Information Technology, BS
The "IT Senior Seminar" (IT Colloquium Series)
At least six or seven times per academic year (usually on the third Wednesday of a month during the fall and spring semesters), the department sponsors an IT Colloquium. Each is an hour long and is usually presented by someone from outside USF (although occasionally a department faculty member may present on one of his/her research areas). Students need to attend at least six of these sessions during their time with us.
Note: Students should not register for the IT Senior Seminar until the semester in which you intend to complete the last of the six sessions. But students should start attending them as soon as they can - attendance counts even when they are not yet registered for the course.
Fall 2009
Wed Sep 16 2009 - Business Incubators
Didier Rousseliere, director of business incubation and global partnerships at the University of South Florida Polytechnic
Rousseliere will discuss the overall purpose and global dimension of USFP's new Blue Sky business incubator and accelerator facilities. Throughout his professional life he has been involved in the management of learning institutions and the administration of education at a regional or national level. Over the last 20 years, he has developed international partnerships in education in Europe and North America between institutions of learning and state and national education offices and organizations. Rousseliere has worked in France, England, Canada and the United States. He has also maintained close working relationships with economic development partners, chambers of commerce, economic development offices and business organizations to facilitate international agreements and economic exchanges.
Spring 2009
Wed Apr 15 2009 - Current Economy and Hiring Trends
Dennis Michael, Vice President of Information Technology, FedEx Freight System
Topics of discussion:
- History of FedEx & FedEx Freight
- IT within a Freight World
- FedEx Trivia Game (similar to Who Wants to be a Millionaire)
- Q&A/Open Discussion "Current Economy and Hiring Trends"
Wed Mar 25 2009 - Performance based Online Marketing - Opportunities & Technical Challenges
Ravi Ghai, VP of Corporate Development, IntegraClick, Inc/Clickbooth.com and Sean Milheim, VP of Engineering, IntegraClick, Inc/Clickbooth.com
Ravi K. Ghai is a seasoned executive with extensive background in all aspects of running a business. He is an entrepreneur who has founded two companies and held senior management positions at numerous other companies, many of which were venture capital backed start-ups. Currently he is VP of Corporate Development at IntegraClick, Inc/Clickbooth.com.
Ravi holds a Bachelor of Technology (HONS) degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, an MSEE degree from the University of Alberta and an MBA from the University of Calgary.
Sean Milheim, IntegraClick's VP of Engineering, started at IntegraClick in 2006. During his short tenure here Sean has rapidly moved up in the ranks from Sr. Linux Admin to being the leader of the Operations and Research/Development team.
Sean has been involved with Y2K projects and troubleshooting Unix/Linux systems and worked for a start-up Voice Over IP provider.
Currently Sean is involved in IntegraClick's 2-Year tech plan which includes moving to a custom tracking platform, quadrupling the personnel count, and expanding the amount of traffic the network can support.
Sean continues to be an avid supporter of open source software and building highly scalable systems.
Wed Feb 18 2009 - How technology is changing the face of Public Safety and Law Enforcement.
Bill Ward, Director, Information Technology Division, Polk County Sheriff's Office
New advances in software such as Automated License Plate Recognition, Facial Recognition, Automated Vehicle Location and many more are going to bring Polk County to the fore front in integrated law enforcement. Polk County is attempting a level of law enforcement that is unrivaled anywhere else in the country.
News Release | View Presentation
Wed Jan 21 2009 - RoboCup Soccer at USF
Alfredo Weitzenfeld, Ph.D., Visiting Professor, Information Technology and Engineering, USF Polytechnic
For the past few years RoboCup Soccer has been a popular arena for testing collaborative and competitive skills among multiple autonomous robots. These competitions provide a common testing ground for different research laboratories where scientific advances can be studied and evaluated under real-time conditions.
The work presented in this talk overviews the technical and scientific challenges involved in RoboCup Soccer and in particular the Small-Size league robot hardware and software designs. Just recently, in 2006, the USF Robobulls was founded as a joint venture with ITAM Eagle Knights from Mexico.
Students interested in robotics at USF are specially invited to attend. You should also attend if you are interested in joining the USF Robobulls team.
Fall 2008
Wed Nov 19 2008 - How to Jump Start Your Career
Anand Pallegar, founder of atLarge inc.
Anand will share insights on building your career and share his experiences and how atLarge was formed.
Wed Oct 15 2008 - Successful IT Consulting
Roy Lawson, owner of Software Development Services, IT Consulting Firm and president of the Central Florida .NET Users Group
Roy will offer his insight into the things he has learned as he has built his own IT Consulting business.
