Spring 2011

• Apr 29:Panel discussion with the CS graduate students who attended the CRA-W Grad Cohort 2011.
• Apr 22: Short Research Talks #7:Jon Trowbridge of Google in Chicago on Planet-Scale Computing
• Apr 15: Short Research Talks #6: Prof. Barbara Di Eugenio on Natural Language Processing at UIC
• Apr 8: Short Research Talks #5: Prof. Tanya Berger-Wolf on Computational Insights into Population Biology.
• Mar 18: Short Research Talks #4: Prof. Venkat Venkatakrishnan on Automated Detection of Parameter Tampering Opportunities (or) How to shop online with unlimited discounts
• Mar 11: Short Research Talks #3: Prof. Robert Sloan on What is the right legal policy for vulnerability-ridden and flawed software?
• Mar 4: Short Research Talks #2: Sean Eby, co-founder of Poll Everywhere (polleverywhere.com) talked about The challenges and benefits of taking on the entrepreneurship route.
• Feb 24: Short Research Talks #1: Prof. Dale Reed on "Teaching CS". The key points of his talk are here.

Fall 2010

• Nov 12th: PhD student Tim Merrifield talked about "TransitGenie", an iPhone application TransitGenie (developed here at UIC by the BITS laboratory group) provides real-time, multi-modal shortest path routes utilizing Chicago's public transportation network.
• Nov 5th: Kathy Corcos from the UIC Engineering Career Center gave a talk on "Internship / Employment Opportunities Lost: What Can You Do To Help Yourself?" about various powerful command line unix tools to automate a lot of grad student tasks in dealing with data.
• Oct 29th: Prof. Jakob Eriksson talked on "Why the command line is a grad student's best friend"
• Oct 22: Grace Hopper Conference attendees participate in a panel describing their experiences and sharing things they learned.
• Oct 15: Scientific Programming and Communication Tools for Research Seminar#2: Tutorial on R. Matt Bourque, PhD student in Math, gave a short tutorial on the open source statistical software R.The R code is here.
• September 24: Life as a Google Engineer. Andrea Vaccari, PhD student in CS described his experiences as a Google intern over the summer and shared tips on getting such an internship.
• September 3: Prof. Bob Kenyon (Dean of Graduate Studies) explained the qualifier exam procedures and hosted a Q/A session. Download the video here (66MB, 51min)

Spring 2010

• April 16: Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) President Charles Moss talks about the new Contract for all grad. employees and rally day on Apr 21st to talk with state legislators in Springfield about state funding for U of I.
• April 9: PhD student Nitin Jindal shared his experiences in finding a job in industry. His slides can be found here.
• April 2: Jon Trowbridge from Google@Chicago gave a talk on: "Distributed Systems, Where Easy Things Are Hard"
• March 19: Dr. Moira Zellner (assistant professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at UIC and is also affiliated with the Institute of Environmental Science and Policy (IESP)) introduces her researchusing agent modeling for urban planning problems like water management systems or traffic management modeling.
• March 18: Dr. William Cleveland (Professor of Statistics, Computer Science, Purdue University) gave a seminar on "Divide and Recombine for the Analysis of Very Large Datasets"
• March 15: Dr. Justine Cassell (Professor, Media Technology & Society, Northwestern University) gave a seminar on "Social Practice: Identity and Culture in Embodied Conversational Agents"
• March 15: WiCS Lunch with guest speaker Dr. Justine Cassell
• March 5: Bowling in the Student Center East.
• February 12: Game night

