Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Blog

Category: Announcements

Today is #GivingTuesday

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 Today (Dec. 1) is #GivingTuesday, a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.

GivingTuesday was created in 2012 and has grown into a global movement that inspires hundreds of millions of people to give, collaborate, and celebrate generosity.

How you can participate at Michigan Tech:

• Support any area of campus
A gift to Michigan Tech or any specific area of campus will help us prepare students to create the future. Give now.

• Help Michigan Tech students through scholarships and fellowships
Scholarship/fellowship funding is Michigan Tech’s top strategic priority. This is especially true now with the need created by COVID-19. Donor-funded scholarships/fellowships come through two sources — the Annual Scholarship/Fellowship Fund and the Endowed Scholarship/Fellowship Fund. Learn more.

• Make a gift to the Husky Emergency Assistance Fund (HEAF)
The HEAF has been established to help provide financial relief for the Michigan Tech campus community (students and employees) who are experiencing financial hardship as a result of crises (including COVID-19). Donate to the HEAF.

• Donate food or resources to the Husky Food Access Network
The on-campus food pantry has helped hundreds of students in their time of need. Make a financial donation or email huskyfan@mtu.edu to coordinate a food donation during social distancing protocol.

Last year, GivingTuesday generated $2 billion in giving, just in the United States, and inspired millions of people worldwide to volunteer, perform countless acts of kindness, and donate their voices, time, money, and goods.

Join the movement! Make a gift to Michigan Tech today.

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Bo Chen, CS, Wins REF Grant for Decentralized Cloud Storage Project

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Bo Chen, Computer Science, has been awarded a Fall 2020 REF Research Seed Grant (REF-RS) for his project, “Towards Secure and Reliable Decentralized Cloud Storage.” Funding for the 12-month, $25,800 award begins on January 1, 2021.

Bo Chen, Computer Science

“This grant will provide significant help to advance my current research,” says Chen. “This is really exciting news for me.”

Bo Chen is a researcher with the ICC’s Cybersecurity and Computing Education research groups.

As a recipient of the REF seed grant, which is awarded by the Michigan Tech Office of the Vice President for Research, Chen will participate in review and feedback for the next round of REF proposals. View the full list of Fall 2020 REF award recipients here.

Abstract

A decentralized cloud storage system eliminates the need of dedicated computing infrastructures by allowing peers which have spare storage space to join the network and to provide storage service. Compared to the conventional centralized cloud storage system, it can bring significant benefits including cheaper storage cost, better fault tolerance, greater scalability, as well as more efficient data storing and retrieval, making it well fit the emerging Internet of things (IoT) applications.

While bringing immense benefits, the decentralized cloud storage system also raises significant security concerns, since the storage peers are much less reputable than the traditional data centers and may more likely misbehave.

This project thus aims to build a secure and reliable decentralized cloud storage system which can serve as the cloud infrastructure for future IoT applications. The project will actively investigate two fundamental security issues faced by the decentralized cloud storage system: 1) How can we prevent the malicious storage peers from stealing the data? 2) How can we ensure that once the data are stored into the system, they are always retrievable even if the storage peers misbehave?

To address the aforementioned issues in an untrusted p2p environment, the PI will integrate efficient integrity checking with the blockchain, as well as the broadly equipped secure hardware like Intel SGX. The PI will also broaden the educational impact of the proposed project by actively involving both graduate and undergraduate students from the MTU cybersecurity programs.

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Research Excellence Fund Awards Announced

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by Vice President for Research Office

The Vice President for Research Office announces the Fall 2020 REF awards. Thanks to the individual REF reviewers and the REF review panelists, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process.

Research Seed Grants:

  • Sajjad Bigham, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
  • Bo Chen, Computer Science
  • Daniel Dowden, Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • Ana Dyreson, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
  • Hassan Masoud, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
  • Xinyu Ye, Civil and Environmental Engineering
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Junqiao Qiu to Present Lecture November 6

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Assistant Professor Junqiao Qiu, Computer Science, will present his lecture, “Speculative Parallelization for FSM-centric Computations,” this Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, at 3:00 p.m., via online meeting.

