Category: Seminars

The Copper Country Coders program is back for the 2020-2021 academic year — in a new all-online format.

The fall kick-off meeting will take place at 1:00 p.m., this Saturday, September 26, 2020. Both students and their parents should attend the first meeting. Find the Zoom link here.

All local middle and high school students are invited to participate in the program, for which Michigan Tech students lead small courses in programming and computer science for all levels of experience.

Copper Country Coders meets online on Saturdays, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m, in the fall and spring semesters. All meetings are conducted through the Zoom videoconferencing application.

“We have an enthusiastic and creative team of tutors, and we are looking forward to another year of learning and having fun,” says Associate Professor Chuck Wallace, Computer Science, the faculty advisor to the group.

Parents are asked to make a contribution to help support Copper Country Coders and the Michigan Tech student tutors. The suggested minimum donation is $60 per semester, but parents may contribute according to what they can afford.

For additional information, please visit the Copper Country Coders website. Parents and students are welcome to email Charles Wallace directly at wallace@mtu.edu with questions.

Professor Yu Cai, Applied Computing, a member of the ICC’s Center for Cybersecurity, is the principal investigator on a two-year project that has received a $99,942 grant from the National Security Agency (GenCyber). The project is titled, “GenCyber Teacher Camp at Michigan Tech. “

Lecturer Tim Van Wagner (AC) and Assistant Professor Bo Chen (CS, DataS) are Co-PIs. Yu Cai will serve as the camp director, Tim Van Wagner as lead instructor.

This GenCyber project aims to host a week-long, residential summer camp for twenty K-12 STEM teachers in 2021 at Michigan Tech. Target educators are primarily from Michigan and surrounding states.

The objectives of the camp are to teach cybersecurity knowledge and safe online behavior, develop innovative teaching methods for delivering cybersecurity content, and provide professional development opportunities so participants will return to their home schools with contagious enthusiasm about teaching cybersecurity.

The GenCyber camp will be offered at no cost to camp participants. Room and board will be provided. Teacher participants will receive a stipend of $500 for attending and completing camp activities.

Read about the 2019 Michigan Tech GenCyber camps for teachers and students here.

A second College of Computing Computing Bits session will take place Wednesday, August 5, at 6:00 p.m. via online Zoom meeting. A link to the event has been emailed to students.

This week’s session will include presentations by two student groups: the cybersecurity RedTeam and the Humane Interface Design Enterprise (HIDE). Following, students are invited to join conversational breakout rooms with College of Computing faculty members, and advisors and representatives from College of Computing student groups. Students may move from room to room according to their interests.

Join the Computing Bits session here.

We really enjoyed visiting with you at the first Computing Bits sessions, so we calibrated content for this next week to emphasize discussion time with faculty. We will also have returning Computing Huskies join in conversations.

New students: This is your chance to ask that question you’ve been wanting to ask–about computing, college, degree programs, careers, snow, pasties — anything!

Dean Adrienne Minerick

At the first Computing Bits session, July 29, 2020, new Assistant Professor Briana Bettin, Computer Science, and Senior Lecturer Todd Arney, Applied Computing discussed introductory Computing courses. Additional presentations included the Copper Country Coders student outreach group and conversations with department chairs Dan Fuhrmann, Applied Computing, and Linda Ott, Computer Science.

Additional Computing Bits sessions will be scheduled in the weeks ahead; topics will be announced in advance. Sessions will include breakout rooms in which faculty members will discuss a unifying topic, such as A.I., cybersecurity, health informatics, or even “what do I need to know about computers before I start?”

Dr. Timothy Havens presented the lead talk at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ISR-2 Seminar Series on Advancing Toward Modern Detection and Estimation Techniques for Multi-Sensor Scenarios, presented online on July 9, 2020.

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

The talk, “Explainable Deep Fusion,” described Havens’s sensor fusion systems research that seeks to combine cooperative and complementary sources to achieve optimal inference from pooled evidence.

Havens specifically discussed his innovations in non-linear aggregation learning with Choquet integrals and their applications in deep learning and Explainable AI.

The College of Computing Department of Computer Science invites girls in grades six through 10 to join a virtual workshop in which participants will explore, design, and program web pages and data analysis programs, while tracing how data flows through our daily lives.

The free workshop will take place Monday through Friday, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., July 13 through August 14, via online Zoom meeting. Space is limited, so register by July 7. Prior programming experience is not necessary.

