THEY'RE OFF TO EINDHOVEN!...The CMU team of Yih-Chun Hu (Grad), Dan Rosenberry (Senior), and Larry Greenfield (Junior) have flown off to The Netherlands for the Finals of the ACM International Programming Contest. After earning a coveted place in this test of "skill and stamina" at the East Central Regional competition in November, they have packed up their supplies, grabbed team advisor Mark Stehlik....and headed off for one further effort. 800-sets of SCS fingers are tightly crossed :-)

CS FACULTY CANDIDATES...
April 8: DANIELE MICCIANCIO, MIT, "The Complexity of Lattice and Coding Problems and their Cryptographic Applications", 10:00 am, Wean 4623.
April 12: SANJEEV KHANNA, Lucent Technologies, "The Approximability of Constraint Satisfaction Problems", 10:00 am, Wean 4615A. His faculty host is Avrim Blum.

April 15: PETER STONE, CMU, "Layered Learning in Multi-Agent Systems, 10:00 am, Wean 4623. His faculty host is Andrew Moore.

ROBOTICS FACULTY SEARCH SEMINAR...
April 8: GEORGE STETTEN, Assistant Research Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, "Automated Identification and Measurement of Cardiac Anatomy in Real Time 3D Ultrasound", 11:30 am, Wean 5409.

ECE FACULTY CANDIDATE...
April 8: SANJAY PATEL, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, "Delivering Instruction Bandwidth using a Trace Cache", 12:00 pm, Hamerschlag Room 1112.

CS DOCTORAL DISSERTATION AWARD LECTURE...David Redish, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of Arizona, presents "What to Do When You're Lost: Self-localization and the Hippocampus" at the CS Doctoral Dissertation Award Lecture/SCS Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, April 8 at 4:00 pm in Wean 7500 (distinguished-donuts at 3:45 pm). Dave, who completed his CS PhD in 1997 with the thesis, "Beyond the Cognitive Map: Contributions to a Computational Theory of Rodent Navigation", will be recognized and awarded a $1,000 prize at the start of the program. Please join us in welcoming Dave back to campus and in acknowledging his outstanding work.

IBM FEST..."A Window on Research at IBM" is scheduled for Friday, April 9 from 9:30 am to 12:45 pm in Wean 8220. A team of IBM researchers, including Alex Morrow, Guerney Hunt, Murthy Devarakonda, Ajei Gopal, and Norman Cohen, from the Yorktown Heights research center, will present a series of brief talks "describing their research agenda in the broad area of Pervasive Computing, an important strategic direction for IBM." The program will be followed with a special SDI Seminar by Norman Cohen on "COSMOS: Co-Operative State Machine for Object Synchronization," at 11:30 am. Faculty, staff and students are welcome. As noted, "these interactions can be valuable in exploring research collaborations, summer internship and job opportunities...while stimulating new research ideas." Doughnuts and coffee will be provided in the morning, followed by pizza at the SDI Seminar. Please rsvp to tracyf@cs.cmu.edu to assure quantities. Complete details are available at: www.cs.cmu.edu/~satya/.

MOBOT FINALS JUST AROUND THE CURVE...Join us Friday, April 16 (spring carnival weekend) at noon for the 5th Annual Mobot Slalom Race Finals. Come cheer on your favorite team on the race course in front of Wean Hall!

SCS THESES - NOW IN PRINT...
JOHN A. HANCOCK/CMU-RI-TR-99-01:
Laser Intensity-Based Obstacle Detection and Tracking, January 1999
PATRICK S. ROWE/CMU-CS-99-09:
Adaptive Motion Planning for Autonomous Mass Excavation", January 1999
PHOEBE SENGERS/CMU-CS-98-151:
Anti-Boxology: Agent Design in Cultural Context, Augusut 1998

SLEEPING BAGGERS...They're back! Newly admitted SCS undergraduates will visit us on Monday, April 12. "Sacking out" in student dorms and residences, the students get a feel for campus life via tours, presentations, class visitations, and talking with their peers. Welcome potential class of 2004 (gasp!).

