July 7, 2008

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IN THE NEWS
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OSU’s solar-powered car takes off. Oregon State University’s Solar Vehicle Team will compete in the North American Solar Challenge, a 2,400-mile car race from Dallas, Texas, to Calgary, Canada, that starts July 13. OSU’s entry, the Rain Dancer, looks a bit like a three-wheeled Batmobile. It took three years and $50,000 to build. Corvallis Gazette-Times

OSU students enter solar car in 2,400-mile race. A solar car sits in a sun-splashed driveway in Corvallis, its sleek shiny surface interrupted only by a compact plastic bubble over the cockpit. Switches click and components engage, and the car moves silently into the street, its first test drive after three years in the making. The Oregonian; Track their progress from their web site

USDC and Applied Materials Collaborate to Develop Advanced Films for Next Generation Display Products. The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC), a public/private partnership chartered with developing the flat panel display and flexible electronics supply chain, today announced a cost-shared contract award with Applied Materials, Inc. to develop metal-oxide films for next-generation thin-film transistors (TFTs). Oregon State University (OSU), a pioneer in transparent electronics, will work with Applied's Display Business Group-AKT, in this USDC-sponsored program, bringing together the U.S. government, private industry and university research to enable critical innovations for future display technology. Forbes

Support for wave energy swells. Drawing power from the ocean could meet as much as 10 percent of the U.S.'s power needs, but some who make their living on the water worry harnessing it will leave them high and dry. American Public Radio broadcast

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OPPORTUNITIES
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Submissions Open for Tapia 2009 Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference

The 2009 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference is now accepting proposals for papers, panels, workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, posters, the Robotics Competition, and the Doctoral Consortium. The conference brings together diverse leading researchers from around the world to present their work on state-of-the-art research in the field of computing. The 2009 event, the fifth in the series, will take place April 1-4, 2009 at the Portland, Oregon Marriott Downtown Waterfront.

The conference theme of "Intellect, Initiative, Insight, and Innovation" should be considered in submissions that may cover any area of computing, computational math and science, and diversity issues in these disciplines. Letters of intent to participate in the Robotics Competition are due July 30, 2008, and robotics checkpoint materials are due September 5, 2008. Papers, posters, and other submissions are due September 5, 2008. Accepted papers presented at the conference will be included in the Tapia conference proceedings published by ACM Press.

There is a strong focus on student participation, particularly through papers, posters, the Robotics Competition, and the Doctoral Consortium. Papers provide students a valuable opportunity to present their work, gain experience in public speaking, and have their research published in the conference proceedings. The posters competition will be organized as an ACM Student Research Competition (SRC). The top posters (1st, 2nd, & 3rd place) in the graduate and undergraduate student categories will advance to the ACM SRC Grand Finals and will be recognized at the prestigious ACM Awards banquet.

Student teams in the Tapia 2009 Robotics Competition will be focused on a search and rescue task and will involve simulated and physical disaster environments where the goal is to identify and locate objects. The competition is a staged event where the first stage involves building a software solution for a simulator and the second stage requires migration to a robot equipped with touch and camera sensors.

The Doctoral Consortium, which is a one-day workshop immediately preceding the Tapia 2009 Conference, will provide an opportunity for Ph.D. students who have been accepted to participate to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives with a panel of established researchers in computing and in computational mathematics, science and engineering.

The many supporters from academia, industry, and the government allow the conference to offer student scholarships to attend. Applications for student scholarships will be accepted at the conference Website after July 30, 2008 and are due by October 15, 2008.

About the Tapia Conference
The Tapia conference series is organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in cooperation with the Computing Research Association. It honors the significant contributions of Dr. Richard A. Tapia, University Professor and Maxfield-Oshman Professor in Engineering in the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics and Director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is internationally known for his research in computational and mathematical sciences and is a national leader in education and outreach programs. Tapia has authored or co-authored two books and more than 100 mathematical research papers.

For more information about the Tapia 2009 Conference, visit http://tapiaconference.org/2009/.

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JOBS
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Did you know that you can subscribe to the EECS Jobs List that will send you e-mail when new jobs are posted? Internships and even a few on-campus jobs get advertised there as well. Subscribe here.

Don't forget to check out the AfterCollege job site, tailored especially for our EECS students. This week's featured employers:

• Schlumberger
• Staffing Technologies, LLC

Lead Development Specialist - Computer/Electrical Engineering Recent Graduates, Mentor Graphics. Lead Development Specialist needed to support key sales and marketing initiatives by identifying, qualifying, and penetrating target accounts resulting in new business. Lead development responsibilities require significant teleprospecting in a business to business environment and use of internet/internal database resources to identify and profile new markets. Opportunity assessment will include communication at the executive level to position the company's emerging hot products and identify key decision makers. Details

Software Developer, Clearwater Analytics. Analyze and develop specifications for software programming applications and modify/maintain existing software; Design/code applications following specifications using the appropriate tools; Research product development options and provide analysis for product direction. Participate in all phases of product delivery including development, integration, testing, deployment, and client integration; Analyze moderately complex technical and system problems; Consult with internal departments to identify client needs and include into project objectives; Provide support regarding product development to internal departments. Details

Software Engineer, Level 1, Jive Software. This role is ideal for someone who has a reputation, either in school or early in their career, of being a capable, friendly, smart and professional person, and is looking for a place to grow. Our challenge is finding someone who has some experience with Java and development, but who also enjoys interacting with customers to understand the technical challenges they face and how to make our products work with their systems. If you have a passion for developing software, then check out what we seek on the Jive website. This role is definitely for someone who can work with little supervision and takes pride in tackling issues and seeing them through to resolution. Details

Bioinformatics/Programming position 1 (Applicants must be current OSU students). The primary responsibilities for this position include the development of computational tools and methods for bioinformatics, specifically in the field of genome and sequence analysis. This position requires experience in Perl, MySQL, and HTML. The ideal candidate will also have a familiarity developing and testing code in a UNIX environment, experience with UNIX shells, commands, and scripts. Experience in full-scale web development a plus. Details

Bioinformatics/Programming position 2 (Applicants must be current OSU students). The primary responsibilities for this position include the development of computational tools and methods for genome analysis, specifically in the field of machine learning. This position requires experience in C++ and in object oriented programming techniques, experience in other object oriented programming languages a plus (Java, C#). The ideal candidate will also have a familiarity developing and testing code in a UNIX environment, experience with UNIX shells, commands, and scripts, and will have some knowledge of machine learning algorithms and techniques. Details

Website Developer. We seek a student to help in the development of a website that is reflective of the OSU Family and Community Development Extension Program and that focuses on programming related to physical activity. The website will consist of a main page with links to additional pages that provide information regarding resources and training related to physical activity research and programming. Details

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