Business Engagement Center

Campus lab technologies bring programming improvements, industry partnership

nlerma — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 14:29:07 +0000

Campus lab technologies bring programming improvements, industry partnership nlerma Mon, 02/05/2018 - 09:29

��-Dearborn lab partners with Sema

With the goal of innovative software development, Computer and Information Science Assistant Professor Marouane Kessentini founded ��-Dearborn’s Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) research lab five years ago.

And now Kessentini—after building a solid foundation through recruiting talented graduate students and maturing product development—is seeing the impact the SBSE lab is making for the university, in students’ lives and in the software industry.

The SBSE lab is partnering with software company Sema to find the most efficient way to help businesses fix their existing software code. Through the partnership, the University of Michigan Office of Technology Transfer has licensed four of the lab’s projects; Sema also has given funding for the lab to continue research and development efforts.

Sema CEO Matthew Van Itallie said he searched the globe for experts in efficient software maintenance, and Kessentini’s name frequently appeared in publications.

“I read more than 1,500 journal articles from software experts around the world over the course of 18 months, looking for the best scientist on earth for my company—and I found him in Dearborn, Mich.”

The lab’s research—which is related to refactoring, testing, migration and technical debt—enables industry programmers to focus on building better software because the time they spend performing software maintenance is reduced, Kessentini said. Currently, he said programmers spend up to an estimated 60 percent of their time fixing old code.

“That is a problem. Programmers are very creative people. They could be spending time making things better, adding new features to what already exists,” he said. “But they are too busy doing software maintenance.”

Kessentini said the partnership also gives the SBSE lab the opportunity to get the developed technologies out into industry.

“We have tested the technologies in our lab. But having them applied in a real-world setting and be successful shows us that we are on the right track. We are seeing how our work is making a difference for others,” Kessentini said. “That is the mission of this lab and the mission of the university.”

Kessentini became interested in finding an effective solution to fixing outdated code and software maintenance after graduate school. As a Ph.D. student, he published an award-winning paper in 2012 on code transformation, which is getting different coding languages—for example, Python or Java—to “speak” with each other.

“That got me thinking: If different coding languages can communicate, why can’t there be a better way to fix problems within the same coding language?” he said. “This is an important issue because you cannot just take down a website—like for banks or government agencies—for long periods of time to build a new one. Developers typically need to work within the existing framework, which is more difficult than starting over. I wanted my lab to find ways to make this process easier.”

The lab is succeeding in that goal, according to Van Itallie.

“Dr. Kessentini has assembled a talented team that truly understands the problem we are trying to tackle,” said Van Itallie, noting the market for software maintenance is estimated to be $245 billion by the year 2020. “After meeting Dr. Kessentini, his students and others on campus, I’ve realized that emphasizing practicality and thoughtfulness in creativity is part of the Dearborn way.”

Van Itallie will further strengthen his partnership with ��-Dearborn soon as Sema plans to set up a technology hub in southeast Michigan.

He wants the technological side of his business to be in close proximity to Kessentini and the SBSE lab. Van Itallie said a multi-year contract is in the works, and he looks forward to seeing new technological developments that will enhance and evolve the software industry.

“The research will unlock extraordinary amounts of human creativity, and provides the opportunity to solve even greater problems through software,” Van Itallie said. “We could not be more excited to work with Dr. Kessentini, ��-Dearborn and the entire Michigan community to make it happen.”

Faculty Research

Technology

Business Engagement Center

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Computer and Information Science

Metropolitan Impact

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Mon, 02/05/2018 - 14:27

Assistant Professor Marouane Kessentini has partnered with software company Sema to find the most efficient way to fix broken code.

Cheryl Donohoe named Business & Foundation Engagement executive director, Business Engagement Center director

nlerma — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 16:43:25 +0000

Cheryl Donohoe named Business & Foundation Engagement executive director, Business Engagement Center director nlerma Mon, 01/29/2018 - 11:43

Cheryl Donohoe

When Cheryl Donohoe started at ��-Dearborn in January, she inherited a mouthful of a title: executive director of Business and Foundation Engagement (B&FE) and director of the Business Engagement Center (BEC). Donohoe said she doesn’t mind if faculty and staff get tripped up on that one. (A few weeks in, she still does.) But one thing she wants there to be less confusion about is how the BEC can be a real difference maker for faculty, staff and students.

It’s a quickly evolving department, where the core mission is a kind of creative matchmaking between the university and the foundation and business world. “I think there’s been a real evolution from looking at corporate partners for transactional philanthropy to an understanding that we, as a university, have a lot to offer,” Donohoe said.

For example, one of her team’s current priorities is helping Detroit companies connect with soon-to-be graduates in STEM fields—an emerging workforce coveted both because of shortages in engineering fields and because ��-Dearborn alumni overwhelming stay in the metro area.

Other days, her team is guiding faculty on how to cultivate business partnerships that can give their research real traction. “For instance, a partner may express a desire to get more involved in artificial intelligence or cyber security,” she said. “That’s a great opportunity for collaboration because we have university researchers who are experts in these fields.”

