Tropical cyclones continue to be a serious concern for the Nation, causing significant risk to life, property, and economic vitality. While NOAA has made steady improvements in forecasting track since 1990, intensity has lagged behind, primarily because a good track forecast is essential before addressing any intensity changes. However, over the last 5 years NOAA's track forecasts improved enough for us to now focus on intensity forecast improvements. Since the devastating 2004-2005 Hurricane Seasons NOAA developed a plan to improve forecasts of hurricane intensity, structure, and track in cooperation with other government and non-government partners. This Hurricane Forecasting Improvement Project (HFIP), is a 10-year project designed to accelerate improvements in one to five day forecasts for hurricane track, intensity, and structure and to reduce forecast uncertainty, with an emphasis on rapid intensity change because of its importance to emergency management amongst others. The HFIP Plan has been widely distributed and reviewed, with an alliance of the hurricane research and forecasting communities agreeing to move forward with its implementation. The Plan's strategy is to perform research into hurricane intensity change and rapid intensification mechanisms, exploit new observing systems, expand computing capacity, build higher resolution coupled models and ensembles, improve infrastructure for transitioning research to operations (R2O) and support operations-like systems to the research community (O2R), and broaden NOAA expertise and expand interaction with the external community.

This is a Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering presentation, and a CSMS Project Industrial Liaison Seminar. See Computer Science and Mathematics for Scientists. Refreshments will be served.

Neal Alewine is an IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, Software Group Voice and DataPower Architect. Harvey Ruback is an IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, Systems and Technology Group Advanced Voice Architect. Juan F. Caraballo is the IBM Program Director for LA Grid - Corporate University and Innovation Programs. He was previously the Software Group Program Director for Enterprise Speech Solutions.

This is a CSMS Project Industrial Liaison Seminar. See Computer Science and Mathematics for Scientists. Refreshments will be served.

With the number of economic, environmental and foreign policy crises at the moment, have you thought about how you as an individual can directly contribute? As a technologist, have you ever thought about how you could save a life, or even better, many? If you have, think about how to promote wellness in your community (health, environment, security and happiness). With all of the crises happening around us at the moment, this is one problem on which we as individuals can have a dramatic effect, for ourselves and those around us.

Within Humana, the Innovation Center is a group of business and technology leaders who are looking at how to engage people to improve their wellness. Within the Emerging Technology Applications group we use digital media and emerging technologies such as computer games, social media, virtual worlds, social robots and the like. We run a paid Rapid Prototyping Internship Program (RPIP) that is designed to provide students with the chance to temper their skills on problems that have important and real world applications.

In 2008, three University of Miami computer science students, Justin Stoecker (BSc 2009), Richard Roesler (BSc 2009) and Adam McMahon (MSc 2009) undertook internships. Adam used Sims2 to design a game to show the health and economic benefit of using technology to assist the elderly to stay in their homes when threatened with an assisted living facility. Justin and Richard developed a prototype system for using the Pleo social robot as an alternative interface for the elderly to use technology in the home such as medication reminders, wireless scales and blood pressure cuffs. Justin also developed a memory game for the Pleo.

In the seminar, Adam, Justin and Richard will present the results of their work. The details of the upcoming RPIP'09 will also be discussed. If you are interested in applying for a paid position, please come and see the type of projects we are interested in pursuing.

This is a CSMS Project Industrial Liaison Seminar. See Computer Science and Mathematics for Scientists. Refreshments will be served.

A brief overview of Intellectual Property (IP) Law including patents, trademarks, and copyrights. What is Intellectual Property? What role does an IP attorney play? Why is an engineering or scientific degree needed to become a patent attorney? Specific focus aimed at the process of becoming a patent attorney or agent, as well as the benefits and obstacles of pursuing this career choice.

This is a CSMS Project Industrial Liaison Seminar. See Computer Science and Mathematics for Scientists. Refreshments will be served.

Actuaries help insurance companies in many areas, such as accounting, claims, lawsuits, investments, mergers & acquisitions, and premium calculations. Join Jonathan Jannarone, UM math graduate and Vice President of Life Actuarial at Assurant, as he explains how actuaries apply math, statistics, and computer science to their daily job. Learn about how to become an actuary, consistently picked as one of the top five occupations in the country.

This is a CSMS Project colloquium

Starting in the 1990s, a large number of young scientists left the academic life for jobs with a score of companies that wanted to merge biology with computer science to create a new branch of science - bioinformatics. Accomplishments, such as the determination of sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, were realized through the combined efforts of life and computer scientists.

Flesh and bones start as protein. Inside each cell is a sort of instruction book that tells the cellular machinery what type of protein to produce and, more importantly, when. That instruction book is written with a 4-letter alphabet: A, C, G, T. Reducing life to DNA reduces life to numbers. And once a problem can be stated numerically, it can be mathematically modeled, stored in computer databases and analyzed with a variety of software tools.

Today, more than even, the field of bioinformatics offers exceptional opportunities for scientists that want to contribute in understanding the natural world. Outstanding challenges, including gene regulation and function, protein synthesis, interaction and conservation, disease-susceptibility prediction based on gene sequence variation and even evolutionary conservation, just to name a few, are all areas where major advances will happen in silico as much as in vitro. And this fact is acknowledged by both academic and industrial forces, which are currently recruiting and offering a variety of well rewarded positions to qualified researchers bridging the cultural worlds of life and mathematical sciences.

This is a CSMS Project colloquium

Modern markets require businesses to stay on the edge of technology. At the same time, C-Level executives are demanding lower IT budgets. Management is forced to downsize their in-house IT departments and outsource the day to day maintenance and configuration to Value Added Resellers (VARs) . This shift towards greater reliance on external resources has made the VAR role increasingly more demanding and complicated, as it covers virtually every aspect of a corporation's IT need. In this talk, I will describe the current landscape for IT VARs and how technology is changing the workplace. Agenda: Segmenting the market space; the IT layers of a mid-size corporation; major players in each layer, in particular Microsoft, CISCO and Citrix; VAR survival skills; Conclusion.

This is a CSMS Project colloquium