Welcome, Alexander Yates
This week Dr. Alexander P. Yates joined the CIS Department and the IST center as Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington while working in the laboratory of Dr. Oren Etzioni. Dr. Yates'research interests include computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, specifically information extraction from the Web, entity resolution, natural language interfaces, parsing, machine learning, and probabilistic methods. Dr. Yates' temporary office is Wachman 1036. In September he will move to Wachman 303A.
CIS Student Awards
On Thursday April 12, the CIS ACM Student Awards Dinner was held. A number of awards were given for Scholarship, Outstanding Achievements, Service and Leadership.
The Aetna Information Services Scholarship:
Tanisha Rankin
Awarded to a deserving student in their junior year who demonstrates excellence in the field of computer and Information sciences or information science and technology.
Award for Outstanding Achievement:
Andrew Andrijiwskyj and Ulid Jirapatnakul
Awarded to the member of the graduating class who is concentrating in Computer and Information Sciences with the highest grade point average.
Award for Outstanding CIS55 Laboratory Instructor:
Chris Pascucci
Awarded Annually for outstanding teaching as CIS 55 laboratory instructor.
Award for Outstanding CIS 55 Laboratory Helper/Consultant:
Luke Bilger
Awarded annually for outstanding services as a helper/consultant for CIS 55.
Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant:
Vishnuparasad Radhakrishnan
Awarded annually for outstanding teaching as a Graduate Teaching Assistant.
Student Leadership Award:
Hector Castro and Bryan Palmer
Awarded to an undergraduate who has made a significant contribution to the Computer and Information Sciences ACM organization and to the CIS department.
ACM Awards
Outstanding Officer: Rebecca Mackin
Outstanding Teacher: Claudia Pine-Simon
New CIS Ph.D. Program Approved
The Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Temple University is pleased to announce the approval of a new, streamlined Ph.D. program. This program allows the well-prepared, research-oriented student to go from a bachelor’s degree to a doctorate in four years. For students with a relevant master's degree, it is possible to obtain a Ph.D. in even less time. Research begins in the first year of the program, and students begin publishing no later than the second year. At the end of the four years, students will have both a Ph.D. and a fair number of publications, which will be a great advantage as they pursue employment possibilities. more...
The ISTZORAN Group is the Winner at a Worldwide Biannual Competition of Protein Disorder Prediction
A meeting to evaluate the results of prediction experiments at CASP7 was held on Nov. 26-30, 2006 in Pacific Grove, California. The predictor of intrinsically disordered protein regions developed by the ISTZORAN group has been rated as the best model. An older version of this model was the best model at CASP6 (Gaeta, Italy, Dec. 4-8., 2004).
The members of the ISTZORAN group are: Zoran Obradovic, Keith Dunker, Kang Peng, Predrag Radivojac and Slobodan Vucetic. Prof. Obradovic and Prof. Vucetic are faculty members of the Temple University Center for Information Science and Technology and the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. Dr. Peng was their Ph.D. student when this work was performed (he graduated in summer 2006) and is now a research associate at Indiana University. Prof. Radivojac, a 2003 Ph.D. graduate from Computer and Information Sciences at Temple, is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University School of Informatics. Prof. Dunker is Director of the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at Indiana University School of Medicine.
CASP is a worldwide biannual competition aimed at obtaining an in-depth and objective assessment of protein structure prediction models. In these rigorous experiments, participants were asked to provide predictions about a set of proteins of unknown, but expected to be known soon, structure (so, it was not a “post-dictions” experiment made on already known structures). Prediction targets were contributed by crystallographers and NMR spectroscopists based on their current work, before the structure of these proteins had been determined experimentally. Prediction targets were made available through a web site and were assigned an expiration date such that predictions were accepted only before the structure had been experimentally determined and made public. The results in the disorder prediction category were evaluated by several independent assessors on 99 targets whose structures were experimentally determined after the prediction expiration date. At CASP 7 the predictor submitted by the ISTZORAN group was the best in all types of evaluations (ROC, accuracy, weighted accuracy).
Motivated graduate and undergraduate students with interest in the bioinformatics of protein disorders are invited to contact Prof. Obradovic at zoran@ist.temple.edu
(research assistantships are available).
Senior Vice President, Worldwide Development Operations , GlaxoSmithKline to be inducted into the Women’s Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.