Lecture Abstract

As a fundamental computation model, finite-state machine (FSM) has been used in a wide range of data-intensive applications, including malware detection, bioinformatics, semi-structured data analytics, natural language processing and even machine learning. However, FSM execution is known to be “embarrassingly sequential” due to the state dependences among transitions. Current studies find that speculation is a promising solution to address the inherent dependencies in FSM computations and thus enables scalable FSM parallelization.
This talk will firstly introduce the fundamental scalability bottleneck in the current FSM parallelization, and then an aggressive speculation, a generalized speculation model that allows a speculated state to be validated against the result from another speculation, is proposed to address the scalability limitations. Finally, this talk will discuss the possibility to enlarge the applicability of the proposed approach and go beyond the FSM-based computations.

Juneiao Qiu is a member of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems’ (ICC) Center for Scalable Architectures and Systems (SAS).

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GSG to Host Grant Writing Webinar Nov. 12

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As a student or a researcher, a necessary component of your work is applying for a multitude of grants to obtain funding for future projects. Peter Larson, director of research development at Michigan Tech, will conduct a seminar on Grant Writing from 4 to 5  p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 12 via Zoom.

Larson specializes in creating effective grant and research proposals, particularly in the non-technical proposal sections that researchers often struggle with. Please send any topics or questions you wish to see discussed to gsg-prodev@mtu.edu so we can structure the seminar to better suit your needs.

Those who participate in the seminar will get a chance to enter a raffle draw. Space is not really limited but just so we know how many students to expect, be sure to register.

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GSG to Host 3MT Competition Nov. 5

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Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, hosted by the Graduate Student Government, will take place virtually tomorrow (Nov. 5). Come join us on an eventful day where research meets fun.

Participants are judged on their communication and presentation skills, while delivering content in just three minutes with one static PowerPoint slide.

You can watch the participants’ videos online on GSG’s 3MT website starting at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

With 28 participants and 4 different heats, 8 finalists will be chosen for the final rounds. The judging panel consists of 3 different faculty/staff from different majors. The names of the finalists will be declared by Noon.

The contestants qualifying for the next round will compete against each other from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday (Nov. 6) in the Rozsa Center for Performing Arts.

There will be a limit of 200 patrons who can be seated in the Rozsa center to adhere to social distancing guidelines. The seating will be on a first-come-first-served basis. The event will also be streamed live on GSG’s Facebook page.

Join us in-person or virtually to enjoy the event and choose a ‘People’s Choice’ award winner. The first and second place winners will receive cash prizes of $300 and $150 respectively. Additionally, a People’s Choice (PC) award will be given to a speaker selected by the event’s audience, with a cash prize of $100. A Facebook poll and in-person voting will happen to choose this speaker.

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Michigan Tech Ranked Among Best Colleges in the State and the Country

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Michigan Tech is one of the top two universities in Michigan and among the best in the country, according to rankings by the website WalletHub, released Monday.

When compared to colleges and universities in Michigan, Tech was ranked No. 2. Among the 273 midwest colleges and universities listed, Michigan Tech was rated 30th, up one from a year ago.

WalletHub named 500 institutions on its “2021’s College and University Rankings.” Michigan Tech was ranked No. 138 on the overall list, up eight spots from last year’s ranking.

WalletHub looks to find the top-performing schools at the lowest possible costs to undergrads. The website compared more than a thousand U.S. institutions using 33 key measures. That data is grouped into seven categories such as Student Selectivity, Cost and Financing, and Career Outcomes.

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“It’s Working!” — CCISD, Michigan Tech Launch New CTE Program in Mechatronics

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Michigan Tech recently launched a year-long Career and Technical Education (CTE) program for high school juniors or seniors in the area of Mechatronics. The new CTE Mechatronics program is offered through a partnership between Michigan Tech and the Copper Country Intermediate School District (CCISD). 

Teaming up to deliver the instruction are faculty in the Mechatronics, Electrical and Robotics Engineering Technology (MERET) program in the College of Computing, and faculty in the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology (MMET) Department in the College of Engineering. 

Michigan Tech faculty administering the CTE program include Prof. John Irwin, Chair of the Department of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology, or Prof. Alex Sergeyev in the College of Computing. 

“Students in the program will find careers in smart manufacturing fields, or they can find a pathway at Michigan Tech into undergraduate or graduate degrees in Engineering Technology, Engineering, or Mechatronics.” says Irwin.