Wed Sep 17 2008 - Virtualization Trends
Scott Thompson, Senior Systems Engineer at VMware
Thompson will discuss the concept and benefits of virtualization, including application virtualization and virtualizing the desktop.
News Release | View Presentation
Spring 2008
Wed Apr 16 2008 - Virtualization in the Enterprise
Josh Beck, East Regional Data Center at USF Lakeland
A look at the migration of virtualization in the Enterprise and implementation at USF Lakeland.
Wed Feb 20 2008 - The Role of IT at FedEx Freight: Key Projects, Current and Future Technologies
Dennis Michael, Vice President of Information Technology, FedEx Freight Systems
News Release | View Presentation
Fall 2007
Wed Nov 28 2007 - IT Virtualization
This colloquium will give students and IT professionals a complete overview of the latest developments in virtualization technology and applications.
Guest speakers will address various aspects of virtualization, including how it can aid the quality assurance process and help with disaster recovery. Representatives from VMware and Red Hat will discuss the latest technology and applications.
News Release | View Presentations
Thu Nov 1 2007 - AutOMathic Blocks: A computer-based method for teaching arithmetic to young blind students.
Arthur Karshmer, Professor in the College of Professional Studies at the University of San Francisco
Learning mathematics has always been a daunting task for the visually impaired student. For the most part, a task that restricted their entry into careers based on the reading and writing of mathematical equations. There have been some notable exceptions, but for the most part education in the domains of math, physics, computer science and engineering have been beyond the grasp of blind students. In the current work, a new system is being developed to help young blind students learn both arithmetic and basic algebra.
News Release | View Presentation
Wed Sep 19 2007 - How to make the most of today's cutting edge of wireless technology
Phillip J. DuMas, Director of research, development and engineering, F4W, Inc.
DuMas is a network and technology professional with more than 16 years of experience designing, implementing and maintaining some of the most unique and complex networks in the world. He designed the recovery network the U.S. Coast Guard used for rescue operations immediately after Hurricane Katrina. Actively involved in academia, he holds over 22 industry certifications in networking and network security.
News Release | View Presentation
Spring 2007
Wed Apr 18 2007
Eric Jones, Help Desk Team Lead at Bunch & Associates
Eric has over 15 years experience in information technology, he holds two MCPs and an A+ certification. He is almost entirely self taught. He has worked as a PC Specialist, Systems analyst, Network Administrator, Senior Tech, Level II Technical Manager, Teacher, and his current roll as the technical manager of the help desk at Bunch. He will discuss Bunch & Associates IT Department with emphasis on help desk skills and Bunch IT department breakdown, as well as ideas for furthering IT students' education.
Wed Mar 21 2007 - Control of Search and Rescue Robots Using Wireless Communication and Challenges in Real-World Conditions
Dr. Dave Armitage, Interim Chair of the Department of Information Technology at the University of South Florida Lakeland
Dr. Armitage will discuss the control of robots and the requirements and difficulties in using wireless communications for that function, especially for robots being used for search and rescue applications in real-world conditions
Wed Feb 21 2007 - Using On Demand Software Delivery to Manage Mission Critical Information
Dave Wiggins, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Document Advantage Corporation
Document Advantage Corporation, with technical offices located in the USF Research Park, Tampa develops and implements electronic document and business process management applications. Mr. Wiggins will discuss the rapid progression of delivering software applications with an On Demand or Software as a Service delivery model and why market analysts are predicting software revenue generated by Software as a Service products will increase to 25% by 2011. Find out how this type of application delivery can be used by companies of every size.
Mr. Wiggins serves as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Document Advantage Corporation. He has nearly twenty years of experience in the electronic document/content management market space in product architecture, development and application management. His client expertise includes business process analysis, design, development and implementation of customer centric document and business process management technologies. His industry experience includes a wide range of EDMS technologies and web-enabled product architectures.
Wed Jan 17 2007 - "Building in" Business Continuity for Greater Protection
Lawrence Giorgio, Director of BC Practice and co-founder of Business Continuity Solutions Inc.
Lawrence Giorgio is Director BC Practice at Business Continuity Solutions Inc. He will review the expanding roles of the BC professional in the corporate environment. The main focus of the presentation will detail the building blocks of a BC/DR recovery strategy that promotes the concept of "building in" business continuity, for each mission critical business application at its inception. The concept is based on the basic Pythagorean Theory that "the whole = the sum of its parts" He will discuss how the BCP is the road map to invoke each BC pod that was or should have been designed in thus creating a "chain mail armor" approach of protection.
Fall 2006
Wed Nov 15 2006 - Mesh Networks: Wireless Architecture of Tomorrow?
