Code in the Wild
Speaker: Zac Till
Affiliation: Candescent
Thursday, October 31, 2024 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Creating features and solving problems with code is only half of the story when working as a software engineer. The other half is delivering, maintaining, and supporting the code that end users consume. This talk will highlight that second half of working as a technology professional in the corporate environment. These areas of focus require the same expertise as a developer, but apply it from a completely different perspective. Technology companies are under more and more pressure every day to drive stockholder value by capturing customers and increasing profits. Product reputation and reliability are of the utmost importance, which provides a tremendous amount of opportunities for computer science graduates. This talk will go over the reality of code in production and all the facets that it requires to function within a large technology corporation. The talk will also explore the vast number of roles available to graduates that can provide a rewarding and fruitful career.

About the Speaker: Zac Till is a GSU Class of 2019 Computer Science alumnus. After graduation, he joined NCR Corporation as a dev ops engineer in the Application Operations Center, focusing on production monitoring. While supporting thousands of servers and tens of millions of customers, Zac became a technical incident manager, driving major incidents to resolution in an efficient and effective manner across a vast array of technologies. He then became the Program Manager of Incident Response for all Go-To-Market business units across NCR. Zac manages a team of dedicated technical incident managers and dev ops engineers focused on maintaining application availability 24/7/365. Following the sale of NCR’s Digital Banking business, Zac continued his role with Candescent, providing transformative technologies that power and connect digital-first banking solutions. Zac lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Michaella, also a GSU graduate with a BFA in graphic design.

Google Beyond Software Engineering
Speakers: Michael, Darpan
Affiliation: Google
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 - 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm - 25 Park Place, Room 2608 (Dean’s Meeting Center)

Interested in working at Google but don't have a CS degree (or don't plan on getting one)? Come hear about all of the cool opportunities Google has for engineering majors outside of software engineering + why having a foundation in CS can be valuable in any industry. We’ll discuss both full-time and internship roles in fields such as IT, hardware engineering, and others. Enjoy sandwiches from Jersey Mike's Subs courtesy of Google!

Speakers

Michael is a User Experience Designer based in New York City who has been at Google for three years. He’s a graduate of Cornell University and enjoys exploring new cultures through travel, cooking, and listening to music in his free time.

Darpan is a Security Engineer based in Reston, Virginia. He has been at Google for four years. Darpan is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park. He likes to spend his free time exploring the outdoors through hiking and travel but also enjoys getting lost in a good book!

Tech Internships: Everything You Want to Know
Speakers: Christiana Afriyie, Manish Kolla, Devika Papal, Devansh Sinha
Affiliations: Randstad, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech
Thursday, October 3, 2024 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

How do you get a tech internship as a college student? What is the process like? What are the things you wish you had done differently? Hear from students who have been through the internship experience as they answer these questions and share their experiences.

Panelists

Christiana Afriyie (Cybersecurity Intern, Randstad) Christiana recently graduated from Kennesaw State University with a B.S. degree in cybersecurity and a concentration in criminal justice. She interned as an information security analyst, helping find account owners and disabling compromised accounts.

Manish Kolla (Data Science/ML Intern, ADP) Manish is a senior CS major at GSU who loves badminton, travel, and trying new cuisines.

Devika Papal (Software Engineer Intern, Deluxe Corporation) Devika is a senior CS major at Georgia Tech. After transferring to Tech from GSU, she was able to continue her work at Deluxe throughout the summer. Devika likes to bake and hike.

Devansh Sinha (AI Engineer Intern, University of Missouri) Devansh is a senior CS major at GSU. He currently serves as program chair for the ACM chapter at GSU.

Navigating an Agile World: CI/CD Pipelines with GitActions
Speaker: Ashley Green
Affiliation: Cox Automotive Inc.
Thursday, September 19, 2024 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

This talk will explore the essentials of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipelines. Discover why they’re crucial in today’s fast-paced tech world, learn how to implement them effectively, and see how GitActions can be your ally in achieving seamless project delivery.

About the Speaker: With four years of experience, Ashley has transitioned through various roles, including software engineering in REST API development, research, and security. Now, she thrives in the dynamic world of data engineering. As a first-generation college student, Ashley earned her B.S. in Applied Computer Science with a minor in German from Northern Arizona University. She spends her free time traveling, learning foreign languages, and making a positive impact in her community through different volunteer initiatives.

How AI is Transforming Content Creation
Speaker: Elizabeth Strickler
Affiliation: Creative Media Industries Institute, Georgia State University
Thursday, September 5, 2024 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

The media landscape is changing as generative artificial intelligence impacts every aspect of content creation. This talk explores how AI is reshaping the media business, from automating pre-production tasks to generating content creatively. It covers the latest AI tools and techniques driving innovation in the industry. Real-world applications and hands-on demonstrations will illustrate how AI enhances creativity, streamlines production processes, and opens new avenues for storytelling. AI is already transforming the media landscape, showing its incredible potential to revolutionize the creative industries. We will also discuss the ethical implications, examining when and where generative AI is helpful or harmful, and what it means to be human and creative in this new era.

About the Speaker: Elizabeth Strickler is a dedicated educator and innovator with a passion for blending technology, art, and education. With decades of experience, she thrives on helping others navigate the exciting, often chaotic intersection of creativity and emerging tech. As an international keynote speaker and innovation strategist, Elizabeth is renowned for her engaging talks, workshops, and courses that combine avant-garde ideas with cutting-edge technology. She specializes in providing hands-on experiences in AI, Web3, and immersive content creation. Her distinct approach to creativity and problem-solving, along with her tech-savvy expertise and insatiable curiosity, make her a prominent voice in the field.

Off the Beaten Path: Utilizing Unlikely Places for Research
Speaker: Dr. Mehdi Mousavi
Affiliation: Aquabyte
Wednesday, April 3, 2024 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Imagine using video game tech to push the boundaries of AI research—that’s where my journey began. I wanted to see how a game engine experiment could shape the future of AI. Today, Unreal Engine is a pivotal tool in developing state-of-the-art generative AI systems like Sora and Midjourney. The first part of my talk will walk you through how these “unlikely places” can become hotbeds for cutting-edge experiments. I will then discuss how to find an industry job related to your research experience and how the connections you make in grad school can be your golden ticket to internships and jobs in your research field. I’ll share my own story of moving from academia to industry, working on underwater computer vision and landing an R&D role at Aquabyte AI.

About the Speaker: Dr. Mousavi is a GSU alumnus. During his studies, he worked on training machine-learning models in photorealistic simulations using modified physics and light transport in underwater computer vision, leading eventually to underwater image processing. After earning his Ph.D., he joined Aquabyte, a market leader in aquaculture AI, where he continues his research by developing models trained on synthetic data that process hundreds of thousands of underwater images per hour, serving thousands of customers across the globe. He has developed solutions to remove image turbidity from underwater images and to detect and forecast rare skin conditions on fish. He has also built a 3D photorealistic replica of underwater environments that is used for analysis and development of new technologies that require dense 3D information.

Manhattan Associates and Its Approach to Microservices and the Cloud
Speaker: Max Boice
Affiliation: Manhattan Associates
Wednesday, March 20, 2024 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

In this presentation Manhattan Associates will share how its platform is leveraging the latest and greatest approaches around microservices and the cloud to implement solutions for its customers.

About the Speaker: Max Boice is a Principal Software Analyst with 10 years of experience in Manhattan Associates’ Professional Services Organization, which implements software solutions for customers.

HPCC Systems Summer Internship Program at LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Speaker: Dr. Hugo Watanuki
Affiliation: LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Thursday, February 8, 2024 - 11:00 am to 12:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

In this talk, I will give an overview of the HPCC Systems Summer Internship Program, a 12-week remote and paid internship where students from all over the world work closely with a mentor to develop a big data project using the open-source technology HPCC Systems.

About the Speaker: Dr. Hugo Watanuki, Manager Community Tech Programs, is responsible for the HPCC Systems Internship Program at LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Hugo holds a Ph.D. in information systems and has worked for over 15 years in various technical roles in the IT industry with a focus on high-performance computing.

Work Life at Amazon, brought to you by Amazon Women in Engineering
Speakers: Grace Manders, Keenal Shah, Apurupa Vemula, Archana Sivakumar
Affiliation: Amazon
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Come hear from several women across Amazon as they chat about their career paths and what it’s like to interview for and work at Amazon. We cover a wide variety of Amazon spaces, including Music, Prime Video, and AWS. We also represent our local Amazon Women in Engineering chapter.

If you want to learn more about working at Amazon (including how to interview and our unique Day 1 culture) or just want to get general advice on how to navigate a career in software development, this is the event for you! Come ready with any and all questions you may have for us!

Speakers

Grace Manders (Software Development Engineer, Amazon Music)
Keenal Shah (Software Development Engineer, Amazon Go)
Apurupa Vemula (Software Development Engineer, Amazon)
Archana Sivakumar (Software Development Engineer, Amazon)

Career Navigation and Power Networking
Speakers: Ramona Simien, Brenton Jackson, Karen McGrath
Affiliations: Georgia State University, Lutron Electronics, Mansfield Energy
Thursday, January 18, 2024 - 11:00 am to 12:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Learn from our panelists as they answer questions about their career journey and discuss best practices for networking. Topics include choosing your career direction, doing what you love, making a difference in your field when you are new to the role, salary negotiation best practices, and navigating LinkedIn.

Panelists

Ramona Simien (Director, University Career Services, Georgia State University) Ramona started her career journey in the corporate world and soon learned her passion was helping people. After serving as a Director of Catering Sales in Orlando, she found her way to a nonprofit and led initiatives for workforce development offices. There, she cultivated a newfound career in business development while using her skills in event management. The career afforded public speaking presentations, radio and news media, and even corporate celebrations—just the right mix for an extroverted personality. Continuing her passion and drive, Ramona joined Georgia State in 2005. As the Director of Employer Relations, she enjoys branding Georgia State University and giving students a fresh, new look at career opportunities. Students and employers can contact Ramona for campus engagement and other questions. Ramona is a consultant, coach, and mentor to many. She enjoys outdoor activities, volunteering, history, music, and sports in her spare time. Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.—Oscar Wilde.

