Florida Tech Jointly Presents Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series March 26

MELBOURNE, FLA.—The Florida Institute of Technology Department of Computer Sciences, in partnership with Rollins College and the University of Central Florida (UCF), will present a free public lecture series March 26, starting at 4:30 p.m. The Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W) and the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) Distinguished lectures will be held in UCF’s Harris Engineering Center (HEC 101) in Orlando. The Department of Computer Sciences is part of the College of Engineering.

Starting in HEC 101, Russ Joseph, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, Northwestern University, kicks off the event with a seminar, Microarchitecture and Compiler Support for Timing Speculation. He will discuss some recently developed techniques to boost the impact of timing speculation by drawing on support from the microarchitecture and compiler, which highlight the potential in relaxing traditional system design boundaries.

A Northwestern faculty member since 2004, Russ received a 2007 National Science Foundation Career Award and a 2009 Modern Day Technology Leader Award from U.S. Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine. He earned his bachelor’s degree with a double major in electrical and computer engineering and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999, and his doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 2004.

A reception in HEC Atrium at 5:30 p.m. will follow. Coffee, tea and hor d’oeuvres will be served.

At 6 p.m., the audience will return to HEC 101 for the next seminar by electronic voting expert Barbara Simons. In her talk, I Can Bank Online; Why Can’t I Vote Online? she will share how Internet voting is currently being reviewed as an option in several states. The widespread perception is that Internet voting is the wave of the future and can save money while increasing voter participation, especially by young people. There is also pressure to adopt Internet voting in the United States for voters with disabilities and members of the military and civilians living abroad.

Simons, co-author of Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? was a member of the workshop commissioned by President Bill Clinton that produced a 2001 report on Internet voting, and was also appointed to the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2008. She is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the only female recipient of the University of California at Berkeley’s College of Engineering Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award, Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award.

The event will end with a panel discussion at 7 p.m. about graduate school in computer science. Dinner will also be served.

UCF is located at 4000 Central Florida Blvd. in Orlando. For more information about the lecture series, visit http://crawcdc.eecs.ucf.edu.