7/23/2004

Dear students:

I hope that you are enjoying the summer.
Fall Semester schedule is now official

http://www.cs.sfsu.edu/schedules/04/fall04.html

As we promised, we will keep you updated on important issues and changes every semester, so you can better plan your course of study. Let me list some of the important issues relevant to this Fall Semester:

NEW GRADUATE PROGRAM IS STARTING FALL 2004

We are starting new graduate program. It has been officially approved. This is a significant accomplishment for our department and we hope an enhancement over current one. We hope that you will find the new program exciting and challenging. We are also open to your comments (sent them to csgrad@sfsu.edu or leave anonymous memo in our mailbox outside the office).

Please tell your friends about this new program.

Current graduate students can continue with no changes, or if they want to graduate with new concentration (those who still have units they can chose from), they should see graduate advisor for that particular concentration.

New graduate students do not have to decide on particular concentration until the first week of their second semester.

Note change in PERNET Graduate Seminar requirement: It is still mandatory, but no units will be given. You have to attend PERNET in a semester you chose (we recommend doing it early in your graduate study). More details on this will be posted soon. PERNET will be scheduled at the same time: every Wednesday 5:30 TH 331.

PERNET will help you chose concentration and also give you ideas on culminating research projects, besides giving you an excellent exposure to hot topics and famous speakers. I will be the speaker in one of the first PERNET talks and I will cover new graduate program, Fall schedule and other updates. For more information on the on the PERNET requirements please go here

FALL SCHEDULE

Please check Fall schedule. It is quite comprehensive given recent budget challenges. Please note the following:

- We will offer several new courses, CSC664 Multimedia Systems(CSC664, area of special emphasis is Graphics and Multimedia Link to CSC664 Syllabus), Systems Architecture CSC 846 (Link to CSC 846 Syllabus) , Advanced SW Engineering CSC 848. .

- We have two new instructors: Prof. R. Singh (664 Multimedia Systems), Prof. B. Wall (520 Theory of Computing)

- 846 Systems Architecture (new course) replaces 856 Advanced Computer Architecture. Current graduate students who took 856 will get credit, so they do not have to take 846. 856 may be repeated in the future.

- Graduate students who took 640 with graduate credit, and want or need to take Advanced SW Engineering 848 need to talk to instructor. Students who have completed Software Engineering CSC 640, or its equivalent at another institution, should check with the instructor

- 510 (Analysis of Algorithms I) will NOT be offered in Spring so please take it now. Generally, we will not be able to offer all courses all the time, and we will be notifying you ahead of time so you can plan

- 413 (Software development) is moved later in the day to make it easier for those who work

- There will be a change in instructor for Math 330: Prof. N. Robbins from Math Department will be teaching it now (he used to teach it several years ago).

- Math 340 may be taken instead of Math 324.

New Professor

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Rahul Singh joined the CS Department as full time tenure track faculty, starting Fall 2004. Professor Singh will be teaching and doing research in bioinformatics, computing for life sciences and multimedia.

Dr. Rahul Singh received his Ph.D and MS degrees in computer Science from the University of Minnesota, specializing in Computer Vision and Vision-Based Robotics and his masters degree in Computer Science ("with excellence") from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. He was a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Singh was in the industry (in the San Francisco-Bay area) at Scimagix, where he worked on various problems related to multimedia biological information management and at Exelixis, where he headed the computational drug discovery group, which worked on various problems across the genomics-drug discovery spectrum. His technical interests are in bioinformatics, computational drug discovery, multimedia information modeling and management, and computer vision and its applications.

NEW LABS

We started two new labs: Lab for Computing for Life Sciences (Contact D. Petkovic) and Lab for Global SW Engineering (contact Prof. B. Levine). This is where you can come and look for project or culminating experiences in those areas (for other areas please continue to talk to professors who teach them or who you know well). WWW pages for these labs are coming up soon. Location of these labs is "virtual" for now (i.e. spread out), please consult the contact instructor.

Updated documentation on UNIX server access and C/C++ compilation can be found here

PROF. EISMAN ON TWO YEAR SABBATICAL

Prof. Eisman will be leaving for 2 year sabbatical to Chancellor's Office, and he will be here occasionally. Prof. Eisman will be involved in advising CSU Chancellor Office on programs with community, an area of his expertise and passion. We wish him all the best. If you need to contact Prof. Eisman in terms of projects and work, please do so asap.

REMINDER FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS

Please maintain your enrolment and GPA (above 3.0) at appropriate level in order to avoid visa issues. Nowadays, there are a lot of federal rules which we have no control over, so please take this quite seriously.

Please keep checking our WWW site often. Our site has all the updates, information, procedures, as well as links for employment and tips for jobs search. We try to keep it current and we added a lot of new information recently. Your feedback on the site or on anything else regarding CS Department is welcome (sent them to csgrad@sfsu.edu or leave anonymous memo in our mailbox outside the office).

Prof. D. Petkovic
Chair, CS Department, SFSU