UTEP Computer Science

Fall Schedule 2024👩‍💻🧑‍💻

Join the International Collegiate Programming Contest on November 16, hosted by the Coding Interview Club in collaboration with

The application deadline is September 6. 💻✨

🌟 New Post! 🌟 The NSF-Sponsored UTEP CREEDS Summer Program is empowering educators with advanced research in cybersecurity and data science! Since 2022, this initiative has equipped middle and high school teachers with invaluable skills and knowledge, enhancing STEM education across the El Paso region. Discover more about the program's impact and future plans! 🔍📚

Read full story here: https://www.utep.edu/engineering/news/utep-creeds-empowers-educators-in-cybersecurity-and-data-science.html

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtRpwZ6LcOg&t=26s

🚀 Calling all UTEP innovators! 🚀

Showcase your entrepreneurial ventures and groundbreaking research at the Miners’ Pitch Competition! 💡✨

Application Deadline: September 13th

Competition Prizes:
Student Track: $1,000 cash prize
Faculty Track: $10,000 grant

Pitch Day:
🗓️ Friday, October 25, 2024
⏰ 1:30 pm-5:00 pm
📍 UGLC, Auditorium 106

What to Expect:
Pitch Day: 10 competitors (5 students & 5 faculty members) will be selected to present their ideas to a panel of experts.
Support & Mentorship: Participants will receive guidance from experts in market research, customer discovery, financials, and pitch deck creation.
Resources: Access to tools and support from our MLCIC team.
🔗 Apply Now: https://bit.ly/46yxFrq

Mike Loya Center for Innovation and Commerce

Congratulations to the Spring Class of 2024! 🎓🎉

On behalf of the entire Computer Science Department, congratulations on earning your degree! 🚀 We’re immensely proud of your achievements. Your dedication and perseverance have truly paid off!

Last Friday, May 10, we gathered for an incredible Computer Science Graduation Celebration. Our faculty and staff joined the graduating students, along with their family and friends, in marking this significant milestone.

Learn more: utep.edu/cs/

GOMiners! ⛏

Artificial Intelligence Summer Camp

Calling all 6-12 graders!
Attend a FREE AI summer camp this summer!
No previous knowledge is required!!
Join us for a thrilling 2-day summer camp where you’ll dive into the fascinating world of AI.
Learn about the latest AI models, explore innovative technologies, and see how AI is changing the world.
June 24 & 25 or
July 22 & 23

Register: https://bit.ly/AI_utepcs2024

CyberPatriot Cyber Camp
Calling all 6-12 graders!

Attend a FREE cybersecurity summer camp this summer!
No previous knowledge is required!!

Students will receive 40 hours of FREE cybersecurity training from UTEP Cybersecurity students provided by the American Air Force (AFA) CyberPatriot Team.

BENEFITS
🔸Gain new cybersecurity knowledge and skills!
🔸AFA Cyber Camp experience which can be placed on college applications!
🔸Opportunity to compete nationwide for scholarships.

Each camp consists of two weeks. During the first week, students will learn beginner cybersecurity skills, and those who complete week one will transition to the second week to learn advanced skills.

🔸June Cyber Camp (June 10-21)
🔸July Cyber Camp (July 8-19)

💻Learn more: https://www.utep.edu/cs/calendar/cyberpatriot-cyber-camp.html

We had a full house for Loki's Cyber Security Hackathon, hosted by The Army Research Lab and the DEVCOM Analysis Center! 🏆 Our students showed incredible skills and teamwork. Congratulations to all the participants! 🎉 Keep an eye out for more exciting events and opportunities to showcase your cybersecurity skills.

Reposted .utep We are so honored to represent UTEP’s WiCyS chapter at the Women in Cyber Security 2024 Conference! 👾 Let’s continue conquering diversity and inclusion in the cybersecurity field! 💻✨

S-STEM Scholarship Info Session
📆Tuesday, April 23 @ 3:30 PM
📍CCSB 1.0410
Info Session RSVP: https://bit.ly/SSTEM24_InfoSession

Join us to learn more about the S-STEM Scholarship opportunity funded by the National Science Foundation, its benefits, eligibility, and application process. The S-STEM scholarship provides financial support to Computer Science students with high academic potential.