Donohoe said developing these kinds of small, meaningful, win-win collaborations also is a proven way to build partnerships that yield big philanthropic results down the road.

That’s the vision on the macro level. But Donohoe also has her focus trained on some short-term goals—none bigger at the moment than helping bring in gifts to support the new Engineering Lab Building, which is scheduled for an April 20^th groundbreaking.

“I would love to make an impact in a big way around that project,” she said. “It’s a compressed timeline, but to be honest, that’s incredibly exciting to me.”

Many of the skills Donohoe brings to her new post are ones she cultivated at the American Cancer Society. She worked there for a total of 15 years in six different roles, holding the distinction of being one of the few employees who worked in every single department at the organization. She’s also a doubly proud Michigan alumna: Donohoe earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and women's studies at ��-Ann Arbor, before completing her master’s in public administration at ��-Dearborn.

Faculty and Staff

Business Engagement Center

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Mon, 01/29/2018 - 16:42

Donohoe plans to maximize the impact of the department, making connections and encouraging collaborations between the university and the foundation and business worlds.

It all adds up: Funding from grant starts two math-focused outreach programs

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:27:30 +0000

It all adds up: Funding from grant starts two math-focused outreach programs admin Wed, 02/17/2016 - 12:27

��-Dearborn math programs

Yunus Zeytuncu noticed that one of the teens in his high-school focused Maize and Blue Math Circle group regularly showed up late to activities.

Because Math Circle is a fun, extra-curricular activity, the tardiness didn’t weigh on the math assistant professor’s mind too much. Until he found out why.

“He was a 14-year-old who was taking two buses to get here—to do math after school,” said Zeytuncu, who explained that Math Circle is a national movement to provide a supportive, playful environment for youth interested in the subject. “That’s when I had the idea to go out to the urban schools and offer the program there too. But we didn’t have the money to do it.”

But thanks to a grant, he does now.

��-Dearborn’s Math Circle, along with the new campus program STEMstart, was recently awarded $50,000 from the Ford Fund.

The two-year grant was facilitated by Clarinda Barnett-Harrison, director of the Business Engagement Center (BEC), and Ann Serra, senior foundation and corporate giving officer, in partnership with the faculty leads Line van Nieuwstadt and Michael Lachance.

Aware that both programs wanted to expand, they looked for financial opportunities to fund the programs. STEMstart, an applied math program for recently graduated high school seniors, had a successful pilot run last year.

“Securing resources for programs like STEMstart and Math Circle not only provide capacity-building for important ��-Dearborn initiatives, it also fulfills the university’s metropolitan vision to support community building through K-12 STEM partnerships,” said Barnett-Harrison, BEC executive director.

Line van Nieuwstadt, engineering clinical professor, said STEMstart picks up at the age Math Circles leaves off: The outreach program is for students entering college who are interested in math and engineering, but whose college placement exam shows they aren’t ready for pre-calculus.

Van Nieuwstadt said CECS Dean Tony England noticed a trend among engineering students who had to take a remedial math course before pre-calculus: If they didn’t place into at least pre-calculus at the beginning of their college career, the likelihood of an engineering degree was slim.

“The goal for all of us on this campus is to prepare students to be successful. When you see that less than 5 percent of our students earn a degree if they do not place into Pre-Calc, you do something about it,” van Nieuwstadt said, noting that one reason may be because it puts them a year behind other students. “You need math preparedness for engineering—for many fields—and for everyday life. It’s important to teach that math is a tool, not something intimidating.”

During the STEMstart pilot last summer—which was organized by CECS’ Jennifer Makas, Lisa Remsing and the Hub for Teaching and Learning’s Tiffany Marra—eight admitted to-be freshmen who didn’t place in pre-calculus decided to take part in the free-to-attend program.

They did hands-on activities—like building Rube Goldberg machines—completed math exercises and met with peer mentors.

By the end of the six-week summer program, seven passed the placement test, and one even placed into calculus. All of those students currently are enrolled on campus and have monthly meetings with Academic Affairs advisers to check their progress.

“I am very thankful for this funding,” van Nieuwstadt said. “It’s going to allow us to open it up for 50 students to attend this summer, and it will fund next year.”

With the money, the Maize and Blue Math Circle is expanding too. They are still working out details, but will travel to schools in Detroit and Southfield starting in April to do their two-hour weekly sessions, which include interactive games, lessons, snacks and camaraderie.

Zeytuncu said it’s important to support and foster interest in the subject. He said kids into athletics have teammates and coaches, and he wants something like that for youth interested in academics too.

“We want to make sure that we can reach them and keep that interest going,” he said. “It’s a fun way to learn problem solving and meet friends who have the same interest as you. We have so many bright, talented kids out there. And we want to provide them with a support system. This money will help go into the community and do that.”

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College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College of Engineering and Computer Science

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Mon, 02/15/2016 - 12:27

Two ��-Dearborn programs designed to strengthen students’ math skills before college are expanding thanks to a two-year grant from the Ford Fund.