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Students to Compete in Programming Contest
(10-22-10)
Two Grove City College teams will compete in the
regional portion of the 35th annual IBM-sponsored
Association for Computing Machinery International
Collegiate Programming Contest Oct. 23 at
Youngstown State University. Students will seek to
apply their programming skills while maintaining
mental endurance to solve complex, real world
problems under a difficult five-hour deadline.
Grove City College students competing in the event
are seniors Aaron Mininger of Halifax, Pa., Shawn
Recker of Finleyville, Pa., and junior Greg Miller
of Winston-Salem, N.C., on a team and junior Shane
Rose of Cochranton, Pa., sophomore Edward Quigley
of Monaca, Pa., and freshman Gideon Ludwig of
Indiana, Pa., on the second team. Freshman Phillip
Edwards of Saxonburg, Pa., will also travel with
the teams as an alternate.
Regional competitions have attracted tens of
thousands of students from approximately 90
countries on six continents competing for a chance
to win the “World’s Smartest Trophy.” The top 100
teams will have the opportunity to compete in
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Feb. 27 to March 4, 2011
for the World Finals.
The ACM International Collegiate Programming
Contest, also known as the Battle of the Brains,
seeks to foster creativity, teamwork and
innovation in building new software programs and
enables students to test their ability to perform
under pressure. The contest is the oldest, largest
and most prestigious programming contest in the
world.
For more information on the 35th annual IBM-
sponsored Association for Computing Machinery
International Collegiate Programming Contest,
visit http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc.
Game Design 2 Demos
(5-7-10)
The COMP 446 Game Design 2 will be demoing their
final games on Monday May 10 from 9 - 11 AM in Hoyt
118. All are invited to come play and take a look
at these games.
Take “Programming in Python” this July at Thiel College
(5-7-10)
Take “Programming in Python” this July at Thiel
College, 4 credits, afternoons.
No programming experience necessary, but college
algebra (or equivalent) required. Fun attitude also
helpful.
Email cmyme@thiel.edu for
details.
Jesse Schell Computer Games Industry Lecture
(3-4-10)
Jesse Schell will giving a talk about the computer
games industry on Friday, March 5th, from 11-11:50
(during the Games 2 class). Dr. Schell is well-
known in the games industry, and gives interesting
and entertaining talks.
His bio is the following (excerpted from CMU
Entertainment Technology Center website
etc.cmu.edu):
Jesse Schell is on the faculty of the
Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon
University, where he teaches classes in Game
Design, and leads several projects, including
GameInnovation.com, a systematic study of the
history of videogame innovations, and Hazmat:
Hotzone, an anti-terror team training game for the
nation's firefighters.
Jesse is also the CEO of Schell Games (an
independent game studio in Pittsburgh: www.schellgames.com
),
and the Chairman Emeritus of the International
Game Developers Association. In 2004, he was named
one of the world's Top 100 Young Innovators by
Technology Review, MIT's magazine of
innovation.
Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, he was the
Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality
Studio, where he worked and played for seven years
as designer, programmer and manager on several
projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest,
as well as on Toontown Online, the first massively
multi-player game for kids. Before that, he worked
as writer, director, performer, juggler, comedian,
and circus artist for both Freihofer's Mime Circus
and the Juggler's Guild. He is presently trying to
cram everything he knows into a book called The
Art of Game Design.
Dr. Joshua Steinhurst Lectures
(03-02-10)
Dr. Joshua Steinhurst from Bucknell will be on
campus this Thursday and Friday, March 4th and 5th.
He'll be giving an
ACM-sponsored talk on Thursday evening at 7:00 pm in
HAL 316, and he'll be addressing the COMP 361
Computer Graphics class on Friday at 12:00 noon in
HH 118 (also open to all).
ACM Dubugger Information Session
(2-11-10)
This coming Tuesday at 4pm in Hoyt the ACM will be
hosting a presentation on how to use Visual Studio’s
debugger. We plan to cover its interesting features,
and show some demonstrations of using it to fix a
broken program.
Hopeman Student Research - Stream Filtered Ray Tracing on a Digital Signal Processor
(2-2-10)
Kevin Bensema & Jesse Porch
Department of Computer Science
Monday, 5 April, 4:00 pm
Hoyt Hall 113
Abstract:
Ray tracing is a rendering technique that models
the physics of light to generate realistic images.
This method employs a relatively simple algorithm,
albeit one that proves to be computationally
expensive. In order to make real-time ray tracing
possible, complex acceleration structures are
employed to reduce the amount of computation
required by each ray. In addition, vector
processing can be use to perform a given
calculation on multiple rays at the same time.
However, as rays traverse an acceleration
structure, the number of rays undergoing same
calculation decreases. Stream filtering is an
algorithm used to overcome this issue by
partitioning rays into groups with similar
characteristics, thereby maximizing efficiency in
parallel processing. We examine an implementation
of the stream filtering algorithm on a digital
signal processor that includes a hardware
partitioning unit and a 16-wide vector unit for
parallel processing.
Hopeman Student Research - Automatic Generation of Instruction Selectors with CoGenT
(2-2-10)
Addison Mayberry
Department of Electrical Engineering
Monday, 15 Feburary, 4:00 pm
Hoyt Hall 113
Abstract:
Contemporary compilers are very efficient and
powerful tools, but once written cannot easily be
ported between systems which are using different
processor-level assembly languages. The goal of
the CoGenT project is to provide a suite of tools
which will allow developers to retarget their
compiler software to alternate processor
architectures quickly and easily. Summer 2009
development focused on completion of the output
mechanisms and preparation for the toolkit's first
complete tests. The basic framework of the project
was completed and several full trials were run
with various compilers and architectures, giving
promising results.
Hopeman Student Research - Pervasive Gaming: Making the World Your Oyster
(2-2-10)
Justin Kabonick & Adam Kaufman
Department of Computer Science
Monday, 8 Feburary, 4:00 pm
Hoyt Hall 113
Abstract:
Pervasive games are a genre of mobile games which
incorporates aspects of physical and virtual
reality. Game-play is commonly based on a player’s
physical location in order to accomplish some
function in the virtual world.
We discuss the importance of location awareness,
boundaries, and time in pervasive games in the
social context. Using Microsoft XNA, we created
augmented reality games based on popular social
games. Evaluating children and college students
playing the games, we determined the importance of
factors such as teamwork and competition during
game-play and how boundaries and location-
awareness affected players on the psychological
level.
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Discover 2010, March 23
(2-2-10)
DISCOVER 2010, Innovation through Collaboration,
is a day-long open house at Pittsburgh
Supercomputing Center, a national and Pennsylvania
resource for high performance computing (HPC).
Featured will be exhibits and demonstrations of
HPC at work in diverse fields of study. You will
learn how HPC toolscomputational science,
modeling, simulation, visualization, data
miningcan help you find innovative solutions to
your complex research and business problems.
For more information and to choose a time slot for
your visit, go to our web site at:
discover10.psc.edu
Grovers Come Out On Top At CMU Programming Contest
(04-15-09)
The two member team of Phil Deets and Suzannah Johnson took first place at the CMU programming contest. Coming in second, was another Grove City team, made up of Jared Heinly, Aaron Mininger, and Shawn Recker.
Read Dr. Dobb's Article on their exciting victory.
To see the Computer Science
Department's archived news items, please click
here.
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