Brenton Jackson (Software Engineer, Lutron Electronics) Brenton graduated from Georgia State in 2023 with a B.S. in computer science. He was employed by CoreView, EasyPost, and Ford Motor before joining Lutron Electronics last year.

Karen McGrath, PHR (Recruiting Manager and HR Business Partner, Mansfield Energy) Karen is a senior-level human resources leader who is a driven, results-oriented, and creative professional with over 20 years of experience. Her previous positions include serving as Human Resources Manager for Enterprise Rent-A-Car at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Using Large Language Models (LLMs) and Text Embeddings for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
Speaker: Dr. Jürgen Nützel
Affiliation: 4FriendsOnly.com Internet Technologies AG
Thursday, November 2, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - 25 Park Place, Room 1802

Fine-tuning LLMs is often not an option. In many use cases, RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) delivers better results. This is particularly true if internal company data changes frequently. In such RAG scenarios, text embeddings of this data play an important role. First, it will be explained how such text embeddings can provide the basis for new search applications, e.g., for online shops. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this, the basic concept of word vectors will be explained. Finally, we put everything together to create a chatbot that can answer questions about internal company data.

About the Speaker: After Jürgen Nützel worked as an electrical engineer at Siemens AG, he went to the Technical University of Ilmenau to do his doctorate. He graduated in 1999 and became a research assistant to begin the habilitation process. He founded 4FriendsOnly.com AG in 2000. Since then he has been doing business as a digitalization pioneer, starting with in-app payments for PC games. In 2006 he joined his company full-time. E-commerce and later cloud computing was the company’s focus. In recent years, AI topics have become increasingly important to him. Dr. Nützel maintains contact with teaching and science through his own lectures and occasional conference publications. In 2023 his company opened a development office in Vadodara, India.

Opportunities for Computer Scientists in the FinTech Industry
Speaker: Dr. Rao Casturi
Affiliation: Voya Investment Management
Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

Dr. Casturi will provide an introduction to the finance industry, including the field of financial technology (FinTech). FinTech increasingly relies on data-mining algorithms and tools, and computer scientists can assist with such tasks as enterprise data modeling and reporting. Dr. Casturi will discuss what skills you’ll need to thrive in FinTech and what the industry looks for in a candidate. He'll also discuss internships in the field of FinTech.

About the Speaker: Dr. Rao Casturi has extensive industry work experience (28+ years) in information technology, risk management (investment as well as operational risk), and teaching. He is currently working as Head of IM Risk Analytics and Reporting at Voya Investment Management (full-time) and as a part-time instructor at Georgia State University teaching various classes in computer science.

ACM Members-Only Mixer
Thursday, October 12, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

Join us for the first ACM members-only social event of the academic year. Here's your chance to network with other members of the ACM student chapter at GSU. Once you've had a chance to meet and connect with your fellow members, ACM officers will conduct a resume review and discuss Georgia State resources that can help you develop your resume. The event will also include quizzes and other fun things. Plus, one lucky person will win a very special door prize! Refreshments will be served, too, so be sure to RSVP and join us on the 12th.

Google Beyond Software Engineering
Speakers: Josh Bartlett, Lipsi Kumari, George Perez, Zuri Godrey, Grant Bennett
Affiliation: Google
Thursday, September 28, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

Interested in working at Google but don't have a CS degree (or don't plan on getting one)? Come hear about all of the cool opportunities Google has for engineering majors outside of software engineering + why having a foundation in CS can be valuable in any industry. We'll discuss both full-time and internship roles in fields such as IT, hardware engineering, and others.

Panelists

Josh Bartlett (Software Engineer)
Lipsi Kumari (Program Manager)
George Perez (Senior Financial Analyst)
Zuri Godrey (Associate Product Marketing Manager)
Grant Bennett (Diversity Strategist)

Tech Internships: Everything You Want to Know
Speakers: Anthony Shajan, Anjali Shajan, Tyree McCloud, Devansh Sinha, Enisha Saha
Affiliations: Georgia State University, Georgia Tech
Thursday, September 14, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

How do you get a tech internship as a college student? What is the process like? What are the things you wish you had done differently? Hear from students who have been through the internship experience as they answer these questions and share their experiences.

Panelists

Anthony Shajan (Software Engineer Intern, QNOPY, and College Intern, Emory MSBA Program) Anthony is a junior at GSU majoring in computer science with a concentration in data science. He spent this past summer interning at a semi-startup that provides an automation platform for the civil and environmental industries. Anthony has been involved with various clubs at GSU, including ACM, where he is currently serving as program chair.

Anjali Shajan (Technology and Innovation Intern, Truist) Anjali is a senior business major at Georgia Tech concentrating in information technology management. For the past two summers, Anjali worked in wholesale technology and robotic process automation. She is active in multiple clubs, including Women in Technology and Girls Who Code. Anjali previously attended the University of Georgia and GSU.

Tyree McCloud (Software Engineer Intern, Northrop Grumman) Tyree is a junior at GSU, where he is enrolled in both the Honors College and the dual-degree program. He was previously involved in Greek life on campus and currently serves as vice president of the ACM chapter.

Devansh Sinha (Research Analyst, University of Missouri) Devansh is a junior at GSU. Over the summer, he worked as a research analyst and software developer at the University of Missouri. Devansh currently serves as publicity chair for the ACM chapter.

Enisha Saha (Security Architect Consultant Intern, Southern Company) Enisha is an electrical engineering major in Georgia Tech’s Honors College. She started her journey in the honors program at GSU, majoring in computer science with a minor in mathematics. After transferring to Georgia Tech, she was able to continue her work at Southern Company throughout the semester. She has also served as a CodePath TA for the Intro to Cybersecurity class.

Georgia State Alumni in Big Tech: Insights, Advice, and Q&A
Speakers: Johnny Self, Dr. Fortune Onwuzuruike, Josh Ferrell
Affiliations: Meta, Microsoft, Google
Thursday, August 31, 2023 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Court Salon

Discover the stories of three Georgia State graduates who have conquered the tech industry's giants: Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Engage in Q&A with our panelists to gain insights into their daily tasks and receive advice on landing your own role. Don’t miss this chance to navigate the world of big tech from the perspective of these insiders!

Panelists

Johnny Self (AR Design, Meta) Johnny earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from GSU. After graduating, he relocated to NYC and immediately immersed himself in the tech startup scene. From starting as the founding product designer at MIRROR (now lululemon) to currently spearheading AR design at Meta, he’s navigated a spectrum of tech spaces from small to large.

Dr. Fortune Onwuzuruike (Security Program Manager, Microsoft) Dr. Onwuzuruike is a co-founder of Tech Is the Wave. Additionally, he is currently a cybersecurity program manager at Microsoft and serves on the leadership team for Blacks at Microsoft – Atlanta Chapter (BAM-ATL). He is an adjunct college professor and a member of the Industry Advisory Board for the GSU Department of Computer Science. He graduated from GSU in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies. Dr. Onwuzuruike was a Georgia State University 40 Under 40 honoree in 2022. He is at the intersection of technology, education, and servant leadership, and lives by the quote “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Josh Ferrell (Technical Recruiter, Google) Josh is a 2014 graduate from GSU who is just out here being led by God… that’s it. All he can do is share his journey and hope it has an impact on lives along the way.

Natural Language Processing: From Graph-Based Methods to Word Embeddings
Speaker: Dr. Mario Kubek
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, April 13, 2023 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Troy Moore Library, 25 Park Place NE, Room 2343

Finding the Internship or Job That You Want
Speaker: Dr. Robert Joseph
Affiliation: Team Mindshift
Thursday, April 6, 2023 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

This talk is about how to effectively find the job or internship that you want. We will talk about how to approach finding a job, the hidden secrets to have you stand out as the ideal candidate, and some ways to increase your ability to get the job while staying true to your interests and personality.

About the Speaker: Robert Joseph, Ph.D., is a data scientist, computer scientist, educator, entrepreneur, and father. He is the co-founder of Team MindShift and a former director and senior data scientist at Stanley Black & Decker working on Industry 4.0. He has 16+ years of experience as a university professor, teaching over 5,000 students. He current teaches the Web Programming course at GSU. Robert’s experience spans recruitment, healthcare analytics, telecommunication, supply chain, manufacturing, and software development. With B.S. and M.S. degrees from MIT in electrical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in computer science, he has deep technical roots. He has built hundreds of mobile, web, and desktop apps and holds a patent for an internet DJ system. However, his proudest accomplishment is being the father of two teenage boys.

Web Dev on the Rise
Speaker: Will Marple
Affiliation: Black Airplane
Thursday, March 30, 2023 - 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm - Student Center East, Room 216

Join ACM and newly formed student organization PantherWeb to hear from an experienced developer about what it’s like to pursue a web development career path. A Q&A session will be followed by a demonstration using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Feel free to bring your laptop to follow along!

About the Speaker: Will Marple is a full-stack web developer with a passion for solving real business challenges with modern technologies. He specializes in PHP and JavaScript development and is constantly striving to hone his craft. Mr. Marple currently works in the Laravel and Vue frameworks. He finds that they are both incredibly powerful when creating scalable, maintainable web apps. He loves working at Black Airplane, where his position affords him the opportunity to gain exposure to many segments of the development workflow. Black Airplane enjoys a developer culture where they invest in each other and are continually promoting the success of their peers and clients. They are a clan of problem solvers who pride themselves in partnering with their client’s vision to deliver software solutions that win.

Workday Information Session
Speakers: Asia Rivers, Margo Gillis, James Wang
Affiliation: Workday, Inc.
Thursday, February 23, 2023 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Workday is seeking summer interns to join their Product & Technology teams this summer! They are hiring for Software Application Development Engineer Interns for a 12-week internship program in Buckhead. Come to this info session to learn more about the Atlanta office, Workday’s VIBE culture, and what the summer internship program is all about. Workday is actively interviewing candidates and this is an opportunity to connect with them in person and put your best foot forward!