Workshop presenters are third year Computer Science undergraduate Sarah Larkin-Driscoll (pictured above), and second-year Computer Science student Miriam Eikenberry-Ureel (pictured below). Email aspire-l@mtu.edu with questions.

Workshop Description

Why do people collect data? How is data collected? What kinds of things can you learn from data? What is wrong with the chart on this flyer? Join us on Zoom to learn about data collection and privacy while building your own website, designing a poll, analyzing collected data, and learning about cryptography.

In the Code Ninjas workshop participants answer these questions while they:

• Build their own websites
• Explore how to set and remove cookies
• Design a survey and learn how polling agencies choose what questions to ask
• Write a program to analyze a data set and present a summary
• Learn about data privacy laws
• Learn about cryptography and write secret code
• Learn about opportunities and careers in data science, web development, and other computing fields
• Meet other girls interested in computing

Class Schedule

Week 1: Basics of Data, HTML, & Cookies
Week 2: Data Collection
Week 3: Data Analysis
Week 4: Data Storage & Encryption
Week 5: Project Week

Workshop Sponsors

The Code Ninjas Workshop is sponsored by an AspireIT grant from the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), and facilitated by the Michigan Tech Department of Computer Science.

To help faculty prepare for Flex Fall, IDEA Hub and the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning have organized a series of events, each including Flex Fall Q&A sessions and discussions about teaching.

Click the below links to register and receive a Google calendar invitation and the Zoom link. Questions? Email margaret@mtu.edu.

Session #2: Wednesday, June 17, 3:00 – 4:30 pm. Online Teaching Showcase
Teaching, Q&A: 3 – 3:30 pm; Teaching Showcase, Discussion: 3:30-4:30 pm)

Session #3, Wednesday, June 24, 3-5 pm: Develop Innovative Solutions
(Teaching, Q&A: 3 – 3:30 pm, Design Thinking Workshop: Develop Innovative Solutions: 3:30 – 5 pm)

Session #4: Wednesday, July 1, 3 to 5 pm: Prototype Your Innovative Solutions
(Teaching, Q&A: 3 to 3:30 pm; Design Thinking Workshop–Prototype Your Innovative Solutions: 3:30 – 5 pm)

Read the full story in Monday’s Tech Today.

The Graduate Student Government (GSG) Professional Development Committee has organized a free webinar series in Computer Programming, which begins Tuesday, July 14, 2020.

July 14: “Introduction to Machine Learning with Python,” by Timothy Havens (CC)

July 15: “Managing Data” (Data Mining)” by MS Data Science candidate Sneha Nimmagadda

July 16: “Introduction to Deep Learning,” by Timothy Havens (CC)

Seats are not limited, but participants are asked to register so webinar organizers know how many attendees to expect.

Find more information, including links to register and join Zoom meetings, visit the GSG website.

The International Graduate Student Communication and Culture Center (IGSC3) is hosting a weekly Conversation Circle on Thursdays at 10:00 a.m. through June 26, 2020.

The aim of the conversation circles is to give international students opportunities to practice conversational English in an informal setting.

International students will discuss a range of topics selected by IGSC3 coaches, as well as students. Topics often include American culture, popular culture, travel, and history.

The meetings will be hosted through an online Zoom meeting. Sign up to participate here.

All GenCyber 2020 summer programs will be deferred to 2021 due to the impact of the COVID-19 virus.

For a listing of those programs who are receiving funding to host a camp, please see gen-cyber.com.

For updates and questions regarding specific camps and/or outreach activities, please contact the host institution using the information found on gen-cyber.com.

Please direct questions about the Michigan Tech GenCyber program to gencyber@mtu.edu.

The College of Computing has announced the addition of a bachelor of science in Mechatronics to its degree programs, beginning in Fall 2020, pending Michigan Tech Board of Trustees and state of Michigan approval.

A multi-disciplinary field at the intersection of mechanics, electronics, and computing, Mechatronics is the science of receiving, processing, and transmitting sensory data for the advanced control of external devices.

More details about this exciting new BS degree program will be shared soon. In the meantime, learn more about Mechatronics at Michigan Tech using the links below.

What is Mechatronics
MS in Mechatronics
Mechatronics Certificate

And check out this video, which was filmed in the Mechatronics lab at Michigan Tech.

Play – STEM Students Specialize in Mechatronics