Mr. Phil Dumas, Vice President Research and Development, Freedom 4Wireless, Inc.
Mr. DuMas has designed and implemented networks nationwide for a Fortune 50 company. He has worked for one of the largest resort ownership companies in the world deploying and securing a global network reach to the farthest and most exotic corners of the earth. Mr. DuMas worked for the founder of Home Shopping Network consolidating and evaluating the technologies of companies being considered for purchase. Currently, he holds over 22 industry certifications in Networking and Network Security and is actively involved in academia.
Wed Oct 18 2006 - Low Bitrate Multimedia Coding Based on Adaptive Bitplane Modeling and GFA Representation
Dr. Paul Bao, Associate Professor, Information Technology
Dr. Bao is currently an associate professor in Department of Information Technology, University of South Florida. His research interests are in Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality, Image-based Rendering, Image/Video Processing, Multimedia systems and Wireless Multimedia Technologies. In this presentation, he will present a novel video coding scheme based on the statistically adaptive bitplane modeling and the generalized finite automata (GFA) representation. In the proposed scheme, a video sequence is represented in GoPs as an overall binary image by adaptively bitplane modeling the significant coefficients of the video sequence within subbands.
Wed Sep 20 2006 - The Convergence of the PC Desktop with the Future: Gaming, Robotics, Mobility, and More Improvement
Brandon McMillon, Microsoft Corporation
Brandon McMillon is the Academic Developer Evangelist covering Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. He started working for Microsoft in 1996, working for the Visual Interdev test team. In 1999, he moved to the Windows product team, spending 5 years there as a program manager and lead program manager. He was involved with shipping Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. As much fun as working on those products was, he's extremely happy to be living in South Florida now, and out of Seattle.
Spring 2006
Wed Mar 29 2006 - Broadening Participation in Technology
Nathan Thomas, Ph.D., Director of Diversity at USF Lakeland, Brent Ellis, Recruitment Manager at USF Lakeland, and Farimah Fleschute, IT Faculty at USF Lakeland
Wed Feb 15 2006 - Application of Information Technology to Prehospital Emergency Medical Services and Healthcare Performance Improvement
Mic Gunderson, President of HealthAnalytics
Prehospital Emergency Medical Services is a multidisciplinary field at the crossroads of public safety, public health and emergency medicine.
This presentation will focus on the IT applications and challenges associated with this unique industry.
Wed Jan 18 2006 - Computer Technology in Manufacturing
Joanne Larsen, Ph.D., PE - Assistant Professor, Industrial Engineering, USF Lakeland
As in many technical areas, manufacturing depends greatly on a variety of computer technologies, from process control to the machine operation. This presentation will provide a demonstration of a robot arm used in the Industrial Engineering program to acquaint students with the latest manufacturing hardware and software.
Fall 2005
Wed Nov 16 2005 - The Other IT- Using instructional technology tools to enhance instruction, training, and presentation
Dr. Naomi Boyer - Director of Distance Learning, USF Lakeland
The IT in the IT Colloquium has traditionally been focused on information technology. However, in this presentation the area of instructional technology will be profiled by providing an overview of available tools in a hands-on format that provides and overview and the ability to practice with technologies in teaching and learning. While the bells and whistles of technological integration can oftentimes be considered distracting, these tools can enhance engagement, provide immediate feedback, and optimize interactive capabilities.
Wed Oct 19 2005 - Brick and Click: How Computers Transformed Libraries Inside and Out.
Catherine Lavallée-Welch, Associate Librarian, USF Lakeland
Computers have revolutionized the way libraries relate to the information, materials and resources they acquire and disseminate. Computers also changed the way the library world relates to its users. This presentation will review the history and the future of those transformations.
Wed Sep 21 2005 - Businesses can recover from disasters thanks to Information Technology
Mike McMillan, Director of System Integration for DSM, a Lakeland-based company that specializes in systems integration and data recovery.
McMillan will discuss the need for these specific technologies today and where much of the system integration technology is expected to go in the future.
McMillan recently worked on a project where data recovery technology enabled him to recover 95 percent of a company's data lost during the June 2005 fire that spread through Bartow's historic downtown district. During the talk he will also share what he has learned through 18 years of experience in the information technology field that includes work with the US Navy's multimillion dollar Air Traffic Control system, the AN/TPX-42V12.
