Tenure? Check. But, at what cost?

Well, it has been a very long time since I’ve added a new post to this blog. Simply put, I’ve been very busy. Going through tenure is a grueling process. As time went on, it became more difficult, rather than easier. Perhaps it was just the stress of wondering whether my efforts would pay off? However, the bigger issue was the struggle of finding the balance between my career and my personal life. As the career continued to take more time, miscellaneous, unimportant tasks such as blogging had to go. Anyway, I'm trying to start this up again as time permits. 

I’ve had an awful lot going on in my life. One of the motivating factors behind writing this blog was to help others who are going through similar situations, such as pursuing tenure in higher-ed. I can’t imagine my experiences are unique in any way. I’ll try to summarize a few very important experiences I’ve gone through, particularly over the past year. Some of it has been wonderful. For example, last year, in early 2016, I found out that I received tenure! I was promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor, which is a typical promotion when one gets tenure.

While that news was wonderful, I often wonder about the cost must one pay to obtain tenure. Life is short. And, if you have children, you have far more important pulls on your attention than tenure. Children grow quickly. Mine is shooting ahead so fast. I have so many moments when I wish his growth would slow down so I can catch up. He’s an amazing boy. My son is what keeps me motivated and smiling.

Family balance. It’s important. In fact, I intentionally chose a liberal arts undergraduate institution for my career. I wanted to work at a place where I would not be suffering through writing countless grants and having no life. Yes, it was eventually a conscious choice, though not at first. In 2008, while I was finishing the final touches of my PhD, I was interviewing at several universities for postdoc and tenure-track positions. I had several offers, especially from postdoctoral research positions in bioinformatics. I had some decent research credentials and I really want to keep building that up to land a top-notch research position. I ultimately accepted a position at NIH as a postdoctoral research scientist in a bioinformatics lab. A few months before I was to start the position, however, I lived through some critical, life-changing events. Without going into detail, let’s just say that these events changed my focus from living a research-driven life of grant-writing and self-promotion, to realizing I needed to consider what is best for those beyond myself, most notably, my new family that was simultaneously starting.

I admit that I did not always do the best job finding that balance, especially at the beginning of my career. I had a very difficult time going from pursuing a PhD where you can’t possibly do anything but focus on yourself and your research 24/7, to suddenly becoming a dad! That was very hard. Becoming a parent changes everything. People tell you that all the time, “Oh you’re having a child? Life as you know it is now over.” Well, it’s not that it’s over, it’s just 100% different. And, you just have no idea just how different everything is until you hold your child for the first time after being born. It changes everything. And, I experienced this change at the very start of my very first tenure track position (a prior position before arriving at Bucknell.) 

My son has been the most wonderful gift to me. Being a parent has been the most amazing experience in my entire life, and one I am still in the beginning stages of. (He’s currently 8 yrs old as I write this. Such a fun age!!!) In some ways, being a parent is far easier than the pursuit of a research-focused career. In other ways, however, it is surely more difficult. For instance, I can just put my laptop down when I’m frustrated with R and data cleaning, debugging poor models, etc. and just walk away. I can’t do that with my son! Despite those few trying times where you feel that pull, I’ve learned to try my best to put him first. Sometimes things get neglected. I’ve missed meetings, missed deadlines for grants, told students who needed me to stay late, “No” on numerous occasions, and occasionally came to class completely unprepared because my son was sick and kept us up a good chunk of the night before. But, those times are so few. And now that he’s older, he’s so independent compared to those younger years! Being a parent, simply put, is amazing. It is the most wonderful, rewarding experience I’ve ever lived through. (I have yet to encounter the teenage years… I might change my mind then.)

So, am I satisfied with my career? That is a very complex question. This past year, since getting tenure, I’ve been sucked into far more service activities than I’ve ever had to endure. It has consumed a lot of my free time. I rarely feel like I have free time to pursue any research interests during the semester anymore (not that I had that much time before. Now, it’s just worse.) Additionally, I’ve been trying to get involved in any opportunity I can that gives our students interdisciplinary experiences. I am a firm believer that our college should be moving fervently toward providing open, collaborative, integrative, interdisciplinary experiences for every student. Our college is a rich environment to provide such experiences, and yet we fall far behind our peer institutions in this area for no good reason that I’m aware of. And unfortunately, I’m not in the majority on the urgency of this endeavor. But, since I’ve been here, I think we are finally making some strides.