Fall 2009

• Nov 20th: Jason Lotter on Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Jason, President of the UIC Chapter of EWB talked about the group's latest project in Guatemala and how those interested can get involved.
• Nov 13th: Scientific Programming and Communication Tools for Research Seminar #1: Scientific publications and presentations using Latex, Beamer, etc. Joel Berger, PhD student in Physics gave a short tutorial on Latex. Info can be found here
• Oct 30th: Halloween Themed 0xFF
• Oct 22nd:Dr. Yunhong Gu on Cloud Computing. Dr. Gu, creator of UDT and other HPC technologies gave an overview of cloud computing and an introduction to Amazon's EC2.
• Oct 16th: Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: We had 8 CS grad students go to this conference in Tucson, Arizona. It was an awesome experiences for them and their impressions can be seen here.
• Oct 13th: Trash/WiCS Lunch. Networking luncheon for all women undergrads, grads and faculty in CS.
• Sept 29th: Prof. Jakob Eriksson on PlanetLab. Prof. Eriksson described the global research network UIC is a member. He showed how one could log in and run simulations on multiple nodes (computers) and leverage such computing power.

Summer 2009

• Super Summer Math @ Oak Park Library: Four CS graduate students with the support of Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf ran a 1 hour session for 5 weeks at the Oak Park Public Library. The session involved fun games to introduce 7-12 year old kids to algorithms.

Spring 2009

• Seminar: Q&A session on the new PhD qualifier exam: The CS dept. changed the format of the PhD qualifier exam in 2008-2009 and this session was led by Dr. Prasad Sistla (the Director of Graduate Studies) to answer questions from students about the new format and to gain feedback from those who took the exam post-change.
• Sour becomes sweet -- On a fun diversion from CS talks, MSc. student Jennifer Anderson gave a short and interactive demonstration to a new craze in Japan - a taste-controller that converts sour tastes to sweet ones.
• Field Trip: ACM Chicago Chapter official meeting with guest speaker Larry Yaeger, Professor in the School of Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington for a talk on The Path to AI Life.

Fall 2008

• Seminar Series: How to get an Academic Job: We had 6 professors volunteer their time to describe their responsibilities in their positions (as assistant professor, lecturer, associate professor, newly-hired assistant professor) and to share their tips on getting an academic job, interviewing and such.
  • Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf & Dr. Venkat Venkatakrishnan
  • Dr. Leilah Lyons & Dr. Andy Johnson
  • Dr. Dale Reed & Dr. Barbara Di Eugenio
• Talk: Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) 2008 attendees gave a short presentation on their experiences at the conference that the CS department funded them for.
• Trash/WiCS Lunch (Dec 2nd)

Spring 2008

• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Apr 8th): Dr. Gyorgy Turan (MCS).

Fall 2007

• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Nov 21st): Dr. Robert Sloan
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Nov 7th): Dr. Ugo Buy
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Nov 1st): Dr. Prasad Sistla
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Oct 17th): Dr. Venkat Venkatakrishnan
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Oct 11th): Dr. Lenore Zuck
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Oct 3rd): Dr. Andy Johnson
• Faculty Mentor Lunch (Sep 26th): Dr. Sol Shatz
• Talk: Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) 2007 attendees gave a short presentation on their experiences at the conference that the CS department funded them for.
• Seminar (Oct 12): Dr. Andy Johnson on "So You Went and Got Yourself a PhD ... Now What?" This talk will give an overview of what happens after you get a PhD, assuming you start working at a university, national lab, or company and not driving a cab. We will discuss what your options are and how can you improve your chances of having a successful career.

Spring 2007

• Seminar Series: How to network at conferences and job fairs (coordinated with WISE): We had tips on networking at meetings and conferences from Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf, Dr. Venkat Venkatakrishnan, Dr. Barbara Di Eugenio and Dr. Robert Sloan. We also heard from a person from Career Services on networking at job fairs. Here is Dr. Tanya Berger-Wolf's materials -- link to StudentNetworking.ppt
• Seminar: The Secret of Better Code (How to Write Maintainable, Robust, and Fast Code) - Yunhong Gu, Research Scientist at the National Center for Data Mining @ UIC gave a talk on programming skills.
• Trash/WiCS Lunch (Mar. 15th): An opportunity for female CS undergrads and grads to get to know CS women faculty and possibly discover research projects of interest or mentoring relationships.

Fall 2006

• Talk: Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) 2006 attendees had a panel discussion about their experiences at the conference that the CS department funded them for.