We just learned that Gregory Harm '06 has been selected for Honorable Mention for the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate Award 2006, sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. CONGRATULATIONS, Greg!

Of this award, CRA says, "This year's nominees were a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several were authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others had made presentations at major conferences, and some had produced software artifacts that were in widespread use. Many of our nominees had been involved in successful summer research or ...

We're delighted to report that David Laidlaw and coworkers Eric Ahrens (CMU), John Allman (Caltech), and Mark Bastin (University of Edinburgh) have been awarded a four-year, $2M+ grant from NIH, "DTI+MRI-based tools for analyzing white matter variation". In this multidisciplinary project, a team of investigators will design and apply software tools that can simultaneously segment neural tissues and identify the locations of bundles of neural fibers in the brain. The tools will operate on combined structural and diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) datasets of the nervous system and will produce morphometric measures of each white matter (WM ...

Brown University has licensed a portfolio of Internet security technology to a group of entrepreneurs that has established IAM Technology Inc. The technology, developed by Brown Computer Science Professor Roberto Tamassia and associates, provides a rapid way to validate identity on Internet domains. Brown will retain an equity stake in IAM Technology.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Brown University recently announced that it has licensed a portfolio of Internet security technology to a group of entrepreneurs that has established IAM Technology Inc. As part of the agreement, IAM Technology is receiving a license to technology developed in Brown’s Center for Geometric ...

David Laidlaw of CS, Kenny Breuer of Engineering, and Sharon Swartz of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology have just received a small collaborative NSF grant. The funding, together with a grant to workers at MIT, will be used develop a collaboration to use new methods to simulate more accurately how bat wings interact with air as the bats fly. The simulation will be designed to operate at multiple levels of physical approximation and computational speed, and will be capable of very rapid solutions while requiring input from measurements to ensure fidelity and optimality. It will be the first such system capable ...

ACM Student Research Award for Daniel Keefe

Daniel Keefe, a graduate student working with Prof. David Laidlaw, recently won second place in the graduate category of the ACM Student Research Competition at SIGGRAPH. His poster, entitled "A Haptic Interface for Creating Smooth 3D Curves with Varying Line Weight", advanced through three rounds of judging. In the final round, the six finalists each gave ten-minute talks about their posters. Plaques and prize money were handed out to the top three finalists. The finalists were also rewarded with invitations to the SIGGRAPH Pioneers reception, where they got to rub elbows ...

Eli Upfal just received a 2005 IBM Faculty Award for his research on Web-related modeling and algorithmic issues. This international, highly competitive award recognizes outstanding university faculty and promotes innovative, collaborative research in disciplines of mutual interest to industry and academia. Congratulations, Eli!

NSF has just awarded Brown researchers funds to acquire a new 3-Tesla (3T) magnetic resonance (MR) system that will be a cornerstone of a multidisciplinary neuroimaging facility. Faculty, students and staff from the 10 physical and life science departments comprising Brown's Brain Sciences Program (BSP) and other University groups will utilize the new MR system. The facility will, the researchers believe, become a focal point both for established and highly successful interdisciplinary educational programs and research into the mind and brain structure, function, and chemistry, and also for the development of new methods of MR physics, data visualization, and ...

The championship team (most of it)

We're delighted to report that CS's softball team won the high-intensity division championship this year! In the photo, top row l-r: Chad Jenkins, Steve Reiss, Russell Bent, Dan Acevedo, Dave Tucker, Bob Zeleznik, Don Carney, Frank Wood; bottom row l-r: Gary Withey, Dmitri Lemmerman, Joe LaViola, Andrew Simon, Dan Keefe. Way to go, guys!

The BBC's Radio Frontiers for April 13, 2005 gave a nice precis of the brain research being done in Brown's Brain Science lab, of which Michael Black of this department is a member -- Michael says "it's the best coverage of our neural prosthesis work that I've heard." Do take a look:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/frontiers_20050413.shtml

Jeff and Max installing the computer museum

Take a look at one of the real coups of CS's current renovation/expansion! The department's "computer museum", which used to be clustered in the dark under the 4th floor stairs, is now on five go-go-dancer platforms in the center of the third-to-fifth-floor stairwell. Here Jeff Coady is installing the Ramtek 9400 raster-graphics display (used in CS from ca. 1979 to 1984) with Max Salvas looking on. Above the Ramtek is a Sun-3/60 (1985-89), and in the background is a Sun-2 (1987-1990).