Computer Science | Grinnell College

On Thursday, April 7, Ravi Chande 2011 and Dylan Gumm 2011 will give a talk in the “Thursday Extras” series:

Maps -- particularly old ones -- have proven a significant challenge to traditional optical character recognition systems. Intersections of text with other cartographic symbols, irregular word orientations, and unusual fonts all serve as sources of error. Previous attempts to improve OCR on maps have used pre-processing steps on the input image or various post-processing techniques on the strings output by OCR. Here, we present a system that attempts to combine an OCR system with the known geography of the map to improve text recognition.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, “Text recognition on historical maps,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, March 3, Forrest Friesen 2011 will give a talk in the “Thursday Extras” series:

Field-programmable gate arrays are integrated circuits whose internal structure can be configured to create digital logic at the lowest level. With ever-improving semiconductor manufacturing technology and increasingly accessible configuration tools, they are the ultimate in general purpose computational hardware. This talk will present an overview of working with modern FPGAs, with examples taken from my independent study project in the physics department. I will also discuss the devices from a technology studies perspective.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Mr. Friesen's talk, “Computation in pure hardware with FPGAs,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, February 24, Henry Walker will discuss present some of his preliminary work on integrating the programming of robots with the curriculum of CSC 161 (“Imperative problem solving and data structures”):

Introductory computer science courses around the country have utilized robots for a number of years. In recent years, for some courses, robot control has taken advantage of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs); some other courses provide students with a programming environment designed for beginners. Although these experiences have often been motivating and interesting for students, the use of robots remains a challenge within courses that focus upon imperative problem solving (e.g., with the C programming language), such as Grinnell's CSC 161.

Drawing upon this background, Mr. Walker has devoted part of his current sabbatical leave to explore the use of simple robots, with the long-term goal of possibly using robots in CSC 161. This talk presents a status report on this work. Discussion will include hardware options and capabilities, programming options, available documentation, examples of working programs, challenges, and next steps.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Mr. Walker's talk, “Programming robots: a status report,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

Students interested in the topics of this talk are encouraged to contact Mr. Walker about the possibility of working in the field for Summer 2011 and [maybe] beyond.

On Thursday, February 17, Aaron Todd 2011 will discuss the use of the Scala programming language, and in particular its support for parallelism, in the construction of simulation frameworks for multi-agent systems.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Mr. Todd's talk, Multi-agent system simulation in Scala, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, February 10, Jerod Weinman will discuss some aspects of his recent work on text recognition:

Is your smart phone smarter than a fifth grader? Not yet. Accurately translating a photograph of text into an intrinsically textual representation has been confounding computational scientists for over a century. Humans (even fifth graders) still outperform computers at reading. In this talk, I review why the problem is difficult and present a model for robustly recognizing small amounts of text in images.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). Mr. Weinman's talk, “Robust text recognition,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, February 3, faculty in the Department of Computer Science will discuss summer research opportunities, both on and off campus, that are open to our students, including the projects that our faculty will direct this year.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The discussion will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. We encourage anyone who might be interested in summer research in computer science to attend!

At 4:15 on Thursday, December 9, in Noyce 3821, students from CSC 325 (Databases and Web application design) will present their class project, GCal:

GCal is an open calendar: Anyone on campus can view, add, and comment on events. In addition to demonstrating GCal, the students will discuss the technologies that are used in the calendar, the processes and problems involved in the project, and recommendations for others collaboratively building medium-scale Web applications.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, GCal: a community calendar for the rest of us, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

At 4:15 on Thursday, December 2, in Noyce 3821, Jordan Shkolnick 2011 will describe her internship experience from last summer:

I will discuss my summer internship as a Software Development Engineer in Test with Microsoft Office. I will discuss the work I did during this internship and present an overview of Microsoft Internships, including the application process and the three job roles.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Testing at Microsoft, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

The Thursday Extra talk originally scheduled for 4:15 p.m. today has been cancelled. Instead, the Department of Computer Science invites you to come and partake of the usual refreshments in our commons, Noyce 3817, and to stay for informal conversation.

On Thursday, November 4, in Noyce 3821, Jeff Leep 2011 will describe the deployment of a configuration management system, cfengine, that automatically checks for problems in MathLAN computers and then either fixes the problem or alerts the system administrator.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Managing the MathLAN, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!