Seminar in Computer Science: Digital Evidence and Computer Crime by trooper Samantha Cord of CT State Police Computer Crimes and Electronic Evidence Unit. Tuesday, May 10 at 4:30 pm in Maria Sanford 216. Pizza and soda will be served.

Seminar announcement

Third Annual Brian O’Connell Lecture by Benjamin Nugent: American Nerd. April 7, 3:30 PM, Memorial Hall - Constitution Room; Contact Laura Marchese: 860-832-2554; marcheselav@ccsu.edu

Lecture announcement

Drs. Kurkovsky and Kjell, together with Dr. Gotchev from the Department of Mathematics and Dr. Sharma from the department of Physics, received a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation program Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM). Beginning in the fall 2011, this grant will continue funding scholarships for academically talented but financially needy students majoring in computer science, mathematics, or physics. Scholarships provided through this program will pay up to $5,400 per year for up to four years.

Scholarship program web site

Tommy Carpenter and Caleb MacDonald, CCSU students majoring in Computer Science, have won the first prize at the national Student Research Competition organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The competition took place at the 41^st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) on March 10-13, 2010, Milwaukee, WI. SIGCSE is the largest international conference dedicated to Computer Science education that is attended each year by well over 1000 attendees from around the world. Tommy and Caleb’s work focused on using iris recognition to protect mobile devices from unauthorized access. Both of them are supported by Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics Scholarship program at CCSU funded by a half-million grant from the National Science Foundation.

Working with his family and friends, Central Connecticut State University has established a fund in honor of Brian M. O’Connell, a professor in CCSU’s computer science and philosophy departments who passed away in May 2008.

Official site

Brian M. O'Connell, Esq., 47, of West Hartford, died Wednesday, (May 21, 2008) at his home. He leaves his wife Sarah Cox. Born in Wethersfield to the late Robert F. and Elizabeth (Shannon) O'Connell he lived in the Hartford area all his life. He graduated from Northwest Catholic High School, Trinity College, and the UCONN School of Law. He practiced law in the Hartford area from 1987 to 1996 and was a professor in computer science and philosophy at Central Connecticut State University. He founded the Young Democrats of West Hartford, and was a member of DeMolay, IEEE, and the Connecticut Bar Assoc. He loved his students, his friends, reading, music, robots, and rocketry. Friends may call on Sunday, May 25, from 3-6 p.m. at the Molloy Funeral Home, 906 Farmington Ave., West Hartford. Donations in his memory may be made to www.alleycat.org. Messages of sympathy and condolences may be made at www.molloyfuneralhome.com

Dr. Zdravko Markov has been named co-principal investigator on a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project involves developing, implementing, and testing curricular materials that teach core Artificial Intelligence topics using a unifying theme of machine learning. Machine learning involves developing systems or programs that improve on their performance based on experience.

CCSU news announcement