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USD Hosts International Computer Programming Contest Regional Site, Places 1st locally
On Saturday, November 12, the Department of Computer Science was a host site for the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest.
The contest is a team-based programming competition operated by a global network of universities hosting regional competitions. During the contest, teams of 3 students compete for a chance to advance to the World Finals in Warsaw, Poland. The contest is designed to test each team’s communication, analysis, and problem-solving ability under pressure.
USD was one of the satellite sites for the contest’s North Central North America region in which more than 200 teams competed at solving 10 problems in 5 hours. 18 teams from 7 area schools participated.
Freshmen Gary Christiansen, Junior Michelle Lee, and Junior Ryan Coyle completed 4 problems, placing first at the Vermillion site and 28th regionally. Also competing from USD were Seniors Brian Reed, Andrew Schmitz, and Zach Dicus, who solved 3 problems, placing 10th at the USD site.
Computer Science professor Doug Goodman coaches the USD teams, meeting with them regularly in the weeks leading up to the contest. As part of their preparation, USD’s teams analyzed problems from previous years and competed against each other in a practice contest.
Posted at 09:26AM Nov 29, 2011 by Douglas Jennewein in General |
USD Places 3rd Overall in Collegiate Cyber Defense Contest
A team of seven undergraduate students from the Computer Science Department competed in the 3rd Annual North Central Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC)
Posted at 12:40PM Feb 28, 2011 by Joe C Reynoldson in General |
30th Annual High School Programming Contest
On April 1, 2010 the Computer Science Department in cooperation with the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery
Each year the members of the ACM work together with the CS department to organize the contest, and some of the coaches from the area high schools have said it is their favorite regional contest to attend. Teams of 2 to 3 students from schools in South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota attempt to solve as many programming problems as possible in the least amount of time. This year teams were given 12 problems and 4 hours to solve them. The Division I winners were Darin Bierbaum, Dustin Casey, and Dan Geschwender from Omaha North High Magnet High School. The Division II winners were Paul Granaas and Mark Helenurm from Vermillion High School. All awards as well as the final standings can be found on the contest website.
The members of the ACM and CS department would like to thank all of the participants in this years contest for attending. Thanks also to the sponsors for their generous donations.
Posted at 08:28AM Apr 19, 2010 by Joe C Reynoldson in General |
USD Competes in Cyber Defense Contest
Five undergraduate students and one graduate student from Computer Science competed in the first ever North Central Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition <http://ia.dsu.edu/ccdc/default.htm> on March 6th and 7th at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. USD’s team consisted of Joe Barrett, team captain Tyler Birgen, John Ford, Josh Houska, Michael Lucin, and Benjamin Say. They competed against 4 other teams from three states for a spot to go to the 4th Annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in San Antonio, Texas <http://www.nationalccdc.org/> on April 17.
At the regional contest, teams were give 30 minutes to secure several computers running a variety of Windows and Linux operating systems before a group of hackers known as the "Red Team" started attacking them. A scoring server tracked which services (such as http and ftp) were up or down for each team during the 8 hour contest, and teams earned points by keeping these services alive under the threat of attack. Throughout the competition, teams were also tasked with setting up software and hardware on their own network. Successfully completing these tasks earned extra points for each team. DSU won overall, but the top few teams were separated by only a small margin.
Posted at 08:25AM Mar 25, 2009 by Joe C Reynoldson in General |
First Computational Science and Statistics Doctorate Awarded in South Dakota
Sujuan Ye was awarded the first Ph.D. degree in Computational Science and Statistics (CSS) in the state of South Dakota at the summer commencement ceremonies held July 31, 2008 on the USD campus. The University of South Dakota issued a media release discussing the details of this important event. Dr. Asai Asaithambi, chair of the USD Computer Science Department, was also recently interviewed on the Viewpoint University radio program on KSOO. During the interview he defined computational science and statistics, and he described the kind of job an individual who earned a CSS Ph.D. might seek after graduation. You can hear this interview in its entirety by pressing the play button on the embedded player below.
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Posted at 12:00AM Sep 30, 2008 by Joe C Reynoldson in General |
Computer Science Begins Three Year GAIn-IT Project
Dr. Asai Asaithambi, Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department, is the Principal Investigator (PI) of a new three year grant entitled "Getting American Indians to Information Technology" (GAIn-IT). The grant is a $500,000
award by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support an effort to increase the number of American Indians entering computing careers in college and beyond. This effort is a partnership including USD, Sinte Gleska University (SGU), and the US Geological Survey's Center for Earth Resource Observation and Science (USGS EROS). Further details are explained in an article published by the Yankton Press & Dakotan.
The grant aims to encourage American Indians to pursue an education in Information Technology (IT) by overcoming several barriers:
- lack of opportunities to link IT to a cultural context
lack of adequate access to higher education within the American Indian Community
lack of background preparation including math skills
lack of resources, especially computers, at home
lack of career opportunities available in computing
lack of encouragement from family and friends
Limited faculty resources in computing at tribal institutions
- community-based summer camp for families to provide oportunities to explore context-based computing activities focused on Lakota language skills development and land resources exploration
summer background preparation program for high school students preparing them for computing majors in college
school-year follow-up of the summer background preparation program
computing-major readiness program for SGU freshmen and sophomores
distance-education and web-based USD computing courses to help SGU students complete undergraduate degrees in computing
3-2 B.S./M.S. transfer program in computing for SGU students
faculty development program for SGU faculty members to obtain master's and/or Ph.D. degrees in computing at USD
Posted at 12:00AM Sep 05, 2008 by Joe C Reynoldson in General |