CS DUG

CS DUG Kickoff Meeting // Join the CS DUG!

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:00:00 GMT

4:00 pm // Friday, September 18, 2009 // CIT 4th Floor Atrium

Want to get involved in the Computer Science Department?
Want to host awesome events for your fellow students?
Want to meet professors and contacts in the industry?

Pizza will be provided!

The Grad School Talk // Shriram Krishnamurthi

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

4:30 pm // Tuesday, April 7, 2009 // CIT 368

Why should I go to grad school?
What should I look for in a grad school?
Should I go right after I graduate from Brown?
Do I want a Master's degree or a PhD?
How should I go about applying?
Who should I ask for letters of recommendation?

Shriram Krishnamurthi will answer all these questions and more...

RI Tech Startup Panel // Bring your startup ideas and business plans to get feedback!

Mon, 9 Mar 2009 04:00:00 GMT

6:00 pm // Wednesday, March 11, 2009 // CIT 3rd Floor Atrium

Have you ever thought of starting your own business? Ever wondered how to evaluate a startup you want to join? In love with Rhode Island, but can't find any good local options?

All these questions, and more, will be answered! This Wednesday, you'll have the opportunity to direct your questions to some of Rhode Island's most distinguished tech entrepreneurs. Each panelist will give a short description of what he does, and then we will open the floor to questions and discussion.

Panelists:

Sean Ransom is the VP of Technology at Batch Blue Software. Sean's job is to shape the direction of everything from what programming languages are used to how the end products will look and behave. Sean began his programming career at Amazon.com writing customer service-based applications. His most recent project was a phone order tool that enabled Amazon to partner with third parties which generated millions of dollars in revenue. Sean has a background in bioinformatics from the University of Washington.
Owen Johnson is an entrepreneur and investor. He was most recently COO of Investment Instruments Corporation, provider of online residential real estate services Rentomatic.com and Rentometer.com. He founded the Board of Making Progress Incorporated, a nonprofit that enables individuals to support the arts and sciences; and Connect Providence, a group helping to connect newcomers to the City of Providence. He is the owner and principal broker of Reagent, a real estate brokerage in Providence and holds an S.B. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.
Charlie Kroll is the CEO of Andera, a technology startup he co-founded in 2000. He is an entrepreneur, fascinated by the challenge and creative process associated with starting and operating a company successfully. He grew up in New York City, went to Trinity School and Brown University, and currently resides in Providence, RI with my wife Jennifer, son Parker, and daughter Maisie.
Allan Tear is a founding partner of the Aptus Collaborative, a team of expert advisors in innovation, global partnering, and technology strategy. A serial entrepreneur, Allan was on the founding team of three venture-funded technology firms. In the first 10 years of his career, Allan served as a technology executive for Fortune 500 and startup companies in the US, Europe, and Asia, including Nortel Networks, Elastic Networks, and CNG. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a dual B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Public Policy.
Jack Templin leads the RI Nexus program for the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. He is Providence-based entrepreneur and Internet strategy consultant, and a co-founder of the popular networking group, Providence Geeks.
Brad Weinberg is a co-founder and CTO of the wellness company Shape Up The Nation. He graduated from Brown University in 2003 and is on fellowship leave from the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University. He is also an avid biker, having biked over 3,000 miles across China from Shanghai to the border of Kazakhstan to raise awareness of mental disabilities and money for autism research.

Food will be provided. Please RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=55339412953.

Cloud Computing, Entrepreneurship, and Life after Brown // Eliot Horowitz

Sun, 1 Mar 2009 05:00:00 GMT

4:30 pm // Tuesday, March 3, 2009 // CIT 477 (Lubrano Conference Room)

The CS DUG will be hosting guest speaker Eliot Horowitz '03, founder and chief scientist of ShopWiki.com, CTO of 10gen.com, and recently voted as one of "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under Age 25" on BusinessWeek.com. Eliot will talk about cloud computing, life after Brown, and career paths, including starting your own entrepreneurial venture. 10gen develops the Mongo database which makes data storage for web (and other) applications fast and easy. Mongo is a high-performance, document oriented (JSON-style) database. 10gen's goal is to build a cloud-scale data store that's easy to deploy, manage, and use.

Food from Kabob and Curry will be provided.

