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That is the tag line for a new application named “Crowded,” developed by the Lexington-based mobile application studio Stadionaut. The app challenges fans watching live Major League Baseball games—whether actually attending or watching on television—to predict what will happen next. Users compete against other fans to earn various rewards and prizes. The social aspect of the application combined with real-time action and updates could turn the casual baseball fan into a loyal supporter of the Major League Baseball brand—at least, that is what Stadionaut, which is comprised of several graduates from the University of Kentucky College of Engineering, believes is possible with their first app.

From left to right: Scott Wagner, Evan Leach, Chris Allen, and
Jim Wombles

Stadionaut is led in part by Scott Wagner, who graduated with a B.S. in computer science in May 2012 and Evan Leach, who earned a B.S. in animal science from the College of Agriculture in December 2011. Other graduates from the College of Engineering include Chris Allen (BSCS, 2010) and Wes Walker, who will graduate with a B.S. in computer science on December 14.

Stadionaut was launched in August 2011 after participating in Lexington-based Awesome Inc.’s startup incubator program during the summer. The basis for “Crowded” originated over the three-month program, during which they were mentored through the process of developing the idea and the business model.

“The University of Kentucky introduced us to the startup accelerator program, Awesome Inc., and continues to support us through resources such as the Von Allmen Center, iNet and its ties through Commerce Lexington,” said Stadionaut co-founder Scott Wagner.

With an eye toward making “Crowded” available for Android and iOS for the 2013 MLB season, Stadionaut representatives recently pitched their product to decision-makers at this year’s MLB Trade Show.

“The MLB Trade Show was a great opportunity for ‘Crowded’ as we were among the top baseball executives in the industry,” emphasized Wagner. “We were proud to represent the University of Kentucky and the emerging startup community in Lexington by presenting ‘Crowded’ to a national audience.”

Stadionaut won the grand prize at the inaugural iNet Venture Challenge, a business competition for University of Kentucky student entrepreneurs last March.

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Computer science is a dynamic field where, as Ken Calvert, Ph.D. and chair of the Department of Computer Science, states, “The only way to stay on the leading edge is to invent everything.” Consider that 10 years ago, Facebook, Twitter and iPhones didn’t exist and iPods and digital internet were just coming into play. Ten years from now, what will serve as our technological staples—and have the ideas for those creations even been conceived? Thinking about the future of computer science necessitates a short-term perspective because the industry sheds its skin with increasing frequency. Nonetheless, questions about the opportunities and perils abound: Are innocent, everyday folks who simply want to catch up with high school friends or purchase a cookbook at the mercy of malevolent, identity-thieving hackers? How will sea changes in the industry, such as the advent of cloud computing, affect traditional computer science jobs? And how can anyone hope to keep up with waves of technology hailed as cutting-edge one year and disregarded as antiquated the next? To sort through these questions, we sat down with Calvert and Jim Griffioen, Ph.D., professor of computer science and director of the Laboratory for Advanced Networking.

Q: What are shaping up to be the greatest areas of opportunity in the computer science field over the next few years?

K.C. I think this is an exciting time in computer science. Hardware has become so cheap that both compute cycles and storage bytes have essentially become commoditized. We’re seeing this right now with the cloud computing model. A company can now pay someone a relatively low monthly fee to run their web server instead of shelling out thousands of dollars for hardware, software and maintenance. It’s basically the same transition that happened with electric power 100 years ago. Nicholas Carr’s book, The Big Switch, describes how, back then, factories had to be located next to big streams because that’s where they got the power to run their machines. When electric power grids came along, generation of power became centralized. The same exact centralization is happening with the advent of cloud computing. It makes a lot more sense to have one big centralized data center run by people who know what they’re doing than for every little company to run its own.

J.G. Historically, computer scientists have created technology without fully knowing how it’s going to play out. The internet was built so machines could communicate back and forth and share information. Well, then users came along and said, “I need this to be easy to use. I need a web interface. I need a browser.” None of those uses were part of the original design. Now we have virtualization through cloud computing as well as ubiquitous networking—you can be on the network at all times. In addition, we also have a very mobile society. Devices which can maximize the benefits of the cloud will need to be developed. I think we’re on the edge of some of these things just exploding and once it explodes, we’ll have a whole new set of issues to address—how to secure such a world, etc.

K.C. What virtualization also means is that software is going to be king. Everything is going to be about software because hardware is so cheap. I think the opportunities in software are tremendous. However, as Jim mentioned, we now have to consider questions such as: how do I keep control of my information? How do I know what information people are collecting about me? Businesses already know a lot about us and they are going to try to monetize that any way they can. Why do Facebook and Twitter have such astronomical valuations?  I believe it’s because they know who is talking to whom and what they’re saying. Privacy is a huge issue going forward and it’s not just “old people” who are concerned about it. We need to understand how to maximize the benefits of virtualization without the Big Brother risks.

Q: What does the future look like on the security front?

