The Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation recognizes Anil Kumar Vullikanti, an assistant professor of computer science in the College of Engineering and the Biocomplexity Institute, who develops methods to forecast significant societal events, such as disease outbreaks.
He is a member of the Biocomplexity Institute’s Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory, which integrates informatics, analytics, and large complex system modeling across diverse domains to build synthetic information tools for real-world, stakeholder-defined problems.
Vullikanti studies dynamical systems, wireless networks, social networks, computation epidemiology, and the modeling, simulation, and analysis of socio-technical systems.
There is a lot of conversation on campus this spring about “Destination Areas,” a term that refers to ambitious new areas of growth in research and education at Virginia Tech. You can learn much more about this discussion at the “Beyond Boundaries” site, which summarizes the bold challenge our new President and Provost has given us—to define what an internationally-recognized, global land-grant institution like Virginia Tech should look like in 2047. The specifics of the Destination Areas are still emerging. However, it is clear that computer science can and will play a pivotal role in all of them. For example, a central Destination Area is in “Data and Decision Sciences.” Our research and teaching emphasis in big data analytics allows us to play a leadership role in the definition of this destination area. Other destination areas have working titles such as “Intelligent Infrastructure and Human-Centered Communities” and “Integrated Security,” so it is not difficult to make the case that CS is part of the discussion!
While we look forward to helping make Virginia Tech an even more attractive destination for new students and faculty, we also think about another kind of destination at this time of year, namely the next destination for our graduates. It is always deeply gratifying to see the excitement of our soon-to-be alumni as they make plans for their next destination. We will award over 200 BS degrees this year, along with over 30 M.S. and about 20 Ph.D. degrees. For some, the next destination will be graduate school, military service, or a faculty position. For others it will mean joining a spectacularly wide array of companies or agencies, from small start-ups in Blacksburg or Austin or San Francisco, to large contractors in Richmond or Charlotte or Arlington, to multinational companies in New York City or Seattle or Mountain View. For all of our alumni, new and old, we are glad you decided to make CS@VT your destination for a few years, and we hope that decision has prepared you well for all your subsequent destinations!
As part of an effort to encourage more young women to choose careers in technology, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and the Virginia/DC Affiliate Award for Aspirations in Computing program recognized 25 high school women for their accomplishments and aspirations in computing and technology. The award event was held at the Microsoft facility in Reston, Virginia, and featured a keynote talk by Ms. Natalie Singh, Director of Microsoft Enterprise Services Sales for the US Department of Defense. The event was co-chaired by Dr. Kelly Shaw, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Richmond, and Ms. Libby G. Bradford, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing is a program of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, a coalition of over 450 universities, corporations and organizations dedicated to increasing the meaningful participation of women in computing. The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing was created to acknowledge the computing aspirations of young women, introduce them to leadership opportunities in the field, and generate visibility for women’s participation in computing-related pursuits. Award-winners have been selected for their outstanding aptitude and interest in computing and desire to pursue computing-related studies. The NCWIT Aspirations in Computing program is sponsored nationally by AT&T, Bank of America, Bloomberg and Microsoft with additional support from Google, Intel, Motorola Solutions Foundation and Northrop Grumman.
“It is a joy to recognize the computing and technical accomplishments of these outstanding young women from Virginia and the District of Columbia. The knowledge, skills, and experiences they have already acquired are impressive as is their desire to share their passion for computing with other students and the community. They are inspirational,” said Dr. Kelly Shaw, VA/DC co-chair. In the Virginia/DC Affiliate’s five-year history, 174 students have been recognized.
Chinell Callwood, a teacher at Heritage High School Governor’s STEM Academy in Newport News, received the 2016 Outstanding Educator award from the affiliate.
