ATTENTION BERKELEY WOMEN CS and EE UNDERGRADUATES

PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT Collaborative Research Experience for Women in Undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering

The Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) is pleased to announce a new initiative to support women involved in undergraduate research. The new program, Collaborative Research Experience for Women in Undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering (CREW), is designed to provide collaborative research experiences for groups of two to three undergraduate women during the 1998-99 academic year. It is hoped that by increasing the opportunity to do research and by decreasing the isolation that may be experienced in doing independent research, women scientists and engineers will be encouraged to pursue similar work in graduate school.

Research will be conducted at the students' home institutions. Students will work with a sponsoring faculty member on a project for which monetary support is typically not available. Ordinarily each student will receive a stipend of $1000 for her work. There is no support provided by this program for faculty stipends. However, up to $500 per project may be requested for special equipment, travel or supporting materials.

At the end of the project, students will be required to submit a one-page summary of their work. These summaries will be posted on the CRA-W web site. Of course, students are also encouraged to submit papers and present their work to other appropriate journals and conferences.

ELIGIBILITY

- Students must be entering their junior or senior year in 1998-99
- All projects must be directly related to computer science or computer engineering and be suitable for undergraduate research
- The entire student research team must consist of two to three undergraduate women who are majoring in computing
- All applications should be jointly submitted by the proposing students and a sponsoring faculty member

PROPOSAL FORMAT

Proposals are limited to four pages plus an information page on each of the students and the sponsoring faculty member. Each student should also submit a transcript.

The format of the proposal must be as follows:

1) Project Description
2) Methods and Means to be Utilized
3) Student Activity and Responsibility
4) Faculty Activity and Responsibility
5) Desired Outcomes
6) Budget (and justification if requests are made beyond student stipends.)
The information page should include name, address (home and school, postal and electronic), Social Security number (for tax purposes), major, and any other information pertinent to the proposal.

TIMELINE
Application Deadline: May 30, 1998
Notification of Awards: June 30, 1998
SUBMISSION

Questions, comments and proposals should be submitted electronically to Sheila Castaneda at:
CREW@keller.clarke.edu
Send transcripts and other nonelectronic information to:
Sheila Castaneda
Computer Science Department
1550 Clarke Drive
Dubuque, IA 52001
Tel: (319) 588-6401 Fax: (319) 588-6789
This information can be accessed at http://cra.org/Activities/craw.

POSSIBLE PROJECT FOR BERKELEY WOMEN: working with Prof. James Landay

See:

http://guir.cs.berkeley.edu/projects/notepals/

and

NotePals: Collaborative Group Note Taking on Mobile Devices

NotePals is a Pilot-based application for ink-based drawing and note-taking. After taking notes in a meeting, users can share their notes by syncing the Pilot with a desktop computer. The shared notes repository can then be accessed via any web browser.

We would like to extend this system in several ways:
1) we would like to build NotePals applications on other clients (e.g., MS Palm-sized CE devices, the CrossPad -- a paper-based note-taking device that electronically records strokes, etc.)
2) we would like to add offline handwriting recognition to the notes on the web repository so that we can better present the notes to the user.
3) using the above, we'd like to see if we can automatically create better organizations of the notes so that they are more valuable for searching or browsing later.
4) we would like to implement a graphical search algorithm so that users can search for information in their own handwriting. 5) we would like to make some interface improvements on the current Pilot user interface for NotePals.
6) we would like to improve the underlying database and web interface for accessing the notes repository.
7) create a tool to synchronize lecture slides with students notes.

URO: Pilot Patches: Informal Collaborative Work Using PDAs

Help implement a system for making quick notes and drawings on a PDA, known as "patches". Several meeting participants can create "patches" that will then be transmitted to a shared whiteboard using a wireless connection. The patches can then be discussed, rearranged, structured, and archived.

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James A. Landay EECS Dept., CS Division Group for User Interface Research
University of California, Berkeley http://guir.berkeley.edu
landay@cs.berkeley.edu
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~landay
(510) 643-3043
(510) 642-5775 (fax)