Dr. Amber Salzman is Senior Vice-President of WorldWide Development Operations at GlaxoSmithKline. She has direct oversight of the worldwide drug development portfolio and is responsible for optimizing the drug development process. Prior to this position, Amber was responsible for Information Technology within GlaxoSmithKline’s Research and Development Organization.
During her 20+ years with GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals Research & Development and legacy companies, Amber established innovative management processes to support a transnational organization, optimized key business processes, delivered critical business applications, and established an effective global computing environment. Amber has combined senior leadership and strategic capabilities along with consistent execution and delivery on a worldwide basis during her career at GSK. She has held increasingly senior leadership positions demonstrating enterprise thinking, creativity and analytical skills in improving the organization’s effectiveness and delivering essential strategies to evolve GlaxoSmithKline's use of technologies and related sciences. While world-wide head of IT for Research and Development of GlaxoSmithKline, nearly 1500 persons reported directly or indirectly to Amber.
In addition to her role at GlaxoSmithKline, Amber leads a medical research foundation taking an entrepreneurial approach to finding better therapies for people with Adrenoleukodystrophy by leveraging innovative technologies such as stem cells and gene therapy.
Prior to joining GSK, Amber worked at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in Mathematics from Bryn Mawr College and BA in Computer Science from Temple University.
After serving as world-wide head of IT for the Research and Development Division of GlaxoSmithKline, Amber moved into a completely different leadership role taking on Operational aspects of Drug Development. In this capacity, Amber looked at the overall Clinical Development process, drove cycle time reductions, established innovative platform capabilities, and increased efficiency accelerating delivery of medicines to patients. In her new organization, Worldwide Development Operations, nearly 1200 people report to Amber.
Amber set a very visible example of moving completely out of her "comfort zone" and taking on a new role and applying critical innovative thinking to enable success. Throughout her career, Amber has taken the initiative to institute change as core component of her management process. This has encouraged all of the people in her organizations to be innovative in their approach to identifying and finding IT solutions to developments in pharmaceutical research and development. Amber’s ‘lead by example’ approach is demonstrated by her moving from a secure, senior administrative position in the research and development area of one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to new challenges in applying IT methodologies to the clinical drug development process. Amber has not only improved IT methods and approaches, but has been looked to the eventual impact of the drug development process. Amber’s desire to ensure benefit from drug therapies has not only shaped her approach in research and development processes, but also has influenced her personal leadership in developing innovative therapies in a medical research foundation.
Dr. Despina Kontos, has been awarded a Post-Doctoral Fellowship by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
Dr. Despina Kontos, a 2006 Ph.D. graduate from Computer and Information Sciences, has been awarded a Research Fellowship from the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Research & Education Foundation. Despina completed her Ph.D. working under Professor Vasilis Megalooikonomou. Her dissertation was entitled " Pattern Analysis for Regions of Interest In Spatial Data with Applications to Medical Images"
After obtaining her doctorate, Despina joined Dr. A.D.A. Maidment’s x-ray physics group in the Radiology Department of the University of Pennsylvania as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Kontos’ Fellowship proposal was entitled: “Analysis of Parenchymal Patterns of Breast Tomosynthesis Images”. Her scientific mentors are Dr. A.D.A. Maidment and Dr. P.R. Bakic, both on the Radiology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.. Her work is currently focused on image analysis of digital breast Tomosynthesis. The application of this work is in breast cancer research.
As a student, Despina was a very important contributer to research and graduate study in CIS. She was also a charter member of the CIS Advisory Board.
Tomosynthesis is a novel 3D x-ray imaging technique in which 3D tomographic images of the breast are reconstructed from a small set of source projection images acquired at different angles of the x-ray tube. Tomosynthesis demonstrates superior visualization, avoiding tissue superimposition encountered in standard 2D projection mammography. There are a number of studies that have demonstrated a relationship between the risk of developing breast cancer and parenchymal patterns in mammograms. Dr. Kontos is currently investigating the relationship between breast cancer risk and parenchymal patterns in breast Tomosynthesis. The underlying hypothesis motivating this work is that 3D texture analysis of breast Tomosynthesis images can potentially yield measures of cancer risk that are more accurate and more precise when compared to conventional mammography. The ability to estimate breast cancer risk more accurately from Tomosynthesis images could provide a biomarker for customizing detection, and tailoring individual treatment and forming preventive strategies, especially for women associated with a higher risk.