Not currently looking for an internship? We welcome all students to attend to get to know Workday and gain career coaching advice to set yourself up for future success!

Speakers

Asia Rivers – Asia is a Senior Early Talent Recruiter at Workday and a former GSU employee. In both roles she has counseled and provided career coaching advice to students. She is a leader on one of Workday’s Employee Belonging Councils, Black @ Workday, where she is the co-chair for Black History Month celebrations throughout February.

Margo Gillis – Margo has been at Workday in Atlanta for two years where she is a Senior Associate Technical Consultant. She is a passionate advocate for helping students live their purpose and find their career passions. She holds a degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech.

James Wang – James is a Senior Associate Software Development Engineer at Workday. Although he is a new Workmate, he is already established in the tech industry. Prior to joining Workday he worked at Microsoft, Tesla, and GE and spearheaded a socially responsible nonprofit, Hack4Impact. He earned a B.S. in computer science from Georgia Tech.

Navigating the Start of a Tech Career: What No One Talks About
Speaker: Batya Zamansky
Affiliation: Meta
Thursday, February 9, 2023 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 460/462

Getting into the tech field can seem daunting if you haven't had a job there before. Even if you have, it can still be intimidating! Hear one software engineer's story about how she got to where she is now, with some anecdotes from the journeys of people she knows and some tips and tricks about navigating the tricky bits along the way. She will talk specifically about the parts that everyone just seems to have to struggle through or figure out or learn along the way.

About the Speaker: Batya Zamansky interned at Originate and 2U before making her way to Meta, where she has been a software engineer since 2017. She earned a B.A. in information science with a minor in computer science from Cornell University. Batya is a born-and-raised New Yorker and is fully convinced that no bagels in Atlanta can compare to those in NYC. In her spare time, she likes to read, write, and craft.

My Computer Science Journey
Speaker: President M. Brian Blake
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, January 26, 2023 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center East, Speaker's Auditorium

Join President M. Brian Blake as he discusses his journey from college student to university president, sharing his tips for success in the field of computer science.

About the Speaker: Dr. M. Brian Blake has been president of Georgia State University since June 2021. Prior to joining GSU, he was Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at George Washington University. Past positions include serving as chair of the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University, where he was a faculty member for ten years.

Dr. Blake is editor-in-chief of IEEE Internet Computing, former associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, and editor-in-chief of a Springer book series entitled Web-Scale Workflow and Analytics. He has served as general/program chair/co-chair for more than 10 research conferences in his field. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 journal articles, books/book chapters, and refereed conference/workshop papers. He is best known for his contributions to the areas of adaptive, inter-organizational workflow for Web-based services and systems.

Dr. Blake earned a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and a Ph.D. in information and software engineering from George Mason University. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and an IEEE Senior Member.

Google Beyond Software Engineering Panel
Speakers: Byron Collins Jr., Natalie El-Laoune, DJ Lewis, Kayla McLendon
Affiliation: Google
Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center East, Speaker's Auditorium

What’s it like to work at Google without a CS background? Interested in roles beyond software engineering? Bring your questions and hear stories from Googlers in a variety of roles to hear more about all the cool opportunities Google offers beyond software engineering. Feel free to bring your resume to this special event!

Panelists

Byron Collins Jr. (Solutions Architect) Byron is an innovative leader whose focus is on creating new opportunities and making people, projects, and organizations successful; his experience includes business development, planning, designing, and overseeing highly complex projects. Byron credits his 20 years in the field of IT/Engineering to his natural passion and curiosity for “fixing” and “tinkering” with things. In addition to demonstrating these traits, Byron was fortunate to grow up during the rise of the PC age. Being introduced to new technologies further piqued Byron’s interest in understanding industry trends, which led to his pursuit of a degree in electrical engineering. A proud Aggie and graduate of HBCU North Carolina A&T, Byron commits himself to making an impact on students of color who, like him, share an interest and passion for engineering and other STEM fields. Byron spends time mentoring and speaking to youth who often remind him of himself – eager, inquisitive, and thirsty for knowledge!

Natalie El-Laoune (Cloud Program Manager for Google Public Sector) Natalie is a proud Atlanta native who is very excited to meet with you all! As a member of Google's Professional Services team, she works directly with state, local, and higher ed customers to deliver successful Google Cloud implementations and migrations. Prior to Google, Natalie worked in technology consulting, working with the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County to deliver cloud ERP systems. Although she is a Georgia Tech graduate, three members of her immediate family are proud Georgia State alums! She currently lives in Midtown and loves going to yoga, walking around Piedmont Park, and trying out new restaurants around ATL!

DJ Lewis (Enterprise Cloud Customer Engineer) DJ is a multifaceted change agent committed to enabling those around him. By day he helps businesses craft impactful solutions with Google Cloud. In his free time he is a community builder through the Emerging 100 of Atlanta and Alpha Phi Alpha. Anime, fitness, and parlaying with homies are also some of his passions.

Kayla McLendon (Network Implementation Engineer) Kayla is a network implementation engineer in the production space at Google. She has been with Google for a little over 4 years. Kayla is an Atlanta native and GSU alum. She designs network architecture in satellite co-located data center environments and oversees the physical installation process. Before this role, she was in Google's Network Operations Residency Program where she rotated to various NE and TPM roles prior to finding her current permanent position. In her free time, Kayla loves going to Pilates, being out in nature, traveling, and planning events for her 501(c )(3), Thrive.

Microsoft ATL
Speakers: Aimee Garcia, Steven Chung, Rodney Elmore, Toni Bostick, Mariam Malik
Affiliation: Microsoft
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center East, Speaker's Auditorium

Come and learn about all the exciting things going on at Microsoft ATL. We will present an overview of Microsoft's ATL Campus, the recruiting process + how to get plugged with recruiters and then have a Q+A session with some of the Software Engineers and Program Managers.

The Intelligent Supply Chain, Pragmatic Machine Learning, and Autonomous MLOps
Speaker: Jeff Beadle
Affiliation: Manhattan Associates, Inc.
Thursday, October 13, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 464

The Intelligent Supply Chain is a data-driven, highly-automated, digitally-empowered supply chain that connects people and systems with processes and assets through the use of emergent and intelligent technologies to help manage and optimize operations and costs within the speed and complexity of today's rapidly evolving, highly interconnected, modern supply chains. In this session I'll provide an overview of these concepts and how AI, ML, and optimization play a critical and necessary role in achieving the goals of this new paradigm. But, before we start guzzling the AI/ML Kool-Aid too quickly, I'll first share how there's plenty to consider and vet out before going “all in” with such solution complexity — you must ensure that you take a very pragmatic systems engineering approach to its enablement, all the way from inception to production. I'll then close with how we approach productizing AI/ML-empowered solutions here at Manhattan Associates.

About the Speaker: Jeff Beadle is the head of the Science Group within Manhattan Associates’ R&D organization. This group focuses on the research and development of the “math & science” that goes into Manhattan's supply chain solutions, things like: operations research, mathematical modeling and optimization, algorithms, heuristics/metaheuristics, data science, and AI and ML. Mr. Beadle is a seasoned computational, algorithmic, operations research and data scientist with more than 25 years of researching and innovating solutions to complex optimization and analytical problems within applied sciences and the supply chain industry.

Plan Your Path With CodePath!
Speakers: Tori Darby and Kellion Knibb
Affiliation: CodePath
Thursday, September 29, 2022 - 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 466/468

Breaking into the tech industry requires industry-relevant knowledge, connections, very specific hard and soft skills, and an understanding of how to navigate the job search and technical interviewing process. CodePath brings together hands-on courses, supportive career services, and topical industry events to put you on the best path to achieving tech excellence.

Come learn about our no-cost programs and career services to help you achieve #TechExcellence! You will also have a chance to speak with current GSU students who have participated in CodePath programs like our Summer Internship for Tech Excellence (SITE) program.

This event includes an information session given by CodePath staff members Tori Darby and Kellion Knibb, followed by a student panel discussion.

Tech Internships: Everything You Want to Know
Speakers: Hayes Helper, Ryan Garland, Malia Absi, Bright Odedo, and Ashwini Aphale
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, September 1, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

How do you get a tech internship as a college student? What is the process like? What are the things you wish you had done differently? Hear from GSU students who have been through the internship experience as they answer these questions and share their experiences.

About the Speakers: The panel consists of college students Hayes Helper, Ryan Garland, Malia Absi, Bright Odedo, and Ashwini Aphale. These students have interned at Amazon, Digital Envoy, NCR, CodePath, and Microsoft. All are excited to meet you and answer any questions you might have about internships!

How We Got Here: The Evolution of Virtualization and Containers on Windows and *NIX
Speaker: Hayden Barnes
Affiliation: Rancher Labs
Thursday, April 7, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Building on the concepts introduced in CSC 3320 (System-Level Programming) and CSC 4320 (Operating Systems), this talk will examine containers, virtualization, and orchestration, and trends in technology around them:

• The evolution of virtual machines beginning with FreeBSD jails.
  
• The development of containers up to containerd.
  
• How containers and virtual machines differ at the kernel level in Linux and Windows, examining how the legacies of UNIX and VMS impact modern computing.
  
• How the lines between containers and virtual machines are blurring with tools such as Windows Subsystem for Linux and Firecracker.
  
• Current and emerging trends in orchestration, such as Kube-Virt.

This talk will lean heavily on operating system history and architectural concepts and how those have influenced some of the hottest technologies and startups today.

About the Speaker: Hayden Barnes is a Senior Engineering Manager at Rancher Labs, part of SUSE. He currently leads the Windows containers, developer relations, and internal DevOps teams at Rancher. His teams work to support Windows on Kubernetes in Rancher products, maintain documentation for 13 open source projects, and CI/CD over 200 open source repositories and containers with over 100 million downloads. Prior to joining Rancher Labs, Hayden was an engineering manager on the Ubuntu desktop team at Canonical focusing on Windows Subsystem for Linux and founded an open source indie startup. Hayden is a Microsoft MVP and recently published Pro Windows Subsystem for Linux with Apress (available to ACM members through Skillsoft). Hayden’s technical background is in virtualization, operating system archi-tecture, and Linux and Windows interoperability. Hayden holds a B.S. from Kennesaw State University and a J.D. from the University of Baltimore.