I love teaching. I still do. I’m in my 7th year at Bucknell and still find teaching very rewarding. But, I miss research. I miss the opportunities to do some deep-diving into the latest mass-scale biological sequence analysis methods. I’ve branched into many analytic methods that focus on pattern discovery and predictive models on sequential data. This is still where my heart is, and I’m longing to get back into this work. But, how? How do I keep teaching at the level I do, increase my service commitments, and somehow find time to get research done? I’m realistic — it’s not going to happen unless something else decreases. And, my work can’t just happen during the summer. I must be invested in some amount of research every week, so that I can maximize my efforts during breaks and summer. But, how? I do not see my service obligations decreasing. I believe that we will continue teaching a 5-course load per year, which is too heavy to conduct high-quality research during the semester.

The approach I’ve tried to follow over the years is to establish a few good students in my research during the semesters through independent studies related to topics I’m investigating. Occasionally, I have bright, motivated students who want to continue the work over the summer, and sometimes these students end up producing some publishable work! I do not see this approach stopping anytime soon.

On the bright side, thankfully, I am about to embark on my first year-long sabbatical for 2017-2018 as a tenured faculty member. I have numerous projects I want to pursue. Thanks to some wonderful colleagues at the Geisinger Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute, some interesting projects are in store which should yield some positive outcomes with my research agenda. I’m looking forward to it.

I write the above forcing myself to try and be positive. Yet, this has been an incredibly hard year this past year. I had more substantial life-changing experiences this past year that has caused a real sense of urgency to rise up within my soul to just get back to pure biological sequence analysis related to cancer and disease.

In December 2016, I found out that my mother had ovarian cancer. It was devastating to me. I spent all of the time that I could afford learning everything I could about ovarian cancer so I could have educated conversations with my mom’s oncology team. I wanted to help her and my dad make the best decisions for her possible recovery. Without going into details, unfortunately, it was not long before I realized that her symptoms were clearly indicating that she was in advanced stages, most likely Stage IV. This is not uncommon with ovarian cancer, because most women don’t have symptoms until it’s too late. The doctor tried to convince us that it was Stage IIIC, but in my heart, I just knew it could not be. And unfortunately, they could not operate to remove the ovary and surrounding tumors because she had blood clots that prevented any possible surgery. On top of that, she was experiencing ascites - a condition where fluid rapidly accumulates in the abdominal cavity. There are many causes of ascites, but when the diagnosis is ovarian cancer, the literature suggests a matter of months before death. My mom passed away in early February 2017, only 2 months from the initial diagnosis.

This loss happened so fast. As I write this, I still tear up. I struggle every day to understand what it was that I lost, and how to keep my spirits up and move forward. My son has been a wonderful motivation for me to keep positive, remain hopeful, and smile. I know it is what my mom would have wanted. She would not want me to wallow in my misery, but for me to keep smiling, keep loving my son, my family, and keep doing what I love to do. So, I do my best to try and remain positive. It’s not easy yet. This is all still fresh. I’m not sure it will ever be easy. This loss is going to hurt for a long time.

(As if that wasn’t enough, my last living grandparent, my mom’s mom, passed away just a few weeks go, in April 2017. Yeah, it has not been a good year.)

After a week of helping my dad prepare the funeral, burial, etc., I pretty much had to go right back to work. I’m so thankful for my colleagues who helped cover my classes while I was dealing with my mom’s situation and loss (Thank you Abby and Chris!!!! I owe you both so much. You have no idea.)

The first week back, I pretty much just stared into space a lot. I would lose my focus in class while talking. Students would talk to me, but I honestly just had a hard time caring about anything. I was hurting inside, but knew I had to keep motivated and just do what I could to get through. I have times when I am in my office, and I think about how nice it was to have my regular phone calls back home just to touch base with her. I think about how fun it was to have my son call her up to tell her the latest corny jokes. There were so many things I took for granted at the time. Now, I just occasionally shed tears.

I don’t care to talk with anyone about it. It is what it is. This is the cycle that we call "life". I understand that. It’s a big loss for me. I’m grieving, but I will make it through this. We all do.

I get angry with this loss. I was robbed of an amazing, wonderful, compassionate woman. She was too young, dying at a mere 68 yrs old. That is young, considering that life expectancy for women in the U.S. is about 81 now.

Let's get back to the original point. Tenure. When I found out that I received tenure, I remember so clearly calling my mom right afterward I received the news. I called her within minutes of receiving my letter. She was so happy! So proud! Such joy shared, in a way that only a mom could. She has been the biggest support system throughout my life. She was my biggest cheerleader in everything I wanted to pursue. I lost my strongest source of support I’ve had since I was a child.