Student winners are:
First Name
Last Name
School
Kathleen
Ascrizzi
Langley High School
Juliana
Bain
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Zainab
Balogun
Albemarle High School (Virginia)
Julia
Burks
Battlefield High School
Emilia
Cabrera
Woodson High School
Macallan
Cruff
New Horizons Governor’s School
Quiana
Dang
Marshall High School (Falls Church VA)
Rupali
Dhumne
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Celine
Estrada
John Champe High School
Madeline
Feigles
Stone Bridge School
Kiran
Girish
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Sydney
Hatton
William Monroe High School
Kavya
Kopparapu
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Jessica
Lu
Deep Run High School
Elizabeth
McPherson
Colonial Forge High School
Sydney
Nixon
West Potomac High School
Neejole
Patel
Briar Woods High School
Paige
Rutherford
Deep Run High School
Sophie
Salomon
Western Albemarle High School
Aditi
Takle
South Lakes High School
Sasha
Volodin
Washington-Lee High School
Michele
Wang
Oakton High School
Yunyun
Wang
Hidden Valley High School
Corinne
Williams
Maret School
Emily
Xu
Manassas Park High School
Student runners-up are:
Mahnoor
Asad
South Lakes High School
Anusha
Basana
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Crystal
Cheung
McLean High School
Katherine
Cinnamon
Forest Park High School
Henrietta
Clarke
St Catherines School
Trishina
Crawley
Appomattox Regional Governor’s School
Keenah
Cuaycong
Stone Bridge High School
Deepshika
Dhanasekar
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Namita
Dongre
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Phaith
Dunlap-Tunnage
Heritage High School (Newport News, VA)
Isabelle
Gallagher
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Elizabeth
Hu
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Navya
Kalale
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Alexandra
Kemper
Jamestown High School
Anusha
Khan
Freedom High School (South Riding, VA)
Satvika
Kumar
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Jamie
Lee
Patriot High School
Sieun
Lee
Marshall High School (Falls Church VA)
Tian
Low
Woodbridge High School
Alexis
Marra
Jefferson Forest High School
Jamie Marie
Pangilinan
Battlefield High School
Hojung
Park
Albemarle High School (Virginia)
Britney
Phan
Oakton High School
Iram
Sharieff
Gar-field High School
Laura
Sizemore
Lake Braddock Secondary
Hannah
Snesil
Deep Run High School
Lauryn
Tideo
Granby High School
Michelle
Wu
Princess Anne High School
Regina
Yap
Langley High School
The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing offers both national and local affiliate competitions to generate support and visibility for women’s participation in communities nationwide. The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) works to correct the imbalance of gender in technology and computing because gender diversity positively correlates with a larger workforce, better innovation, and increased business performance.
The “Aspirations in Computing Awards” event and the gifts received by the winners this year were funded by Bank of America, Eastman Chemical, Fidelity, NetApp, Northrop Grumman, SWIFT, The Washington Post and Virginia Tech. Additional support was provided by Accenture, BEL Network Integration & Support, Deloitte, Level 3 Communications, and Microsoft. Winners receive prizes from multiple companies and two trophies: one for the winner and one to be displayed at her high school.
For more information on the Aspirations program please visit http://www.aspirations.org
Standing: Vanessa Barlow (National Winner from Virginia), Sydney Hatton, Kavya Kopparapu, Sydney Nixon, Corrine Williams, Elizabeth McPherson, Madeline Feigles, Aditi Takle, Sasha Volodin, Jessica Lu Seated: Celine Estrada, Sophie Salomon, Michele Wang, Quiana Dang, Rupali Dhumne, Emily Xu, Zainab Ayoade Balogun
The Association for Women in Computing (AWC) hosted the 18th Annual Women in Computing Day on Friday, April 1st. About 80 middle school girls from five area schools attended. This year, Abigail Bartolome and Angel Pak co-chaired the event. Marina Kiseleva (AWC chapter president), Jisu Park (AWC chapter vice president), and Deborah Tatar (AWC faculty advisor) were also instrumental in making the event successful. A special thanks is due to our friends from IBM who offered their time, to professor Wu Feng who led one of the demonstrations, and to all the graduate and undergraduate student volunteers.
The 25th anniversary of the Civil War Weekend will be held at The Inn at Virginia Tech the weekend of March 18. Kurt Luther, an assistant professor in computer science, will offer tips for solving photographic mysteries. One example he likes to use is an iconic poster used to recruit African American soldiers into the Union Army. Investigations by a series of Civil War historians led to the discovery that the image was based not on the artist’s imagination, as had been assumed for nearly 150 years, but on an actual photo. Further research helped debunk a version of the photo that had been altered to misrepresent the recruits as Confederate soldiers.
Luther’s own contribution was in scrutinizing both biographical details and visual cues – a cap insignia, a set of whiskers, a single row of buttons – to identify the white officer pictured. This finding, he hopes, will help him identify the other soldiers in the photo. “The discovery process is one of the great joys of photo sleuthing,” said Luther, who supplements his more traditional detective work with crowdsourcing techniques and facial recognition software. “It allows us to restore meaning to images and personal histories that would otherwise remain forgotten.”