J.G. When everyday users weigh the prospective gain of a new application against the possible security risks, they almost always accept the tradeoff. It is difficult to keep up with potential threats and understand the risks because the landscape changes so quickly. On the positive side, though, industry has finally recognized that security is not an afterthought. In the past, companies created products and tacked security onto the back end of the development process. Often, that made it hard to add the security because it wasn’t present from the start. Now, computer scientists are asking, “How do I design the architecture so that if it doesn’t have security now, it is amenable to it later?” There are discussions going on right now about the next generation of the Internet. Naturally, security is a central topic.

K.C. As long as we have the Internet architecture we have, we’re not going to solve many of the current problems. The architecture doesn’t have the things we need to solve them, and there’s just too much inertia to counteract. So it’s hard to say what the future is going to look like there. But again, almost as important as security is privacy. When it comes to the leaders in software and social media, people aren’t given a choice to use the product and still maintain their privacy. Those companies say, “Here are our policies, take them or leave them.” And people agree, even though the policies are not in their favor, because they want to use the product. I printed out the iTunes license agreement once. It was 29 pages of 9 point font. No one is going to read that! That’s why I think we really need more collaboration between experts in computer science and experts in psychology. As systems get more and more complex and everyday people have to make decisions about privacy settings on their computer or home router, we need to design systems and educate users so the consequences of each decision they have to make is much clearer. That is certainly not the case right now. Unfortunately, until software providers accept accountability for their products—until they have incentive to change—the situation will remain challenging.

Q. What areas in the field besides security and privacy need attention?

K.C. We need to focus on parallelism. You often hear that Moore’s Law is running out of gas. On the contrary, Moore’s Law is still going strong; but the dividends of Moore’s Law are now being paid in parallelism, not in faster sequential computation. Rather than doing each step of the computation faster, you can do multiple steps at once in the same amount of time.

J.G. As far as teaching parallelism in the classroom, we have to change our approach. We’ve been teaching the students a step-by-step process; basically, that’s how computer scientists have always conceived writing programs. Well, now we have multiple processors running on chips and we have to start thinking, “How do I write a program that does three things at once? Eight things at once?” What happens when the chips allow us to do hundreds of things at once? We need to start changing the mindset of everyone in our program and challenge them to think, “I’m going to do lots of things at once.”

K.C. If you’re only doing one thing at a time, you cannot take advantage of the additional power that Moore’s Law is giving you. So, like Jim said, we have to be able to figure out how to do multiple things at once, like putting meat on the stove to brown and, while that’s happening, mixing other ingredients. That’s the way we need to think about things all the time. It’s not trivial. We want to turn out graduates who can master doing things in parallel because this is the way it’s going to be from now on. Right now, though, the tools we have for taking advantage of Moore’s Law and parallelism aren’t very good, so it’s definitely an area that needs attention.

Q. How much of a challenge is it to stay on the leading edge of an industry where technology changes so rapidly, let alone translate those changes into your curricula?

K.C. It’s almost impossible. We could spend all of our time just trying to keep up. It’s a catch-22: we have to show our students technology and let them get their hands dirty, but the reality is whatever we show them as freshmen will have changed and might even be obsolete by the time they are seniors. Five years ago, everybody was using Perl and CGI scripts on the web. Now those tools have been replaced by a new generation of languages and platforms. So, our task is to teach fundamental principles and I think we do a good job of that. Fortunately, students quickly adapt to the rate of change. They’re fearless and not afraid to pick up new technology and play with it. I consider that a good thing and we need to try to leverage it in the classroom.

J.G. At the same time, we faculty have to make the purpose of learning fundamental concepts and principles clear to them. They have to know that chances are whatever programming language we teach them their freshman year will probably be out of date by the time they graduate. The turnaround times really are that short.

K.C. That actually seems to make it easier to motivate our students to learn the fundamentals, though, because incoming students have seen the short life cycles of various technologies several times already.  It’s pretty obvious to them now that if they don’t focus on the stuff that doesn’t change, they’re not going to be able to adapt when they’re forced to.

J.G. Even though I’m a longstanding faculty member, I often learn from the students. There is so much software out there, so many programs, so many computing languages, that I can’t play with them all. Students will come to me and tell me about a program and I’ll say, “Explain it to me. How does it work? What does it do?” I learn a lot from interacting with them.

K.C. The only way to stay on the leading edge is to invent everything. We have a weekly “Keeping Current” seminar, where students share what they’ve learned or some new technology they’ve discovered. They’re always coming in and telling us about stuff we’ve never heard of. It’s a volunteer thing, very informal, but a lot of fun. There are so many tools around, it’s just unbelievable.

Q. How does the future of computer science look from the perspective of college students choosing it as a career?

K.C. It couldn’t be better. In the early 2000s, people were afraid all the computer science jobs were going to be outsourced overseas. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the Bureau of Labor projects software engineering jobs will grow by 38% over the next ten years—one of the top professions as far as growth. Our students are in demand and will continue to be in demand for a long time. I am constantly being contacted by people wanting to hire our graduates. It’s clear there are more jobs than people to do them, and I don’t see that changing.

