How would a 3-D printer work in the microgravity of suborbital space after surviving a jarring ride 100 miles above the earth? A group of Virginia Tech College of Engineering students answered that after a launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. The use of a 3-D printer in space is not new. A 3-D printer is on the International Space Station. But this is the first time such a printer was used on an unmanned rocket during flight, said Virginia Tech RockSat-X team leader Sebastian Welsh of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and senior in the department of computer science.
Changhee Jung and Dongyoon Lee, assistant professors in computer science, received a NSF award for a project titled “Compiler and Architectural Techniques for Soft Error Resilience”. Professor Jung is the principal investigator and Professor Lee will serve as co-principal investigator.Read the full abstract below or click here:
Due to technology scaling, electronic circuits are becoming more susceptible to radiation-induced soft errors also known as transient faults. Soft errors may lead to application crash or even worse, silent data corruptions (SDC) that are not caught by the error detection logic but may cause the application to produce incorrect output. Another serious problem is the rise of detected unrecoverable errors (DUE) that often directly impact the reliability of any computer applications. The challenge is to achieve soft error resilience in a way that does not significantly increase the performance overhead, power consumption, and complexity of underlying hardware. To this end, this project designs and develops low-cost hardware/software cooperative techniques for soft error resilience. The resulting artifacts and technologies are expected to contribute to the nation’s competitiveness by addressing the challenge of building reliable computing systems in the presence of soft errors.
This research involves three intermediate research goals: design novel microarchitecture, that dynamically verifies the correctness of the processor core execution based on sensor-based soft error detection, to achieve soft error resilience at low cost; design a compiler that forms verifiable and recoverable regions in the presence of soft errors and provides relevant program analysis techniques; and design and develop compiler optimization and microarchitectural techniques that significantly reduce the verification overhead. This project will create tools and technologies for realization of soft error resilient computing systems, contributing fundamentally to the fault tolerance research community. Adoption of the resulting compiler and microarchitectural techniques will impact a broad range of any disciplines that need correct computation results thus requiring reliable computing systems, covering from mobile devices to high-performance large-scale computing systems. Consequently, use of the resulting technologies will make the execution of current and emerging applications much more reliable, and therefore directly affect our way of life.
Dr. Ing-Ray Chen, NCR Campus CS Program Director and Professor of Computer Science received the 2015 IEEE Communications Society William R. Bennett Prize in the Field of Communications Networking. This award was presented at IEEE 2015 International Conference on Communications in London, UK, during the Awards Ceremony and Luncheon on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 and comes with a plaque and a honorarium of $1,000. Dr. Chen worked together with his PhD graduates, Dr. Fenye Bao and Dr. Jin-Hee Cho, and his former postdoc, Dr. MoonJeong Chang.
Prof. Chen won the award with his paper entitled, ‘Hierarchical Trust Management for Wireless Sensor Networks and its Applications to Trust-Based Routing and Intrusion Detection. Every year the IEEE Communications Society selects an original paper published in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking or the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management in the previous 3 calendar years as the winner for this award on the basis of quality, originality, utility, timeliness, and clarity of presentation.
According to Dr. Chen, the paper advances the basic knowledge on defending selfish and malicious nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The methodology proposed in this paper can be applied to a wide range of WSN applications. Read More Here
Rising Virginia Tech sophomore Marcus Wanner was a home-schooled 15-year-old when he solved an enigmatic series of cryptographic mindbenders that landed him in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Now he’s a computer science major who is applying his experience in cryptography and computer security to genomic research. Read Full Story
Aditya Prakash, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, received a Facebook Faculty Gift. This gift is one of 10 such awards given at this time from the Facebook Faculty Program. According to Aditya, “The award will support novel information diffusion related research focusing on understanding, predicting and countering virality on social-media websites and platforms. For example, some of the questions we will be studying include: What content could go viral? How much and when? Given a context, how to identify and counter negative viral campaigns?”
Professor Kurt Luther’s National Archives grant proposal was accepted. The project is through the NHPRC’s “Literacy and Engagement with Historical Records” program. Paul Quigley (History) is the PI. Kurt Luther (Computer Science) is Co-PI, along with David Hicks (Education).
The project titled “Mapping the Fourth of July in the American Civil War Era: A Crowdsourced Digital Archive” will use a variety of primary sources to build a website through which college and high school students, Civil War enthusiasts, and the general public can analyze and discuss how different regions celebrated the Fourth of July during the Civil War.