Dr. Kirk Cameron and a group of CS students are heading to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas this month. SeeMore, an animatronic sculpture designed by sculptor Sam Blanchard and computer scientist Kirk Cameron to illustrate the concept of parallel computing, will be featured at the trade show March 13-16. The name is a reference to supercomputing pioneer Seymour Cray.SeeMore is designed to simultaneously educate and inspire computational thinking, SeeMore is part kinetic sculpture and part giant parallel computer. Built with 256 single-board computers, called Raspberry Pis, the living sculpture physically demonstrates conceptual elements of computer science, showing how a parallel computer carries out many calculations simultaneously. As a computation propagates and evolves across the surface of the form, it visually represents the architecture modern supercomputers use, helping people understand the abstract concepts involved. Read more about Virginia Tech at South by Southwest Here
SeeMore was also one of the centerpieces of the 2015 World Maker Faire in New York City. Read More
Kirk Cameron, Seemore, Sam Blanchard (SOVA), and Ebon Upton (Founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi Foundation).
Jin-Hee Cho has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers. The 105 winners will receive their awards at a Washington, DC ceremony this spring. Jin-Hee received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Virginia Tech, under the advising of Ing-Ray Chen.
Dr. Cho is currently a computer scientist at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland. Her research interests include network security, trust and risk management, cognitive modeling, and network science. She received the best paper awards in IEEE TrustCom09 and BRIMS13. She is a recipient of the 2015 IEEE Communications Society William R. Bennett Prize in the field of Communications Networking. She is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of ACM.
Dr. Cho is looking to extend her research in two potential directions: (1) trust to enhance autonomy in tactical environments; and (2) trust to facilitate opinion spreading in distributed environments. First, autonomy in tactical networks is a critical aspect for a distributed system to be highly reconfigurable, agile, and scalable in the presence of hostile entities. Although the role of trust in enhancing autonomy has been discussed in other domains such as bioethics, social psychology, and sociology, it has not been fully addressed in tactical networks whose characteristics introduce many difficult design challenges including high dynamicity, hostility, tempo, and uncertainty. Dr. Cho’s trust research can be extended to provide solutions for autonomous systems in the Army settings that consider heterogeneous entities including both humans and machines. Second, as social network/media services (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) become more popular than ever, social network analysis that seeks to infer trust relationships (e.g., by investigating patterns in relationships, interactions, and opinion flows) can provide crucial insights, which can be used to predict and control critical aspects of decision-making processes. These two areas can be smoothly extended from Dr. Cho’s current research efforts, which are also well aligned with ARL and DoD mission areas.
Virginia Tech Center for Autism Research experts will host a one-day seminar March 4 in Falls Church, Virginia, for scientists, professionals, educators, students, and health-care providers in the field of autism, and individuals with autism and/or their family members to learn about new insights in the disorder that affects more than 3 million Americans.
This marks the second time that Virginia Tech has hosted a public seminar in the National Capital Region focusing on novel autism research and other information about its autism center. The first seminar was held in 2014, the same year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released startling new data on the growing prevalence of autism: That one in 68 children has some form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a 123 percent increase during the last decade.
Virginia Tech researchers will provide additional insight into new research involving autism.
Virginia Tech is one of five universities from across the nation to receive an academic research grant from Microsoft to explore the potential uses of its HoloLens devices for advancing research in the area of mixed reality and the possibilities of holographic computing. The research team includes Doug Bowman, professor of computer science; Ivica Ico Bukvic, associate professor in the School of Performing Arts; Bill Carstensen, professor and head of the Department of Geography; Denis Gracanin, associate professor of computer science; Mike Horning, assistant professor of communication; Chris North, professor of computer science and associate director of Virginia Tech’s Discovery Analytics Center; Todd Ogle, senior director for networked knowledge environments in Virginia Tech’s Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies; Nicolas Polys, director of visual computing with the Virginia Tech Research Computing Group and affiliate research professor of computer science; and Ben Knapp, director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s data internship program is offering Siddharth Krishnan an unexpected and invaluable learning opportunity.
During the spring 2016 semester, Krishnan, a computer science doctoral student, has been assigned to the project, Health Opportunity Index: Modeling the Health and Cost impacts of Social Determinants of Health. He is conducting this research at the Discovery Analytics Center (DAC) in the Virginia Tech Research Center ─ Arlington. “Collaborating with the Office of Minority Health and Health Equity to analyze biological, social, economic, and environment factors underlying population health provides me with a fantastic opportunity to apply my research skills in a way that can tangibly impact the community.” Krishnan said. The data internship program, which launched in 2014, supports Gov. McAuliffe’s ongoing initiative to provide easier access to open data in Virginia. The internships also support treating data as an enterprise asset, one of four strategic goals of the enterprise information architecture strategy adopted by the Commonwealth in August 2013.
