Dr. Nicholas Polys was invited to the White House Maker Faire in summer 2014. Dr. Polys presented his research on the NIH 3D Print Exchange. Dr. Polys served as general Chair of the Web3D during the SIGGRAPH 2014 conference. He was also part of a team that demonstrated Web3D tools and techniques at that conference. More information can be found at www.web3d.org/news-story/web3d-consortium-president-invited-white-house and 3dprint.nih.gov.
Department of Computer Science Graduate, Dr. Emil Constantinescu received a highly selective Early Carreer Award from DOE. Dr. Constantinescu was one of only 35 researchers selected from over 700 applicants. His research focuses on predictive modeling of complex systems, such as climate and the power grid. To learn more about this ward, please visit http://www.mcs.anl.gov/articles/constantinescu-receives-early-career-research-program-award
Dr. Dennis Kafura was named one of the eight Virginia Tech Pathways Faculty Scholars in June 2014. He will be collaborating with a group of faculty from various departments, to formulate new courses that aim to redefine general education at VT. In the Fall 2014, Dr. Kafura’s is teaching a new computational thinking course that is geared to non-science, non-engineering VT students.
On June 2014, the VT BOV approved three promotions in the Department of Computer Science. Dr. Daphne Yao was promoted to tenured Associate Professor. Dr. Chris North was promoted to Full Professor; and Dr. Wenjing Lou was promoted to Full Professor.
VTIP has filed a patent on a technology developed by Dr. Daphne Yao, as part of her NSF CAREER Award research. Dr. Daphne Yao presented a paper about this technology, entitled “Detection of Stealthy Malware Activities with Traffic Causality and Scalable Triggering Relation Discovery” this past June, in Japan. The paper was written in collaboration with Dr. Naren Ramamkrishnan and CS graduate student Han Zhang. A VT News article about this can be found here: https://www.eng.vt.edu/news/new-proactive-approach-unveiled-detect-malicious-software-networked-computers-and-data
Dr. Naren Ramamkrishnan, his collaborators, and students working in the DAC IARPA EMBERS project were featured in a recent news article on the Wall Street Journal. The article can be found here: http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-intelligence-community-explores-more-rigorous-ways-to-forecast-events-1409937859
Dr. Kirk Cameron and his ICAT collaborators were mentioned in an article in The Washington Post, for their sculpture depicting various parallel computing algorithms. The sculpture will be displayed at this year’s SIGGRAPH. A smaller version is on the display at the Moss Center gallery, where visitors can experiment with it. The full article can be read online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/an-inventor-takes-the-helm-at-virginia-tech/2014/05/25/4de12c68-e0e9-11e3-8dcc-d6b7fede081a_story.html
Dr. Naren Ramakrishnan was featured in the Roanoke Times front page article on May 23, 2014. The article highlighted the research conducted in the Discovery Analytics Center (DAC), of which Dr. Ramakrishnan is the Director. In particular, it discusses the IARPA-funded EMBERS project. The full article can be read online at: http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/virginia-tech-team-s-computer-program-aims-to-read-the/article_5339830e-e224-11e3-bcc6-001a4bcf6878.html
Dr. Kirk Cameron was awarded a MD Research Faculty Fellowship. This fellowship is a recognition of Dr. Cameron’s research in green computing, and is an honor, not only for Dr. Cameron, but for the CS Department.
Dr. Stephen H. Edwards was featured in the Spring 2014 issue of the VT Magazine. The article focuses on Dr. Edwards’ prominent role in creating educational tools for students. It discusses his involvement in creating “the Web-based Center for Automated Testing, or Web-CAT, a flexible, tailorable, Web-based automated grading system that has been adopted by 75 institutions nationwide and is the most widely used open-source grading tool of its kind in the world.” The online version of the article is available at http://www.vtmag.vt.edu/spring14/professor-profiles.html#edwards.