Category Archives: Achievements and Awards

Congratulations to Keith Vertanen and Bo Chen for their excellent teaching in Spring 2019. They are among only 92 instructors who received an exceptional “Average of 7 Dimensions” student evaluation score during Spring semester 2019. Their scores are in the top 10% similarly sized sections.  Keep up the good work!

At the annual awards banquet of the Michigan Tech Institute of Computing and Cybersysytems (ICC), on Friday, April 12, three ICC members received the ICC Achievement Award in recognition of their exceptional contributions to research and learning in the fields of computing.

Soner Önder, director of the ICC Center for Scalable Architectures and Systems and professor of computer science, was recognized for his research in next-generation architectures. Önder is principal investigator of three National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, and he has three NSF grant proposals under review.

Kevin Trewartha, a member of the ICC’s Center for Human-Centered Computing, was recognized for his interdisciplinary and collaborative research at the intersection of technology and human motor movement. Trewartha is an assistant professor with a dual appointment in the departments of Cognitive and Learning Sciences and Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology. He is co-principal investigator, with ICC member Shane Mueller, of a new, three-year, interdisciplinary and collaborative project funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Bo Chen, a member of the ICC’s Center for Cybersecurity and assistant professor of computer science, was recognized for his teaching and research in cybersecurity of mobile devices. Chen is the co-PI of two external grants on cybersecurity from the National Security Agency, and he has submitted numerous cybersecurity proposals to NSF, NSA, Microsoft and Google.

The ICC, founded in 2015, promotes collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and learning experiences in the areas of cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, data sciences, human-centered computing and scalable architectures and systems. It provides faculty and students the opportunity to work across organizational boundaries to create an environment that mirrors contemporary technological innovation. Five research centers comprise the ICC. Visit the ICC website, contact the ICC at icc-contact@mtu.edu or 7-2518.

The Graduate Student Government (GSG) hosted the 11th Annual Graduate Research Colloquium March 27 and 28, to celebrate the hard work and outstanding achievements of our graduate students. The event has grown from a one-session event with a handful of participants into a two-day event with a record 85 participants, representing 17 academic schools and departments. The event ended with an awards banquet honoring presenters, award nominees and three new awards recognizing departments for supporting graduate education. Congratulations to the 2019 graduate student recipients for their outstanding accomplishments.

Congratulations to Daniel Byrne who received the Graduate Student Service Award!  Read the full Tech Today article here

Robert Pastel is a Co-Principal Investigator on this NSF grant led by Arizona State University (ASU).  The project is titled, “SCC: Community-Based Automated Information for Urban Flooding” and the abstract is as follows:  Flooding is the most damaging natural hazard in the U.S. and around the world, and most flood damage occurs in cities. Yet the ability to know when flooding is happening and communicate that risk to the public and first responders is limited. At the same time there is a surge in digitally connected technologies, many at the fingertips of the general public (e.g., smartphones). The need is for new flood information that can be generated from primary observations that are collected in exactly the right places and times to be coupled with the ability to more effectively communicate this risk to communities. This project will develop the Integrated Flood Stage Observation Network (IFSON), a system that can take in crowd-sourced information on flooding (from cameras, a smartphone app, and social media), intelligently assess flood risk (using machine learning), and communicate those risks in real time. IFSON will be scalable to any community or city and will provide a backbone for new crowd-sourced technologies.

This project will i) integrate several new technologies (each that directly engages with different communities) to provide new insights into and communication capacity around urban flooding hazards, ii) connect a range of communities to each other in near-realtime (from the general public to first responders to infrastructure managers) and develop flood sensing and avoidance capacities that can be used anywhere in the U.S. or even internationally, iii) develop new insights into how urban morphology contributes to flood risk, and iv) leverage prior funding by connecting practitioners from existing sustainability research networks and sending data to CUAHSI and eRams. Additionally, this research will develop outreach activities that will educate the public and practitioners on how flooding hazards occur, their impacts, and how to mitigate risks. The research will directly empower and engage local citizens in flood event reporting and response, and explores a concrete model for what it would mean to have a “smart and connected community” for minimizing flood risk. Although driven by a number of novel technologies and techniques, the central focus of this work is on the interface of community with technology and, in particular, how modern network technologies can engage and bring together ordinary citizens, city planners, first responders, and other local stakeholders within a shared, collaboratively constructed information space; a broad range of educational and outreach opportunities are included to engage stakeholders and amplify project impact. In addition to training students through research positions, the project will create a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. It will also connect with national, state, and local societies across a number of disciplines. For example, the project will work with the City of Phoenix during their Monsoon Preparedness day to educate first responders on how to use project results. Interdisciplinary course modules that show how to engage various communities (including the public, first responders, and infrastructure managers) in mitigating flood risk will be developed and disseminated. Additionally, infrastructure managers will be recruited to participate in workshops on how project data will reveal new insights into the condition of infrastructure and what strategies can be employed to reduce hazards.

This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Congratulations Robert!

The Department of Computer Science, supported by a gift from Google, will hold a 3-day workshop to introduce female undergraduate students with an interest in computer science, to research experiences, provide them with information about graduate school, and provide them with an opportunity to interact with current graduate students.  The department has a long history of working to increase the enrollment of women in our undergraduate program,  This workshop expands those concerted efforts to our graduate program.  Special thanks to Google and the CS faculty Laura Brown, Jean Mayo, Linda Ott, and Leo Ureel.  The workshop will be held on the weekend of April 6 at Michigan Technological University in Houghton.