J.G. I was contacted by a mid-sized company the other day that decided they were going to get into the mobile world, but didn’t have a clue as to how to go about it and wanted to know if any of our students or graduates could help them figure it out. Companies need people who know how to take advantage of the technology, not just throw around terms. One aspect that will change in light of the switch to cloud computing, however, will be the kinds of jobs available. There won’t be as much need for systems administrator jobs if everything is run through a centralized data center. So what a graduate might do once they’re in the marketplace might change, but the demand is still very high.

K.C. Our goal is to equip students to be able to adapt to change. We teach them how to think and how to learn because that’s the only way they’re going to survive. If they think they’re going to learn C++, graduate and be a C++ programmer all their lives, it’s just not going to happen.

Q. What are some myths and misconceptions about the computer science industry?

J.G. One myth I often hear is that all the exciting stuff is happening in industry. “Companies are where the exciting things are happening,” someone will say, downplaying the need for education in the field. While it’s now true that bright high school kids can get programming jobs with big companies right away, we still believe in the importance of developing a skill set based on the fundamentals that will last a long time.

K.C. I think another myth is that computer science is all about programming. Computing professionals need to have an understanding of programming, but it’s even more important to have a broad understanding of the business you’re in: social networking, data mining, business concepts, etc. The future is about applications and applying computing to problems in biology, medicine, engineering, the environment, business, entertainment and other industries—it’s a great time to be a software entrepeneur! Another myth is that computer science is something only guys would want to do. The stereotypical image of scruffy-haired guys with beards staring at computer screens needs to be replaced by one which illustrates the openness of the field to anyone who wants to get in on the opportunities available.

“I am grateful to our faculty volunteers and student organizations like Kappa Delta Sorority and Society of Women Engineers (SWE) who work hard to make sure GEMS is a rewarding experience for the girls,” said Vicki Cooper, who coordinated the event. “They generously sacrifice their time to teach and inspire girls who could become future engineers.”

The girls began the day listening to former UK president Lee Todd share his story about developing a childhood interest in engineering as the result of a similar outreach program.  To emphasize his point, Todd displayed the project he created when he was a boy as he recounted his career.

Following the keynote address, the attendees participated in three interactive sessions led by College of Engineering faculty and graduate students. Challenged by event coordinators to present STEM education in ways that compel students to want to know more, faculty members Bruce Walcott, Debby Keen, Kimberly Ward Anderson, Nancy Miller, Chuck May, Christine Trinkle and Czarena Crofcheck engaged students through hands-on demonstrations, games and experiments. Walcott, who is involved with several such outreach programs, is encouraged by how programs like GEMS benefit Kentucky.

“It is critical to the economic future success of the Commonwealth of Kentucky that the UK College of Engineering continues to conduct outreach programs such as our Girls Enjoying Math and Science (GEMS) Day. This program promotes engineering and math and science to young women at a time when our State and Nation needs more women entering the engineering workforce. Our partnership with the Girls Scouts and Susan Miller makes an ideal platform to promote the importance of the STEM education disciplines to young women.”

IEEE UK Student Branch Counselor Regina Hannemann was pleased with the teams’ performance as well as the role the competition plays in enhancing student learning.

“Many of the UK students learned a lot about algorithms and problem solving during this marathon while having a fun time with their friends,” she said.

“It is an honor to join my colleague and UK faculty member Dibakar Bhattacharyya as a Fellow of the AIChE. Our department has a very strong tradition of service to AIChE, and I have reaped many professional benefits from my involvement in the Institute,” said Kalika.

Kalika has been on the faculty of the UK College of Engineering since 1990 and chair of the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering since 2009.

Over 150 teams competed at several satellite sites. The Lexington site was organized by UK’s Department of Computer Science, which has hosted the event since 2000, and enlisted the help of many student volunteers and staff members. Twenty-seven teams competed for five hours in the WT Young Library labs, attempting to solve numerous algorithmic problems in an extremely short amount of time.

“The contest was a great success for all the participating teams,” said faculty advisor and satellite site director Jerzy Jaromczyk. “The participants moved their programming skills to the next level and took home new experiences.”

While the competition itself was demanding, creative programming-themed team names offered levity to the experience. “How I Met Your Motherboard” from Austin Peay University was among the most popular entries.

Four teams representing UK competed in the event, finishing in the top seven locally and in the Mid-Central region’s top 10; however, they fell short of advancing to the ACM World Finals in St. Petersburg, Russia. Jaromczyk, who oversaw the UK teams that advanced to the World Finals—most recently in 2010—is optimistic about UK’s future in this event.

“Overall, our teams did very well. We plan to continue practicing for next year and hope to make it back to the World Finals of this most prestigious programming contest.”