Questions: How and When to Ask Them
Speaker: Chris Moultrie
Affiliation: GitHub, Inc.
Wednesday, March 23, 2022 - 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 468

When you start a new job, you’ll be asking plenty of questions. Chris Moultrie will discuss how to ask questions that will yield the best answer: one that improves your knowledge and helps you grow while at the same time balancing the needs of the company you work for (such as sometimes prioritizing speed over learning).

About the Speaker: Chris earned two degrees from GSU: a B.A. in Spanish (2007) and a B.S. in Computer Science (2010). He currently works at GitHub as a senior software engineer on the Observability team, which improves tooling and systems for understanding and managing large distributed systems (such as GitHub.com). When he’s not working you can find him in his powerlifting gym or volunteering at PAWS Atlanta helping homeless pets. Chris was recently selected as a member of the GSU Alumni Association’s 2022 class of outstanding alumni under the age of 40.

Machine Learning for Space-Weather Forecasting
Speaker: Dr. Azim Ahmadzadeh
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Friday, March 4, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Machine learning and data science can offer a lot more than what the job market advertises. If you are interested in one of such applications, I would be glad to share with you how it is helping “space-weather forecasting”: the real-world problem, the approaches, and of course, the impact. And if you find yourself fascinated by such problems, maybe you could join our lab—we are always looking for passionate students!

About the Speaker: Dr. Ahmadzadeh works in the Data Mining Lab, part of the Georgia Astro-Informatics Nexus (GAIN), here at Georgia State University. His research plan is inspired by the agenda of the national agencies studying and supporting research in the area of space-weather forecasting, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He collaborates with astrophysicists, computer scientists, and of course, graduate students passionate about solving interesting ML problems with real applications.

Finding Community in the Tech Industry
Speaker: Nadah Feteih
Affiliation: Meta
Friday, February 18, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

I will talk about my journey into tech, what motivated me to continue, and how I've been able to find and build a community to support me in this space. I will also talk about getting internships (I interned at Intuit, Google, and Facebook in the past) and my experience working at big tech companies. I’ll be happy to answer any questions that come up.

About the Speaker: Nadah is a graduate of UC San Diego, where she completed a Masters in Computer Science with a specialization in systems and security in 2019. She completed her undergraduate degree at UCSD as well, where she was active in her department as a tutor and teaching assistant. Given her passion for inclusion and CS education, she founded an organization to work with underserved schools to host coding workshops and after-school programs. In 2018, she founded Muslim Women in Tech, a global organization with 2000+ members. Since then, she has established mentorship programs, scholarships, and opportunities to support women in this field. She is currently a software engineer at Facebook working on Instagram privacy and is passionate about building safety and security into the products that we use every day.

Stuff You Wish You Knew BEFORE That Interview
Helping You Get That Awesome Job After Graduation! :)
Speakers: Alex Kelly and Dr. Erin-Elizabeth Durham
Affiliation: Microsoft and Techtronic Industries
Friday, February 4, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Alex Kelly is a senior software engineering manager at Microsoft with 11 years of stellar experience. He is currently leading development teams and delivering cool products for Azure at Microsoft. An avid early-career and quality advocate, he is happy to bring his years of excellent advice to CS students here at GSU!

Dr. Erin-Elizabeth Durham is a principal data scientist at Techtronic Industries with more than 20 years of technical hands-on experience and over 10 years of technical people leader experience. She is an enthusiastic early-career influencer as a USG computer & information science faculty member, CS Industrial Advisory Board member, EBCS faculty member, WIT and WiCys member and much more. Her life goals: helping people, making connections, and building cool stuff!

Getting Started in a Software Engineering Career
Speaker: Jaswanth Sai Pyneni
Affiliation: Bloomberg LP
Friday, January 28, 2022 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Interested in a software engineering career? Here’s your chance to meet a recent computer science graduate who now works for Bloomberg in New York City. Jas Pyneni will discuss his background and career preparation before taking questions from attendees.

About the Speaker: Jas Pyneni graduated from Georgia Tech in 2021 with B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science, with a focus on studying applications of machine learning. He is currently a software engineer at Bloomberg, working on machine learning engineering projects.

Research Experiences for Undergrads at MORSE Studio
Speaker: Dr. Ashwin Ashok
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, November 11, 2021 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Interested in doing research as an undergraduate? Learn more about the opportunities at Dr. Ashok’s MORSE Studio, which focuses on the science and engineering of MObile and Robotic Systems through Experiential research. Research topics in the MORSE Studio include next-generation optical wireless systems, IoT and smart sensing, mobile computing and systems, and cybersecurity and privacy.

About the Speaker: Dr. Ashok has been an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University since 2017. His work spans the areas of communications and networking, robotics, environmental systems, and privacy/security. He earned a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2014 and completed postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University in 2016. His dissertation pioneered camera-based communication through a novel concept called visual MIMO. He founded and continues to co-chair the ACM Wearable Systems and Applications (WearSys) workshop. Dr. Ashok is an editor of the Elsevier journal Vehicular Communications, guest editor for the special issue on visible light and camera communication of the MDPI journal Electronics, and a member of the IEEE P1920.2 Working Group on Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

Meet the CEO: Carlos Rodriguez of ADP
Speaker: Carlos Rodriguez
Affiliation: ADP, Inc.
Friday, October 29, 2021 - 3:00 pm to 3:45 pm

How would you like to meet the CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Here’s your chance! Carlos Rodriguez, the President and CEO of ADP, will first discuss his background, what roles he has played in the IT industry, and how he got to where he is. He will then answer your questions. ADP is a comprehensive global provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions with over 920,000 clients in 140 countries.

About the Speaker: Carlos Rodriguez was named President and Chief Executive Officer in 2011, making him ADP’s sixth CEO since its 1949 founding. After joining ADP in 1999 through an acquisition, Carlos held a series of positions with increasing responsibilities before becoming CEO. He served as President of the PEO which became an industry leader under his direction. He also served as President of the National Account Services and Employer Services International divisions, which serve large companies, and spent several years as President of the Small Business Services (SBS) division. Under his leadership, the company has accelerated its transition from payroll processor to human capital management services provider leveraging technology to design a more personalized world at work. Carlos holds Master of Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Harvard University. He is a member of the Business Roundtable, the Economic Club of New York, and the American Heart Association CEO Roundtable.

Starting Out in a Computer Science Career & Future Growth
Speaker: Anjuli Patel
Affiliation: McKesson Corporation
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 - 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Anjuli Patel will discuss her background and answer commonly asked questions: How do you start to look for a job in computer science? What do you do after getting a job? How you plan for career growth in the years that follow? Bring your questions – she will be glad to answer them!

About the Speaker: Anjuli Patel is currently a data scientist at McKesson. She has held several positions over the past 15 years as a data analyst, database developer, and software engineer at such firms as Adecco, Berkeley Specialty Underwriting Managers, CGI, and Siemens. Anjuli has a B.S. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech and an M.S. in computer science from Georgia State.

ACM Technical Interview Workshop & Practice
Speaker: Jessica Mitchell
Affiliation: Google
Friday, October 1, 2021 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Are you gearing up for technical interviews this fall? Whether you’re interested in our STEP Internship (for 1st and 2nd years), Software Engineering Internship (for 3rd years) or our full-time SWE roles, you may want to brush up on those interview skills. Join us for mock questions and tips!

Tech Internships & Research Opportunities: Tips & Tricks
Friday, September 17, 2021 - 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

How do you get an internship as a college student? What was the interview process like? How do you find research opportunities? What should you expect when applying to a research position? What do you wish you had done differently? Hear from college students who have been through the internship and research path answer these questions and more.

About the Speakers: The panel consists of college students Aman Jaiman, Ikenna Okonkwo, Marco Delgado, Melanie Gipson, and Tori Padgett. These students have experience in internships or research positions, ranging from the Google STEP program and Microsoft Explore/SWE program to research assistantships. All are excited to meet you and answer your questions!

Facebook: What I Wish I Had Known
Speaker: John Martin
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Facebook
Friday, September 3, 2021 - 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

There are so many ways to be a successful software engineer, but there are also fundamental things you can do in school and as a new grad to set yourself up to thrive in the industry. In this talk, I will explore some advice that no one gave me, but that would have cleared up a great deal about getting hired at Facebook, transitioning from school to software engineering, and enjoying myself in the process. Anyone wondering how to get started in the industry is invited to come and ask questions.

About the Speaker: John Martin is the lecturer for Software Engineering (CSC 4350) this fall. He’s been an engineer at Facebook in the Connectivity group for over four years, working on a wide array of tools for planning network infrastructure deployments. He’s excited to meet students and help them navigate all aspects of entering the industry.

Cox Backbone Capacity Planning and Automation
Speaker: Dr. Marco Valero
Affiliation: Cox Communications, Inc.
Friday, April 16, 2021 - 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Cox Backbone Capacity Planning and Automation has been one of the company's priorities over the past few years and was successfully completed in January of 2020. The goal was to forecast the backbone hardware needs for the entire year, then deploy and verify that hardware across the nation, and finally turn up network capacity between markets automatically or on-demand at the click of a button.

My team actively collaborated on this project with multiple teams and vendors and completed multiple activities, including data collection, traffic forecasts, network simulations, physical hardware verification, and port activation. To succeed in this work, we needed to learn and improve the traditional capacity processes and create new applications and automations that expedite and simplify the work of our engineers.