Spring 2005
Wed Apr 20 2005 - A Systems Perspective Study of the Performance of Different Supply Chain Inventory Models
Dr. Craig Knight, Assistant Professor of Information Systems and Decision Sciences, USF Lakeland
Business organizations are interested in Information Technology (IT), not so much in terms of the technologies themselves, but in terms of the processes that can be improved by the technologies. The extensive availability of IT is now permitting the development of new and different business processes for the accomplishment of the organization's purposes. One of the areas in which these new and different processes are having a significant impact is in the area of Supply Chain Management (SCM). This presentation is designed to discuss ways in which IT is being used to facilitate non-traditional inventory policies, allowing information to be shared and used in the operational decisions of organizations. Simulated supply chain behaviors will be presented, showing the magnitudes of changes created through the use of IT-facilitated business processes. Dr. Knight will offer insight into these new business processes and capabilities.
Wed Mar 23 2005 - Where am I? Why am I Here? What am I Doing Here? The answer to one of these questions comes from computers in space.
Dr. Art Karshmer, IT Faculty USF Lakeland
Throughout the history of mankind on earth, the knowledge of where I am on earth has been a burning question which took millennia to answer in an accurate way. From the earliest days of ships plying the oceans of the world, accurate positional information was a key element which could literally mean life or death to the sailor. In this presentation, a very brief history of navigational techniques will be presented as a prelude to the solution initiated in 1973 - the GPS or Global Positioning System. The discussion of GPS will be presented in practical terms with an emphasis on how it produces information so exact that the concept of cartography has changed drastically in the past three decades. Examples of its will be shown. Today, with a hand-held GPS device which can be purchased for under $100, you can pinpoint your location on earth within a tiny margin of error.
Tue Feb 15 2005 - Low Bitrate Multimedia Coding with its Comparison with MPEG4 and Application in Multimedia Communications
Dr. Paul Bao, prospective candidate for the position of Instructor and Assistant/Associate Professor for USF Lakeland's Department of Information Technology.
Wed Jan 19 2005 - Using IT to Support a Learning Organization
Dr. Andrew Artis and Dr. Naomi Boyer, Faculty USF Lakeland
Cutting edge organizations consistently thrive even in competitive and rapidly changing business environments by encouraging employees to develop superior knowledge and skills. These "learning organizations" succeed by creating a culture where self-directed learning is used to maximize individual performance and where the overall competency of the firm is improved by having employees share knowledge. Information technologies play an important part in facilitating the self-directed learning process, and the retention of knowledge to increase a firm's intellectual capital. This presentation is designed to provide managers with an overview of information technologies used by learning organizations, possible barriers to using technology, and recommendations to achieve desired outcomes. USFL faculty members Dr. Naomi Boyer, Director of Distance Programs, and Dr. Andrew Artis, Assistant Professor of Marketing, use their research in organizational and self-directed learning to provide insight and assistance to managers and the IT staff who support them.
Fall 2004
Wed Nov 17 2004 - Outsourcing: What, Who, Where, When, Why, and How.
Raed Hawat, Ph.D., IT Faculty USF Lakeland
In recent years, and especially months, Outsourcing has been a very hot and discussed topic. The purpose of this colloquium is to pose, debate, and attempt to answer these basic questions.
One of the key points is that it is 'not' just IT that is getting outsourced.
So here is a more detailed framework...
What is outsourcing?
What is the difference between outsourcing vs. offshoring vs. nearshoring?
What is being outsourced?
Who is outsourcing? Which industries, etc.?
Where are we outsourcing from and to?
When did the outsourcing practice start? Is this something new?
Why do companies outsource?
Why do outsourcing companies accept the liability?
How does it work? How is outsourcing sold and managed?
Wed Oct 20 2004 - HCI and Automated Sign Language Recognition
Barbara Loeding, Ph.D. and Sudeep Sarkar, Ph.D.
Human computer interaction is gradually moving towards speech-based I/O devices because of advances in automated speech understanding and synthesis. This shift is likely to present a barrier in the near future for people with disabilities. In particular, it may be next to impossible for people who rely on sign language to access state of the art technology unless these devices also incorporate automated recognition and translation of sign language into speech and vice-versa.
Sign language is not universal. Many countries use their own sign language which differs from American Sign Language (ASL) so research groups around the world are working on this challenge. In this talk, we will broadly sketch out the state of art in automated recognition of signed sentences based on the data sets used, features computed, technique(s) used, and recognition rates achieved by research groups throughout the world. We will also present results from our own research at USF with respect to one important aspect of ASL recognition, i.e. integration of non-manual features (e.g. facial expression) with manual ones to improve recognition rates.
Wed Sep 22 2004 - Java: A programming language, an operating system, a computer architecture.
As Dr. Karshmer states, "Java has become a key programming tool worldwide. But, is this really the right way to go and what impacts does it present to our tradition view of computing?" The current talk looks into java and its impact on computing. The talk is based on some controversial assumptions that will certainly be the foundation for heated discussion.