Benefits:
The S-STEM program will fund students seeking a degree in Computer Science for a period of up to four years. Funded students at UTEP and CSU-S will receive an annual scholarship up to the amount shown below based on their academic level:
🔸Freshman: $8,000
🔸Sophomore: $8,000
🔸Junior: $9,000
🔸Senior: $10,000
🔸Graduate: $10,000

🔸Selected students will be provided travel funds to attend professional workshops, conferences, and competitions.

*UTEP & EPCC students are encouraged to apply.

Learn more: https://www.utep.edu/cs/opportunities/opportunities.html

CS students attended the first Bloomberg HSI Summit in New York City. During the summit, they learned from SWE engineers about their inspiring stories, work, and impact in the company and the world, including the Head of Engineering, Adam Wolf. They also participated in multiple activities such as live coding sessions, mock interviews, an engineering expo, and BPuzzled. Additionally, four UTEP students will be competing in the BPuzzled competition with 22 universities for an opportunity to travel to London.

Good news: UTEP teams were able to complete maintenance repairs sooner than expected, so all UTEP online services and platforms, including email and Blackboard, are currently operating normally. Because of the short notice, classes before noon today (April 4) will remain canceled. Employees should report to work as usual.

All UTEP classes before noon on Thursday, April 4 are cancelled due to an urgent maintenance issue. Many UTEP technology and data services will go offline, starting at 10 p.m. Wednesday, April 3. All employees should report to work as usual, but many online services and platforms will not be available until noon.

Cybersecurity Research Seminar: Dr. Jesse Ables

Creating Explainable Intrusion Detection Systems (X-IDS) Using White Box Techniques

March 11, 2024, @3:00 to 4:00 PM
CCSB 1.0410 (hybrid) MS Teams will be provided
Register: https://forms.office.com/r/pBQtS1RA7A

Abstract: Trust and reliability in decision-sensitive domains such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) have become important topics to many organizations. Traditionally, IDS are created using black box machine learning algorithms. These black box algorithms, though highly accurate, are not trustworthy due to their opaque nature. Explainable Intrusion Detection Systems (X-IDS) using white box explanation techniques can be used to address this issue. Competitive Learning (CL) is a white-box technique that can create accurate and trustworthy X-IDS models. Using CL, we create X-IDS architectures and a methodology for understanding explanations. Additionally, a hybrid X-IDS is proposed to bridge the gap between high-accuracy black box models and the trustworthiness of white box explanations. We use a white box Rule Extraction (RE) to generate explanations for a Deep Neural Network (DNN) IDS. Using these techniques, we demonstrate how white box algorithms can be used to enhance the accuracy, explainability, and trustworthiness of IDS in decision-sensitive domains.

Bio: Jesse Ables is a recent Ph.D. graduate from Mississippi State University. His recent work has primarily focused on explainability in the field of intrusion detection. He currently works as a postdoc research associate at MSU's National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center (NSPARC), where he is researching various uses of AI anomaly detection. Jesse's research interests include Explainable AI (XAI), anomaly detection, and cyber security.

Sponsored by Cybersecurity Community of Practice

CS student leaders present at the 34th Annual President’s Dinner, organized by the Student Government Association and the President’s Office. Go miners ⛏️👏🏻

CHIRP Info Session- Application Open!
📆Wednesday, Feb 22 @ 4:30PM
📍CCSB 1.0410
Register to info Session: https://bit.ly/CHIRP_UTEPCS_SP24_2

Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP)
CHIRP is a collaboration between Space Systems Command (SSC), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), UTEP CS, and industry partners that offers students a two-year college-to-career program opportunity.