About the Speaker: Dr. Marco Valero is Senior Manager of the Software Engineering team for Backbone and Metro - IP and optical networks at Cox Communications. He has extensive expertise in systems development and automation, large-scale network monitoring and traffic control, and smart device interactions and automation. He holds a patent for Internet routing and traffic control and has published seven articles in top-tier IEEE and ACM conferences and two articles in journals. Dr. Valero graduated with honors from his computer engineering program in 2005. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Georgia State University in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

Just Ship It: Bringing Products to Market
Speaker: Eric Ning
Affiliation: Facebook, Inc.
Friday, April 2, 2021 - 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm

Bringing a new product to market is confusing and hard. Join Eric Ning to hear about:

• Engineering principles for new products
• Making technical tradeoffs in uncertainty
• Building products at a large versus small company

About the Speaker: Eric Ning is currently a software engineer on Facebook's New Product Experimentation team. At Facebook he worked on charitable giving, safety check, and company-wide product infrastructure. Before Facebook, Eric worked at a few other startups and at Airbnb. He has also has a cute cat named Catt Damon.

Contextualizing Computer Science Through Opportunities and Challenges in Epidemiology and Population Health
Speaker: Dr. Armin R. Mikler
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Friday, March 12, 2021 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Bioinformatics, Health Informatics, and Computational Biology are examples of scientific disciplines that have emerged during the last two decades. These disciplines are inherently multi-disciplinary and involve the participation of computational scientists. However, the area of Public Health has been lagging on applying computational methodologies to address problems that are stemming from the mandate to improve population health. This presentation will contextualize Computer Science’s role through problems and challenges rooted in the field of Public Health. This presentation aims to encourage Public Health researchers and practitioners to embrace computational science as an integral tool to develop solutions and alert computer scientists of the need to seek opportunities to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries. This talk shall highlight collaborative opportunities by exemplifying some public health challenges that lend themselves to applying computational methods and therefore represent opportunities to a multi-disciplinary approach. Specifically, this presentation will focus on the data-centric nature of challenges in Public Health and highlight the importance of interpreting data in the correct context.

About the Speaker: Armin R. Mikler is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Iowa State University in 1995. As a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas from 1997–2020, Dr. Mikler directed the Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis (CeCERA). His research interests include Computational Epidemiology and Disaster Informatics with focus on data-driven response plan design and plan optimization. Dr. Mikler’s research on response plan design and analysis is supported by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has supervised over 40 Ph.D. and M.S. theses and has published over 100 research articles related to a range of topics, including distributed systems, networking, computational epidemiology, and response plan design and analysis.

Bioinformatics: Past, Present, and Exciting Future
Speaker: Dr. Murray Patterson
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Friday, February 26, 2021 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

While some biological theories have been around for more than a century, the amount of available biological data for these has exploded in the last few decades. This data, mostly in the form of genetic sequencing, has both proven these theories with even less of a shred of doubt than ever before, while largely refining them at the same time. There is no sign of this exponential growth slowing down anytime soon; indeed, genetic sequencing technologies are evolving just as quickly, making such data even more widespread in availability as well as in scale, e.g., at the level of the single cell. I will talk about this past, present, and exciting future of bioinformatics in the context of some of the research I work on.

About the Speaker: Murray Patterson is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science bioinformatics cluster. His area of expertise is algorithmic approaches to the latest bioinformatics challenges, many of which will be mentioned in the presentation; see https://cs.gsu.edu/profile/murray-patterson/ for more details.

ACM Google Info Session
Speaker: Jessica Mitchell
Affiliation: Google
Friday, February 12, 2021 - 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

What is it like to work at Google? How did you prepare for your interviews? What do you love most about the tech industry? Bring your questions and hear stories from Googlers!

About the Speaker: My name is Jessica Mitchell and I’m happy to serve as Google’s Georgia State University Programs Specialist. I am a part of Google’s broader campus outreach team, responsible for building a demographically-representative pipeline for the company’s internships and entry-level roles for university students and graduates. My job is to inform computer science students in the Georgia University System of opportunities at Google and help guide students through Google’s hiring process. I am an ATLien, born in NJ but ATL is home. I graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. I was an economist for the City of Atlanta and College Park prior to joining Google. And I currently reside in the city of Atlanta so I am THRILLED to be back home and sharing my passion for Google with Atlanta-area universities.

How to Stand Out During the Tech Recruiting Process
Speaker: Nicole Morris
Affiliation: Norfolk Southern Corporation
Friday, February 5, 2021 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

During this session you will learn what Norfolk Southern looks for in a candidate and how you can stand out when applying for new opportunities. This will include resume pointers and interview preparation tips. We will even deep dive into how to effectively network with recruiters and dress for your interview. These topics will help you prepare for your next opportunity.

About the Speaker: Nicole Morris is a talent acquisition specialist with one year of human resources experience. She is a recent graduate from Georgia State University with a bachelor’s degree in managerial sciences. Nicole currently specializes in information technology and audit recruiting. During her free time, Nicole enjoys exercising with her dog Chloe.

Q&A With Facebook Engineers
Speaker: Andrew Huang (Moderator)
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Facebook
Friday, November 20, 2020 - 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

How do you get a job as a software engineer? What skills are the most important? What's the scariest thing about working for a big company? What advice do you have for undergraduates? Hear from engineers from all over Facebook answer these questions and more in our Eng Q&A panel. We'll answer pre-submitted questions and take questions from the audience.

About the Speakers: Andrew Huang, the panel moderator, is the lecturer for Design and Analysis of Algorithms (CSC 4520) this fall. He's also an engineer at Facebook. Previously, he's worked at startups in SF and taught computer science at UC Berkeley. Joining Andrew will be Facebook engineers Aaron Cordova, Jessica Fleck, Luisa Hurtado, Zoe Robert, and Brandon Vo from Privacy, ML, Core Nav, Recruiting, and Social Impact. Some are new grads, others have been in industry for a few years or more. All are excited to meet you and answer your questions.

Opportunities at Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting
Speakers: Brian Settle and Skye Hall
Affiliation: Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting, Inc.
Friday, November 6, 2020 - 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Would you like a rewarding career applying advanced analytics to real-world financial problems for nationally known brands? If so, please plan to attend an information session this Friday with Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting to learn how you can leverage your programming experience in an insurance setting as an actuarial intern. The session will cover what it takes to become an actuary, skills utilized in the field, and how to apply for an internship.

Brian Settle is a principal with Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting, Inc., located in the Atlanta office. Brian has provided a variety of consulting services to insurance companies, self-insured companies, and public entities. Services include reserve analyses, capital modeling, and loss projection studies for a range of coverages. Coverages that Brian has actively worked with include workers compensation, professional liability, general liability, and automobile liability.

Skye Hall is an analyst with Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting in Atlanta. Skye has supported lead consultants to provide consulting services to self-insured companies and public entities. Services include web application development, data processing using R, and reserve analysis. Coverages that Skye has actively worked with include workers compensation, professional liability, general liability, and automobile liability.

Interviewing Skills Talk with Microsoft Employees
Speaker: Alex Kelly
Affiliation: Microsoft Corporation
Thursday, October 29, 2020 - 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm

Come and join Alex Kelly, Bryan Spence, and other Microsoft employees to discuss the interview, resume, and networking skills you'll need for your career. During this chat, you'll gain a variety of perspectives on the process of getting a job and hear anecdotal stories from each of the speakers to show what companies look for when we hire. We will also address some of the most pressing issues in the technical field and provide a call to action for all!

Our University Recruiting staff will also be available to answer questions during the event. We will be an open book, so feel free to ask us anything! (NOTE: This is not a recruiting event so we will not be collecting resumes; however, we will show you how to apply to Microsoft.)

About the Speaker: Alex Kelly is a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft with 15 years of coding experience and 5 years of management experience. He's worked at General Electric, General Motors, Microsoft (twice), a Berkshire Hathaway company, and the Pickens County Sheriff's Office as a dispatcher (back in the day). In his free time, he's usually flying drones, riding bikes, tinkering, or trying to be a great husband!

Facebook Engineering, Teaching, and the EIR Program
Speaker: Andrew Huang
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Facebook
Friday, September 11, 2020 - 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Have you ever been curious about what it's like to work at a large tech company? What it'd be like to teach computer science? Or what opportunities exist this fall to strengthen your coding and interviewing skills? Andrew Huang will walk you through his experiences as a software engineer at Facebook, his previous work in education, as well as the current work he's doing at GSU through the Engineer-in-Residence program. He'll also re-introduce GSU's programming team, a club for improving your coding skills, competing in programming contests, and making friends.

About the Speaker: Andrew is the lecturer for Design and Analysis of Algorithms (CSC 4520) this fall. He's also an engineer at Facebook. Previously, he's worked at startups in SF and taught computer science at UC Berkeley. He likes Tetris, reading, and cats.

How a Computer Science Education Translates to Software Engineering
Speaker: Rachel Min
Affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Facebook
Friday, May 1, 2020 - 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Sometimes, it’s very hard to imagine how what you’re learning translates to job readiness. I’ll be talking about what software engineering at Facebook is, how to get an interview and pass it, and how your education translates to your job.

About the Speaker: I’m excited to be here at GSU as the Engineer-in-Residence from Facebook. I’m teaching CSC 2720 (Data Structures). I taught in college both as a TA for theoretical computer science and for Girls Who Code, and I’ve loved it. I’m very passionate about making spaces for everyone to participate. At Facebook, I worked on videos and stories. Outside of work, I am a huge fan of visual art and music. I love going to museums and concerts.

Data Science/Analytics Internship Panel
Wednesday, March 4, 2020 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Join our panel of current and former interns as they provide tips for getting internships and making the most of the internship experience.

Panelists

Soukaina Filali Boubrahimi (LexisNexis, Expedia) Soukaina is currently a Ph.D. student majoring in computer science. She works with Dr. Rafal Angryk and is an active member of GSU’s Data Mining Lab. Soukaina’s research interests include, but are not limited to, different aspects of the time-series data-mining problem, including clustering, prediction, classification, and shapelets learning. Soukaina was a data science intern at LexisNexis and Expedia, where she developed fraud detection and customer satisfaction score models for financial and online booking services. Soukaina received the Outstanding Research Award last year from the Department of Computer Science. She was also selected by the Office of the Provost to be featured on the GSU website as an exemplary Second Century Initiative Fellow.

