainstays at the College of Computing Learning Center, which provides peer assistance for Michigan Tech students in their computing studies. Learning Center coaches help students from a wide range of backgrounds in a wide array of topics, and must be able to quickly assess and deploy the right tutoring strategy for the situation.

Award for Excellence In Teaching: Dean Bassett, Lucas Catron, Jacob Jablonsky, Amy Slabbekoorn, Emily Winkleman
Dean, Lucas, Jacob, Amy, and Emily have served as lab assistants for our introductory courses. These programming labs are where some of the most important learning moments happen for our beginning students. Lab assistants play a crucial role in providing peer support and guidance. These four individuals have shown great commitment, compassion, and patience in this role.

The CMH Division presented Class of 2020 undergraduate awards to the following students:
Michael Dabish: Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award for exceptional performance as a research and laboratory assistant.
Bernard Kluskens: Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award for exceptional performance as a teaching assistant.
Gary Tropp: Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award, for excellent student academic mentoring in the College of Computing Learning Center.
Emma Davidson: Outstanding EET Graduate Award for exceptional service as a laboratory assistant and grader.
Mark Heinonen: Outstanding EET Graduate Award for an exceptional Senior Design project in audio system design.
Spencer Thompson: Outstanding EET Graduate Award for exceptional service as a teaching assistant in the transition to remote instruction.

Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award: Michael Dabish
For exceptional performance as a research and laboratory assistant. 
Michael’s work in the lab has been very helpful in fulfilling our needs to provide the best lab environment for students. He has shown that he is always willing to put in the work necessary to get the job done.
In 2018 Michael became a research/teaching assistant, working with the CNSA faculty on two NSA grants to create and update course content regarding cyber ethics and cybersecurity.
Michael is constantly collaborating with CNSA faculty and students to discover new ways to implement popular technologies in system administration and security.
He has even created a YouTube channel to document and share methods of implementing these technologies.
What Michael learned in these jobs has inspired him to pursue graduate school in the hope of becoming a teacher right here at Michigan Tech.

Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award: Bernard Kluskens
For exceptional performance as a teaching assistant.
Bernard was teaching assistant for four classes taught by Todd Arney, who nominated Bernard for this award.  Arney says Bernard took the lead on answering lab questions, and then even made calendar appointment slots for students to get one-on-one help using Zoom online. Arney says he would not have been able to manage his  classes with Bernard’s help with grading, fielding questions, and reviewing material before posting to Canvas.

Outstanding CNSA Graduate Award: Gary Tropp
For excellent student academic mentoring in the College of Computing Learning Center.
Gary is the first CNSA student to work as a “Student Academic Mentor” (SAM) in the new “College of Computing Learning Center” (CCLC), offering in person one-on-one help with two of the lab intensive classes in the CNSA program and then even continuing to offer online personalized help for students.

Outstanding EET Graduate Award: Emma Davidson
For exceptional service as a laboratory assistant and grader.
Emma has been helping faculty and students in the lab for over three years, and she also helped with “texting day” to reach out to prospective students.

Outstanding EET Graduate Award: Mark Heinonen
For an exceptional Senior Design project in audio system design.
Mark designed a 4-way passive electrical circuit specifically tuned for a pair of loudspeakers he created as part of his Audio Production and Technology degree.  He started out with a design based on the latest in digital signal processing, but in the end he discovered the value in “old school” analog electrical circuits built from resistors, capacitors, and inductors – what used to be considered mainstream electrical engineering but is now something of a lost art.

Outstanding EET Graduate Award: Spencer Thompson
For exceptional service as a teaching assistant in the transition to remote instruction.
Spencer has been lab assistant for most, if not all of the EET labs. He was nominated for this award by new faculty member Jungyun Bae, who pointed out his dedication to helping students with labs and homework in the EET data acquisition course. After mid-semester, Spencer actively helped the students during lab hours through emails and Zoom meetings. He also took videos of all the labs left within the semester when we transferred into remote instruction and, thanks to him, the course went smoothly even after the campus was locked down.