SCS INVITED TALKS...
ED CLARKE presented "Symbolic Model Checking without BBDs" on March 17 at the 1999 Workshop on Formal Design of Safety Critical Embedded Systems (FEmSys), held in Munich Germany. He also chaired a session on "Distributed Code Generation" during the programming. The workshop, sponsored by BMW, GMD, INRIA, and Siemens AG, addressed a "theme well established in industry...one that hopes to find even broader dissemination of the methods and tools now provided by industry and academia." Complimented by his March 24 presentation at the CWI SOIREE, hosted by the Dutch Research Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, it was an exciting and full month!
DAN SIEWIOREK discusses "Wearable Computers" at the April 8 Cutting Edge Cafe at 4:30 pm in the McKenna/Peter Rooms, University Center.

2000 WAYS TO MAKE SOFTWARE BETTER...The 12th Software Engineering Process Group Conference, SEPG 2K, sponsored by the SEI and hosted by the Seattle Software Process Improvement Network (Seattle SPIN), along with program committee representatives from SPIN groups in Albuquerque, Kansas City, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and Washington DC SPIN, will be held 20-23 March 2000 in Seattle Washington. As the the premier international conference and exposition for software process professionals, this year's theme will focus on "2000 Ways to Make Software Better." For more details and registration information, visit www.sei.cmu.edu/products/events/sepg/ or send mail to sepg@sei.cmu.edu.

WHAT ABOUT COMMENCEMENT?...So, have you been giving thought to ordering your cap and gown for commencement? Go beyond thinking! Do it today. Visit the site www.cmu.edu/commencement to order online or contact Carol Worek at ye olde University Shoppe (cw4b@amdrew.cmu.edu, 268-6042) to place your order. You can also physically visit the University Shoppes and fill in a form in real-time. However you choose, don't delay. Orders really should be in by Friday, April 9! This goes for faculty, too.

WORDS FOR THOUGHT...
FRIDAY, APRIL 9
**THEORY SEMINAR: Russell Impagliazzo, University of California, San Diego, "Which Problems Have Strongly Exponential Complexity?", 3:30 pm, Wean 7220.
**ROBOTICS SEMINAR: Roderic Grupen, University of Massachusetts, "Structure in Continuous-Time Control of Complex Robot Systems", 3:30 pm, Adamson Wing.
**STUDENT SEMINAR SERIES: Mihai-Dan Budiu, The CMU Reconfigurable Computing Project, Noon, Wean 4601.

MONDAY, APRIL 12
**PROGRAMMING SYSTEMS SEMINAR: Patrice Godefroid, Lucent/Bell Labs, "Model-Checking Software with VeriSoft", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.

TUESDAY, APRIL 13
**AI SEMINAR: Usama Fayyad, Microsoft, "Data Mining and Databases: Recent Developments", 3:30 pm, Wean 5409.

WEAN HALL TO BECOME PARKING GARAGE...In anticipation of the New SCS expansion, the first 3 floors of Wean Hall will be revamped and turned into the newest parking facility on campus. Once gutted, repaved, and equipped with meters, Campus Parking expects 800 new parking spaces to be made available to the SCS community from these three floors alone. If the first stage of construction goes as planned, the remaining 5 floors of Wean will be converted over the next few years, clearing the way for over 4500 new parking spots! Each parking meter will be fully networked, enabling web-based monetary transactions. Faculty, staff and students will be able to charge their parking fees directly to FRAS, Tartan Trust, or object/account codes instantaneously. Netbar access and IP addresses are planned for each parking space during the second year of operation, enabling a truly "mobile" computing environment. (Got ya...April Fools!).

THE SCS JUST SO-SO LECTURE SERIES...SCS is pleased to announce the inauguration of the SCS Just-So-So Lecture Series. Members of the computer science community who have "sort of" distinguished themselves over the past years will be invited to talk about "kind of" interesting topics. While no immediate speakers come to anyone's mind, we vaguely anticipate that one day we will find someone who is just "so-so" to ask to participate. If you have any average suggestions, please forward them to so-so@cs.cmu.edu. (Got ya again!)

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