Daphne Yao receives $1.2 million Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant

May 22, 2017August 25, 2017 laurie

Daphne Yao, an associate professor of computer science, is the principle investigator on a new three-year $1.2 million Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant, title “Data-driven Vulnerability Repair in Programs with a Cloud Analytics Architecture for Practical Deployment.” Na Meng, computer science assistant professor, and Trent Jaeger, computer science professor at Penn State University, are co-principle investigators on the grant. Yao is also the Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 and L-3 Fellow.

Abstract:

The proposed effort is toward a secure software ecosystem that enables the automatic attack detection, vulnerability localization, code repair against attacks including stealthy exploits. In this project, we will focus on vulnerability location and code repair that leverage and build upon existing security detection solutions, i.e., detection-guided localization and repair. In preparation for near-term deployment, we will also develop a new cloud data analytics framework that minimizes the client-side effort and substantially enhances the transparency and usability of data-driven security tools.

Clifford Shaffer receives XCaliber Award

April 24, 2017 laurie

Clifford Shaffer, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering, has received the university’s 2017 XCaliber Award.

Established in 1996 by the Office of the Provost, the XCaliber Award is presented annually by Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies to recognize individual faculty members or teams of faculty and staff who integrate technology in teaching and learning. The award celebrates innovative, student-centered approaches.

Shaffer received the award for his development of the computer science course, CS3114 Data Structures and Algorithms.

This course plays a central role into the curriculum of the computer science program and is essential for learning fundamental programming skills. The course is also notorious for its exceptional difficulty, resulting in an unusually high drop rate, which was Shaffer’s inspiration for innovative pedagogy.

Assistant Professor Kurt Luther receives National Science Foundation CAREER award

March 21, 2017March 21, 2017 laurie

Assistant professor of computer science Kurt Luther has been recognized by the National Science Foundation with a Faculty Early Career Development Award to study and improve the capabilities of crowdsourced investigations. The issue is of particular importance in an era where speed can sometimes best factual and accurate reporting of news. Luther will use an innovative expert-led crowdsourcing approach to collect data using a platform called CrowdSleuth. The software will assist collaboration between crowds and experts, such as journalists, historians, and law enforcement, as they attempt to discover new information and verify details of investigations.

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Daphne Yao running for office!

February 9, 2017 laurie

Dr. Danfeng Yao, associate professor in computer science and Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow, will run for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGSAC secretary/treasurer officer position this spring. SIGSAC is the ACM’s society on security, audit and control. “I feel quite excited about the possibility of serving the community”, Dr. Yao said. Her candidate statement is below.

ACM SIGSAC is a strong, successful, and inclusive organization. I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to serve this large international community that makes my 15-year academic life interesting and fulfilling. Besides the duties of managing SIGSAC finances and correspondences, the secretary/treasurer officer will be a member of the executive committee and participate in decisions that improve SIGSAC’s ability to support its members. Several challenges that I hope to help address include encouraging constructiveness in paper reviews, supporting women in security, and facilitating international exchanges. From serving on numerous PCs I found that security paper reviews tend to be overly negative and sometimes inconsistent, leaving junior researchers confused and discouraged. This is partly due to the critical nature of security and the breadth of the field. However, I believe that constructive criticisms foster our scientific community without reducing its competitiveness. I am also committed to increasing women’s participation in security. Diverse groups with the capacity of anticipating and working with alternative viewpoints are more innovative. The immense task of securing cyberspace demands a diverse and sustainable workforce. Through organizing workshops and exchange programs, I will help create opportunities to broaden the participation of female security professionals around the world.

Naren Ramakrishnan and colleagues explore big data analytics to plan for smart communities of the future

February 8, 2017 laurie

We already have smartphones, smart clothing, and smart appliances, but emerging “smart cities” are still a concept of our imagined future. A Virginia Tech team wants those smart cities to feature zero energy, zero outage, and zero congestion. Their tools: big data and interdisciplinary technology.

Walid Saad, the Stephen O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow and assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering; Harpreet Dhillon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering and director of the Discovery Analytics Center in the Department of Computer Science, are leading a three-year, $1.4 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop a new planning framework for smart, connected, and sustainable communities.

Danfeng Yao recognized as the VT Scholar of the Week

February 6, 2017 laurie

Dr. Danfeng Yao, associate professor in computer science and Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow, is being recognized as the Scholar of the Week by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Kurt Luther Honored with NSF CAREER Award

February 3, 2017August 25, 2017 laurie

Dr. Kurt Luther, assistant professor of computer science, has been awarded an NSF CAREER award for his project entitled “Transforming Investigative Science and Practice with Expert‐Led Crowdsourcing.” The prestigious NSF CAREER award recognizes creative and high-impact research proposals submitted by early-career faculty members. Dr. Luther’s project will study how best to combine experts and crowds to improve the effectiveness, ethics, and efficiency of investigations, with applications in domains such as history, journalism, and national security.

Dr. Ed Fox named an IEEE Fellow

January 9, 2017 laurie

Dr. Edward Fox, professor of computer science, has been named an IEEE Fellow for leadership in digital libraries and information retrieval.

The IEEE Fellow grade is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one-percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Dr. Fox directs the Digital Library Research Laboratory and the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations. He is known for extraordinary contributions to technology-enriched learning activities in the classroom. When asked what this honor means to him, Dr. Fox said, “It is always an honor to be recognized in such a way and I’m grateful for all the people who have worked with me over the years.”

