The School of Computing and Information Sciences held its fifth annual Awards Ceremony on Dec. 8th, 2007 at the Embassy Suites Hotel. Miami Int'l Airport. In attendance was the school's faculty, staff and special guests.

Donaley J. Dorsett, Administrative Coordinator of the School of Computing and Information Sciences coordinated guests and entertainment.

Dr. Yi Deng, Dean of SCIS, addressed the attendees with a speech on the school's dynamic transformation during the last five years. He expressed that the school's transformation is due to the quality of work its faculty and staff collectively accomplished.

Bill Kraynek was named an Emeritus Professor by the School of Computing and Information Sciences. Several professors prepared many of Dr. Kraynek's pictures and words of appreciation, including Dr. Deng, Dr. Berk, and Dr. Clarke. This was a special moment for SCIS since Dr. Kraynek was among the first professors to arrive at FIU and helped in more ways those who knew him and attended the ceremony ever imagined.

Dr. Yi Deng Professor & Dean of SCIS

Donaley Dorsett Administrative Services Coordinator

Dr. Masoud Milani Associate Professor & Associate Dean of SCIS

Norman Pestaina was awarded a Teaching award for the second time. He continues to have high evaluations, which averaged 4.55 (on a scale of 1-5). This rating is based on student evaluations using questions on consistency in following the syllabus (4.59), preparation for class (4.68), use and management of class time (4.66), knowledge of course content (4.81,) communication of ideas and information (4.56), stimulation of interest in course (4.39), availability to assist students in or out of class (4.35) and overall assessment of instructor (4.52). Norman Pestaina's performance in this area has been excellent.

As the director of SCIS undergraduate program assessment, he prepared our annual assessment report and findings. This is a major task which is fundamental to the success of our undergraduate program and students and his insights and contributions have been instrumental improving the quality of our undergraduate program.

Norman Pestaina was also a Question Leader for the College Board Computer Science Advanced Placement Examination.

Dr. Narasimhan has been awarded a Research award for the second time. He taught 1 graduate course this year. Based on student ratings for survey questions 4-9, 12 and 15, his teaching is rated to be excellent. Dr. Narasimhan's average rating was 4.51/5.00.

Dr. Narasimhan supervised 6 Ph.D. students, of which 3 (2 women and 1 Hispanic woman) graduated in 2006-07. This is a distinct accomplishment the Dean thanks him for his contribution to our school's rapidly growing Ph.D. program. In addition, he supervised 5 independent studies and served on 2 Ph.D. committees.

Dr. Narasimhan completed and published his book Geometric Spanner Networks, Cambridge University Press. This is major undertaking and accomplishment, indeed. In addition, he has 3 journal papers (including 2 in premier journals of his field), and 7 peer reviewed conference papers (including 1 in top conference), published or accepted. Dr. Naramsimham is the PI of a new NIH grant ($350K/2 years) with 3 co-PIs.

Dr. Narasimhan served as an editor for 1 journal, as a panelist on a NSF panel, as a member of Program or Organizing Committee for 8 conferences or workshops. In addition, Dr. Narasimhan has also been a reviewer for a number of journal and conferences. At FIU, Dr Naramsimhan served on the school's undergraduate committee.

Mark Weiss taught 7 undergraduate courses, including 2 in summer 2006. His overall rating was 4.50/5.00, which was among the highest teaching evaluation scores in the School this year.

Dr. Weiss has 1 book, "Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java (4th Edition)", accepted for publication by Addison-Wesley, and 1 book chapter, both of which were reported last year.

Dr. Weiss served on a number of University and School committees. In SCIS, he served as the Chair of SCIS Human Resource Committee. He has done an excellent job in handling the 3rd year tenure review for 4 faculty members, as the Chair of the SCIS Award Committee responsible for selecting annual SCIS awards, and as a member of SCIS Faculty Recruitment Committee, which played an instrumental role in our successful faculty search. At the college level, he served as a member and Vice Chair of the CEC Faculty Council, as the Chair of the CEC Committee on Tenure Revision Guidelines, and as a member of the college committee on implementing the new class schedules. In these roles, he has not only played a critically important role in faculty governance, but also a constructive leader in making our organization stronger and better.

S. Masoud Sadjadi advised directly or indirectly 45 students (27 PhD, 14 MS, and 4 undergraduate students) through independent study, honor's college, NSF-REU, NSF-CI-TEAM-GCB, MS and PhD committee and major advisor assignments. Many of these students have been successful at publishing papers, passing their candidacy exam, produced posters and/or are working with various types of projects including CVM and LaGrid.

Students appreciate Dr. Sadjadi's dedication to help them succeed at their research and careers. He has transformed students' level of achievement significantly in research and in skills to perform with excellence. His first student, Onyeka Ezenwoye, is now an assistant professor in South Dakota State University, is well published and received the Presidential Fellowship for his excellent research record in year 2005-2006.

Dr. Sadjadi is leading several international research projects in the Latin American Grid and is co-chair of the program committee for IEEE ICNSC 2008. He is PI or Co-PI of 8 grants from NSF and IBM for total of over $3.5 million.