I remember when I went to graduate school, my parents looked at me and said, “Wow, we’re so impressed with what you are doing. We have no idea where you get your intelligence or your drive. We can’t understand much of anything you are doing now. But we are so proud of you, and know you will keep moving ahead to achieve great things.” I remember looking at them, and thinking, "I don't understand why you are saying those things to me." I was so humbled when they were talking to me like that. It was a moment when I finally started to realize what it meant to be a first-generation college student. They truly did not understand any aspect of what I was doing, and I’m not just talking about my research, but about college and graduate school in general. They only knew that it was good for me to go to college after high school. After that, they figured I’d get a job and have a family. I pursued a path that really didn’t make a lot of sense to them. My parents never went to college. They got married at 18 yrs old and lived a very basic, simple life. Yet, they supported me regardless of their own lack of understanding of my passion for learning, and ultimately for research. I truly was blessed to have them as parents. (Fortunately, my dad is doing well. He is healthy and recovering from the loss. It will take all of us time.)

OK, seriously getting back to the point. The cost of tenure. What is it? Well, I can’t really tell you right now. I’ve lost a lot recently, and I recognize that those things I lost have nothing to do with tenure, directly. All I can tell you is this: I strongly, strongly recommend that you find an appropriate balance between your career pursuit, your family, and your own sanity. Keep in regular contact with those you love. Take the time out regularly to call your parents, siblings, family, hug your spouse, love your children, grab a drink with friends, and be social. And, when I tell you to be social, I mean be social like they did before smartphones and social media! Go out with friends! Get out of the house! Leave the electronics at home! Have a hobby or two, and stick to it. Exercise regularly doing things that get you outside. Stand up regularly and walk away from your desk and your computer every hour. And parenting? The papers, the grading, the new assignment you need to create… they can all wait an hour or two so you can be the best at being a parent when you get home from work. Be a kid and play some games, go and play outside, read your child’s favorite book to him/her, and do whatever you can to help them smile. Your family is far, far more important than trying to be the best tenure case your department has ever had. Read your tenure document from your department, have a clear understanding of what you need to achieve, and do what you need to do. Because it's not a game where only the top receives tenure. You only need to achieve what is laid out in your tenure review criteria. Overachieving does not get you more tenure. It's a binary outcome. Either you get tenure, or you don't. Have good short-term and long-term plans. Stick to your plans, and always strive to have balance. Balance — that is the cost, and you need to figure out how much you can afford to lose, because you never know when those people in your life who you love and hold dear to you, may be gone… forever. 

New Technique Identifies Novel Class of Cancer's Drivers

New Technique Identifies Novel Class of Cancer's Drivers

It was only a matter of time that modern DNA sequencing methods would be able to uncover some "use" of the enormous amount of non-coding DNA in our genome. We still have so much to learn! But, this is a great step.

How people learn - The Week

I'm posting this article for my own reminder about the importance of teaching in a way that maximizes student learning.

I've made a remarkable number of changes over the past year with my teaching tools and techniques. Yet, I still find myself occasionally drifting back to old habits -- giving a standard, boring lecture where I expect my students to sit there, pay attention and take notes for 52 minutes of class. Fortunately, this is certainly becoming the exception and not the norm.

Regardless, research is continuing to emerge about how ineffective this traditional approach is on the majority of students. However, I don't believe it is ineffective for everyone. After all, the vast majority of my undergraduate years were all completed by taking courses where I had to sit through lectures where the professor delivered the material for the entire class with talking and an overhead as their primary tools. I did it. It worked for me, yet I can't help but wonder how much more enjoyable some of my undergraduate years would have been if I had some active learning....

Big data, big jobs?

See the article Big data, big jobs? in a recent issue of ComputerWorld.

I teach an undergraduate course in data mining. It is definitely one of my favorite courses to teach.  I've been telling students over the past couple of years that this area is a huge opportunity in the job market, and will continue to blossom for years to come.

Yet, even as this article suggests, data mining is not for everyone.

Here are my observations: Unfortunately, I am not seeing enough students ready or willing to dive into some of the statistical math required to really understand how to get the most interesting information out of the data.  Being a good programmer is not enough for getting into data mining. Knowing a good programming language that is popular for data mining tasks (such as R) will be better.  However, knowing how to analyze, visualize, and extract relevant information from large data sets is important. To do this, you need to know what models to apply when, and why, and what to expect out of them.  You need to know how to evaluate model performance, and select appropriate parameters to improve it.  You need to understand causes of poor performance (e.g. noisy data, lack of preprocessing, etc.) I see too many students blindly meandering around the data mining landscape with programs such as SAS, SPSS, or even Weka, not really understanding why a particular model is behaving the way it is. (BTW, Weka is an absolutely wonderful piece of software for exploring data mining!)

