Monthly Archives: December 2012

A new course has been added for Spring and meets for the second 8 weeks.  It does not count as an upper-level course for the informatics minor, BUT it *can* be used for those of you needing an extra hour of informatics credit (for example, if you took CS 105, which is a 3-hour course, as a substitute for INFO 102, which is a 4-hour course).  It also promised to be a good course!

For Informatics, it is listed as INFO 199 JC, CRN 59663.  It Meets With the course described below.

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Diversity by the Numbers

SOC 196 (CRN 40758) – Spring 2013 (second 8 weeks) 

Cross-listed with LLSP, AAS, AfAm, and AIS

Mon 3:30-5:50 pm (computer lab), Wed 3:30-4:50 (lecture-discussion), and required online module (2 hours per week)

This course is intended to introduce students to the nature, uses, sources and computational analysis of statistical data that can be used and misused to give a perspective on race and ethnicity in the US.  It will also provide an introduction to the social theories and issues that explain the patterns that will be revealed by our analyses.  The class will meet in a computer lab, a seminar room and will require student completion of an on-line module that will teach straightforward techniques in Microsoft Excel and SPSS via online modules.  

The Facebook fellowship supports doctoral students in computer science and related fields, and both American and international students are eligible.  Facebook is interested in a wide range of topical areas including architecture, compilers, data mining, databases, distributed systems, formal methods, graphics, human-computer interaction, internet economics, machine learning, natural language processing, networking, operating systems, programming languages, security/privacy, social computing, theory, and vision.

Benefits:

•$30,000 stipend.

•Coverage of tuition and fees.

•$5,000 toward conference attendance and travel.

•$2,500 toward a personal computer.

•Opportunity for a paid internship at Facebook.

Students apply directly to Facebook, and the deadline is January 7, 2013.  For additional details and application instructions, see  

Facebook Fellowship webpage

Informatics PhD student Arshan Nasir was part of Professor Gustavo Caetano-Anolles's team of researchers whose work on giant viruses has produced ground-breaking results.  [link to article]

Our next meeting will take place tomorrow (Wednesday 12-12-12, noon to 1pm) at the NCSA building, room 2100.  David Enstrom and David Tcheng will be discussing their acoustic analysis system called ARLO which is capable of identifying birds, tracking them, and transcribing their utterances.  Hope you can make it!



-David Tcheng