Monthly Archives: December 2018

Mobile Banking Prototype Exemplifies Value of Capstone Classes for Students and Businesses

December 19, 2018

The Informatics Senior Design Project infuses undergraduate education with hands-on, practical learning through external partnerships from local corporations and organizations. During spring and summer 2018, the banking solutions company Global Wave Group offered its support and sponsored a project. By the end of the two-quarter capstone course, the four informatics students who teamed up to work on the project — Daniel LeeLilyann Khung Torres , Griffin Williams and Aivan Eugene Francisco — had not only gained real-world experience, but had also developed a mobile banking app prototype and successfully presented a demo to Global Wave Group’s client, First Foundation Bank.

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Entrepreneur: “Why Entrepreneurs Are Constantly Distracted (And 6 Ways To Fight Back)” (Gloria Mark quoted)

December 18, 2018

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you find yourself struggling with distractions on a regular basis. Whether it’s an email notification, a meeting or a new emergency to deal with, every distraction can potentially pull you away from whatever project you’re working on. And that’s not good because, according to Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, “Once thrown off track, it can take some 23 minutes for a worker to return to the original task.” So, why are entrepreneurs so susceptible to distraction and what steps can they – and you – take to fight back against this vulnerability?

Read the full story at Entrepreneur.

The Conversation: “With a limited on-screen presence, autistic characters have emerged in another medium: fan fiction” by Rebecca Black and Jonathan Alexander

December 13, 2018

As scholars of fan fiction and young adult literature, we started noticing how some fan fiction authors were incorporating autism into their stories – sometimes through new characters and other times by rewriting existing ones. Since then we’ve been collecting and analyzing fan fictions in which young writers have created characters with autism.

Read the full story at The Conversation.

IGN: “Dragon Age 4: Who Is the Dread Wolf?” by Informatics graduate student Kat Brewster

Kat Brewster, UCI informatics graduate student writes, “Thursday night’s Game Awards offered much in the way of glitz, glam, and game teasers — including an exclusive look at the fourth installment of BioWare’s blockbuster Dragon Age series. BioWare has been known to offer painstaking amounts of detail in their promo art which, if deciphered correctly, has the potential to unlock oodles of secrets about Thedas, character backstory, lore and more.”

Read the full story at IGN.

Founders of Coding Club for Kids in Homeless Shelters Grateful for UCI’s Support

December 10, 2018

While volunteering at local homeless shelters, University High School students Katherine McPhie and Milan Narula witnessed the struggles of poverty firsthand. Yet they didn’t just feel sorry for the children they met; they found a way to empower them. In part by applying knowledge gained through UCI programs and leveraging UCI student volunteers, they have built a service to help prepare these children for future success.

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CPRI Hosts Workforce 2020 Panel Discussion and Networking Reception for ICS 90 Students

The Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute (CPRI) introduced students to the opportunities and realities of working in cybersecurity by hosting a private panel discussion during ICS 90 — the seminar class for new students in UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). For the Nov. 14 seminar, Informatics Professor Hadar Ziv handed the course over to CPRI Executive Director Bryan Cunningham, who moderated the Cybersecurity Workforce 2020 discussion featuring cybersecurity leaders from three Orange County companies. Even students not interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity might have reconsidered after Cunningham mentioned projections for the field. “In about three years,” he said, “there will be 500,000 open jobs in cybersecurity just in the United States.”

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Professor Crista Lopes Named IEEE Fellow

December 7, 2018


Informatics Professor Crista Lopes has been named an IEEE Fellow for her contributions to ubiquitous and immersive programming. “I am extremely honored for having received this recognition,” says Lopes. IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose “extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation.”

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The Conversation: “Why Tumblr’s ban on adult content is bad for LGBTQ youth” (postdoctoral fellow Alexander Cho quoted)

Tumblr has served as an essential outlet for LGBTQ youth in relation to other popular platforms. Alexander Cho, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Irvine, has written about Tumblr’s “queer ecosystem” where “users circulate porn, flirt, provide support to deal with homophobia as well as advice on coming out…” Cho has found that queer youth of colour experience Facebook as a space of “default publicness” and prefer Tumblr for sharing intimate and personal content.

Read the full story at The Conversation.