The best foundation you can give yourself for a career in data mining is to give yourself a solid foundation in statistics and probability. Then, take a course in data mining! I find that failure to fully embrace these important topics makes it difficult for a student to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the wide range of statistical models and algorithms for inference and induction in data mining tasks. More importantly -- you will likely miss many hidden gems buried in the data, and this is what your potential employer is after.

How Software Updates Are Destroying the Stock Market - Businessweek

This is a sobering reminder of how far we have yet to go in this modern era of software development of engineering. We continue to strive to release some great development tools, and yet it is practically impossible to set up tests to capture every possible event that might raise exceptions....

High school student wins Google Science Fair with an artificial neural net to predict breast tumor malignancy

You can view her presentation and information related to the project here. I am thoroughly impressed. Congratulations Brittany on a job well done! You are going to go extremely far!

Now, I have two questions:

1. How can I recruit her to work with me on my research?  The reality is that Brittany is most likely MIT or CMU bound, though she will be able to choose whatever school she really wants, and will most likely get a full scholarship on top of the awards she has already earned. Awesome.
   
2. How do I get in touch with her parents to see what they did with this amazing girl as she was growing up? My son is almost 4 yrs old now. And, right now, he is all about Thomas the Tank Engine! But, the young mind is so malleable, impressionable... they are little sponges! Do I start giving him some Java and Python books now? (Yes, I'm kidding... I'll wait until he is 5 yrs old. :-) Do I get him started with some neat robotics project? Teach him how to code in R? Yet, I want him to enjoy his life as a child. This is more important to me. It goes by so fast! There must be a balance, right? I suspect that the voice of encouragement and support from the parental units are probably the most critical part of any child's success. But, is there something more? Perhaps feeding them more brain food? Keeping them away from the TV? I wonder what steps parents need to take to maximize our chances of raising more Brittanys for this world? What did they do to inspire such motivation and creativity in her mind at such a young age?
   
   To me, it sounds like this is an opportunity for data mining to answer these questions... if I only had a large repository of data...

Again, congratulations Brittany on a job well done! Awesome job, girl. Your parents must be extremely proud of you.

Research in the cloud

I'm continuing to work on methods that investigate large amounts of biological sequence data. I have a new method in the works for assembly of next generation sequence data. This was work that culminated from a rather successful honors thesis by Matt Segar, '12. I'm also delving into mining large amounts of HIV sequence data to sift for possible patterns, mutations, motifs, etc. that are related to different levels of infection. This is work that has just started with Charles Cole, '13. I have another project that is a bit of a stretch for me. It has involved mining for descriptive and predictive patterns in Twitter data related to the stock market. This is work that was started by Marc Burian, '12, a student in my data mining class a couple of semesters ago. This work is actually turning out some interesting results. The papers for two of these projects are in the works as I write this.

Now, I have a different problem. I am facing the reality of being a research-motivated faculty member in a non-R1 institution. At Bucknell, we strive for excellence in teaching and research. We work hard to provide an excellent education to our students, one that will maximize their chances of success after graduation. We believe that research needs to be a part of our overall career, as it makes us better teachers.  In fact, one of the reasons I chose to come to Bucknell was because of their insistence that we do both.  However, as I've noted in the past, I'm increasingly aware of the difficulties of doing both simultaneously. (I understand now, more than I ever have, why so many faculty at R-1 universities have their grad students doing the teaching of undergraduate courses. They don't have time for both!) Fortunately, I'm slowly discovering the sweet realization that undergraduate research can be successful, with the right students, and the right mindset. I've had an extraordinary number of students come to me with interest in completing some interesting research projects related to my work. I did not expect to see that type of interest at the undergrad level. Bucknell really has some great students.

OK, so my main point is not so much on completing successful undergraduate research, but on completing research that requires high performance computational resources at a non R-1 university. We currently have one primary cluster of 128 cores, and roughly 4-8GB of memory per processor, depending on the configuration of the system. Now that my research is underway, I have an extraordinary amount of data to mine through, and a lot of parameters in my models to evaluate in order to understand what parameter values will give me the best results. I have thousands of jobs to execute. On my quad-core Macbook with 8GB of memory, one job takes roughly 2 hours to complete. Surely, executing one job at a time is, well, as my 4 yr old son would tell me, that's just "silly!"

