Congratulations to Murat Yilmaz, who recently completed his Ph.D. at Dublin City University School of Computing, under Rory O'Connor. His research interests include software engineering economics, team dynamics, project management and productivity, software process improvement and practices, social modeling, and agent-based simulation. Dr. Yilmaz received his master's degree in software engineering from University of Minnesota in 2009.

Sri Latha Ganti's (MSSE 2011) new project, MyRain LLC, has acquired funding to launch a for-profit social venture to boost local economies in India. Ganti is the co-founder and COO of MyRain, which offers efficient drip irrigation systems to rural farmers in developing countries.

Ganti's project began as the brainstorm of a team of participating in the 2010 Acara Challenge, a course and competition sponsored by the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. The competition helps budding social entrepreneurs develop plans for businesses that make a positive change in the world. After completing the Acara competition, the project leaders incorporated their business and refined plans to the point where they could solicit funding from investors.

The MSSE graduate program is designed to develop professional skills, teaching the fundamentals of software development and management of software technology. Recent graduates Bekki Freeman, Heath Schubert, and Andy Selvig have taken those skills and used them to launch their company. Tiny Mission (tinymission.com) is their enterprise software development company specializing in mobile development with integrated web services. One example of Tiny Mission’s work is QuickCues, a set of social scripts designed for teens and young adults on the autism spectrum.

The University of Minnesota Software Engineering Center (UMSEC) is pleased to announce that Dr. Mike Whalen will be the new Program Director for UMSEC. In this newly created position, Dr. Whalen will direct the research performed and sponsored by the center and will also administer parts of the Masters of Science in Software Engineering (MSSE) program.

To some students, the goal of academic projects is to receive a top grade. But for recent CSE graduate Huroye Scott (M.S.S.E. '07), his objective was to help improve life for the people and ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa through a project called Savannas Forever.

Imagine being able to mix and mash the features you like most from different Web sites, to create unique Web capabilities. The Minnesota Daily highlighted the software engineering student projects that do just that in a story in last week's paper entitled, "Creative students mix and mash Web sites."

CSE students Kevin Arnold and Clifton Peters have found an innovative way to meet their master’s program requirements, while helping the community though a new school project. The duo started a master’s project a last fall aimed at improving student data management for guidance counselors in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS).

MSSE student Mikko Niemioja has found an innovative project to work on as part of his degree program. He's implementing a web-based computer program called "The Visual Autism Symptom Scale" intended to be used by teachers to more accurately evaluate Autism in children and tailor lessons to their ability.

The project is the vision of Diane Halpin, a second-year doctoral student, seeking her degree in Special Education. Halpin is also the mother of a 10-year-old daughter with Autism.

Dr. Eric Van Wyk has won a prestigious 2005-2007 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship for his project "Extensible Programming Languages for Cost-Effective Development or Reliable Software Systems." Dr. Van Wyk is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

The McKnight Land-Grant Professorship is awarded by the University of Minnesota Graduate School which describes the program as follows:

On Monday, April 26, UMSEC Director and Associate Professor Mats Heimdahl was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in a ceremony in the McNamara Alumni Center's Memorial Hall.