Benefits
🔸Full-paid tuition
🔸Up to $6,000 for professional development
🔸Annual stipend: $25,000 for undergraduates
🔸Summer Institute (Year 1)
🔸Paid research support and mentorship (Year 1)
🔸Paid summer internship for at least 10 weeks at SSC/PNNL or SSC-Industry Partner (Year 2)
🔸Service-level job placement at SSC or SSC-Industry Partner (after Graduation)

Apply Today! - CS Opportunities

🔸NCWIT AiC Ambassador
Application Deadline: February 16

🔸Human Exploration Development and Operations 2024 Summer Internship Program
Application Deadline: February 23

🔸2024 UTEP Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP)
Application Deadline: February 29

🔸Sprinternship Program
Application Deadline: March 1

🔸MSEIP AFRL SUMMER 2024 INTERNSHIP
Application Deadline: March 1

🔸2023-2024 MAES Scholarship
Application Deadline: March 15

🔸Palantir Future Scholarship (North America)
Application Deadline: March 22

🔸Palantir Women in Technology Scholarship (North America)
Application Deadline: March 22

💻Learn more: utep.edu/cs/calendar or check cs weekly email

CS Dept Seminar
Perceptions of Pragmatic Similarity among Spoken Utterances: A Model and its Applications

📆Friday, February 16
11 am-12 pm
BUSN 312

Speakers: Nigel Ward, Andy Segura, Divette Marco

Abstract:
Screening for autism and other communication disorders in early childhood can improve patient outcomes, and we wish to use AI to help. The obvious approach, using supervised machine learning methods to learn to classify children, is ruled out by data limitations, so we are exploring an alternative, knowledge-rich method. The strategy is to use a general model of perceived pragmatic similarity, able to take two utterances and output an estimate of how similarly they will be perceived. To create this model, we first collected 5496 human judgments of the similarity between utterance pairs. We then built various models, of which the best --- cosine similarity over 103 features selected from a deep pretrained model, HuBert --- correlates as highly as 0.74 with the average human judgment. This model enabled good performance, 82% accuracy, on the task of classifying adolescents as neurotypical or autistic, using k nearest neighbors. This model also supports diverse use cases in the diagnosis and treatment workflow, which we will illustrate with a live demo.

Acknowledgment:
The work was supported in part by Meta and by NSF's AI Institute for Exceptional Education.

Goldman Sachs Engineering @ UTEP
Learn more about internship opportunities and full-time roles!

📆Thursday, February 15
🔶Tabling Info Session
10:30 AM-12:30 PM
CCSB First floor lobby (Next to Starbucks)

🔶1 on 1 Coffee Chats
2:00–4:00 PM
CCSB 1.0410
Register:
https://utep.joinhandshake.com/stu/events/1491368?ref=events-search

🔶Goldman Sachs with ACM-W
Learn about internship opportunities and mock interviews. Food will be provided!
5:00–6:00 PM
Location: BUSN 304

CHIRP Info Session- Application Open!
📆Wednesday, Feb 14 @3:00PM
📍CCSB 1.0410

Cyber Halo Innovation Research Program (CHIRP)
CHIRP is a collaboration between Space Systems Command (SSC), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), UTEP CS, and industry partners that offers students a two-year college-to-career program opportunity.

As a CHIRP appointee, you will:
🔸Participate in cybersecurity research with SSC, PNNL, or other industry partners
🔸Complete a one-week professional development experience at PNNL and a summer internship at SSC
🔸Access academic financial support for tuition, professional development, and other academic needs.

Register: https://bit.ly/CHIRP_UTEPCS_SP24

Bloomberg Engineering: 2024 HSI Tech Summit
📆Application deadline: January 29

Bloomberg is hosting our first HSI Tech Summit focused on preparing top students for our interview process and providing deep dives into our engineering culture and career paths across software engineering.
All travel expenses and accommodations will be covered by
Bloomberg LP.

