Possible Events
Winthrop's ACM Student Chapter
Association for Computing Machinery
Note that as of now, lectures by these professors are only proposed events. The professors mentioned have not even been contacted yet to see if they are available to give lectures. The reason for proceeding like this is to avoid wasting their time trying to schedule them for a lecture if no one is interested in hearing them speak. Once a reasonable amount of interest is expressed, we can start to work out a concrete schedule. These lectures are only the lectures that I would be interested in hearing and this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list of possibilities.
Dr. Sebhatu is a nationally recognized speaker on modern physics. His recent work has been on the Superstring theory, the most recent attempt at a grand unified theory.
Dr. Vartanian has come back to Winthrop this Fall after spending a year at Duke concentrating on his research on photons (non-linear differential equations). His work will advance the science community's knowledge of fiber optic communications.
Dr. Bresenham is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of computer graphics and has famous line and circle algorithms named after him. He is currently spending most of his time on the ethical dilemmas that technology presents us with.
Dr. Kullberg is doing research on the chemical reactions involved with batteries and trying to figure out how to make them more energy efficient and able to hold more energy.
Dr. Owens is doing work on the ammonia content in cigarette smoke and works with the growing amount of smog over the Charlotte area.
IBM has a building in Charlotte that might be able to lend us a speaker for a day.
Professor Katzan has worked in the field of expert systems and many other miscellaneous contracting topics and might be able to give insight into the life of a computer consultant.
James Hammond is the head of information technology at Winthrop and could come give his standard talk on how the Winthrop network is setup and any other topics about the Winthrop computing systems. He is also working on the next-generation smart ID cards for Winthrop students with chips in them for operating with laundry, vending machines, meals, and anything else students use their ID's for.
There might be professors in the Philosophy department interested in fuzzy (or other forms of) logic, which is applicable to computer science.
Dr. Caballero just finished a math course in cryptology and might be able to give a brief lecture on the mathematics behind cryptography.
Dr. Polaski is knowledgeable about Mathematica and might be able to give a lecture about what he knows of its internals.
Dr. Olsen does research on evolutionary algorithms and their applicability to inventory control systems and has expressed interest in speaking to us about her work.
Pizza parties at the Winthrop Shack.
There are numerous Internet Service Providers in the Charlotte area with big server rooms and big network connections that we might be able to visit and gawk at.
The Catawba Nuclear Plant gives tours and is not that far away.
Universities within a few hours driving distance have some kickass computer science and applied mathematics departments. For instance, Clemson has a VR lab full of SGI servers and has a graduate program in parallel processing that has a large Beowulf Linux following. USC has a PhD program in Computer Science that might have something interesting.
A Linux installation day might be useful for those students interested in Linux but without the know-how to install it for themselves.
Dr. Thacker mentioned that we might like to organize a LAN game competition. We could use Quake 3 and any other games that we have handy. Thacker mentioned that we might want to use a lesser-known game to even playing field for those of us who have been playing Quake since it came out.
I'm not sure if a keg party is feasible. If so, we will definitely have one.
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Last Updated: 09 September 2002