Shah Muhammad Hamdi (AWS, LexisNexis) Shah Muhammad Hamdi is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. He works in the Data Mining Lab under the supervision of Dr. Rafal Angryk. His research interests are machine learning, data mining, and deep learning, with a focus on finding interesting patterns in real-life graphs and time-series data. His research finds applications in the fields of neurological disease prediction, solar weather analysis, and social network analysis. Before joining GSU’s Ph.D. program, he worked for a year as a computer science lecturer at Northern University Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He received his bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2014 from Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET), Rajshahi, Bangladesh.

Abhijeet Ray (Cardlytics, Mohawk) Abhijeet has over three years of professional experience at Tech Mahindra Limited, a multinational corporation. He started at Tech Mahindra as a software developer, then shifted to business analyst and eventually data analyst. He then decided to pursue an M.S. at GSU, focusing on big data analytics. He is currently doing an internship at Cardlytics as a transaction data analyst. He will be interning at Mohawk this summer. After graduation, he will join Genpact in August as a full-time employee.

Delta Air Lines: No One Better Connects the World
Speakers: KK Krishnakumar and Mahesh Gupta
Affiliation: Delta Air Lines
Wednesday, February 19, 2020 - 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm - 25 Park Place, 2nd Floor Event Center, Room 223

Delta Air Lines is the largest airline in the world by revenue ($47B in 2019) and carried 200+M passengers to 300+ destinations in 2019. Delta has received many accolades and prides itself on superior customer experience, best flight operations, and technology as a competitive advantage. Delta had 281 days of no cancelations in 2019 in spite of weather occurrences across the world. To delight our customers and empower our employees, we are leveraging a broad spectrum of technologies, ranging from RFID to biometrics to AI/ML. Join us to see a bird's eye view of Delta Air Lines and its operations, some of the technologies behind the airline, and what is up ahead.

Narayanan (KK) Krishnakumar is Delta's Chief Technology Officer. As a member of the CIO's leadership team, Krishnakumar is responsible for leading Delta’s applications layer transformation as part of the airline's efforts to continually develop fast and innovative solutions to enhance employee and customer experiences. His 24+-year career has included executive leadership roles within various industries at companies including Dell Technology, State Street Corporation, and Investors Bank and Trust. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, he also holds a Ph.D. in computer science from SUNY Stony Brook and an MBA from the Babson College F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business. Krishnakumar is a published author with 19 technical papers and a book (Databases and Mobile Computing) to his credit.

Mahesh Gupta is General Manager, AI and Intelligent Automation, at Delta Air Lines. He is a thought leader in fostering innovation and transforming a workforce into a high-performing team. Mahesh's team created the award-winning Fly Delta app to enhance customer experience. Mahesh is passionate about bringing cutting-edge technology into the enterprise to improve the experience for customers and employees alike. In his current leadership, Mahesh is driving innovation through artificial intelligence, machine learning, and intelligent automation. Mahesh's mission is to transform teams to create a deep connection with what they do on a daily basis and experience fulfillment and happiness.

Machine Learning Approaches to Brain Imaging
Speaker: Dr. Sergey Plis
Affiliation: TReNDS Center & Department of Computer Science, Georgia State University
Thursday, January 23, 2020 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Information-rich multimodal and multi-subject brain imaging datasets facilitate understanding brain function and dysfunction but they are extremely complex. Automatic knowledge discovery from these data could distill their complexity to self-evident information. In this talk I will go over machine learning methods for the task of knowledge discovery in neuroimaging that my group is working on.

About the Speaker: Dr. Plis is an associate professor in GSU’s Department of Computer Science. He is also a researcher in the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS), a tri-institutional effort supported by Georgia State, Georgia Tech, and Emory University. Dr. Plis earned a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of New Mexico. His research goals lie in developing computational instruments that enable knowledge extraction from observational multimodal data collected at different temporal and spatial scales.

End-of-Semester Bash: Have Breakfast with ACM!
Monday, December 9, 2019 - 9:30 am to 12:00 pm - 25 Park Place, Room 755

Join the members of the GSU Student Chapter of the ACM for one last event before the fall semester ends.

• All students are welcome to attend – you don’t need to be a member.
• Stop by for a few minutes or stay as long as you want.
• Learn more about ACM and its activities. Applications will be available if you would like to join or renew your membership.
• Meet ACM officers and tell them what events you would like to see in the future.
• And, last but not least, fill up on delicious food before finals!

AI in the Enterprise: Opportunity and Challenges
Speaker: Jason Schlachter
Affiliation: Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

You know how to write software and build killer AI models – you’re a rock star. But are you prepared for corporate America? Learn what it’s like to work as an AI researcher, AI architect, or data scientist within a large organization, and how you can ensure that you’re at the right place, on the right team, and focused on the projects that will drive company value and make you a hero. In this talk, we’ll explore some of the ways in which things go sideways in the real world and identify some best practices for your success and the ethical use of AI.

About the Speaker: Jason Schlachter is a senior strategist at Stanley Black & Decker, where he leads artificial intelligence and IoT strategy and program development across its industrial, tools, security, and healthcare businesses. Jason previously worked in the defense and intelligence world, most recently as a senior research scientist for 10 years at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories (LM ATL), leading AI, cyber, and robotics efforts under DARPA, ONR, and other sources of funding. He also hosts the “We Wonder” podcast, which focuses on how our lives and society is affected by our tech and is always on the lookout for exciting guests to join the show.

Business Transformation Through Data
Speaker: Sarah Hsi
Affiliation: United Way of Greater Atlanta
Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

In this talk, the speaker will share the journey of transforming the organization to adopt a data strategy and start to harness the power of data. How to change staff from being skeptical about data to embracing the technology? How to partner with software vendors for implementation? Real-world examples will be covered using such technologies as Power BI, PowerApps, and LUIS.

About the Speaker: Sarah Hsi is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the United Way of Greater Atlanta. She is a member of the President’s Cabinet and is leading the organization’s digital transformation for measurable and impactful changes in our communities. Prior to joining the United Way, Sarah served as the CIO for MARTA, the 8th largest transit agency in the U.S. Sarah received her Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, from Georgia State University and her EMBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Sarah currently serves on the advisory board of the Georgia CIO Leadership Association, the Technology Association of Georgia’s Diversity & Inclusion Society, and Georgia State University’s Department of Computer Science.

ACM Trivia Contest
Thursday, October 17, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Think you’re an expert at computing trivia? Here’s your chance to prove it: join us for the 14th ACM Trivia Contest. The questions will test your knowledge of computing technology, history, and current events. Everyone who attends is eligible to compete! First, second, and third prizes will be awarded, and there will be pizza from Rosa’s as usual. Don’t miss this special event!

Software and Data Science Internship Panel
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Join our panel of current and former interns as they provide tips for getting internships and making the most of the internship experience.

Panelists

Heta Desai (R & D Data Scientist Intern, 3M) Heta is a Ph.D. student majoring in computer science. She worked at CDC as a bioinformatician for a few years after earning her master’s degree before returning to the Ph.D. program full-time. At 3M, she worked in a corporate research laboratory with an AI team. She has been a lab instructor as well as an instructor for a few lower-level programming classes at GSU as part of her graduate studies. She is a long-time ACM officer and currently serves as vice chair.

Naman Kanwar (Application Developer Intern, Fiserv) Naman is an M.S. student in CS. While working on his undergraduate CS degree, Naman researched applications of machine learning in bioinformatics. His current research focuses on cybersecurity in social networks. Naman has worked as an application developer at Fiserv and a data analyst at Verizon. Naman is the chair of the GSU student chapter of the ACM.

Jonathan Pinder (Aladdin Client Services Data Intern, BlackRock) Jonathan is a senior honors CS major. He is very interested in financial technology. He spent this summer working at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, in their New York office. He worked in their Aladdin Client Services group in the Data bucket and recently accepted a return offer. Throughout Jonathan’s time at GSU, he has been involved with the university in many ways, including serving as vice chair of the student IEEE branch and as program chair for the ACM chapter.

Harnoor Singh (Software Engineering Intern, NCR) Harnoor is an M.S. student in CS who recently completed his undergrad degree at GSU. Harnoor previously did research in bioinformatics and is now working on cyber insurance research. He has two years of experience as a software engineering intern at NCR and Panasonic Automotive Systems. He is also a successful YouTuber with over 100k subscribers: check out his channel, Singh in the USA!

Software Design and Engineering Concerns in Payments and Fintech
Speaker: Mark Pearson
Affiliation: Fiserv, Inc.
Thursday, September 19, 2019 - 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Fiserv is a global leader in payments and fintech (financial technology), supporting thousands of financial institutions and millions of businesses in more than 100 countries. The merchant payment acquiring business in the United States collectively captures and settles ~40% of U.S. debit and credit card transaction volume. In this talk, we examine how current day compute, economic drivers, and commerce styles are creating interesting opportunities and challenges for the maintenance and construction of very large software systems, and how almost all business will rely on these very large software systems over time.

About the Speaker: Mark Pearson joined Fiserv in 2018 as VP Principal IT Architect. In his role, Mark leads the architecture for the Merchant Acquiring Business in North America. Prior to joining Fiserv, Mr. Pearson was Senior Vice President at SunTrust Bank, where he held various software delivery, architecture, and business planning management roles in Enterprise Information Services including the roles of Chief Architect, Director of Innovation and Strategy, and Head of Operations IT and Architecture. Mr. Pearson holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Georgia. In his off time, Mark enjoys participating in Atlanta Track Club training and running events.

ACM Competitive Programming Team Kickoff
Speaker: Sailesh Kumar
Affiliation: Facebook, Inc.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019 - 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm - 25 Park Place, Room 2608 (Dean's Meeting Center)

Welcome to the kickoff of our very own Facebook-sponsored ACM competitive programming team. What is competitive programming? It is an international programming competition, with over 3,000 universities from 111 countries all around the world. Teams from each university tackle various problems and puzzles, and are scored based on their ability to solve these problems in an efficient manner. Our team will be coached by our Facebook Engineer in Residence, Sailesh Kumar.