Fox has held multiple leadership positions in IEEE. He is a member of the IEEE Thesaurus Editorial Board and a member of the Executive Committee of the Technical Committee on Digital Libraries; he served as chair of TCDL from 2004 to 2008. He has been an IEEE Senior Member since 2004. He was on the editorial board of IEEE Multimedia from 1997-2003. Fox was General Chair for the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in 2001, and has served on the JCDL steering committee since 2003, including as chair from 2010 to 2014. Fox also has served on the program committee of many IEEE conferences and workshops.

Fox has been (co)PI on over 123 funded projects. He has co-authored and/or edited 18 books, and (co)authored 120 journal/magazine articles, 49 book chapters, and 211 refereed conference/workshop papers. These are in areas including digital libraries, information storage and retrieval, machine learning/AI, computational linguistics (NLP), hypertext/hypermedia/multimedia, computing education, and electronic publishing. His work has been cited more than 14940 times and his h-index is 56 according to Google Scholar. Fox has graduated more than 50 masters and Ph.D. students.

Dr. Ed Fox holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University, and a B.S. from M.I.T. He joined the Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science in 1983.

The IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its 400,000 plus members in 160 countries, the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed more than 1300 active industry standards. The association also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 1700 international technical conferences each year. If you would like to learn more about IEEE or the IEEE Fellow Program, please visit www.ieee.org.

Successful corporate partnerships provide hands on learning experiences for CS students

December 16, 2016 laurie

Professor Eli Tilevich provided a great opportunity for students in his CS 4704 capstone course this fall. Dr. Tilevich partnered with The MITRE Corporation, a member company of the department’s Computer Science Resources Consortium (CSRC) program. The MITRE Corporation sponsored the course this fall and created hands-on learning experiences for students to work with real clients. The MITRE Corporation managers met and one-on-one with students during the semester. The results of the students’ hard work were displayed to company representatives on December 14.

Alexander DeRieux, Christie Goddard, Andrew Heatwole, David Pickle, Will Schrag presented on ERIS (Emergency Responder Information System)

Alex Martin, Anthony DiMarco, Riley Babcock, Victor Weiss presented onSkyBook (Aircraft Specification Aggregator)

Arman Bahraini, Zhizheng Chen, Taiwen Jin, Steffen Moseley, Sungha Song presented on GroupSafe (Group Location Safety System)

A summary of each team’s work is below:

ERIS (Emergency Responder Information System)

In times of crisis, effective communication and informed decision making can mean the difference between life and death. Modern-day first responder communication systems rely heavily on dispatch to control the flow of information among units. While this system has its merits, data flow to on the ground personnel is somewhat restricted to the speed that dispatch can process and disseminate information. In order to decrease response time, dispatch filters out much of the information they receive; some of which could actually be useful to responders. This tradeoff can lead to dangerous situations for firemen, police officers, and EMTs. ERIS aims to ease communication and data collection by creating a system to provide fast and detailed information sharing among first responders. ERIS application development was guided by the standard Android development paradigm, and utilized various APIs and SDKs to communicate with peripheral devices and remote services. The ERIS application provides users (responders) with relevant location and status information for incidents and other responders, and interacts with mobile phones and wearable computing devices (Recon Jet glasses, Motorola smartwatches, and Myo armbands) to facilitate collection and display of information.

SkyBook (Aircraft Specification Aggregator)

This project involves the aggregating, storing, and displaying of data on various types of commercial aircraft. The primary goal is to collect this data from multiple sources and make it accessible by two means: an intuitive web application and a RESTful API endpoint. This has been accomplished by utilizing a Python web-scraping library called Beautiful Soup to gather data from official manufacturer websites (Boeing, Airbus, etc) in addition to third-party sources like Aircraft Bluebook and storing that data in a SQLite database. A flexible Web API was created with use of the Django REST framework. Through making aircraft data available via these two highly useful mediums, this project resulted in a useful tool for the originally targeted users in addition to opening the door for a diverse variety of unplanned potential use cases.

GroupSafe (Group Location Safety System)

GroupSafe is an application designed to provide connectivity between all the members in a group at all times in order to ensure everyone’s safety. The goal of the application is to leverage current technologies available in modern smartphones to share and display locations on a map in real time. Users are able to create groups with unique names and passwords. Each group member shares his or her location and can chat with other members since websockets are utilized to provide a low overhead location and messaging system. In addition, the creator/host of the group can set up a radius which he/she expects everyone to be within at all time. If any member of the group is to wander past the radius set by the host, the application will send an alert to everyone in the group so they can react accordingly. For easy direct communication the app provides click to call or text. Google Maps is embedded in the app to show user locations, so in the event where a member does not respond to group chat, call, or text, everyone in the group will still be able to find the member by looking at the map. While the application was developed with college students and young adults as the primary clients in mind, other user bases may also find the app useful.

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Eli Tilevich awarded grant for computational exploration of music performance and composition

December 12, 2016December 13, 2016 laurie

Eli Tilevich, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Charles Nichols in the School of Performing Arts have received a $10,000 grant from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) to create a Research Experiences for Undergraduates program that will focus on computational exploration of music performance and composition.

The goal of the program is to introduce undergraduates, with interests and background in both computing and music, in multidisciplinary research that creates computational and artistic approaches for exploring musical scores, with possible applications for automated performance guidance and advanced musical analysis.

In addition to serving as a Computer Science faculty, Tilevich is also pursuing a parallel career as a professional clarinetist, engaged with various orchestral and chamber music ensembles nationwide as well as in solo performances. Influenced by his music background and experiences, he has recently become interested in music informatics, applying computational approaches to music. The ideas that influenced this work stemmed from his recent work with students Galina Belolipetski and Arman Bahraini.