Honors Graduates: These Department of Computer Science students graduated with honors.
Christina Anderson, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Isaac Appleby, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Daniel Carrara, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Lucas Catron, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Zach Dill, CS, Cum Laude
Peter Dukes, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Trevor Good, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Ethan Hegg, CS, Cum Laude
Mads Howard, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Sophia Jensen, CS, Cum Laude
Derek Kamin, CS, Magna Cum Laude
Alex Larkin, CS, Cum Laude
Maddie LeClair, SE, Cum Laude
James Michniewicz, CS, Summa Cum Laude
Michael Munoz, CS, Summa Cum Laude
Dante Paglia, CS, Summa Cum Laude
Brandon Paupore, SE, Cum Laude
Elijah Potter, CS, Cum Laude
Emily Winkleman, CS, Cum Laude
Kieran Young, CS, Cum Laude
Parker Young, SE, Magna Cum Laude

Honors Graduates: These CMH Division students graduated with honors:
Dina Falzarano, CNSA, Cum Laude
Timothy Graham, CNSA, Cum Laude
Mark Heinonen, EET, Cum Laude
Andrew Hitchcock, CNSA, Magna Cum Laude
Chris Koch, CNSA, Summa Cum Laude
Zack Metiva, CNSA, Magna Cum Laude
Joshua Peter, CNSA, Magna Cum Laude
Spencer Thompson, EET, Cum Laude

Effective July 1, 2020, the Department of Applied Computing (AC) will open for business as Michigan Tech’s newest academic department, and the second department of the College of Computing. Daniel R. Fuhrmann, Dave House Professor of Computer Engineering, has been named the interim chair of the new department, for a period of one year.

The Applied Computing department administers undergraduate bachelor of science programs in Computer Network and System Administration (CNSA), Electrical Engineering Technology, and soon a new B.S. in Mechatronics (pending final approval by the Michigan Tech Board of Trustees and the state of Michigan). Applied Computing also shares responsibility, with the Department of Computer Science, for the B.S. in Cybersecurity, which began enrolling students in Fall 2019

On the graduate side, the Applied Computing Department hosts the Master of Science in Health Informatics and the Master of Science in Mechatronics, which also started in Fall 2019. In addition to teaching AC program courses, faculty in the new department will pursue research in a variety of areas where computers and computing play a major role, including cybersecurity, mechatronics, health informatics, and machine learning.

Fuhrmann notes, “I am delighted to be a part of the continued growth of the College of Computing, and to do what I can to get our new department up and running. I believe that the Department of Applied Computing makes the CC unique among similar colleges nationwide, and gives Michigan Tech a distinctive edge.”

Key goals for the interim chair position, identified during the nomination and selection process, include strategically increasing the visibility of and enrollment in in Department of Applied Computing degree and certificate programs, and supporting and strengthening collaborative, interdisciplinary, and interdepartmental relationships in curriculum and research.

“I think I speak for others when I express how extremely appreciative I am of Dan’s willingness to contribute to the growth and success of the College of Computing over the last year, and his further willingness to agree to serve as department chair during this particularly challenging time,” says Adrienne Minerick, dean of the College of Computing.

“Dan has repeatedly proven to be an excellent team member who is willing to do the work to support the greater good of our teams in the CC. By stepping forward into unfamiliar tasks as is needed and framing most things as opportunities, he helps bring out the best in our team.”

Fuhrmann says that the new department will continue to deliver strong programs in the AC department’s areas of primary responsibility, and he hopes to increase synergies among the various groups within the department, for instance, looking at how cybersecurity and mechatronics work together in industrial control systems.

Growth in the Health Informatics graduate program is also anticipated, and Fuhrmann notes that the need for trained, talented health informatics professionals has never been more apparent than it is right now.

“In addition to what we will be doing internally, I hope to build a culture of collaboration and cooperation with other Michigan Tech departments that have an interest in computing applications, both inside and outside the College of Computing. We have a lot to offer,” Fuhrmann says.

For more information about the Department of Applied Computing as it becomes available link here.

This May, AVA Labs, a next-generation blockchain platform spun out of Cornell and led by Professor Emin Gün Sirer, is hosting a month-long virtual hackathon for the best and brightest computer science and engineering students in the world.

The event will focus on developing new applications for financial products and services, and infrastructure tools that could someday be used by millions of people on the AVA platform. In addition to opportunities for close mentorship with our engineering leadership and early exposure to the most anticipated blockchain launch of 2020, students will have the opportunity to compete for up to $50,000 in prizes.

More details on the event are in the note below, and linked here: https://www.avalabs.org/ava-x/hackathons/university-hackathon-may-2020

And here is a recent Bloomberg News article featuring AVA: New Startup Aims to Prove Blockchain Fast Enough for Finance

AVA is a leading blockchain platform spun out of Cornell and led by Professor Emin Gün Sirer. It is an open-source platform for launching highly decentralized applications, new financial primitives, and new interoperable blockchains.