2010 Programming Contest

On October 16, 2010, UCSD students participatedin the Fall 2010 UCSD Programming Contest over the course of five hours. 36 students participated and 20 pizzas were consumed. Below is a summary of thecontest, more details (photos and detailed results) are available at: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/groups/UCSDProgramContest/fa10/results/

The contest consisted of 8 problems, and the top honors go to Elliott Slaughter for solving 5 problems with a combined time of 420 minutes. Junior David Michon placed second, and Haoxi Fang,Van Lam, Andrew Chen, and Matt Der rounded out the top six, each with 4 problems solved. Below is a list of the top fifteen placers in the contest:
1 Elliott Slaughter
2 David Michon
3 Haoxi Fang
4 Van Lam
5 Andrew Chen
6 Matt Der
7 Ellison Bayan
8 Justin Yuhsong Huang
9 Yimai Fang *
10 Rohan Anil
11 Timothy Martin
12 Daniel Price
13 Eric Dorman
14 Yixin Zhu
15 Tim Wheeler
16 Adrian Teng-Amnuay

* unofficial contestant

Thanks go to Mike Dini and The Dini Group for providingthe prizes, food and drink, and support for the contest. Michael Vrable, Mohammad Moghimi, Do-Kyum Kim,Keliang Zhao and Faculty Coach Michael Taylor ran the contest, with help from UCSD Programming Team Co-Captain Justin Huang, CSES President Chris Moghbel, and other folks at CSES. Additional results (and photos) can be viewed here: http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/groups/UCSDProgramContest/fa10/results/

StarCAVE Up for an "Immy"

Today is the last day to vote for the Calit2 StarCAVE for an immersive Technology Award / You can vote! (one vote per IP address). http://www.immersivetech.org/summit/immys/

Learn more from the Calit2 story from Tiffany Fox



San Diego, Oct. 4, 2010 -- Immersive virtual reality has been a cornerstone of Calit2’s research into scientific visualization from the institute’s very beginning almost 10 years ago. The latest validation of that research may be handed out on Oct. 21 in Los Angeles, when Calit2 could win one of the inaugural Immersive Tech Awards, dubbed the ‘Immys’.

Jacobs School Engineers at "SUPERMATH: Better Living Through Analytics"

SUPERMATH, is a one day conference in San Diego bringing together national analytics experts and business practitioners across industries for a day of thought provoking presentations and discussions to inspire, educate and collaborate.

Jacobs School engineers will be participating in participate in the SUPERMATH "Expo and Neighborhoods."

Elelctrical and computer engineering PhD student Anup Doshi will present some of his work on innovative approaches to making future automobiles safer and “intelligent.”

Yuvraj Agarwal (Ph.D.'09), a Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering will be highlighting various aspects of SleepServer, a software-only approach for reducing energy consumption.

Elelctrical and computer engineering PhD student Luke Barrington will describe his work on the Valley of the Khans virtual exploration project.

Conference details below:

On November 10, 2010, San Diego Software Industry Council (SDSIC.org) will be hosting a first-of-its-kind event – "SUPERMATH: Better Living Through Analytics” - to showcase and celebrate the history and innovation of analytics technologies and applications. The invitation-only conference will also include an Expo open to the public, to demonstrate how analytics affect our lives today and tomorrow.

There are four Neighborhoods for participation:
• Healthcare and Medicine
• Energy and CleanTech
• Security, Fraud and Risk
• Social Networks and Marketing/Sales

The Conference will be held at the Del Mar Marriott and the expo is open to the public. The rest of the conference requires paid admission.

CAPTCHA Project on NPR Weekend Edition

The August 2010 CAPTCHA paper from computer scientists at UC San Diego made it's way to NPR's Weekend Edition on Sunday. Listen to the story, "Spammers Use the Human Touch To Avoic CAPTCHA"

The paper referenced in the NPR story is below:
Re: CAPTCHAs -- Understanding CAPTCHA-Solving from an Economic Context, by Marti Motoyama, Kirill Levchenko, Chris Kanich, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at UC San Diego, published in Proceedings of the USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, D.C., August 2010.


Savage talks big picture about CAPTCHAs and hits one of the findings from the paper:
 

"On the one hand, CAPTCHAs do not keep the bad guys out, but at the same time, they actually are effective at keeping the problem in control," Savage says.


Below is the abstract to the paper Re: CAPTCHAs -- Understanding CAPTCHA-Solving from an Economic Context:
Reverse Turing tests, or CAPTCHAs, have become an ubiquitous defense used to protect open Web resources from being exploited at scale. An effective CAPTCHA resists existing mechanistic software solving, yet can be solved with high probability by a human being. In response, a robust solving ecosystem has emerged, reselling both automated solving technology and realtime human labor to bypass these protections. Thus, CAPTCHAs can increasingly be understood and evaluated in purely economic terms; the market price of a solution vs the monetizable value of the asset being protected.We examine the market-side of this question in depth, analyzing the behavior and dynamics of CAPTCHA-solving service providers, their price performance, and the underlying labor markets driving this economy.

San Diego Union Tribune is Live Tweeting Interview W/ UCSD Chancellor Fox Regarding Her National Medal of Science

http://twitter.com/#!/LilyShumLeung

Science Today at the University of California

Science Today at the University of California offers a nice selection of research stories coming out of the University of California system.

Science Today, a five-day-a-week, one-minute radio program is produced for the Westwood One/CBS Radio Network by the University of California. Each week, Science Today features stories highlighting the latest scientific breakthroughs and discoveries at the university and its two affiliated national laboratories. Topics focus primarily on health, nutrition, the environment and social & physical sciences. Hosted by Larissa Branin, Science Today airs nationally on various CBS radio affiliates.

Trey Ideker in Xconomy

The Oct 6, 2010 Xconomy headline: "Stanford, UCSD Biologists Take Plunge Into Arpanet-Style Project With Sage Bionetworks"

Learn more about UC San Diego's Trey Ideker on his lab Web page.

Dr. Ideker is Chief of Genetics at the UCSD School of Medicine.  He also serves as Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.