Computer Science News

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.

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
  

The first step in the GAIn-IT project is to sponsor a summer camp which will be held at the SGU campus, rather than at the USD campus. Dr. Asaithambi points out the importance of bringing USD resources to the tribal community to lower the barrier for entry into the program. Here are the subprojects proposed in the grant:

• 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
  

Assisting Dr. Asaithambi in this effort are Co-PI's Dr. David Struckman-Johnson and Dr. Douglas Goodman. In addition, the grant will fund several undergraduate students and one graduate student to participate in developing and supporting the programs specified in the grant.

Posted at 12:00AM Sep 05, 2008 by Joe C Reynoldson in General  |