At an institution like Bucknell, with faculty that must be excellent teachers during the semester, there honestly is not much research that gets done during the semesters. The vast majority of the faculty complete their hard-core research during the summer. Our cluster sits largely unused during the semester, and then summer arrives. We have a lot of faculty using the cluster. To put this into perspective, since the beginning of the summer, all 128 cores have been running at 100% utilization. I submitted a batch of about 800 jobs about 10 days ago, and only about 300 of them have completed. To say that this is frustrating is an understatement. Thankfully, my colleague, Felipe Perrone, is letting me use his own 48-core system to get some of my jobs done in a timely manner. But, that is not a solution for the long term.

I met with our awesome IT support team, and we're now investigating some possible solutions to help with these summer surges in HPC demands. One solution that I am currently investigating is the use of a cloud-based compute server. Specifically, the first service I am investigating is Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Amazon EC2 was surprisingly easy to get a basic "free" system set up. Without going through all of the details, it took me roughly a couple of hours to read through some documentation on their site and set up a simple, single-core Ubuntu Linux system with 8GB of storage. I was able to ssh into the system, and scp'd my research folder and corresponding files from our local systems over to the cloud system. I started my program, and that was it! I now have my program running in the cloud. I can keep this one system running 24/7 for about a year, and assuming I don't start any more instances of the system or use enormous amounts of disk space beyond this, this will stay free for the entire year. But, clearly this is not an HPC system. How much would it cost to configure a true multi-core cluster in the cloud?

Amazon has a few different HPC options. Let's consider their "Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large" system. It boasts 60.5 GB memory, 88 EC2 "Compute Units",  3370 GB of local instance storage, 64-bit platform, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet.  One EC2 Compute Unit (ECU) provides the equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor. This specific configuration uses 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670 (eight-core "Sandy Bridge" architecture.) So, this is a pretty reasonable compute instance for one researcher.  So, let's suppose I wanted one of these systems entirely for my own work for the summer -- 3 mos. to be exact. What would the cost be?

Let's use Amazon's calculator -- http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html. A single instance of this system configured "on demand", would cost $1756.80 for one entire month at 100% utilization. Multiplied by 3 months, and thats about $5270 for the summer. In comparison, this same system configured as a "reserved" instance for an entire year, with "medium utilization", would cost $4541.28. Of course, averaged out over a month, the reserved configuration is surely better, despite the fact that the usage will not be consistent over the year. The on-demand three-month configuration is actually more costly than the full year reserved instance. If I'm willing to pay for a full three years, the cost only goes up to $6773.28. Averaged out, that is pretty good, and I don't have to worry about losing anything for the entire duration. All of my data, my programs, etc... are all stored in the cloud.

I have complete access to install / configure / maintain this entire system to my own liking for the needs of my own research.

I want to run some actual benchmarks to see how well an ECU measures up in practice.

For information about how AWS solutions can be used to address HPC needs, check out the following: http://aws.amazon.com/hpc-applications/.

As an aside, for those into data mining like myself, if you choose to go the Amazon EC2 path for compute time, you will have access to some Amazon-hosted public data sets: http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets

Finally, as you might know, Google just announced their compute server yesterday. That should only make things even cheaper in the near future. I have not seen any prices made available yet.

The research momentum continues (a.k.a Thank you, Matt!)

It has been a while since I've written any updates here. I have become quite busy doing... wait for it... here it comes... RESEARCH! I have finally gained my momentum back, thanks to great work by a student of mine, Matthew Segar. Matt completed an honor's thesis under my advisement, which subsequently won the Harold W. Miller Prize, an award given to one or two seniors for an exemplary honors thesis. His work focused on the development of a novel, probabilistic method for the assembly of next generation sequence data. Way to go, Matt! The award was well-deserved. I wish you the very best in your future endeavors as you continue to pursue your interests in bioinformatics. You will continue to make great achievements no matter what you do!

That Dalai Lama Quotation, and the Historical Sceptic

There has been an excellent "quote" (I'm putting that word in literal quotes for a reason) going around the blogs lately. It is a supposed quote from the Dalai Lama. Oh, ahem -- what I mean is that there is absolutely no evidence that he ever said it.  But if you post something to Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, etc. then is must be true, right? (See NT Blog: That Dalai Lama Quotation, and the Historical Sceptic) Regardless, whoever actually generated this quote is awesome:

"The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered, ‘Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.’"