Outside of representing your school and competing against others, competitive programming is easily the best interview prep you could possibly do. If you can competitively program, then interviews will be a piece of cake! All majors and years welcome, but typically you need to have a strong programming and basic algorithms knowledge to be able to compete. Food will be provided!

The Virtual is Real: Blockchain in the Creative Industries
Speaker: Elizabeth Strickler
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, September 5, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Creative Media Industries Institute, Room 306

Georgia is the number-one center for film and television in the world, with a $9.5 billion economic impact. It’s also a center for blockchain, one of the most important new technologies to emerge since the early days of the Internet. Come hear Elizabeth Strickler discuss blockchain in entertainment and its impact on everything from fundraising and rights management to content access, distribution, fan economies, and other opportunities for disruption.

About the Speaker: A passionate believer in creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, Elizabeth uses her talents and technology to support students and clients to start businesses, tell immersive stories, and build a stronger cultural economy. She is excited to combine her knowledge of media technologies and the decentralized movement with local, digital and international communities. As the Director of Media Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) and the Blockchain Lab at the Robinson College of Business, she works to make her visions become reality and virtual reality.

End-of-Semester Bash: Have Breakfast with ACM!
Monday, April 29, 2019 - 9:00 am to 11:30 am - 25 Park Place, Room 755

Join the members of the GSU Student Chapter of the ACM for one last event before the school year ends.

• All students are welcome to attend – you don’t need to be a member.
• Stop by for a few minutes or stay as long as you want.
• Learn more about ACM and its activities. Applications will be available if you would like to join or renew your membership.
• Meet ACM officers and tell them what events you would like to see during the 2019–2020 academic year.
• And, last but not least, fill up on delicious Chick-fil-A and Highland Bakery food before finals!

Introduction to the Google Cloud ML Engine
Speaker: Melchizedek Mashiku
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm - 25 Park Place, Room 755

Melchizedek Mashiku, an undergraduate GSU computer science major with a focus in machine learning, will present an engaging workshop for students to get exposed to ML Engine, a Google Cloud service. The workshop will feature the fundamental concepts of machine learning with an emphasis on gaining a practical understanding and learning about applications.

About the Speaker: Mashiku is a machine learning enthusiast. He is currently a Google Cloud student innovator. He has three years of NASA software engineering internship experience and is currently doing full stack engineering for Research Solutions at Georgia State University. He has experience with Amazon Web Services as well as Google Cloud Platform services. His research focus is on augmentation. This semester he won the CNT (Center for Neurotechnology) Hackathon.

Introduction to Docker Workshop
Speaker: Gary Hutchins
Affiliation: Docker, Inc.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm - Student Center West, Room 464

Learn how to use Docker, a popular container platform. Docker containers are the fastest growing cloud-enabling technology with their lightweight approach to bundling applications and dependencies into isolated yet highly portable application packages. Participants should bring a laptop with Docker already installed. Agenda:

• Brief history of software containers
• What is a Docker container?
• What is the benefit of a software container?
• What a container is and isn’t
• How to build a Docker container
• Running a Docker container
• Do’s and don’ts when designing containers
• Q & A

About the Speaker: Gary Hutchins is a Lead Solutions Engineer with Docker Inc., where he is focused on helping customers across all verticals leverage containers to improve software delivery. After starting his career in San Diego and working as a Vice President of Technology he moved the family to Georgia and accepted a role as Director of Solutions Architecture where he was focused on helping customers understand and implement new technologies. He currently lives in Atlanta with his wife and three boys. When he is not stacking Docker containers, he enjoys 3D printing and playing with embedded microprocessors. He can be contacted at gary.hutchins@docker.com.

Introductory Data Science Workshop in R
Speaker: Andira Putri
Affiliation: Xylem Inc.
Friday, February 22, 2019 - 11:00 am to 1:00 pm - Aderhold Learning Center, Room 106

Data science is a growing interdisciplinary field; it combines mathematics, computer programming, and domain knowledge to create life and meaning out of many types of data: big, small, structured, unstructured. Many methods used in data science are based on the notion of linear regression, so getting the basics down is super important! In this workshop, we discuss and implement simple/multiple linear regression, logistic regression, and cross-validation techniques. We use the R statistical language and the RStudio environment to implement our models. Participants should bring a laptop with the R Base Package and RStudio already installed.

About the Speaker: Andira Putri is a Data Scientist at Xylem Inc., a water engineering and technology company. She graduated from Georgia State University with a B.S. in Mathematics in Spring 2018. During her undergraduate career, Andira built her experience and passion for math through completing research projects in bioinformatics and tutoring in the Math Assistance Complex. Now, Andira does math every day! Her main role is to conduct statistical analysis on time series data, and the most important tool for her modeling is RStudio. She also works on data communication and visualization, data science workflows, and training others in machine learning (haha!). She works out of Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, and in the fall, she is beginning a master’s in statistics at North Carolina State University.

Apache Maven Workshop
Speaker: Bismita S. Jena
Affiliation: Georgia State University and Anthem, Inc.
Thursday, February 7, 2019 - 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 216

Apache Maven is a tool that is widely used in industry for software project management. In this workshop, Bismita will give an overview of Maven and walk participants through the basic steps of building a Maven project from scratch. Participants should bring a laptop with Eclipse (Oxygen release) already installed. The workshop will also include a brief overview of Spark DataFrames and a discussion of how to build a Spark/Scala-based application. At the end, participants will learn how to launch an AWS cluster and deploy/run the Spark application using Amazon EMR.

About the Speaker: Ms. Bismita Jena is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science, graduating in May 2019. Her research focus is on finding frequent subgraphs/patterns from transactional datasets. She also works as a big data engineer at Anthem, Inc., where her job includes designing technical solutions for big data projects and managing projects end-to-end. This involves understanding the business model, gathering industry best practices, choosing the right-fit technology stack, building the framework, etc. In this workshop, her goal is to make students aware of some common industry practices as well as introduce them to a few current big data techniques.

Applying Data Science and Big Data Analysis to Solar Data
Speaker: Dr. Rafal A. Angryk
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, January 24, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

In this talk we give an overview of interdisciplinary research projects related to solar data analysis that are being conducted at Georgia State University. We will provide the audience with an update on progress made by our lab on big data cleaning, analysis of images, spatio-temporal patterns mining, and temporal data analysis. We will talk about a few up-to-date data mining methodologies and their relevance for big data-driven solar physics re-search.

About the Speaker: Dr. Rafal A. Angryk is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and the J. Mack Robinson College of Business. Dr. Angryk is the founding director of the GSU Data Mining Lab and conducts interdisciplinary and collaborative research on massive repositories of scientific data. Dr. Angryk’s research and teaching interests lie in the areas of big data (spatial, spatio-temporal databases, and scientific and medical image repositories), data science (frequent patterns discovery, clustering and classification of real-life big data), and information retrieval (kNN indexing of high-dimensional data coming from text and image repositories). He has published over 140 journal articles, book chapters, and peer-reviewed conference papers in these areas. His research has been sponsored by federal agencies (NASA, NSF, and NGA) and industry (Intergraph Corporation and RightNow Technologies [now part of Oracle]), with a successful grant history exceeding $12M.

Blockchain and Applications
Speaker: Dr. Juan M. Banda
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

If you ask people on the street, maybe one in a couple hundred will be able to define what blockchain is. However, if you ask about Bitcoin, more than half will tell you it is some sort of digital magic that has created millionaires. Ignoring the underlying technology behind Bitcoin (or any other legitimate cryptocurrency, for that matter) is like talking about cars and ignoring the invention of the wheel. In this talk I will provide a high-level overview of what the blockchain is and some of its most exciting applications. I will also mention some of the hands-on things we will be learning in the CSC 4980/6980 Block Chain & Applications course during the Spring 2019 semester.

About the Speaker: At his GSU Panacea Lab, Dr. Juan M. Banda works on building machine learning, computer vision, and NLP methods that help to generate insights from multi-modal large-scale data sources. With applications to precision medicine, medical informatics, and astroinformatics as well as other domains, he works with large volumes of image data, extracting and transforming computer vision image features into large content-based image retrieval systems for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory mission. His research interests are not limited to image data; he is also well-versed in extracting terms and clinical concepts from millions of unstructured electronic health records and using them to build predictive models (electronic phenotyping) and mine for potential multi-drug interactions (drug safety). His work in electronic phenotyping includes leading the development of Aphrodite, a tool that allows researchers to build phenotypes using noisy labels. Dr. Banda has published over 45 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers. Prior to becoming an assistant professor of computer science at Georgia State University, Dr. Banda was a postdoctoral scholar, then a research scientist at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. He is an active collaborator with Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics. His work has been funded by NASA, NSF, and NIH.

Rise in Phone Fraud: Have You Secured Your Call Centers?
Speaker: Dr. Payas Gupta
Affiliation: Pindrop Security, Inc.
Thursday, October 25, 2018 - 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

In the past decade, technologies such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP) have converged telephony with the Internet. Technological advancements in VoIP have allowed fraudsters to mount successful voice phishing attacks by calling victims’ banks, insurance companies, retailers, government agencies, and emergency responders. Therefore, a massive shift is needed in the way we handle the security of our call centers and voice-based IOT devices. In conversations with our major partners, we have found that blended threats that utilize both the web and telephony channels have become a serious concern. Phone fraud is now so prevalent that it caused $14 billion in losses last year. We found a 79% increase just in retail fraud rates between 2014 and 2016, where one in 491 calls is fraudulent. This includes Card-Not-Present (CNP) fraud, account takeovers, cross-channel attacks, and reshipping fraud over the telephone.

Pindrop’s patented Phoneprinting technology helps call centers detect anomalous behavior for first-time callers and identify repeat fraudsters. We also developed Phoneypot, the first large-scale telephone honeypot for studying phone abuse. We believe Phoneypot provides us with new insights into telephony abuse and attack vectors that could threaten the online channel. The talk will also summarize insights that have been gained based on the analysis of Phoneypot-generated abuse data.