Requirements
🔸Must attend a US-based Hispanic Serving Institution
🔸Computer science major/ 0-3 years of SWE experience
🔸Completed data structures + algo coursework
🔸Must be looking for full-time or intern roles
🔸All students will required to complete a technical interview
🔸Candidates will be fast-tracked into our 2025 interview process

💻Apply: https://bloomberg.recsolu.com/app/collect/form/FpKAgZT4SN6juWcfCEyRwA

Bloomberg @ UTEP ‼️
Bpuzzled Event- Race to New York
📆Wednesday, January 24 @ 4:30pm-8pm
📍Location: BUSN 302

Join us for a competition where teams of 4 use creativity, lateral thinking, and team work to solve logic puzzles themed to cities around the world.
First place team will win a trip to NYC to compete in our global competition! ✈️

💻RSVP HERE:
https://forms.gle/7rUJRU2zxonBwUGv7

Bloomberg @ UTEP Computer Science

Resume Review with GWC x ACM-W x CAHSI Allyship
📆Tuesday, January 23 @ 1:30-4:30 PM
📍CCSB 1.0410

Moving to New York Panel
📆Wednesday, January 24 @ 2:00–3:00 PM
📍CCSB 1.0410

Bpuzzled Event- Race to New York
📆Wednesday, January 24 @ 4:30–8:00 PM
📍Location:TBA
Join us for a competition where teams of 4 use creativity, lateral thinking, and team work to solve logic puzzles themed to cities around the world.
First place team will win a trip to NYC to compete in our global competition!
Register: https://forms.gle/7rUJRU2zxonBwUGv7

Bloomberg @ UTEP ‼️

Bpuzzled Event- Race to New York
📆Wednesday, January 24 @ 4:30pm-8pm
📍Location: TBA

Join us for a competition where teams of 4 use creativity, lateral thinking, and team work to solve logic puzzles themed to cities around the world.
First place team will win a trip to NYC to compete in our global competition! ✈️

💻RSVP HERE:
https://forms.gle/7rUJRU2zxonBwUGv7

Spring 2024- NEW Course ‼️
CS 4390- CRN: 24693
Special Topics in Computer Science: AI in Engineering

Instructor: Dr. Natalia Villanueva Rosales
TR 10:30AM-11:50AM (*correct time)

🔸Artificial Intelligence with a focus on Machine Learning using a Smart Cities framework.
🔸Open to all engineering major students.
🔸This interdisciplinary course will introduce Artificial Intelligence (with a focus on Machine Learning) to engineering students using a Smart Cities framework to understand patterns and behaviors to improve the quality of life of city residents.
🔸This course will use authentic problem-based learning. Concepts learned will be applied in a semester-long project that addresses a challenge of our region.

💻Please contact your academic advisor for course registration

Welcome back! Wishing you a great semester!

CS students started the year at Google's headquarters in Mountainview, California, for the Google Tech Exchange Orientation. 🚀 As part of Google’s 2024 Tech Exchange Program, they will be taking computer science courses co-taught by Google instructors and HBCU/HSI faculty.

Go miners! ⛏️
Learn more about UTEP's computer science programs: utep.edu/cs/

Hello everyone! Please fill out this form so we can know your schedule and see which times work best to host our weekly sessions :).

Spring 2024- NEW Course ‼️
CS 4390- CRN: 24293
Special Topics in Computer Science: AI in Engineering

Instructor: Dr. Natalia Villanueva Rosales
TR 3:00-4:20 PM

🔸Artificial Intelligence with a focus on Machine Learning using a Smart Cities framework.

🔸Open to all engineering major students.

🔸This interdisciplinary course will introduce Artificial Intelligence (with a focus on Machine Learning) to engineering students using a Smart Cities framework to understand patterns and behaviors to improve the quality of life of city residents.

🔸This course will use authentic problem-based learning. Concepts learned will be applied in a semester-long project that addresses a challenge of our region.

💻To register, please contact your academic advisor.