I rarely, if ever, post things not directly related to CS on this blog. So, why did I post this? For two reasons:

1. Stop trusting everything you read online. Learn how to use the web to investigate sources of information before spreading it
2. It's a really thought-provoking quote. 'Nuff said.  

Reflect on your own life. Adjust your priorities. Determine what is really important in your life, and start living it now. All you have is now, and despite what your spouse, friend, relative, girl/boyfriend, parents, peers, blog, your dog, news source, or your professor will tell you, now is good. Be thankful for it.

Now, I need to eat my own words.

The next DARPA challenge -- a Humanoid

This is a video showing some of the more recent advances in the development of humanoids. Boston Dynamics has been doing some great work in this field. And, it represents the next DARPA Grand Challenge.  See the Wired article here that documents a bit more about the challenge.

This video reminds me a bit of The Terminator. Yes, it's kinda cool, yet kinda creepy at the same time. But, entirely fascinating. Be sure to check out some of the other robots these guys are working on. Fantastic work!

Hottest major on campus? Computer science

Check out this link: Hottest major on campus? Computer science:

It would seem, at least among the very best computer science undergraduate programs in the country, that computer science is becoming a very hot major again. We are finally seeing the return of enrollments that are approaching numbers that are becoming reminiscent of the Y2K era. While this is fantastic news for those of us that teach this discipline, I cannot help but to wonder why I am not reading more about how we are not going to repeat the past problems in higher ed. We saw a dramatic decline in enrollments between 2001-2005. The numbers stayed depressed, causing a large number of departments to struggle in order to stay in existence. Many programs that failed to find their niche in the post Y2K era, and folded. Some CS departments merged with others to survive. (It happened at my alma mater -- SUNY Albany. Thankfully, they survived and are doing well.) Many struggled to figure out how to reach a very different student body than what represented their own experience in learning CS. They tried (and continue to try) to embrace many new approaches to teaching computer science in an attempt to lure more students. A large fraction of these techniques involved introducing media- and game-based approaches to solving problems. Many found this difficult, and frequently yielded students that lacked a depth in abstract concepts required to do well in the more difficult concepts. (A topic for another time.) Regardless, this continued until around 2009-2010, when we started to see a slight incline in enrollments. And now, here were are today -- the press has once again taken notice of us! Just as the Whos shouted from Whoville, "We are here! We are here! We are here!"

Alas, we are becoming the saving grace of colleges and universities nationwide. Soon we will have the opposite problem: rapidly increasing enrollments. How can we handle this? It is a good problem to have, except when it isn't. I strongly advise and encourage department chairs to remember the past! During the Y2K glut in enrollments, many departments were forgetting the importance of maximizing student learning, because they were up to their foreheads in enormous paperwork and other infrastructure management issues trying to deal problems such as teaching introductory computer science classes that had 400-500 students!

My opinion is that the increase in interest is a very good thing. Let's try to find a balance between embracing this surge of interest and not adding more students to our program with no thought of managing the long-term growth and sustainability of our programs.

There are very few entities out there that can experience unprecedented growth without a correction of some sort. It happens with the stock market. It happens with individual business. And, it happens in higher ed, and in the job market. Without controlled, managed growth, the reinforcement required to support infrastructure that manages the growth will surely fail. It happens every time. All bubbles eventually pop.

Let's see if we can keep this good news lasting as long as possible. Let's remember why we are here. We are not here to increase our enrollment numbers in order to keep our programs surviving and our pockets loaded with cash. We are here to maximize the learning among our students, which will yield the very best computer scientists that our country has seen to date. We want them to not only find excellent jobs, but also be well prepared for graduate school. Yes, perhaps many will argue that it would be nice to graduate the next Jobs, Zuckerberg, or Gates from our departments. But, how about we embrace a bigger challenge among us: Let's ask ourselves what we can do to graduate the next Dijkstra, Hamming, McCarthy, Knuth, Liskov, etc. -- those that have set remarkable milestones in computer science. We do not need more people with their minds set on padding their pockets with multi-million dollars, nor do we need more people that bend toward every whim of the shareholder. We need people that can think about the science of computing itself, and dream big.

MIT Center for Mobile Learning

MIT Center for Mobile Learning @ The Media Lab

I definitely need to watch what this group does. If there is an obvious area where Computer Science departments should be investing their time and resources toward, it is mobile development. I know that it is something that some of us here at BU have discussed. It certainly represents a growing niche that companies are investing their resources in. The desktop / laptop model of computing is continuing to fade. We are doing a disservice to our students by not providing opportunities for them to learn more about mobile development before they graduate.