Michal Krell is a second year IT major. She has been the WICS president since January 2006.

Under Michal's presidency, WICS has experienced its all time highest number of active officers (which presently is at 14). Her leadership style is exquisite: in a quiet yet decisive manner she delegates the chores to the officers and keeps after them until they complete their tasks. In response to her leading style, the officers, in turn, are more responsible than ever. At the same time, under Michal's presidency, WICS has become a community that many SCIS women students use as a reliable emotional and professional support.

Under Michal's presidency, WICS has been very active: it organized lectures by women professionals who shared their experiences in industry corporations such as Cisco; it has offered female students personal growth opportunities such as a course in self-defense, leadership workshops, and experiencing modern art; and last but not least, it has continued its tradition of tutoring women students.

In addition, Michal is a single mother raising two teenage sons and yet, her GPA is a perfect 4.0.

Alain joined the undergraduate program at FIU in the summer of 2005 after completing 4 years of study at the University of Havana in Cuba. He is currently in his final year and will be graduating this semester (Fall 2007) with a BS in Computer Science.

Alain became interested in research while taking the graduate Software Design class in the Spring of 2007. As a result of his interest in research and his high quality work, he was awarded an NSF REU position in FIU during summer 2007. During the REU program Alain worked with the Software Testing Research Group to develop a Self-Testing framework that can be used to test a distributed Autonomic Container and an Autonomic Job Scheduler. Alain has been co-author of two he papers that have been accepted for publication, one paper in the Journal of Computers and the other paper in the Symposium on Applied Computing 2008. Currently, Alain is working on a student paper for the ACM Southeast conference. Alain has been accepted to the PhD program in the SCIS starting in the spring of 2008.

Erliang Zeng is a student of the Bioinformatics Research Group. He got his early training from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he obtained a Bachelors in Biotechnology and a Masters in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He then spent 2 years in a company in Shanghai called Biostar Genechip Inc. His work in China led to a patent and to many publications. Based on his previous record, he was awarded the FIU Presidential Fellowship.

He came to FIU with little experience in Computer Science and has emerged as one of our strongest graduate students. He currently has 1 book chapter, 11 journal, and 8 conference publications to his credit. He is a coauthor on a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the most cited journal for multidisciplnary scientific research, to be published later this year. He also has two papers in premier conferences in the field. His strong record has resulted in 2 prestigious summer internships, one at Centocor (a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson) and the other at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Erliang will finish his PhD dissertation this summer under the supervision of Giri Narasimhan. He has also worked closely with Tao Li and has forged strong collaborations with several researchers outside the department.

Ramakrishna, who presented his PhD thesis proposal in Fall 2007, joined FIU in Fall 2004 as a PhD student and was immediately involved in research projects under the supervision of Dr. Hristidis. Since then he has gone a long way. His area of expertise is in the junction of Databases and Information Retrieval. Despite some initial paper rejections, he never wanted to settle with anything other than the top forums. His persistence paid off, and led among others to an ACM CIKM paper in 2006 with acceptance rate 15%, an IEEE ICDE paper in 2008 with acceptance rate 19%, and a IEEE TKDE journal in 2008, which is one of the top database journals. Ram has also been a great citizen of the SCIS community and his energy has been inspirational to his colleagues.

Guillian "Gil" Villasenor, is my nomination for Best Technical Staff. Gil is the Business Support Specialist who leads our Business Support Services for the Technology Group. The "Biz" group, as it is known, is responsible for processing the School's technology purchases, service contracts and laboratory equipment assets management.

Gil has a great personality to provide excellent customer service without along with tenacity of a bulldog to see that the job gets done.

Leading is about taking action, sometimes action that is not in our "comfort zone". Gil understands this and demonstrates such leadership every day. For instance, when faced with difficult negotiations with the Purchasing Dept., she didn't leave voice messages or send emails to the purchasing agent, which in our world is the normal practice. Instead, she on her own initiative drove over to Purchasing and introduced herself to the agent and in the end got our orders through, meeting the quotation deadline and saving the School thousands of dollars in equipment costs.

Great customer service is about not only meeting expectation but exceeding them. "Going the extra mile", means using all your abilities to solve the problem quickly while maintaining a great relationship with your team and customers.

When Gil asked to oversee desk allocation to our RA/TA's in the lab she didn't just keep a spreadsheet, she created a floor plan and layout, redesigned the room to make it more efficient to hold more students while reducing crowding. She oversaw and coordinated the effort, while helping the students become oriented to the new facility and followed up on their requests for assistance.

Examples like these, of taking initiative and being resourceful is why in the 10 years we have had a Technology Biz Group, Gil is the best we have seen. We are proud of her work and the example she set for our staff.

Donnaley Dorsett is our Administrative Services Coordinator. Her duties include managing the office staff, assisting the Dean, organizing annual school events, and coordinating the school.s financial brochure. She is a hard worker, responsible, knowledgeable and effective, and is a great asset in our office faculty, staff and students.