Dr. Daphne Yao’s (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/yao) research was featured in an article in ACM Tech News on October 17, 2014. This research focuses on the development of algorithms that “can alert companies when an employee might be acting maliciously on their network.” The article, entitled Researcher Builds System to Protect Against Malicious Insiders, can be found here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2825952/researcher-builds-system-to-protect-against-malicious-insiders.html
The Department of Computer Science is proud to announce three lectures for the Distinguished Lecture Series 2014-2015 (http://cs.vt.edu/DistinguishedLectures). Dr. Michael Littman, from Brown University, an expert in reinforcement (machine) learning will be speaking on December 5, 2014. Dr. Annie I. Antón, Chair of the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, an authority on digital privacy will be speaking on January 30, 2015. Dr. Jamika Burge, Senior Scientist at Information Systems Worldwide, a Ph.D. alumna of CS@VT (20017) and specialist on qualitative/behavioral research design and analysis, will be presenting on April 17, 2015. Dr. Burge is also co-chair of the Coalition for Diversity in Computing. The Department is pleased to host these eminent computer scientists.
Dr. Dennis Kafura (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/kafura) and CS grad student Cory Bart were featured in an article in the Roanoke Times on October 25, 2014. The article, entitled Students Test New Ways of Teaching and Learning in Virginia Tech, describes a new course in computational thinking offered to non-CS majors by Dr. Kafura this semester. (http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/virginia_tech/students-test-new-ways-of-teaching-and-learning-at-virginia/article_dca00832-1328-5e74-9ba5-c0bbf62fb0fb.html).
Pay Scale, an online company that provides information about salary, benefits, and compensation in industry, ranked the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, seventh among universities for mid-career pay for CS graduates. More information can be found here: http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2014/best-schools-by-major/computer-science
Dr. Stephen Edwards (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/edwards) has been recognized as an ACM Distinguished Educator (http://awards.acm.org/grades-of-membership.cfm#distinguished). This recognition is awarded to “members with at least 15 years of professional experience and 5 years of continuous Professional Membership who have achieved significant accomplishments or have made a significant impact on the computing field.” In addition, “Candidates in the educator category should have significant educational achievements.” The Department of Computer Science congratulates Dr. Edwards on this recognition.
Dr. Ali Butt (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/butt) and Dr. Chao Wang (http://www.ece.vt.edu/faculty/chaowang.php) received new NSF funding for a proposal entitled Pythia: An Application Analysis and Online Modeling Based Prediction Framework for Scalable Resource Management. Dr. Butt describes his research as: “Advanced computing systems for running data-intensive scientific and enterprise applications often boast of different types of resources, e.g., a conventional computer processor running alongside specialized GPUs/FPGAs. Such heterogeneity presents major resource management challenges, especially at large scale. Having a better understanding of the applications behavior on the emerging hardware is key to sustaining these systems. To this end, the project designs and develops Pythia, software that uses application classifiers and simulations to model and predict how workloads would behave on given hardware. This information is then used to better utilize the resources, and achieve scalable and high performance computing systems.”
The grant was featured on the front page of the College Of Engineering web site on October 21, 2014. (http://eng.vt.edu/news/ali-butt-and-chao-wang-receive-nsf-grant-develop-pythia-solve-problems-big-data-processing ). The research was also recognized on the front page of VT News on October 31, 2014).
Dr. Kurt Luther (http://people.cs.vt.edu/~kluther/) was hosted by Virginia Center for Civil War Studies to gave a talk entitled Using Social Computing to Solve Historical Mysteries on October 23, 2014. For information about the center, please visit http://www.civilwar.vt.edu/wordpress/
Dr. Edward Fox (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/fox) was featured in an article in The Collegiate Times on October 21, 2014. The article describes Dr. Fox involvement in the technical side of research on addiction recovery through social interaction. The Addiction Recovery Research Center received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for this research, led by PI Dr. Warren Bickel (research.vtc.vt.edu/employees/warren-k-bickel), Virginia Tech Carillion Research Institute (VTCRI) professor, and director of the Center (http://research.vtc.vt.edu). The full article from the Collegiate Times, can be found at http://m.collegiatetimes.com/news/virginia_tech/article_99ed3692-58b7-11e4-baa1-0017a43b2370.html?mode=jqm
Department of Computer Science Graduate student Chris Frisina’s work on The Sound of Fractions ( http://thirdlab.cs.vt.edu/education-and-technology/sound-of-fractions/ ) was featured on NPR on October 2, 2014. The Sound of Fractions is a project to help middle school students learn Math concepts. The project was presented at the Virginia Science Festival. For the NPR piece, please visit wvtf.org/post/virginia-science-festival-party-where-science-guest-honor. Chris Frisina’s advisor is CS professor, Dr. Deborah Tatar (http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/tatar).
Dr. Wenjing Lou (CS) and Dr. Tom Hou (ECE) were awarded two new multi-institutional NSF research grants. The first, is entitled NSF CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Cognitive Green Building: A Holistic Cyber-Physical Analytic Paradigm for Energy Sustainability. It aims to develop a unified analytical approach for green building design that comprehensively manages energy sustainability by taking into account the complex interactions between these systems of systems, providing a high degree of security, agility and robust to extreme events. This is a collaborative project between Profs. Ness Shroff and Qian Chen from Ohio State University, and Profs. Tom Hou (PI) and Wenjing Lou, from Virginia Tech.
The second award is entitled NSF CNS Collaborative Research: A Multi-Layer Approach Towards Reliable Cognitive Radio Networks. The objective behind this project’s research activities is to develop technological solutions that ensure that cognitive radios operate in trustworthy manner, in spite of potential security threats. It is a collaborative project between Profs. Wenjing Lou (PI) and Tom Hou from VT, and Profs. Wade Trappe and Yanyong Zhang from Rutgers University; with VT being the lead institution for this project.