Notable News

Ed Fries to speak at DePaul

Banks, William — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:55:00 GMT

Ed Fries, former VP of Game Publishing at Microsoft, will speak right before Geek 'till Dawn at DePaul Center 11th floor, 5-7 PM.

Ed Fries was vice president of game publishing at Microsoft during much of the Xbox's lifecycle. He was a prime evangelist of the platform to game developers and had an important role in the acquisition of developers Bungie Studios, Ensemble Studios and Rare.

Fries left Microsoft in January 2004. He consulted with a startup company, FireAnt, that was later sold to Sony Online Entertainment. He was also involved with several start ups including AGEIA, which aims to bring the first 'physics accelerator' chip for games to market, and Emotiv Systems, a company building an EEG based game controller.

Fries is currently working on bringing his favorite game, World of Warcraft, to three-dimensional life with his startup company, Figure Prints. The company makes 3D models of a player's characters using a fleet of Z Corporation printers. Within the first 12 hours of his company going live, over 4,000 people had requested an order for a model. Fries explains in an interview that each model can take about 1 week to complete.

Exciting Guests Coming to Visiting Artists and Lecture Series

Banks, William — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:56:00 GMT

The School of Cinema and Interactive Media's Visiting Artist and Lecture Series proudly welcomes three special guests over the next three Fridays, including Marc Webb (director "500 Days of Summer"), Tom DiCillo (director "Living In Oblivion") and Jim McKairnes (Sr. Vice President Paramount Studios in charge of Cable Television). These events give our students the rare opportunity to learn from some of the brightest professionals in their field.

CIM Visiting Artist and Lecture Series

MARC WEBB - FRIDAY OCTOBER 16th, 7pm

Perhaps best known recently for his directorial debut “500 Days of Summer”, MARC WEBB had already established himself as one of the most prolific and innovative contemporary music video directors. Marc has crafted ground-breaking music videos for artists as diverse as Weezer, My Chemical Romance, 3 Doors Down, Regina Spektor, Evanescence, Nelly, Green Day and the list goes on. Marc will be sitting for a one night exclusive engagement at DePaul University’s College of Digital Media on:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2009 7:00 PM
DePAUL DIGITAL CINEMA THEATRE
14 EAST JACKSON, LOWER LEVEL
DePAUL UNIVERSITY – LOOP CAMPUS

FREE WITH DePAUL ID
LIMITED SEATING – FIRST COME FIRST SERVE – ARRIVE EARLY
Sponsored by the CIM VISITING ARTISTS AND LECTURE SERIES

TOM DICILLO - FRIDAY OCTOBER 23rd, 6:00pm

TOM DiCILLO is one of the most singular filmmakers to emerge from the American independent film scene of the last two decades. DiCillo's first film, JOHNNY SUEDE, featured Brad Pitt in his first leading role. DiCillo's follow-up film, LIVING IN OBLIVION, starred Steve Buscemi in an inventive and hilarious work of cinema that has been hailed as the definitive "film about filmmaking.” DiCillo recently completed his 7th feature film, WHEN YOU'RE STRANGE, the first full-length documentary about the The Doors with narration by Johnny Depp. AN EVENING WITH TOM DiCILLO will feature an onstage conversation with the filmmaker and interactive discussions with students. Not to be missed.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2009 6:00 PM
DePAUL DIGITAL CINEMA THEATRE
14 EAST JACKSON, LOWER LEVEL
DePAUL UNIVERSITY – LOOP CAMPUS

FREE WITH DePAUL ID
LIMITED SEATING – FIRST COME FIRST SERVE – ARRIVE EARLY
Sponsored by the CIM VISITING ARTISTS AND LECTURE SERIES

JIM McKAIRNES - FRIDAY OCTOBER 30th, 6:30pm

Former CBS and Discovery executive JIM MCKAIRNES currently serves as the Senior Vice President, Cable Development and Strategic Planning at Paramount Studios. McKairnes has overseen Paramount’s cable unit's expansion into comedy with a concentration on identifying international formats and multi-platform opportunities for the U.S cable marketplace. Jim will be sitting for a one night exclusive engagement at DePaul University’s College of Digital Media on:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009 6:30 PM
DePAUL DIGITAL CINEMA THEATRE
14 EAST JACKSON, LOWER LEVEL
DePAUL UNIVERSITY – LOOP CAMPUS

FREE WITH DePAUL ID
LIMITED SEATING – FIRST COME FIRST SERVE – ARRIVE EARLY
Sponsored by the DIGITAL CINEMA COLLABORATIVE and the CIM VISITING ARTISTS AND LECTURE SERIES

Daniel Mittleman Secures US Dept. of Education Grant

Banks, William — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:33:00 GMT

The Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) at the US Department of Education recently awarded CDM professor Daniel Mittleman with a $76,000 grant to design, build, and evaluate the “Atlantis Consortium Team Interaction Virtual Environment.” The Atlantis Program consists of over 80 four University teams of faculty who supervise US/EU student exchange programs. This research project addresses the fact that these cross-organizational faculty teams lack methods for collecting lessons learned and passing on best practices for supporting intercultural academic exchange programs. Building from the basic concepts of social networking systems, this grant supports the analysis, development, and implementation of an environment that will encourage the collection of trans-organizational memory so best practices are collected, maintained, and transferred to future teams.

