On November 12th, 2015 the Computer Science Department held its fourth annual CS Expo in The Center for Global Engagement here on FSU’s main campus. The CS Expo is one of the department’s key annual events for both student and alumni, that takes place to showcase emerging technological projects, encourage innovative dialogue, and lets everyone exchange experiences in the world of tech. There are several components of the fair including a “Grad-Made-Good” talk, door prizes, poster contests, and a software demo contest.
This most important part of this year’s event included two talks from keynote speaker Dr. Prasad Kulkarni from University of Kansas, and an invited talk from the David Lawson of NewSci. Lawson is well known around Tallahassee’s community of tech startups for being a partner at Domi Ventures, and for advising several companies including Return on Mission, Agile Equity, Small Act, and HG Data. During his talk he went into the new innovations in Big Data and the things NewSci is doing in regards to the field. Lawson was followed by Dr. Kulkarni who is currently an Associate Professor in the EECS department at the University of Kansas and is well known for being a Ph.D. recipient from FSU in 2007. He went into detail of his graduate experiences here at the university and how it has carried over in his professional field. Prasad also heads the Compilers, Architectures, and Runtime Systems (CARS) research group at KU and specializes in the efficiency in modern multi-core machines and embedded systems.
The event also featured several student talks from students here in the department. CS student Javier Escobar presented his research project entitled: Automatic Categorization of Software Libraries Using Bytecode, where his proposed techniques could potentially help software developers use more efficient search methods for large repositories. Another student, Shiva Krishna Imminni, presented research on a more Python focused search engine project entitled PyQuery: A Search Engine for Python Packages and Modules. CS student Yue Chen held a talk based on his project entitled Harvesting Developer Credentials in Android Apps. His efforts explored the challenges of credentials in third party apps and safer ways to recover such information. CS Student Martin Brown delivered an exceptional talk on open-source benchmark suites designed to expose the complex interactions between components of the Android software stack in his presentation entitled Agave: a Benchmark Suite Addressing AndroidSystem Complexity. Finally, Peyman Faizian delivered a talk on The Performance of Random Regular Topologies.
The event eventually closed out with student awards and closing remarks. The student talk winners were Martin Brown and Peyman Faizian, the best demo was given by Ali Hamie and the best poster was presented by Josh Garlitos. According to event organizers all students who participated in each contest did a wonderful job in their respective categories. Special thanks goes out to Jie Yang, Margareta Ackerman, and ACM student members Sharanya Jayaraman, David Perez, and Preston Hamlin who all assisted main event organizer Caitlin Carnahan with the event.