Peterson's Guide to Computer Science at Florida Tech

2002-2003 Academic Year

The Department of Computer Sciences offers programs of graduate study leading to the degrees of Master of Science in Computer Science, Master of Science in Software Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy. Major areas of study include artificial intelligence, database systems, information assurance, programming languages, software engineering, software testing, and web technology.

The master's degree in computer information systems is for students who do not have an undergraduate degree in computer science but who wish to obtain advanced training in this field. The course work required for this degree provides a broad background in the major areas of computer science. All students must pass a final program examination during their last semester.

The master's degree in computer science offers the student the opportunity to pursue advanced studies in various areas of computer science. The program is designed for students with baccalaureate degrees in computer science and provides a solid preparation for those who may pursue a doctorate. All students must complete and defend a thesis, or pass a final program examination during their last semester.

The master's degree in software engineering offers the student the opportunity to advance their skills in software development and software project management. The program is designed for students with baccalaureate degrees in computer science or closely related fields. Software testing and computer security are fields of emphasis within the department. All students must complete and defend a thesis, or pass a final program examination during their last semester.

The doctoral program is designed to provide research in the disciplines of computer science. The program requires broad knowledge of computer science fundamentals, mastery of a specialized subject, and the creativity to produce a dissertation based on original research.

The Computer Science Program occupies approximately 2,750 square feet of laboratory space and 2,000 square feet of office space in the new F. W. Olin Engineering Complex, a state of the art teaching and research facility. Computer laboratories support active research programs in artificial intelligence, database systems, programming languages, software engineering, software testing, and web technology. The Program provides graduate students with a wide range The of computing resources for course work and research. There are six computer laboratories reserved for computer science students. The College of Engineering and the University provide additional computer laboratories for student use. Computer resources include IBM, Silicon Graphics, and Sun workstations and PC networks. All machines are connected on a 1Gb internal network and externally to the Internet.

Graduate teaching and research assistantships are available to qualified students. For 2001-2002, stipends range from $15,400 to $17,300 for twelve months. All assistantships include tuition remission. Computer-based information on scholarships, loan funds, and other student assistance may be obtained from the Financial Aid Office and the Department's Web site http://www.cs.fit.edu.

In 2002-2003, tuition is $690 per semester credit hour for all graduate students. As noted above, however, tuition is remitted for students awarded assistantships.

The cost of living in central Florida is approximately 15 percent lower than the national average. Housing for single students is available in on-campus dormitories. Efficiency apartments, as well as one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments for single and married students, can be obtained in the area surrounding the Institute. Average monthly rental rates range from $325 to $550.

The department currently has an enrollment of 180 graduate students from colleges throughout the United States. Approximately 25 percent of the graduate students are women and 59 percent are international students

Graduates of the College of Engineering have found employment with such firms as IBM, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Oracle, Cadence, NASA, Harris Corp., AT&T, General Electric, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell International, Advanced Micro Devices, USF&G, United Technologies, Honeywell, Computer Sciences Raytheon, ITT Aerospace, U.S. Patent Office, CIA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Naval Air Systems Command, Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and Rational Software.

Florida Tech's main campus is located in Melbourne, a residential community on Florida's Space Coast, Melbourne is the key city in south Brevard County, which also encompasses nine other smaller communities on the mainland and beachside. The Kennedy Space Center and Disney World are within a 90-minute drive of the Institute. The area's economy is a well-balanced mix of electronics, aviation, light manufacturing, opticals, communications, agriculture, and tourism.

Florida Tech was founded in 1958 and has developed rapidly into a university that provides both undergraduate and graduate education in the sciences and engineering for selected students from throughout the United States and many countries. Current enrollment on the Melbourne campus is about 4,000. In addition to the computer sciences, Florida Tech offers graduate programs in aerospace engineering, airport development management, applied mathematics, aquaculture, aviation science, biotechnology, business administration, cell and molecular biology, chemical engineering, chemistry, civil engineering, computer education, computer engineering, ecology, electrical engineering, engineering management, environmental management, environmental resource management, environmental science, industrial/organizational psychology, managerial communication, marine biology, mathematics education, mechanical engineering, ocean engineering, oceanography, operations research, physics, science education, space sciences, and technical and professional communication.

Further information forms for admission may be obtained from the Graduate Admissions Office. Students are required to take the GRE General Test and encouraged to take Subject Test in Computer Science and submit score for consideration. Separate application for financial aid must be made on forms available from the department's web site and must be submitted by March 15.

The Faculty and Their Research

Michael Andrews, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., University of Kent, 2002. Software engineering, debugging techniques. (E-mail: mandrews@cs.fit.edu)

Shirley Ann Becker, Professor; Ph.D. Maryland, 1990. E-commerce, database and information systems, software processes and management. Developing Quality Complex Database Systems, IDEA Group Publishing, 2001. ``A Global Perspective of Web Site Usability,'' IEEE Software 18, 1:54-61, 2001. ``Aligning Strategic and Project Management Systems'', IEEE Software, 16, 3:46-51, 1999, ``The Technical Infrastructure for Software Process Improvement'' in Software Process Improvement Concepts and Practices, IDEA Group Publishing, 1999, ``A Study of a Generic Schema for Management of Multidatabase Systems'', Journal of Database Management 7, 4:14-20, 1997. (E-mail: abecker@cs.fit.edu)

