Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Blog

Category: College of Computing

Our Stories: Dr. Robert Pastel, Assoc. Prof., Computer Science

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This is part of a series of short introductions about College students, faculty, and staff that we would like to include in the Weekly Download. Would you like to be featured? Send a photo and some background info about yourself to computing@mtu.edu.

Dr. Robert Pastel, Associate Professor of Computer Science

  • Advisor to Humane Interface Design Enterprise (HIDE)
  • Has been teaching at Michigan Tech for about 20 years, and teaching for 30 years.
  • Researcher with the Human-Centered Computing group of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC)

Education

  • PhD, University of New Mexico, Physics
  • MS, Computer Science, Michigan Tech

Faculty Profile

Classes Dr. Pastel teaches: 
o    CS5760 – Human-Computer Interaction – Usability Evaluation and Testing 
o    CS4791 and CS4792 – Senior Design
o    ENT1960 – ENT5960 – Humane Interface Design Enterprise

The “coolest” class you teach, and why: All my classes are “cool” because they all involve making applications that will be used by people. The “coolest” class is CS4760 – User Interface – Design and Implementation where students work with scientists across the world to make citizen science applications.

The importance of your class topics to the overall understanding of Computing and your discipline: In all my classes, students learn to design and implement usable applications for people.

Your teaching philosophy: My teaching philosophy is that students learn best by experience and working with others. Consequently students work in teams on project for clients. 

Research projects in which students are assisting: 

  • StreamCLIMES – Large collaborative project studying bio diversity of intermittent streams. I’m responsible for developing a web applications monitoring the stream.
  • FloodAware – Large collaborative project recording and modelling flooding in urban areas. I’m responsible for developing the citizen science effort.
  • KeTT – Keweenaw Time Traveler – Historical geospatial information citizen science website for user to record region’s history and explore the maps and stories. 

Interests beyond teaching and research: The outdoors: skiing, biking and hiking. Every summer, he takes a one-month backpacking trip. 

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Spend 1010 Minutes with Gorkem Asilioglu

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You are invited to spend one-zero-one-zero—that is, ten—minutes with Gorkem Asilioglu, Computer Science, on Thurday, March 18, from 5:30 to 5:40 p.m. EST.

Asilioglu is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include computer architecture, high-performance computing, programming languages, and CS education.

Join the Zoom meeting here.

We look forward to spending 1010 minutes with you!

Visit the 1010 with … webpage here.

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CS Dept. Lecture: Tim Frick, Mightybytes

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The Department of Computer Science will present a lecture by Tim Frick, founder and president of Mightybytes, on Friday, April 9, 2021, at 3:00 p.m.

In his talk, “People, Planet, Pixels: Toward Sustainable Digital Products and Practices,” Frick will discuss how sustainable web design and responsible digital practices can help create an internet that is clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient.

Lecture Title

“People, Planet, Pixels: Toward Sustainable Digital Products and Practices”

Speaker Bio

Tim Frick started his digital agency Mightybytes in 1998 to help purpose-driven companies, social enterprises, and large nonprofits solve problems, amplify their impact, and drive measurable results. He is the author of four books, including Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products and Services. Tim regularly presents at conferences and offers workshops on sustainable design, measuring impact, and problem solving in the digital economy.

Lecture Abstract

The internet has a larger environmental impact than the commercial airline industry. It currently produces approximately 3.8% of global carbon emissions, which are rising in line with our hunger to consume more data. Increasingly, web technologies are also being used to sow discontent, erode privacy, prompt unethical decisions, and, in some countries, undermine personal freedoms and the well-being of society. Web technology has the potential to bring huge benefits to society and the environment, but only if we use it wisely.

In this talk, author and digital agency owner Tim Frick will discuss how sustainable web designand responsible digital practices can help us create an internet that is clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient—principles outlined in the Sustainable Web Manifesto, of which Tim is a co-author. Elements of this talk are also based on Tim’s book, Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products and Services. Creating an internet that works for people and planet is possible. The methods described in this talk will show you how.

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Sidike Paheding Publishes Paper in Top Journal

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A scholarly paper co-authored by Assistant Professor Sidike Paheding, Applied Computing, has been published in the April 2021 issue of ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, published by Science Direct.

The title of the paper is, “Field-scale crop yield prediction using multi-temporal WorldView-3 and PlanetScope satellite data and deep learning.”

View the article abstract here.

Paheding is a member of the Institute of Computer and Cybersystems’s (ICC) Center for Data Sciences.

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Meryl Spencer to Present Lecture, Feb. 26, 3 pm

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The Department of Computer Science will present a lecture by Meryl Spencer, Michigan Tech Research Institute, on Friday, February 26, 2021, at 3:00 p.m.

Spencer’s lecture is titled, “Advancing Robotics through competition.”

Join the virtual lecture here.

Meryl Spencer is a research scientist with the Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI). Her research interests include Multi-Agent Teaming, Robotics Simulation, Applications of Graph Theory, Biomimicry For Robotics, Emergent Behavior, Reinforcement Learning, and Camouflage Detection in Machine Learning.