About the Speaker: Dr. Payas Gupta is a Senior Research Scientist at Pindrop. His primary research interests revolve around telephony security and the human aspects of security. He has won best paper awards for his recent work on a telephone honeypot (Phoneypot) at NDSS 2015 and on keystroke biometrics at NDSS 2013. His work has been published in top security conferences including CCS, Usenix Security, NDSS, RSA, and M3AAWG VTA-SIG. Some of the detection systems resulting from his recent research have been integrated into commercial products distributed by Pindrop, which specializes in phone fraud detection to protect enterprise call centers, and other various other robocall-blocking companies. Payas obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Information System at SMU, Singapore, in 2013 and a Bachelor of Technology in Communication and Computer Engineering from LNMIIT, India, in 2008. In 2011, Payas was a visiting scholar for a year in Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab and Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Prior to joining Pindrop, he was a research scientist at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Note: This meeting is jointly sponsored by the GSU Student Branch of the IEEE and the Computer Science Club.

Demystifying the Internet of Visual Things
Speaker: Dr. Zhisheng Yan
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Thursday, October 11, 2018 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Visual data is the biggest of big data. It has been ubiquitously and continuously collected by cameras and video/graphics-enabled devices. Interacting with such visual content via mobile devices opens the door to compelling applications such as AR, VR, video analytics, holographic teleimmersion, etc., promising a future Internet of Visual Things (IoVT). Unfortunately, continued user frustration and concern with wireless network speed and battery power indicate that our visual experience in current systems is far from satisfactory. In this talk, I will identify the mobile-vision problem, which fundamentally leads to bandwidth and energy inefficiency in current mobile visual computing systems. I will then introduce a unified solution to address all system issues in IoVT applications by presenting a few examples in real-world visual computing systems.

About the Speaker: Zhisheng Yan is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, in 2017. He also worked in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University as a visiting researcher in 2016. His current research interest is the Internet of Things, focusing on next-generation camera sensing systems, visual communication systems, and computer vision systems. He is the recipient of the ACM SIGMM Outstanding Thesis Award in 2018, the SUNY Buffalo CSE Best Dissertation Award in 2017, the Best Demo Award at ACM HotMobile 2018, the David M. Benenson Memorial Award in 2016, and was runner-up for the Best Student Paper at IEEE HealthCom 2014.

How to Solve Problems (in CS and Everywhere Else)
Speaker: Dr. Brendan Benshoof
Affiliation: Square, Inc.
Wednesday, September 26, 2018 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Computer science education focuses on giving students tools for analysis and for solving programming problems. This talk will focus on the process and mindset of how to use those tools to solve practical engineering problems and what to do when you face problems you can’t solve.

About the Speaker: Dr. Benshoof earned his Bachelor's and Ph.D. in computer science at Georgia State. He was employed at Google headquarters after leaving Georgia State, where he worked on logistics and planning tools for Google's network infrastructure. He recently returned to Atlanta and now works as a senior software engineer on the Authentication team at Square.

ACM/IEEE Tailgate Party
Saturday, September 22, 2018 - 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Georgia State Stadium Gold Lot

The Home Depot Software Engineering Internship Information Session
Thursday, September 13, 2018 - 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Join professionals from The Home Depot’s internship program, including recruiters, and speak directly to some current technology associates to learn what tools, traits, and talents are necessary to work for a top Fortune 50 company based in Atlanta. Come as you are and feel free to bring your resume.

How to Crack the Google Coding Interview!
Speaker: Dr. Danial Aghajarian
Affiliation: Google
Thursday, August 30, 2018 - 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm - Student Center East, Room 217

I was recently able to successfully crack Google’s coding interview and will soon start my new job at Google’s Mountain View/Sunnyvale campus as a software engineer. In this talk, I will first briefly discuss my Ph.D. research, which involved designing a heterogeneous high-performance computing framework for processing big spatial data. Then I will share some personal experience regarding coding interviews in general. Finally, I will provide advice/resources for cracking the Google coding interview process. I will walk you through a real coding example, describing practical strategies to approach the problem step by step and write code for it.

About the Speaker: Dr. Aghajarian received his Ph.D. from Georgia State’s Department of Computer Science in August, 2018. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer engineering from Isfahan University of Technology (IUT) and Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), respectively. His current research interests include performance evaluation and modeling of parallel/distributed systems and parallel algorithm design for spatial data over heterogeneous distributed computing platforms equipped with GPUs.

Data Science: Challenges and Opportunities
Speaker: Semir Sarajlic
Affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology
Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm - Student Center East, Room 217

Data Science and Big Data are ubiquitous terms in today's society. Both complement one another; for example, data science techniques provide unprecedented insights from the data while the data presents ever-changing challenges in interoperability, processing, storage, and access. With growing demand in data science, researchers are relying and leveraging advanced research computing resources to accelerate their research progress.

About the Speaker: Semir Sarajlic is a Research Scientist and a Team Lead for Outreach and Faculty Interaction at Georgia Tech's PACE. Semir obtained his B.S and M.S. degrees in Geology/Geoscience along with a Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Science (GIS) from Georgia State University. After graduating in 2013, Semir worked at GSU’s IIT and later Research Solutions in various roles such as research computing and analytics, where he provided support for the campus research computing community and research administration. Semir is a co-founder and former PI and Chair of the Scientific Computing Day symposium (http://scd.gsu.edu), and former Co-Principal Investigator on an NSF CyberTraining collaborative research project. He is a member of the XSEDE User Requirements Evaluation and Prioritization group, an XSEDE Campus Champion, and an FY2018 XSEDE Campus Champion Fellow. Semir holds a GISP (Certified GIS Professional) certificate from the GIS Certification Institute, and he obtained certificates in Grant Writing and Big Data Analytics from Emory University.

Machine Learning: Who Is Teaching?
Speaker: Dr. Daniel Pimentel-Alarcon
Affiliation: Georgia State University
Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm - Student Center East, Room 217

When you hear about machine learning, what do you first think of? Sci-fi, artificial intelligence, and robots? Me too! To achieve these goals we first need to teach computers how to perform human activities. For example, if we want to create a physician-helper robot, first we need to teach computers to determine whether a magnetic resonance image (MRI) contains a tumor. Teaching machines is a challenging task that will require a great deal of interdisciplinary work.

About the Speaker: Daniel is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University. His research interests include machine learning, signal processing, optimization, statistics, algebraic geometry, and everything data science. Before coming to GSU, Daniel was a postdoc at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, working with professors Robert Nowak, Nigel Boston, Stephen Wright, and Rebecca Willett. Daniel did his Ph.D. work in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Professor Nowak. He also earned master’s degrees in mathematics and in electrical and computer engineering, both at UW-Madison. Daniel is originally from Mexico City, where he obtained undergraduate degrees in telematics engineering and in computer engineering, both at ITAM.

The Coding Bootcamp Industry and Job Search Tips
Speaker: Liz Carley
Affiliation: Digital Crafts
Thursday, March 1, 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm - Student Center East, Room 217

To start off, we will go over the concept of coding bootcamps and different bootcamps in Metro Atlanta. We will then break down preparing for the job search and discuss research, interview, and professionalism tips.

About the Speaker: Liz Carley is the Operations Manager for DigitalCrafts. She is a North Carolina native and has called Atlanta home for three years. She comes from an information technology staffing background and has worked with top corporations in metro Atlanta. Liz now runs DigitalCrafts’ Atlanta campus and oversees student and instructor management.

GSU Google TensorFlow Workshop Day
Speaker: Robert Martin
Affiliation: Google
Friday, February 23, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:00pm - Aderhold Learning Center, Room 107

The GSU ACM Student Chapter in conjunction with the Department of CS, is organizing a half-day workshop on Google's TensorFlow DeepLearning toolkit. We are excited to have Robert Martin from Google delivering the workshop. The workshop is divided into two lab sections, each of which will run 60-90 minutes in addition to brief intros.

About the Speaker: Robert Martin is a Cloud Customer Engineer for Google, working with companies from small startups to the largest enterprises to harness the power of Google Cloud Platform. Robert has worked previously as a software developer, architect, and IT director in financial services, law enforcement, and satellite telecommunications. Robert graduated with a BS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech and is currently pursuing an MS in Analytics from Georgia Tech.

Intelligent Edge : Introduction to a Comprehensive IoT Solution
Speaker: Dr. Devanand Kondur
Affiliation: VMware
Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm - Student Center East, Room 217

IoT, despite being around for some time now is yet to fully deliver on its potential. Most of IoT services have been about onboarding devices, maintaining gateways, grouping devices, provisioning to devices and to a certain extent analytics of data from devices. It is in acquiring, processing, reacting and intelligent forecasting based on this data in an efficient, real time manner that the potential of IoT lies. Also, the data thus collected needs to be transmitted through secure channels, as well as stored in a secure manner.

About the Speaker: Dr. Devanand Kondur has over 25 years of experience in the software industry and currently works in the IoT division at VMware. He is involved in exploring new ways to enhance and improve IoT solutions. Dr. Kondur obtained his Masters (1992) and Doctorate in Structural Mechanics from Texas Tech University (1995). He has worked in many industry verticals including the Airline industry and Supply Chain Management. His pastimes include reading, sports and DJ'ing for parties.

Scaling Up Deep Learning for NLP
Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Shihao Ji
Affiliation: GSU
Thursday, February 1, 2018 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm - Student Center East, Room 217

In this talk, I will talk about some of my recent research in the area of deep learning for NLP, especially how to scale up deep NLP algorithms through approximation and HPC techniques. I will show that with appropriate approximation techniques, we can not only speed up the training of deep learning algorithms but also improve their predictive accuracy. Typical deep learning NLP algorithms, such as word2vec, neural language modeling, and neural machine translation will be covered.

About the Speaker: Dr. Jonathan Shihao Ji is an Associate Professor in the CS department at Georgia State University. His principal research interests lie in the area of machine learning and deep learning with an emphasis on high-performance computing. He is interested in developing efficient algorithms that can learn from a variety of data sources (e.g., image, audio, and text) on a large scale and automate decision-making processes in dynamic environments. Dr. Ji received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University in 2006. After that he was an research associate at Duke for about 1.5 years. Prior to joining GSU, he spent about 10 years in industry research labs.