1. Computer Science: Research and Outreach
Dr. Martine Ceberio
Associate Professor of Computer Science
The University of Texas at El Paso

2. Background
Completed my degrees in France: Ph.D. in CS in 2003, University of Nantes
Visiting Professor in CS at UTEP from 2003 to 2004
Assistant Professor in CS at UTEP from 2004 to 2012
Associate Professor in CS at UTEP since 2012
But before 1998: I hated CS… 
Paths are not always very straight

3. Main Categories of Activities
Research
Teaching (More on this later)
Service

4. Research in CS @ UTEP Successful research teams in areas as varied as:
Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Decision Making
Computational Sciences
Software Engineering
Security
Funded by NSF, ARL, DARPA, Army Corps of Engineers, Google, NCWIT, Microsoft, …
CyberShare center: interdisciplinary research teams
Lead of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI.org)

5. My Research Decision making Under uncertainty
Large computational problems

6. Decision Making under Uncertainty for Large Problems
Design of algorithms: optimization, constraint solving algorithms
Design of problems to be solved
With one constant: the need for reliable solutions

7. Examples of Problems We Address

8. Example of Simulation

9. What We Added
Predictions
Recomputations

12. Who is Interested? ARL funded this work for several years
Contributions to algorithmic foundations
Contributions to applications

13. A Very Important Aspect of This Work
It is conducted with students
1 post-doc researcher
3 Ph.D. students
about 10 undergraduate students, 3 of whom are very involved and making significant contributions

14. Our App: built by UG Students

17. Service
Takes many forms: to my department/college/university, scientific community, local community
Passion:
to show young students what CS is,
to involve them in CS as early as possible,
to acknowledge their efforts
How? (selected items)
Advisor of ACM-W at UTEP, among others
Coordinator of the El Paso NCWIT AiC program
Host of Nexus interns in CS at UTEP
Contributor to CS activities for CS summer camps
Host of campus visits for K-12

18. These Programs, and More
NCWIT Aspirations in Computing (AiC)
see:
For young women in high-school with interest in CS
When? Early fall annually
What? Short paragraphs informing us (judges) about their interests, experience, and aspirations
What else??
A parallel program for educators
Those who support the participation of women in CS
We need more applicants: I know many do a great job and we do not get a chance to acknowledge them

19. NCWIT AiC: Students & Educators
This is a national & regional program
Entering the competition once:
automatically entered to the regional competition (if any): there is El Paso
automatically entered to the national competition
What’s in for the participants?
members of a closed group of past participants
scholarships in some universities
prestigious award
monetary prize for educators
laptops for students
Etc.

20. Nexus Internships What? When? Who?
Shadowing program in Engineering at UTEP
In my lab: it is more than shadowing
coding (incl. scratch, java, matlab), presenting, preparing and pitching 2 projects, command line, research (as running tests for our algorithms), etc.
When?
Regular semesters or summer
In my lab: only in summer
Who?
High-school students

21. Excites Summer Camps For middle to high-school students
Many different engineering topics
Some camps are focused on CS

22. Other Ways to Ignite CS The Hour of Code: http://hourofcode.org
Annual event
Also available all year long
It is happening now!
Easy to organize
We can help!

23. Other Ways to Ignite CS Google IgniteCS:
College students offering CS programs in K-12 schools
UTEP’s ACM-W chapter has run IgniteCS programs since January 2015
Let us know if you are interested

24. Why is all of this important?
Because:
We need to inform young students about what CS is: so they can make informed decisions
We need more people in CS: many jobs (and even more going forward) will require knowledge of CS, or at the very least strong computational thinking
We need diversity in CS (currently not diverse)
We need skilled people

25. Thank you for your attention!
Any questions?