SIGBITS March 2018

A WPI Computer Science Department summary of short notes on happenings involving faculty and students.

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Phone: 508-831-5357
Fax: 508-831-5776
Tian Guo

Guo Receives NSF CRII Award

 

Tian Guo received the NSF CRII award for research on mobile-aware resource management in the modern cloud platforms.

To see more about the award click here

Gillian Smith

Smith's Work Spotlighted

Gillian Smith spoke at the Education Summit at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco on social justice in games and academia.

She was profiled in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for a College Town article.

 

Read telegram.com article

 

Suzanne Mello-Stark

Mello-Stark Participates in Cybersecurity Activities

Suzanne Mello-Stark has been invited to speak on the hazards in our voting system (and how to ameliorate them ) on Call to Action Day (April 17th) at MIT.

Suzanne attended Women in Cybersecurity March 23-25. She held a workshop "Thinking outside the box: Using a security mindset to escape the Room" along with two students, Emily Hao and MaryAnn VanValkenburg. The workshop was well received (70 in attendance). The team was invited to present again at the 2018 USENIX Workshop on Advances in Security Education where their game will be featured.

Suzanne's presentation "Was the 2016 Election Hacked? Your Forensic Expertise is Needed!" has been accepted to DFRWS2018.

She reports that WPI once again received a GenCyber grant to run a Cybersecurity session as part of the WPI Summer Frontiers program.

She and two students (Alex Kasparek and Ankur Gupta) visited the RI Board of Elections early March to discuss the upcoming logistics of the RI audit. The team is building a simulator to help understand different election scenarios. Suzanne won a WPI mini-grant to support students.

 

Yanhua Li

Li Receives Funding Awards

Yanhua Li received industrial funding awarded from DiDi Chuxing, i.e., the Chinese Uber. It provides $100,000 as a 1-year research grant (in the form of unrestricted gift) to support Professor Li's research on user behavior analysis in ride-hailing system.

He received a NSF REU supplement funding awarded for an on-going NSF CRII grant. This fund provides $16,000 to support two REU students for one year to involve in Professor Li's research project in smart transportation.

 

Rodica Neamtu

Neamtu Activities

Rodica Neamtu announces that the paper "Generalized Dynamic Time Warping: Unleashing the Warping Power Hidden in Point-Wise Distances" authored by Rodica Neamtu, Ramoza Ahsan, Elke Rundensteiner, Gabor Sarkozy, Eamonn Keogh, Hoang Anh Dau, Cuong Nguyen, Charles Lovering has recently been accepted for publication by the International Conference in Data Engineering ICDE2018.

Rodica Neamtu invited to give a research talk "Interactive Exploration of Time Series Powered by Time- Warped Distances" as part of the Colloquium Series for the Computer Science Department at Williams College on March 9, 2018.

Rodica Neamtu selected to attend the Professional Development Workshop for Teaching Track Faculty in PhD Granting Institutions organized by the Computing Research Association CRA-E on February 21, 2018.

Rodica Neamtu recently joined the Faculty Subcommittee of the WPI Project Inclusion tasked with building a campus community that not only celebrates diversity and inclusion but has the infrastructure in place to do that effectively and uniformly.

 

Michael Gennert

Gennert Appointed to Advanced Robotics in Manufacturing Institute

Prof. Michael Gennert has been appointed to the Education & Workforce Advisory Council for the Advanced Robotics in Manufacturing Institute. As a Council member, he will help devise policies and programs to create and sustain the workforce needed to maintain American leadership in Advanced Manufacturing through robotics technologies.

Elke Rundensteiner

Rundensteiner Student Presents Proposal

Elke Rundensteiner reports that PhD student Maryam Hasan has successfully passed her Ph.D. Proposal on "Emotion Classification in Social Text Streams." Her PhD committee is composed of: Prof. Emmanuel Agu, WPI, Computer Science Prof. Kyumin Lee, WPI, Computer Science Prof. Wei Ding, UMASS Boston, Computer Science Prof. Elke A. Rundensteiner, WPI, Computer Science.

 

Craig Shue

Shue in the News

Work by Craig Shue, Associate Professor of computer science, to develop cloud-based security for home networks was reported in more than 100 trade and mainstream media outlets, including IT Business Net, the Houston Chronicle, Seattlepi, Consumer Electronics Net, and Erie News Now. Shue's research is supported by a $507,600 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

 

Read article "Making Home Networks Safer"

He was interviewed by WBUR about his research into cloud-based security for home networks. The work is supported by a $507,600 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

Hear WBUR audio interview

Emmanuel Agu

Agu in the News

Work by Emmanuel Agu was featured in the MetroWest Daily News, BioPortfolio, Houston Chronicle, Doctors Outlook, and seattlePI and dozens of other online trade and mainstream media outlets. The work is funded by a $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a new smartphone app to monitor chronic wounds. The work is led by Emmanuel Agu, associate professor of computer science and coordinator of WPI's Mobile Graphics Research Group, with co-principal investigators professor Diane Strong and associate professor Bengisu Tulu, both of the Business School, and Peder Pedersen, a retired professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Read article "Researchers Creating App to Track, Analyze Dangerous Chronic Wounds

Women in Data Science Conference

WPI Hosts Women in Data Science Conference

WPI hosted a regional gathering of the global Women in Data Science Conference.

 

Read article "WiDS Conference Sparks Collaboration"

Carolina Ruiz

Ruiz Advises at New Zealand Project Center

Carolina Ruiz spent C Term 2018 (January-March) in Wellington, New Zealand, co-advising 25 WPI IQP students with Prof. Michael Elmes at the WPI New Zealand Project Center. These interactive qualifying projects are projects at the intersection of society and technology. The encompassing theme of these C Term 2018 projects was the environment, with topics that included climate change and sea level rise, protection of wildlife from predators, and sustainable forestry. Project sponsors were The Antarctic Research Center of Victoria University, The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Wellington Zoo, The Wellington City Council, The Greater Wellington Regional Council, and The New Zealand Department of Conservation.

Image removed.

Kinicki Advises in Morocco and Project Teams Wins Award

Professor Emeritus Bob Kinicki spent C Term 2018 in Rabat, Morocco, co-advising at the IQP Project Center. Hangzhou, China in B18.

He co-advised in Namibia last year was where one the projects was named co-winner of the President's IQP of the Year Award this year.

See More President's IQP Awards Recipients

 

Kyumin Lee

Lee has Paper Accepted in SIGIR

 

A paper by Kyumin Lee and his graduate students entitled "The Rise of Guardians: Fact-checking URL Recommendation to Combat Fake News" has been accepted to the SIGIR conference.