CDM's Cleland-Huang and Mobasher Receive NSF Grant

Banks, William — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:28:00 GMT

Dr. Bamshad Mobasher and Dr. Jane Cleland-Huang received an NSF grant from the division of Information Integration and Informatics for $499,892 over three years to investigate the application of data mining techniques and recommender systems technologies within the software engineering process. This research represents a synergy between Dr. Mobasher's work in Web mining and Dr. Cleland-Huang's work in Systems and Software Engineering. The research is intended to develop tools and algorithms that help automate requirement elicitation and management processes in large projects. This is a timely project designed to address the needs of an increasing number of organizations who adopt collaborative tools such as wikis and forums to gather and manage requirements. The proposed research is expected to deliver a robust library of algorithms and tools to augment the functionality of wikis, forums, and other specialized management tools used in the requirements domain.

CDM Student to Present Paper at ACE 2009

Banks, William — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:13:00 GMT

CDM undergrad Matt Zachara’s research paper on the Nintendo Virtual Boy console will be presented at the 2009 International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technologies (ACE) to be held in Athens, Greece. ACE is a leading academic ACM conference whose focus is to gather researchers from academia and industry-researchers to stimulate discussion in the development and advancement of interactive art and entertainment applications.

Matt has spent the last year working with Professor Jose Zagal doing video game research. Their paper, “Challenges for Success in Stereo Gaming: A Virtual Boy Case Study”, explores some of the challenges that must be overcome for mass-adoption of stereoscopic 3D video game systems.

Nintendo’s Virtual Boy platform, originally released in 1995, was the first portable gaming console capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D images. It was a commercial failure. Matt’s research explores the reasons for this failure as means for examining and understanding the challenges that exciting upcoming technologies such as volumetric displays and 3D flat panel displays will have to address if they wish to succeed.

Professor Zagal's Research Page

Wicklander Fellowship Awarded to CDM Professor

Banks, William — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:18:00 GMT

The Institute for Business and Professional Ethics has awarded its annual Wicklander Fellowship award for the 2009-2010 academic year to two faculty. The new recipients are Susan Bandes, professor in the College of Law, for her research on "Emotion and the Law;" and Tom Muscarello, professor in the College of Computing and Digital Media, for his research on “Bioethics: Impact of Massive Data Repositories on Informed Consent in Genomic Studies.” The Wicklander Fellowship (formerly the Wicklander rotating chair) is awarded annually to two or three full-time faculty members who demonstrate an interest in applied or professional ethics as these topics relate to his or her field of research.

Jazz Musician, Film Composer, and DePaul Alum Harry Manfredini speaks at CIM Lecture Series

Banks, William — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:03:00 GMT

Born in Chicago, Harry has spent most of his life in music. While living in the Midwest, he worked as an arranger and performer. He also earned a Bachelor of Music degree from DePaul University and a Master of Arts degree from Western Illinois University, where he subsequently taught theory, orchestration, and conducting. Harry moved to New York to pursue his doctorate at Columbia University. Upon completion of his doctoral courses, the opportunity arose for him to further his longtime dream of a career in film music.

The years of classical training and the twenty years in the popular music scene (he plays great sax) combined with a good sense of drama to make him a natural in film music.

Harry has scored over eighty films. His major feature credits include the highly successful FRIDAY THE 13TH series for Paramount Pictures, and now New Line Cinema. SWAMP THING for UA/Embassy, HOUSE, A breakaway hit for New World Pictures, and DEEP STAR SIX and ACES-IRON EAGLE III for Carolco Pictures. These films characterize his style as an action, suspense, and thriller composer but Harry's credits also include SPRING BREAK, a good-time rock and roll summertime success for Columbia Pictures and MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, a teen comedy for Touchstone Pictures. Harry's dark, jazzy, dramatic scores have been heard in A GUN, A CAR, A BLOND, and HIDDEN AGENDA. Harry's score to WISHMASTER, helped make it the number one independent film of 1998, and he repeated in 1999 with his score to THE OMEGA CODE, the largest grossing independent for 1999. AMORE' and FOLLOW YOUR HEART are examples of his lighthearted love story scores.

Harry is extremely proud of his scores for numerous children's films. While many of them have received various awards, three of them, CORDUROY, ANGUS LOST, and A BOY, A DOG AND A FROG were awarded best children's film at the American Film Festival. His children's feature films include THE STORYBOOK, and DANNY.

Harry also has found time to write and bring to Broadway a country-western musical titled PLAY ME A COUNTRY SONG.

Adjunct faculty member, Mark Grechanik, wins best paper award at the 2nd International Conference on Software Testing, Verfication, and Validation

Banks, William — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:01:00 GMT

Adjunct faculty member Mark Grechanik won the best paper award at the 2nd International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST 2009) for his paper "Inferring Types of References to GUI Objects in Test Scripts," written with his Accenture Technology Labs colleagues Chen Fu and Qing Xie.

This is DePaul Video Contest

Banks, William — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:59:00 GMT

DePaul CDM students swept the award categories in the first ever “This is DePaul” student video contest. A panel of 20 judges from across the university evaluated the submitted videos on creativity, originality, depiction of DePaul, overall impression and technical execution.

First place: Justin Flocco, Digital Cinema Junior
Second Place: Paul Gustafson, Digital Cinema Freshman
Third Place: Brendan Leahy, Digital Cinema Junior
Audience Choice: Paul Hennessy, Digital Cinema Freshman and Mark Carroll, History Freshman

To view all the winning videos, visit depaul.edu/thisisdepaul.

Cyber Defense Competition

Banks, William — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:57:00 GMT

The DePaul team placed 2^nd at the 2009 Midwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. The regional competition included 6 teams from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The winning team, Baker College, won the national level competition last year and will be going back for a second time in April.