There are 10 students enrolled this fall 2020 from the local area school districts of Houghton, Hancock, Calumet, and L’Anse. CTE Director Shawn Kolbus expects the program to only increase in popularity. “Local business owners approached us last year wanting to get more students from the area interested in Mechatronics, CADD and Engineering,” he says. “The result was the Mechatronics program which encompasses standards from each area.” 

The course is taught by two mechatronics professionals who possess both industry and teaching experience. One of those instructors is George Ochieze, who is pursuing a master’s degree in Mechatronics and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Tech. “Even in difficult times during the pandemic, these young scholars show overwhelming potential to conquer the mechatronics field—a glimpse into a welcoming future in engineering,” says Ochieze.

The second instructor, Chinmay Kondekar, will earn an MS in Electrical Engineering at Michigan Tech in 2021. “Teaching for local schools is an opportunity for me to give back to people in the community who welcomed me as an international student,” says Kondekar. “I hope to create a strong interest in robotics and automation in my students. People with these skills will be the future of manufacturing and will have plenty of opportunities.”

Program enrollment is closed for 2020, but will be available again starting in fall 2021. This spring there will be the opportunity for area sophomore and junior students to visit Michigan Tech to tour the labs and meet the instructors. Both the Applied Computing and MMET department labs used at Michigan Tech are equipped with state-of-the-art electronics and mechanical systems partially provided through generous startup funding from the CCISD.

Mechatronics uses electromechanical systems, typically automated for the design of products and processes. Industry 4.0—sometimes called the “fourth industrial revolution”—applies various aspects of mechatronics to manufacturing enterprises. Topics in the CTE Mechatronics program include; automation, computer integrated manufacturing, high speed manufacturing, embedded systems design and controls, industrial robotics, pneumatics, hydraulics, and computer-aided design. 

For more information please contact Shawn Kolbus, Director, Career and Technical Education, Copper Country Intermediate School District (906) 250-5353. 

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Jim Keller to Present ICC Distinguished Lecture October 30

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Dr. James Keller, recently retired Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the EE/CS department at University of Missouri, Columbia, will present his lecture, “Soft Streaming Classification,” on Friday, October 30, 2020, at 3:00 p.m., via Zoom online meeting.

The talk is an Institute of Computing and Cybersystems’ (ICC) Distinguished Lecture Series event.

Join the meeting here.

A Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Keller recently received the IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award for his “fundamental work on fuzzy pattern recognition, fuzzy clustering, and fuzzy technologies in computer vision.” He holds a number of additional professional and academic honors and awards.

Lecture Abstract

As the volume and variety of temporally acquired data continues to grow, increased attention is being paid to streaming analysis of that data. Think of a drone flying over unknown terrain looking for specific objects which may present differently in different environments. Understanding the evolving environments is a critical component of a recognition system.

With the explosion of ubiquitous continuous sensing (something Lotfi Zadeh predicted as one of the pillars of Recognition Technology in the late 1990s), this on-line streaming analysis is normally cast as a clustering problem. However, examining most streaming clustering algorithms leads to the understanding that they are actually incremental classification models.

These approaches model existing and newly discovered structures via summary information that we call footprints. Incoming data is routinely assigned crisp labels (into one of the structures) and that structure’s footprints are incrementally updated; the data is not saved for iterative assignments.

The three underlying tenets of static clustering:

  1. Do you believe there are any clusters in your data?
  2. If so, can you come up with a technique to find the natural grouping of your data?
  3. Are the clusters you found good groupings of the data?

These questions do not directly apply to the streaming case. What takes their place in this new frontier?

In this talk, I will provide some thoughts on what questions can substitute for the Big 3, but then focus on a new approach to streaming classification, directly acknowledging the real identity of this enterprise. Because the goal is truly classification, there is no reason that these assignments need to be crisp.

With my friends, I propose a new streaming classification algorithm, called StreamSoNG, that uses Neural Gas prototypes as footprints and produces a possibilistic label vector (typicalities) for each incoming vector. These typicalities are generated by a modified possibilistic k-nearest neighbor algorithm.

Our method is inspired by, and uses components of, a method that we introduced under the nomenclature of streaming clustering to discover underlying structures as they evolve. I will describe the various ingredients of StreamSoNG and demonstrate the resulting algorithm on synthetic and real datasets.

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