Reading ability especially for blind and deaf children has long been acknowledged to be a critical factor in the educational progress. Learning of alphabet is a complex task regardless of the medium through which the skill is acquired. The poor, blind children of Bangladesh in need for a low cost refreshable digital Braille-display that will assist in reading Bangla and English. Under the “ব্রেইলশিখিবইপড়ি” (Learn Braille Read Books) project, funded by the Access to Information (A2i) program of Prime Minister’s Office a low cost refreshable digital Braille-display will be developed to read Bangla and English daisy Braille books including national text book from class 1 to 10.
Optical Character Recognition software, abbreviated as OCR is an essential software for converting printed, text document to editable documents. Although there are many commercial OCR for English, there are no workable solutions for Bangla. UIU was awarded a project, named “Development of a Bangla Optical Character Recognizer (OCR)” funded by the Access to Information (A2i) program of Prime Minister’s Office to develop a prototype of OCR. Under this project, researchers of UIU develop a workable prototype that can convert images of Bangla texts into editable documents. The output document of the OCR can also be edited by any editor software. Any person who requires Bengali document processing system will be benefitted by this software.
Moreover, CSE department has recently established the Advanced Intelligent Multidisciplinary Systems Lab (AIMS Lab) to foster computer science research and development in Bangladesh as well as to utilize the benefits of information technology for the society. The research lab focuses on theoretical aspects and applications of the areas of machine learning and data mining, natural language processing, intelligent systems, computational intelligence, biomedical engineering, bioinformatics and embedded systems. This lab is driven by a multidisciplinary team of highly qualified researchers in their respective fields and aiming to maximizing possibilities for computer science research in Bangladesh. CSE department is planning to establish another lab named Future Network Research Lab (FNRL), which will focus on various cutting edge networking applications and their theoretical aspects. FNRL will bring network related researchers from UIU and different universities of Bangladesh and abroad under a common platform.
UIU has established the Center for IT Services (CITS) with the primary objectives to identify, design, plan, develop, implement and maintain various information systems in the university campus which will in turn position UIU as a model for a world class university. CITS provides technical support for the University automation, network and computer laboratory services.
All computer labs, hardware labs and class rooms’ equipment (projectors and PCs) are maintained and operated by the trained CITS personnel. Most of the PCs are equipped with high-end hardware (Core-i3/i5 processor, 4GB RAM) and latest software. Moreover, UIU students through the Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) program are eligible to download licensed software from Microsoft. The CSE Department of UIU is also member of Oracle Academy Advanced Computer Science program, which offers access to world-class software, Java development environments, faculty training, curriculum, certification preparation.
Faculty members and students of CSE department are the founders of Google Developer Group (GDG) Dhaka, a common platform for developers who are interested in Google’s developer technology; everything from the Android, App Engine, and Google Chrome platforms, to product APIs like the Maps API, YouTube API and Google Calendar API.
As a whole, UIU has been established with the goal of developing state-of-the-art modern campus facilities. In addition to maintaining the connectivity and the network throughout the university, CITS is engaged in Software Development, Web design & Redesign, Website Maintenance, Software Testing, IT Consulting Services, Business Analysis, Software Design.
Faculty members and students of CSE department are dedicated for their research and development projects and a number of quality research articles have been already published in different esteem journals and international conferences.
Computer science is an ever changing area and therefore a close interaction with the industries is required. Our courses and contents are regularly updated by taking feedback with the industries. Not only that the CSE department signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) on April 11, 2012. Following the MoU, UIU and BASIS agreed to jointly work for research and carry on various information technology related engineering, practices, solutions and trainings for the expanding market for the country’s software. We are on process of signing another MOU with Earnest & Young (E&Y), a global company working on the World Bank supported IT/ITES skills Training Projects with the Bangladesh Government implemented through Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC). Department of CSE started a 36 weeks long training program from February, 2015 onwards on Mobile Application Development with the Department of ICT, Government of Bangladesh and EATL to train expert trainers and app developers under the National App Development program.
UIU is the only university of Bangladesh that regularly participates in the Digital World (previously known as SoftExpo), country’s biggest showcase for software products. Each year, the students of CSE and EEE presents their software and hardware projects at this mega-event.
An UIU team comprised of CSE students won the 1st prize of National Hackathon 2014 for developing an App entitled ASTHA under Cyclone Shelter Management category. The winning team will be getting about 2 Lacs BDT as prize money. The App mainly focuses on Cyclone Center Management, Condition update, relief priority basis on effected people information by weight management, damage Reporting of a cyclone centre, alert before disaster. Another UIU team comprising of 4 students and a faculty member has clinched Championship Award including a prize money of US $5000 out of total 53 teams in the 2nd Citi Financial IT Case Competition.
An UIU CSE fac ulty, Mr. Feroz Ahmed Siddiky achieved the 1st position in national IT innovation search program at BASIS Soft Expo-2012. Another UIU CSE faculty, Mr. Md. Jahidul Islam who is pursuing Masters at BUET, secured the runner-up position in International Robotic Challenge (IRC) Grand Finale 2013, organized by IIT, Bombay. Note that Jahidul participated in the event as a BUET team.
UIU has partnership with several European Union (EU) universities through different EU funded projects including eLINK, cLINK, FUSION, STRoNG-TiES, INTACT, LEADERS, etc. Under these projects, many faculty members and students of CSE department have availed teachers’ training, post-doctoral, doctoral and undergraduate scholarships at different EU partner universities. Note that CSE department has already established a good relationship with several EU partner universities. Thus the department has always opportunities for applying such projects in future.