DARPA Shredder Challenge

DARPA Shredder Challenge:

Now, this is a bit of a different data challenge. Come up with an algorithm that can reassemble a shredded document. The individual shredded pieces are available in TIF format. Then, you need to prove to DARPA that you were able to successfully reassemble the document by answer a question about information contained on the original document, and providing them with a reassembled image.

The award: $50,000

If interested, click on the link above.

NIH Grant Success Rate Likely Hit Historic Low in 2011 - ScienceInsider

I am only slightly surprised by this:

NIH Grant Success Rate Likely Hit Historic Low in 2011

I am an absolute cynic when it comes to our government involvement in education and research, particularly with respect to funding STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) fields. (Okay, I'll be honest -- I am cynical over all things related to government and politics.) There was some hyped-up hope coming from the liberal voices of our country preaching about how the Obama administration would change things around with respect to increased funding in these areas. My question was always, "With what resources?" As the saying goes, "You can't get blood from a stone." Yet, my observations have opened my eyes a bit more, and shown me that we have much bigger problems. Do not let anyone in government fool you into thinking we do not have resources. We do. They are highly misdirected. My concern is not over the availability of resources, but over the governing bodies in charge of directing those resources.

Historically, we have proven time and again that substantial investment into STEM education and research has yielded substantial economic gains, not to mention establishing ourselves as a formidable player in STEM work. We are rapidly losing ground in the worldwide race in STEM education and research. Not only is the educational system suffering from its substantial loss of funding, but, as evidenced by the current historically low fraction of NIH grants awarded, groups conducting research also are suffering.

I have rising fears over the future of this great country. I find myself often pondering where we will be in 10 years without a major overall of our entire governing body. We spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money guiding the country toward the aims of lobbyists looking out for their big blue chip companies. And, let us not neglect the enormous voice we increasingly give large religious organizations, with the Tea Party currently being their #1 voice. I personally do not have a problem with big companies making money, nor do I have a problem with religion and spirituality. My problem is their persuasive involvement in government leading to unnecessary funding of special interest groups and other unnecessary pork. Their involvement ties up extraordinary amounts of resources and do not reflect objective decision making on behalf of the general public of this country. Specifically in my field, they lead us even further away from fixing our current education and research crisis. We need people in government that can honestly represent current and future general public interests and concerns, and can objectively consider what is best for the long term placement of our country in the world economy.

I believe that our current spending is one of the most important predictors of the direction of our country. How much is going toward education and research?

For those that are interested in this growing concern, visit http://www.researchamerica.org. (Yes, I know... I accept the irony with me sending you to another lobbying group. But, do your own investigation, and let the facts speak for themselves. Simply put, the current spending patterns are wrong for our future.)

Android... in space?

Are you thinking that there must be a better use of that dual core processor in your Android-based phone than simply dealing with phone calls, text messages, and playing yet another round of Angry Birds? Alas! Indeed, there is. Here is one awesome example:

Android in spaaaace! (Part 2):

Computer Science Tops List of Best Major for Jobs

As reported here, computer science is currently topping the list of the best majors for students to elect for getting a job after you graduate. This is certainly good news for those that choose to pursue this path in college.

Remember that the path can be a difficult one. Fortunately, I do not see as many students coming into the major with the belief that computer science equals game development. However, I still see quite a number of students that are not ready for the required math courses; more often than not, they are not willing to work hard enough for the advanced math classes required for the BS, and often decide to pursue the BA.  I assure you that, for those that work hard and do well, the rewards are plenty. There are quite a number of development positions that prefer students with a solid math and science background.

Computer science is still one of the very few majors where you can land a decent job with good pay without a graduate degree. However, please do not take that as a statement suggesting that I believe grad school is a waste for a computer science student. On the contrary, the right graduate program can substantially help prepare a student for a solid career in a wide range of software development positions, particularly at companies whose primary product is software itself. I pursued a masters degree in the early 90s, and it substantially helped me land the position developing scientific instrumentation software. There are many more similar positions available today than there were back then.  Though these are available for the hard-working student pursuing their BS in Computer Science, I strongly urge good students to consider graduate school. It will open up the opportunities and move your average starting pay up quite a bit.

It is good to be beyond the Y2K bubble burst. It is my hope that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past...

Computer Science's 'Sputnik Moment'? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Computer Science's 'Sputnik Moment'? - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Interested in exploring your own genome?

