Dr. Cynthia Sims Parr is joining the ebiquity lab to work on the Spire project. Dr. Parr is a Research Associate at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS ) an the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Parr received BS in biology from Cornell University and an MS and PhD from University of Michigan, where she studied social behavior and vocal communication in American crows. She studied molecular systematics and behavioral ecology of magpies during a postdoctoral fellowship at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea. She served as the Content Development Director for the Animal Diversity Web project at the University of Michigan she uses web technology to help instructors at many institutions teach about animal ecology and evolution. At the University of Maryland she has worked on a number of projects using advanced computer technologies to support research and education in the Biological sciences.

Two of our AIX boxes were compromised this week, including the machine that runs most of Swoogle’s services. So, Swoogle and a few of our other research systems will be off line until sometime next week. We’re reorganizing our systems and putting more of them behind the campus firewall, leaving only the interfaces outside the firewall. This isn’t the first time we’ve had such incidents and it won’t be the last. I’m resigned that it will just be this way until the end of time — a constant struggle between the system builders and the crackers. It’s kind of depressing, and maybe that’s why humans tend to believe in an ultimate, apocalyptic day of reckoning — Armageddon, Ragnarok, Yawmid Din, Acharit Hayami — in which Good will finally triumph over Evil. I wonder what the Internet version of this would be like — I hope it’s not a darker version, like Night of the Living Dead. Anyway, look for Swoogle to be up next week.