Category Archives: Achievements and Awards

Caden Sumner and HIDE team develop online learning center scheduling program

Problem: Scheduling learning center appointments. Solution: Apply education; develop online scheduling program.

Maybe you’ve heard the claim that Michigan Technological University students are crazy smart. In case you needed proof, meet Caden Sumner, a third-year who is double majoring in computer science and psychology. He’s also a coach at the Michigan Tech Multiliteracies Center (MTMC) and leader of the Human Interface Design Enterprise (HIDE) programming team that developed Timeslot.

Timeslot enables students to schedule appointments in campus learning centers from their mobile devices and computers, instead of having to sign up in person. A combination of factors inspired Sumner to develop the program: his interest in psychology, his first (intimidating) impression in a learning center, his experiences as a coach in the MTMC, and encouragement from his boss and MTMC Assistant Director Bill De Herder.

Sumner says, “We were using a software that was really difficult to use. It was hard to figure out how to schedule appointments. Students didn’t like it, coaches hated it. My boss mentioned ‘you should do something about that’ at about the end of last (academic) year. I said absolutely, I’ll give that a go.”

Sumner and his fellow HIDE teammates started working on Timeslot at the start of the fall 2017 semester. Though they didn’t keep track of the hours they put into development, Sumner says it was “a lot.”

Creatsumne-profile-personneling His Future

Timeslot went live for the MTMC the first week of spring 2018 classes. The HIDE team is taking a soft rollout approach so as to catch and fix all program bugs and prevent a huge scheduling snafu. The math lab will implement the software in the fall, and plans for the biology lab are in the works. Sumner and his team hope that in time all 17 University learning centers will adopt the system.

Congrats!

Please see the full story from Tech Today here.

 

 

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Graduate Student Colloquium features two CS students

Two of the Computer Science graduate students attended the Graduate Research Colloquium hosted by the GSG this week.  This is MTU’s largest graduate research showcase and competition with grad students presenting more than 60 research papers.  See the article in Michigan Tech Today http://gsg.mtu.edu/grc/.

“Improving Caching for Web Applications” by Daniel Byrne

Abstract:  Web applications employ caches to store the data that is most commonly accessed. The cache improves the application’s performance by reducing the time it takes to fetch a piece of data from the application’s database. Since the cache typically resides in a limited amount system memory, maximizing the memory utilization is key to delivering the best performance possible. In addition, application data access patterns change over time, so the system should be adaptive in its memory allocation policy as opposed to current staticDaniel Bryne allocations.In this work, we address both multi-tennancy (where a single cache is used for multiple applications) and dynamic workloads (changing access patterns) using a sharing model that relates the cache size to the application miss-rate, know as a miss-ratio curve. Intuitively, the larger the cache, the less likely the system will need to fetch the data from the database. Our efficient, online construction of the miss-ratio curve allows for us to determine the optimal memory allocation given the available system memory, while adapting to changing data access patterns. We show that our model outperforms the existing state-of-the-art sharing model in terms of overall cache hit-rate and does so at a lower time cost.

 

“Maximizing Coverage in VANETs” by Ali Jalooli

The sAli Jalooliuccess of vehicular networks is highly dependent on the coverage of message, which refers to the Euclidean spatial distance that a message once initiated by a given mobile node (i.e., source vehicle) can reach within time t. We studied the crucial problem of optimal utilization of roadside units (RSUs) in 2-D environments, and proposed a greedy algorithm, which by taking the V2V communication into consideration, finds the optimal locations for RSUs deployment to achieve the maximum message coverage.

 

 

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CS Students develop new healthy eating app

Congratulations to Kyle Ludwig and CS graduate student Chetan Chaurasiya on creating a new app to help healthy eating habits.

A locally developed app which tracks eating habits and recommends healthy meals will soon be hitting the market.  Please read the full story from the Daily Mining Gazette here http://www.mininggazette.com/news/2018/01/new-eating-app-developed-by-tech-student-graduate/

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Alexander Larkin places 101 out of 3,449 in the National Cyber League (NCL)

My name is Alexander Larkin and I am currently finishing up my first semester, at Michigan Tech, as a Computer Science major.  I transferred from Waukesha County Technical College, WI where I spent a few years studying networking, programming, and cybersecurity.  During my first semester, at Michigan Tech, I competed in the NCL(National Cyber League) and placed 101st out of 3,449 competitors.  NCL is a cybersecurity competition that assesses an individual’s skill in cryptography, network traffic analysis, task automation, exploitation of vulnerable systems, and much more.  Participating in NCL is an incredible way to learn about cybersecurity concepts and is an absolutely great experience.  I began competing in NCL when I was sixteen years old.  I have continued to compete in most NCL games since that time and I always look forward to the next competition.  The competition gives a competitor a set of tasks to complete, via a clean and intuitive web interface.  For every task completed, points are given based on the difficulty of the task.  Sometimes the competition demands an individual learn about some strange technologies such as Voice-Over-IP.  During this last competition, I found myself researching how Voice-Over-IP works, so I could track phone calls, stored in a packet capture.  Every time I compete in NCL I find myself learning about cool technologies.  Over the years, I have learned how to become a master at the art of “Google-Fu”.  Over the years of competing, I have learned just how important it is to do research on unknown topics and technologies.  NCL also taught me that it is OK to not know something and to not admit defeat, but to do some research, learn the topic, and apply what I learn on the fly.  Learning how to “learn on the fly” has helped me immensely in all aspects of my life and is enormously valuable in Computer Science.  I would consider it to be a pseudo-required skill to possess in the dynamic world of computing.  I am happy to be competing in National Cyber League here at Michigan Tech and I am looking forward to competing in the Spring of 2018.  Additional information about National Cyber League can be found at www.nationalcyberleague.org.  I would like to personally thank Professor Min Song and Professor Bo Chen for providing faculty leadership during this last competition and I look forward to working with them again in the Spring.

Congratulations Alexander!

Associate Professor, Jeon, Receives Korea Automobile Testing and Research Institute Grant

MyounghoonJeon20140131_0001Philart’s grant is a 4-year award with a total budget of $350,000 from Korea Automobile Testing & Research Institute. Two graduate students will be supported by this grant each year. The project is titled “Development of the safety assessment technique for take‐over in automated vehicles.”

The goal of the project is to design and evaluate intelligent auditory interactions for improving safety and user experience in the automated vehicles. Research tasks include developing a driving simulator for automated driving model, modelling driver states in automated vehicles, design and evaluating discrete auditory alerts for safety purpose, and the development of real-time sonification systems for overall user experience. Congratulations Philart!

 

CS Assistant Professor, Jianhui Yue, Receives an NSF Award

Jianhui YueJianhui Yue’s grant is a 3-year NSF award with a total budget of $176,876. One PhD student will be supported for two years.  The project is titled “Improving Reliability of In-Memory Storage”. The project addresses two challenges of in-memory storage: 1) Memory cells have limited write endurance (i.e., the total number of program/erase cycles per cell), and 2) Nonvolatile memory has to remain in a consistent state in the event of a system crash or power loss.
This project will take a holistic approach, spanning from low-level architecture design to high-level OS management, to optimize the reliability, performance, and manageability of in-memory storage.
Congratulations!