Computer Science graduate student Zheng (Jason) Song won 2nd place in the ACM Student Research Competition at MobileSoft 2015. Jason’s project was entitled: “Programming Support for Seamless Resource Sharing across Heterogeneous Mobile Devices.” The MobileSoft conference (ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems) took place May 16-17 in Florence, Italy. The event was co-hosted by ICSE, http://mobilesoftconf.org/2015/. Professor Eli Tilevich is Jason’s advisor.
Ali R. Butt, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, has received an IBM Faculty Award.
A crucial challenge for cloud service providers and their customers is how to control the escalating data size of their service management, and implicitly its costs, in order to remain profitable in the race for the cloud market. Dr. Ali Butt and his team will conduct research and analysis to look at this timely topic with funds awarded from IBM.
In this project, the team will analyze the design of the monitoring subsystem provided by open source cloud solutions, such as OpenStack. Specifically, they will analyze how OpenStack collects the monitoring data. By assessing the characteristics of the collected data, they aim to not only pinpoint the limitations of the current approaches but also suggest more effective alternate solutions. Furthermore, they will design a framework for cloud service providers to scale their revenue management systems in a cost-aware manner.
IBM is a globally integrated technology and consulting company. Innovation is at the core of IBM’s strategy. The company develops and sells software and systems hardware and a broad range of infrastructure, cloud and consulting services.
Jessie S. Eaves (pictured above) retired from her position in December 2014 after 28 years of service. She served as receptionist and fiscal technician for the Department of Computer Science. Most recently, Jessie received the university’s 2015 Staff Career Achievement Award. Some of her many contributions to the department and university include organizing speaker events and serving on university search committees. Her former colleagues describe her as a generous and warm individual who built strong relationships with students and colleagues across campus. Dr. Barbara G. Ryder, CS department chair, said, “Jesse is a gregarious, welcoming individual who most recently has been the “face of the department” in the McBryde CS advising office. Jesse had personal connections with CS students and faculty, and also has been an amazing and effective volunteer in the community. We have been lucky to have such an extraordinary person in our department.”
Ginger Clayton Long (pictured above) will retire on September 1, 2015 after 30 years of service to Virginia Tech. She spent 14 of those 30 years in the Department of Computer Science. Her path leading to the department includes positions in the Library, Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Mathematics (ICAM), and Sponsored Programs. During this time, Ginger built networks and gained experience and new skills that made her an ideal candidate for the Business Manager position. In her current role, she oversees facilities in four locations and all financial management areas in the department. When asked what she enjoys most about her career her response is “bringing order and simplifying processes”. Ginger is a solutions driven individual who takes initiative to deliver quality results. This ingenuity helped strengthen the department’s fiscal status.
Some of her many accomplishments include re-structuring Commonwealth Technology Research Fund (CTRF) Hires which resulted in increased profit margins. Another monumental assignment she oversaw was the department’s move to the Corporate Research Center. Ginger spent long hours over the course of a year working with administrators and construction teams to ensure a smooth logistical transition. She also managed the renovation of the first floor space in McBryde Hall that is now the Undergraduate Learning Center (ULC). Dr. Barbara G. Ryder, CS department chair, said, “Ginger has been a wonderful steward of CS finances during some challenging times. She has an amazing ability to understand and manipulate the low-level details of complex financial arrangements — and Ginger has always gone the extra mile in working at her job. We have been fortunate to have such a tremendous contributor in our department.”
Ginger looks forward to being spontaneous and not having a schedule. As a Virginia Tech alumna, Ginger plans to stay connected to the university and department through personal relationships with colleagues across campus.
Susie Marion
Susan Marion (pictured above) will retire from the Department of Computer Science on June 30, 2015 after eight years of service. In her role Susie supports Professor Ed Fox. She serves as an essential link that connects Dr. Fox with his students, the department and colleagues across campus. Her work in assisting many graduate students and visitors during her time here has been valuable. She is very happy to advise students on department processes and life issues. Dr. Fox said, “Susie has played the mother role to many graduate students who have young families”. She enjoys this role and relies on her own life experience as a mother of two children to help others.
Both Susie and Dr. Fox share the same sentiment for each other and describe one another as “incredibly caring”. One of her accomplishments includes the role she plays in keeping the Digital Library Research Lab (DLRL) in top condition for future students. Her impact and contributions to computer science students and colleagues will be missed. Dr. Barbara G. Ryder, CS department chair, said, “Susie has provided outstanding support to the Digital Library group — faculty, visitors and students. We very much appreciate her excellence service to our department.”