Spring 2004
Wed Apr 21 2004 - Challenges of a blind student, software developer and entrepreneur
Ted Henter, owner of Henter Math
Featured speaker, Ted Henter, owner of Henter Math, will speak on his experiences searching for jobs and eventually starting and running his own software development company. Mr. Henter is also the co-founder of Henter-Joyce, the developers and distributors of JAWS for Windows, the premier screen reader for the blind in the world. Without JAWS, few if any, blind computer users would be able to use personal computers. Since selling his company to Freedom Scientific, Mr. Henter has been developing new software to help the blind learn mathematics.
Wed Mar 17 2004 - Information Technology: Advancing Health Care for the Underserved
Dr. Judy Karshmer, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, USF College of Nursing
Dr. Judy Karshmer is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and her research interests include health care informatics and behavioral health in primary care.
Wed Feb 25 2004 - Program Management Office (PMO) and its impact on project delivery
Raed Hawat, Ph.D., IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
In this presentation, Raed Hawat will cover:
• The blue print of a PMO
• The core values of a PMO
• Industry best practices and accreditations
• A typical methodology
• The business and financial benefits of the PMO and methodology
Wed Jan 21 2004 - Publishing: From Hot Lead to Hot Web
Barry Friedman, Electronic Media Editor for the Lakeland Ledger
Fall 2003
Wed Nov 19 2003 - Creativity in Technology
Richard A. Young, President and CEO of Xnext Omnimedia
Young, a USF alum, will discuss the growing importance of original thinking in today's IT workplace.
Wed Oct 15 2003 - IT Development and Support Challenges in a Large Organization
Terry Brigman, Director I/S Services and Jerry Gates, Direction, I/S Development, Publix Information Systems leaders
As part of their lecture, the speakers will review the IT processes and roles implemented to help meet the challenges of the growing demand for high quality and superior service faced by businesses in today's society.
Wed Sep 17 2003 - IT Degrees: at USF and Florida's Other Public Universities
David Armitage, Ph.D., IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
Featured speaker, Dr. David Armitage, USF IT professor, will speak on the approach to Information Technology taken by USF professors. As he states, "employers complain that their new IT workers graduate from college without real-world know-how, but what is IT and how do you teach it? I will discuss the exceptionally wide variety of degree program responses to this question by the ten public universities in Florida, using the USF IT degree developed at Lakeland as an example of a 'middle-of-the-road' approach."
Spring 2003
Wed Apr 16 2003 - Using the Computer to Improve Access to Mathematics by Blind Students
Art Karshmer, Ph.D., IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
As Dr. Karshmer states, "One of the greatest stumbling blocks in the ability of the blind to enter careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics is the paucity of tools to help them read and write equations. Over the years, there have been numerous projects with the goal of building special tools to help the visually impaired student read and write equations."
In his presentation, Dr. Karshmer will describe some of the most interesting work in this domain and then attempt to make recommendations and/or predictions about the future.
Wed Mar 19 2003 - Can a Small (Even Part-Time) Business Be Successful Using the Web?
Bill Horde, the owner/operator of a successful part-time custom golf club business, will explore the start-up and promotion of his business. He will additionally demonstrate the ways his website has assisted in enhancing his business.
Wed Feb 19 2003 - Image database systems
Qinglong Zhang, IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
Image database systems have been very active over the past 20 years. With the explosive interest for the last 10 years in multimedia systems, content-based image retrieval has attracted the attention of researchers across several disciplines including computer vision, pattern recognition, human-computer interaction, and image databases. In this informative lecture, USF Lakeland Information Technology professor, Qinglong Zhang, will cover what a content-based image database is and present his recent work in this field.
Wed Jan 15 2003 - Von Neumann's Computer Architecture
Alessio Gaspar, Ph.D., IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
The seminar will illustrate the concept of Adaptive Computation with the help of two biological metaphors: Evolution and Immunization. As humans, through history, have evolved to adapt to changes in the environment, so, too can computer programs. USF Lakeland Information Technology professor, Alessio Gaspar will demonstrate how an extremely simple algorithm, capturing some of the properties of these highly complex biological mechanisms, can help solve discrete optimization problems for which more classical approaches fail.
Fall 2002
Wed Nov 20 2002 - Predicting the Future of Technology
David Armitage, Ph.D., IT Faculty, USF Lakeland
This presentation will focus on how technology has changed who we are, how we live, and how we can use the lessons of past technology to predict some ways in which technology will further change our personal and professional lives.