David R. Naugler

Information assurance in the undergraduate curriculum

Information assurance and systems security are important topics that compel the attention of future computer scientists. Typically, undergraduate students in computer science programs today are exposed to these concepts at the end of their education in stand-alone courses on information security. As information assurance (IA) educators, we perceive the need to incorporate IA topics throughout the undergraduate CS curriculum. In this panel, we will first present the goals, challenges, and current state of progress made at our respective institutions. Then we will solicit feedback and suggestions from the audience for better integrating IA topics across the undergraduate curriculum.

Random points on spheres: a graphics conjecture "proved"

Alan Schoen, a graphics expert at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, has observed that the following result is true empirically: If 4 points are selected randomly on the unit sphere in Euclidean 3 space, then the probability that the tetrahedron with these points as vertices contains the origin is 1/2³.