Madhav Marathe named VT Scholar of the Week

February 4, 2016February 11, 2016 laurie

The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation recognized Madhav Marathe, as its VT Scholar of the Week. Dr. Marathe, a professor of Computer Science and director of the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory at the Biocomplexity Institute, was recognized for his work in modeling complex systems to help solve tomorrow’s problems.

The citation recognizes Dr. Marathe as “An expert in interaction-based modeling who advances computing as a science and a profession. He and his colleagues simulate large, complex biological, information, social, and technical systems to build understanding that may solve pressing problems.”

Eli Tilevich showcases the relationship between music and technology

February 2, 2016February 12, 2016 laurie

Eli Tilevich, associate professor of CS and a College of Engingeering Faculty Fellow, has been pursuing a parallel career as a professional clarinetist, engaged with various orchestral and chamber music ensembles nationwide as well as in solo performances. He is currently active in Manhattan Symphonie, a NYC-based professional orchestra comprised of “musicians that are eager to play music without any limitations.” During the 2015-16 Christmas and New Years season, Tilevich joined the orchestra as co-principal clarinet to perform a series of concerts throughout China. They visited 14 cities and performed 15 concerts, which were enthusiastically received by Chinese audiences on all occasions.

Even though Tilevich’s intent was not to bring up his CS academic side during the tour, things turned out differently. One of the concerts was performed in the auditorium of the North China Electrical Power University (NCEPU). When the hosts discovered that a member of the orchestra was a tenured professor of Virginia Tech, they asked if Tilevich would be willing to meet with the university’s computer science community. The meeting took place right before the concert and involved vigorous intellectual exchange on the latest CS research and education topics in a cordial and relaxed atmosphere.

EliNCEPU EliOrchestra EliShaghaiHall

Alumni Rob Capra and Dong Li receive 2016 early career awards

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 laurie

Recent CS@VT alumni Rob Capra and Dong Li have received prestigious early career awards.

Rob Capra, an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS), received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016 to support his research for the next five years on a project titled “Knowledge Representation and Re-Use for Exploratory and Collaborative Search.” Capra graduated with his Ph.D. in computer science in 2006 under the guidance of professor Manuel Perez. Read More

Dong Li, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Merced, also received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2016. Dong’s research focuses on high performance computing (HPC), and maintains a strong relevance to computer systems. Dong completed his Ph.D. in 2011 under the guidance of professor Kirk Cameron. Read More

Capra and Li join two other recent Ph.D. graduates of the department who have received prestigious early career awards.

Rong Ge, an Associate Professor in the School of Computing at Clemson University, received the NSF CAREER Award in 2015. Her research interests include parallel and distributed systems, energy-efficient computing, high performance computing, data intensive computing, and performance analysis and modeling. Rong graduated in 2007, also under the guidance of professor Kirk Cameron. Read More

Emil Constantinescu, an assistant computational mathematician in Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division, received a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Research Program Award in 2014. His research focuses on predictive modeling of complex systems such as climate and the power grid. Emil completed his Ph.D. in 2008 under the guidance of professor Adrian Sandu. Read More

Virginia Tech’s FutureHAUS unveils new bathroom in Las Vegas

January 19, 2016February 11, 2016 laurie

Denis Gracanin, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, is co-leading the FutureHAUS bathroom project. Gracanin and professor Joseph Wheeler (Architecture) were part of the team behind the LumenHAUS, which won the International Solar Decathlon competition in Madrid, Spain, and received a 2012 National AIA Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture. They are also partnering with Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology and the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute as they pursue research in integrated technology and new materials for buildings of the future.

FutureHAUS bathroom: Faculty and students from the FutureHAUS team in Las Vegas, from left to right: Mohamed Handosa, Brandon Lingenfelser, Joseph Wheeler, Andrew Ciambrone, Denis Gracanin, Clive Vorster, Kelsey Werner, Miles Navid-Oster, Kimberly Jusczak, Thanhthao Le, and Marquis Reynolds.

Anomaly Detectors Catch Zero-Day Hackers

January 14, 2016 laurie

Danfeng (Daphne) Yao and collaborator Naren Ramakrishnan, both professors in the department of computer science , think they have devised a technique by which any program can be protected from even the slyest hacker “by observing a program’s execution traces and/or analyzing executables.” Yao explained, “In our work entitled “Unearthing Stealthy Program Attacks Buried in Extremely Long Execution Paths” presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security [CCS 2015, held in October in Denver], we constructed such a behavioral model through data mining and learning methods on function- and system-call traces.”

Osman Balci receives 2015 ACM SIGSIM Distinguished Contributions Award

December 14, 2015 laurie

Congratulations to Osman Balci on being honored with the 2015 ACM SIGSIM Distinguished Contributions Award.

The award recognizes individuals based on their overall contributions to the field of modeling and simulation, including technical innovations, publications, leadership, teaching, mentoring, and service to the community.