Phil Bernhard, Associate Professor; Ph.D. SUNY at Albany, 1988. Databases, database performance tuning and optimization, software engineering. ``Experimental Evaluation of Techniques for Database File Assignment,'' International Symposium on Information Systems and Engineering, 2001. ``Partitioning Message Patterns for Bundled Omega Networks'', IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 5, 4:353-363, 1994, ``A Reduced Test Suite for Protocol Conformance Testing'', ACM Transactions On Software Engineering And Methodology, 3, 3:201-220, 1994, ``An Intelligent, Agent-Based Assistant for Database Performance Tuning'', International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 331-335, 1999. (E-mail: pbernhar@cs.fit.edu)

Pat Bond, Associate Professor; Ph.D. University of Georgia, 1976. Software architecture, software systems. ``The Use of Response Surface Methods for the Analysis of System Architectures,'' SES Annual Performance Modeling Conference Proceedings, 1999. ``SES/workbench Tips: Precedence Networks to Loop Nodes'', SES Annual Performance Modeling Conference Proceedings, 1999. (E-mail: pbond@cs.fit.edu)

Philip K. Chan, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Columbia, 1996. Scalable and adaptive systems, machine learning, data mining, parallel and distributed computing. ``Using Artificial Anomalies to Detect Unknown and Known Network Intrusions,'' IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, 2001. ``Cost-based Modeling for Fraud and Intrusion Detection: Results from the JAM Project'', DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition, 130-144, 2000. ``Distributed data mining in credit card fraud detection'', IEEE Intelligent Systems, 67-74, 1999. ``AdaCost: Misclassification Cost-sensitive Boosting'', International Conference on Machine Learning, 97-105, 1999. (E-mail: pkc@cs.fit.edu)

Cem Kaner, Professor; Ph.D., McMasters University, 1984, J.D. Law, Golden, Gate University, 1993. Lessons Learned in Software Testing, John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Bad Software: What To Do When Software Fails, John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Testing Computer Software, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1999. (E-mail: ckaner@cs.fit.edu)

Ronaldo Menezes, Assistant Professor; Ph.D., University of York, 1999. Coordination and distributed systems, parallel models of computing. ``Scalability in Linda-like Coordination Systems'' in Coordination of Internet Agents (Models, Technologies and Applications), Springer-Verlag, 2001. ``Distributed Garbage Collection of Tuple Spaces in Open Linda Coordination Systems, Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences, 1999, ``Using Tuple Monitoring and Process Registration on the Implementation of Garbage Collection in Open Linda-like Systems'', IASTED Parallel and Distributed Coordination Systems, 1998. (E-mail: rmenezes@cs.fit.edu)

Debasis Mitra, Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 1994, Ph.D., Indian Institute of Technology, 1984, Artificial intelligence, spatio-temporal reasoning. ``Interactive Modeling for Batch Simulation of Engineering Systems as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem,'' Proceedings of the International IEA/AIE Conference, 2001. ``Turning chaos into order: a critical evaluation of web-based technologies,'' WebNet, 2000. ``The consistent singleton modeling (CSM) algorithm for any domain,'' IJCAI, 1999. (E-mail: dmitra@cs.fit.edu)

J. Richard Newman, Professor and Vice President for Information Technology; Ph.D., Southwestern Louisiana, 1976. Software engineering, information systems management, CASE tools for cleanroom software engineering, legal issues, program specification tools. ``An undergraduate curriculum in software engineering,'' Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference on Software Engineering Education, SEI, April 1990 ``Performance issues for an expert system written in Ada,'' Fifty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Florida Academy of Sciences. Melbourne, Florida, March 23, 1990 (E-mail: newman@cs.fit.edu)

William D. Shoaff, Associate Professor; Ph.D., Southern Illinois, 1981. Mathematical programming, parallel algorithms, parallel processing, supercomputers, computer modeling in genetics, computer graphics. ``The recognition of imperfect strings generated by fuzzy context sensitive grammars.'' Fuzzy Sets and Systems 62:21-29, 1994 ``Domain Independent Temporal Reasoning With Recurring Events'', Computational Intelligence, 1996, ``Integrating Literate Programming and Cleanroom Software Engineering,'' Second Australasian Conference on Computer Science Education, 1997, ``Texture Mapping with Wavelet Transforms'', IASTED Computer Graphics and Imaging, 289-293, 1999. (E-mail: wds@cs.fit.edu)

Marius Silaghi, Assistant Professor, Ph.D., Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, 2002. Artificial intelligence, distributed problem solving, asynchronous algorithms. ``Maintaining Consistency for ABT,'' 7th International Conference on Principles and Practice of CP, 2001. ``Asynchronous Search with Aggregations,'' AAAI 2000. (E-mail: msilaghi@cs.fit.edu)

Ryan Stansifer, Associate Professor, Ph.D., Cornell, 1985. Programming languages, compilers, information systems, internationalization. ``Implementations of Bidirectional Reordering Algorithms,'' Eighteenth International Unicode Conference, 2001. The Study of Programming Languages, Prentice Hall, 1994. M. L. Primer, Prentice Hall, 1992. The Foundation of Program Verification, Wiley, 1987. (E-mail: ryan@cs.fit.edu)

James Whittaker, Professor; Ph.D., Tennessee, 1992. Information assurance, statistical testing of software, software reliability engineering. ``Software's Invisible Users'' IEEE Software 18, 3:84-88, 2001. ``What is Software Testing. Any Why is It so Hard'', IEEE Software 17, 1:70-79, 2000. ``Stochastic Software Testing'', Annals of Software Engineering, 4:115-131, 1997. Clean Room Systems Engineering Practices, IDEA Publishing, 1996. (E-mail: jw@cs.fit.edu)