Facebook Tech Talk

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT

4:30 pm // Monday, February 23, 2009 // CIT 477 (Lubrano Conference Room)

At Facebook, our engineers develop products that millions of people use around the world, work in a fast-paced high-energy environment, solve tough technological challenges, and interact with a team of people who are just as talented as they are.

We invite you to join us in the Lubrano Conference Room in the CIT for our Tech Talk delivered by Facebook Engineers Jason Sobel (BS '02, MSc '03) and David Ellis (BS '08) to learn more about what makes Engineering at Facebook unique.

Food is on us, but do us a huge favor and RSVP so that we know to expect you. Please add any of your friends to this event that you think might be interested.

Please RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/browntechtalk.

Facebook Resume Workshop

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT

12:15 pm // Monday, February 23, 2009 // CIT 477 (Lubrano Conference Room)

Need help on getting your resume up to par?

Want your resume to stand out from the pack?

Join Facebook Recruiter Clifton Tay for a quick presentation on "dos and don'ts". Learn about what recruiters and employers look for in addition to some common mistakes applicants make.

After the session, sit down with Clifton and Facebook Engineers Jason Sobel (BS '02, MSc '03) and David Ellis (BS '08) in the 4th floor atrium for some hands on help so make sure to bring your resumes!

Please RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/brownresumeworkshop.

Facebook Hackathon

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT

8:00 pm // Friday, February 20, 2009 // CIT 3rd Floor Atrium

A Facebook Hackathon is a long night of intense pleasure where our engineers can code up features that they've always wanted to work on but never had the time. Past Hackathon projects have led to site features like Video, Chat, and Marketplace, infrastructure projects like PHP => C++ conversion, internal tools, and sweet site tweaks like the search typeahead and share integration with Inbox.

This year, we're bringing the Facebook Hackathon to Brown. Come to the CIT 3rd Floor Atrium for the kick off at 8 PM sharp. Food and caffeinated beverages will be provided and if anyone can code through the night, we'll also treat you to breakfast.

To participate, you'll need to bring a laptop, some friends, and a cool idea. We'll give you a short introduction about coding and Facebook and then you're off! Our only guideline for your Hackathon idea is that it is creative and appeals to other programmers.

We hope that you will attend so we can share with you a bit of our culture, but more importantly, we'd like to show you how we encourage creativity and innovation, which is integral to maintaining our position as the world's leading social network.

Do us a huge favor and RSVP so that we know to expect you. Feel free to add any of your friends to this event that you think might be interested. See you there!

Please RSVP at http://www.facebook.com/brownhackathon.

Cryptographic Diversions for Valentine's Day // Anna Lysyanskaya

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:00:00 GMT

4:00 pm // Thursday, February 12, 2009 // CIT 368

Alice and Bob decide to do some matchmaking among their straight and single friends in the CS department. Alice is friends with all the women in the department, while Bob is friends with all the men. Each woman confides in Alice and tells her whom among the men she likes. Each man similarly confides in Bob. Now Alice and Bob together can figure out which of these crushes are mutual. But how do they do it in such a way that Bob does not learn any other information about the women, and Alice does not learn any other information about the men? I.e., unless Carol's crush on Dave is mutual, Bob does not find out about it.

In this meeting, not only will we see various solutions to this pressing problem, we will also see, more generally, how Alice and Bob can jointly compute any function of their inputs such that they don't leak to each other anything but the output of the function. This area of cryptographic research is called "secure two-party computation" and was pioneered by Andy Yao.

No background in math, CS, cryptography, or matchmaking will be assumed.

Software Design and Entrepreneurship // Angus Davis

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 04:00:00 GMT

4:30 pm // Monday, November 3, 2008 // CIT 477 (Lubrano Conference Room)

The CS DUG and Brown EP will be hosting guest speaker Angus Davis, founder of Tellme Networks. If you've ever used a voice-operated phone menu, then you've probably used a Tellme product. Tellme was recently purchased by Microsoft for $800 million, the largest acquisition of a private company by the software vendor. Mr. Davis will reveal the story of how his company was founded and acquired, as well as share his thoughts on what a Brown student should do next in today's economy. This event is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in technology startup entrepreneurship or software development.

Food from Kabob and Curry will be provided.