Osman Balci (left) and Jim Wilson (right)

Virginia Tech High School Programming Contest

December 14, 2015 laurie

The 2nd Annual Virginia Tech High School Programming Contest took place Dec 5, 2015. Over 58 teams from 15 high schools across the Commonwealth participated in this online contest. The opening note was held via WebEx videoconference, followed by a short practice and a 4-hour online contest held in the style of the ACM ICPC competition with teams of three competitors. Students were asked to solve 8 programming problems of varying difficulty – including simple problems such as how to count the vote in an election to more challenging problems involving probabilities. Teams submitted a total of 527 attempts, with 134 successful submissions. 56 out of 58 teams solved at least one problem. The top 3 teams all came from Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, solving 7, 6, and 6 problems, respectively. Congratulations go to the winning team of Mihir Patel, Jerry Huang, and Franklyn Wang, coached by Ms. Nicole Kim!

The contest was organized by Dr. Godmar Back and volunteers from the Virginia Tech ACM Programming Team, who helped with logistics, tested problems, and helped with judging. We would also like to acknowledge the numerous on-site coaches and CS teachers at high schools who supervised the teams who participated.

We thank stack@cs for support with providing prizes to contestants.

For more information, visit: https://icpc.cs.vt.edu/#/hscontest2015

Cal Ribbens named Computer Science Department Head

December 10, 2015December 14, 2015 laurie

Cal Ribbens, professor and associate head of the department of computer science has been named as the new head of the department. His new position officially begins December 10.

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Ribbens has been a member of the computer science department since 1987. He was named associate head for the department in 2003 and associate head for undergraduate studies in 2008. His research has focused on advancing high-performance computing and its applications for computational science and engineering, with the goal of making high-performance computing an effective tool for solving important scientific and engineering problems.

Richard C. Benson, dean of the College of Engineering who holds the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Chair, said Ribbens emerged from a very strong field of candidates. “Cal is very well known to this department, and many other corners of the university, for his long and exemplary service as an associate head for the department,” Benson said. “I am grateful to the search committee for its great work, and especially grateful to the department heads who Cal succeeds — Dennis Kafura and Barbara Ryder. I’ve watched the department thrive under their leadership and know that it is in excellent hands moving forward.”

Ribbens has taught 19 different courses at Virginia Tech, including all levels of core computer sciences courses, an honors course and several advanced topics courses. He chaired 17 master’s committees and eight Ph.D. committees, and served on dozens of others. As associate head for undergraduate studies, he had a lead role in faculty teaching assignments and course scheduling, and graduate teaching assistant selection and assignment. Ribbens also supervised the academic advising staff and lead curriculum revisions and assessments.

“I am looking forward to this opportunity to lead a strong and growing department,” Ribbens said. “This is a very exciting time to be in computer science. Our students and faculty are working on challenging problems drawn from a remarkably wide array of application areas, and affecting virtually every aspect of life.”

Ribbens completed his undergraduate work in mathematics at Calvin College. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from Purdue University. He has been widely published in journals, including the Journal of Parallel & Distributed Computing, the Journal of Computational Science, and ACM Transactions On Mathematical Software.

Ribbens has served on more than 20 conference program committees and as general chair of the 17^th High Performance Computing Symposium, and is founding director of the Laboratory for Scientific Computing and Applications. He played a major role in the System X supercomputer project.

As associate head, Ribbens helped guide the department through considerable change, including joining a new college and the hiring of more than 20 faculty members.

“It is an exciting time for Virginia Tech, the College of Engineering, and the Department of Computer Science, as we continue to grow in size, impact, and quality,” Ribbens said.

Dr. Ribbens

SEEC 4th Semi-Annual Symposium

December 8, 2015 laurie

SEEC Symposium

Research in Democratizing Parallel and Distributed Computing

In keeping with the goal of the SEEC Center to democratize parallel and distributed computing, staff and students will present overviews of their research in the fourth semi-annual SEEC Research Symposium to be held January 15, 2016 in 3100 Torgersen Hall.

This is an all day workshop. Any one is welcome to attend the workshop in its entirety, or individual research presentations according to interest by individualized interest in the research presented. An agenda will be added to seec.cs.vt.edu, prior to the workshop.

The SEEC Center, established July 2014, is an interdisciplinary and integrative center that spans 20 different departments and institutes across Virginia Tech. The center “SEECs” to combine the strengths of research, education, and infrastructure at Virginia Tech, along with social, business, and research opportunities in society to leverage the power of computers for the good of mankind.

For more information concerning the SEEC Center, see seec.cs.vt.edu or, if you would like to be notified when the agenda is released, please email Missy Thomas @ mdthoms@vt.edu.

We look forward to your attendance,

SEEC Faculty/Staff

Dissertation Defenses

December 8, 2015December 15, 2015 laurie

Dr. Daphne Yao’s doctoral student Hao Zhang successfully defended his dissertation on October 8, 2015. Hao’s research lies in the area of network security, and more specifically, traffic dependence analysis for network anomaly detection. His thesis work detects stealthy malware activities through analyzing causal relations among network requests. Applications of this analysis include the detection of data exfiltration, bot and spyware activities. Tools developed in Hao’s thesis research provide rich contextual and structural information associated with network events. They can be used by security analysts to help reason about the security alerts. He and Dr. Yao have a pending continuous-in-part (CIP) patent on this anomaly detection technology. Hao Zhang will join the database security team at Oracle, Redwood Shores CA, starting from January 2016.