Interpretome is an interesting new project coming out of Stanford University that is designed to help people analyze their own genome (assuming it comes from 20andMe and Lumigenix.) The site lets you perform a variety of genotyping analysis, such as exploring your ancestry, searching for known single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to determine your risk to a wide range of diseases, or even performing a pharmacogenomic analysis to determine your response to a wide range of drugs. Of course, the web site places a big disclaimer on its main page, indicating that its results are for educational purposes only, and should not be used for diagnostic purposes.

Epigenetics

This link is a great introduction to epigenetics.

Raising awareness of the need for science and math students

The article I am referring to appeared today in CNN.com:

Why would-be engineers end up as English majors - CNN.com

Sure, I've taken some tough courses as an undergrad. In fact, I recall being in classes where the professor came right out during the first class and said, "About 25% of you will drop this course after the first exam, and only half of you will make it to the end." At first, I recall thinking, "Geez, this guy has a great bedside manner. Thankfully he is not the type of doctor that takes care of people." It was sobering. Despite that very first impression, at least for me, it served as a nice warning to make sure I keep up with all of the material. I got the point he was trying to make. So, how did the rest of that semester go? Did he jump through hoops to make sure I was engaged, interested, and motivated? No. Did he pay attention to everything I was doing to make sure I was keeping up with the material? Nope. Did we watch lots of cool videos? No. He pretty much lectured for the rest of the semester, and gave extensive, stressful assignments, and taught with the expectation that the majority of our learning would happen outside of the classroom. 

Though I might not adopt this scare tactic for classes I teach, I also do not see it as completely out of line. Let's get something straight: college is not supposed to be easy! Earning a bachelor's degree needs to mean something. Listen, if colleges were handing out these degrees with minimal effort on the part of the student, then what value would it place on the degree? Learning is work, and sometimes it is damn hard work. If you aren't working hard in college, then you're probably not learning much. If you are not learning about your field of interest, then how would we be adequately preparing you to get the best job offers in your field? The fact of the matter is that most employers pay attention to which colleges are offering the best programs, and they consider this information in considering prospective employees. Employers and graduate schools want students that are graduating well-prepared for their next phase of life. Thankfully, it is not the only information they consider, but it surely is a big part of it. Having hired many people during my years in industry, and having worked with other employers and "head hunters" shopping for talent, I know for certain that where you obtain your degree from matters. Not all computer science programs are created equal, and most employers are quite aware of this. If you are at a low-ranking school in computer science, then you better make sure you supplement your degree with quality internships. Look for opportunities to do research. Find a temporary job doing IT-related projects during your summers. (Even if you are at a very good school, you should still consider this!)

OK, going back to this article. It's a well known fact that our country is continuing to suffer with our STEM education. The article is certainly pointing the finger at STEM education in our education system, right from K through 12. But, the problem is also within higher education. Educators need to be more aware of just how much students have changed the way they learn and acquire knowledge. Like it or not, we are in a highly interactive, visual, media-based culture. Young kids today are using iPads, cell phones, and laptops for the majority of their communication and education. Educators (I'm preaching to myself here as well) need to carefully consider how students acquire knowledge today, and embrace it in our classrooms, our assignments, and our overall communication with students. I know personally how difficult this is for many of us Ph.D.'s. We busted our behind for many years in graduate school. We had to teach ourselves an extensive amount of material to do well in research. But, we are a unique breed. We should never expect our students to have the same drive for learning as we do. Again, the burden lies within us. We need to provide the motivation for our students to learn, and we need to do it in an interesting, relevant way.

Here was my big "take-away" from this article:

Hrabowski said many people assume they're not smart enough to study science or math. His response?

"No. Your teacher wasn't innovative enough."

I mostly agree with this. Again, I do not necessarily like it. It makes me uncomfortable. It requires me to step out of my zone of comfort and keep thinking of new ways to approach the material in my classroom. I need to consider ways to connect to the student right in the classroom, to encourage open discussion of topics, the relate the material to them and their world so they understand its relevancy. I need to help them better understand and appreciate why my topic is so important and relevant. I love what I teach (most of the time!) So, how can I convey this better? More consistently?

On a somewhat related note, I need to better address the dichotomy of students that I have in many of my classes with respect to their background and "comfort level" in the class. I so often find that in a typical class of 20 or so students, I have about 5 that answer the majority of the questions. I need to level this out.

I think it is extremely important to raise awareness of the problem. The article does that. How about some solutions?