Lecture Title

“Advancing Robotics through competition ”

Lecture Abstract

Michigan Tech is a top competitor in the DARPA Subterranean challenge, which pits teams of fully autonomous vehicles against difficult underground environments to find artifacts hidden in caves and mines. In this talk, Dr. Spencer will give an explanation of the graph-based approach the Michigan Tech team is using to enable joint searching of gps-denied environments with a heterogeneous team of robots.

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CS Dept. Lecture: Hongyu An, ECE, Friday, March 5

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The Department of Computer Science will present a lecture by Assistant Professor Hongyu An, ECE, on Friday, March 5, 2021, at 3:00 p.m.

An’s lecture is titled, “Designing an Energy-Efficient Neuromorphic System through Two-Layer Memristive Synapses.”

An will introduce Brain-inspired Computing, an emerging approach for an energy-efficient artificial intelligent system through hardware and software co-design.

Join the virtual lecture here.

Lecture Title

Designing an Energy-Efficient Neuromorphic System through Two-Layer Memristive Synapses

Lecture Abstract

Recently, deep learning is suffering from the excessive-high power consumption issue, which cannot be resolved alone by software/algorithm optimization. In this talk, An will introduce an emerging concept named Brain-inspired Computing, which is an emerging approach for an energy-efficient artificial intelligent system through hardware and software co-design.

More specifically, An will introduce and discuss applying Three-dimensional Integrated Circuits (3D-ICs), Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), and memristors to achieving a high-speed and energy-efficient system with the smallest design area. Our memristive synapses are utilized for storing the exported weights of the SNNs that have threshold function as the activation function. The simulation results demonstrate the significant improvement of memristive synapses on design area, power consumption, and latency.

Speaker Bio

Hongyu An is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University. He obtained his doctoral degree in electrical engineering at Virginia Tech. He received an M.S. degree and B.S. in electrical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology and Shenyang University of Technology, respectively.

He is the recipient of the 2021 Bill and LaRue Blackwell Graduate Research Ph.D. Dissertation/Paper Award and he was a DAC Young Fellow in 2020. His research areas include neuromorphic computing, energy-efficient neuromorphic electronic circuit design for Artificial Intelligence, spiking neural networks, and machine learning for medical applications.

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

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Info Sessions for CyberCorps Scholarship Are March 22, March 30

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An exciting scholarship opportunity has been announced for Michigan Tech students who wish to pursue cybersecurity-related degrees and work for government agencies after graduation.

Two informational sessions will be presented, on March 22 and March 30, to help students complete the application process for the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program.

Both sessions will provide the same information. Prior registration is required. Following, you will receive a confirmation email and instructions for joining the session.

Recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the SFS Program provides full scholarships for two or three years of support for undergraduate and graduate students in selected cybersecurity-related degree programs.

In return, following graduation recipients must agree to work for for the U.S. government in a cybersecurity-related position for a period equal to the duration of the scholarship.

Applications are being accepted for the 2021-2022 cohort. The deadline to apply is June 1, 2021. View the list of eligible degree programs on the SFS website.

Session #1 is on Monday, March 22, 2021, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. EST. Register for Session #1 here.

Session #2 is on Tuesday, March 30, 2021, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. EST. Register for Session #2 here.

For more information, please visit the SFS website at https://www.mtu.edu/sfs/, or contact Professor Yu Cai (cai@mtu.edu).

Read a Michigan Tech press release about this new scholarship opportunity:
https://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2021/february/cybercorps-offers-huskies-scholarship-for-service-opportunity.html

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Computing Programs Ranked Among Best in Nation

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Several Michigan Tech College of Computing degree programs have been ranked among the best in the nation by Intelligent.com. In addition, the research guide ranked the University number three among all colleges in Michigan.

Intelligent.com looked at nearly 2,300 accredited colleges and universities nationwide making evaluations based on curriculum quality, graduation rate, reputation and post-graduate employment. Programs were evaluated on a scale of 0 to 100 with Michigan Tech making it to the final list for 12 separate degree programs.

The four College of Computing programs and their national ranking as rated by Intelligent.com are:

Additional Michigan Tech degree programs included in the ranking are:

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Sidike Paheding Awarded MSGC Seed Grant

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Michigan Space Grant Consortium

Assistant Professor Sidike Paheding, Applied Computing, has been awarded a one-year MSGC Research Seed Grant for his project, “Monitoring Martian landslides using deep learning and data fusion.”

Professor Thomas Oommen, Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, is Co-PI of the project. The grant will support part-time employment of two students during the award period.

This grant is supported in part by funding provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), under award number 80NSSC20M0124, Michigan Space Grant Consortium (MSGC).

The MSGC Research Seed Grant Program supports junior faculty and research scientists at MSGC affiliate institutions. The program also helps mid-career and senior faculty develop new research programs. The objective of this program is to allow award recipients to develop the research expertise necessary to propose research activities in new areas to other federal or nonfederal sources.

Sidike Paheding is an assistant professor in the Applied Computing department of the Michigan Tech College of Computing.

His research interests cover a variety of topics in machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and remote sensing. He has authored/coauthored close to 100 research articles, including several top peer-review journal papers. He is an invited member of Tau Beta Pi (Engineering Honor Society).

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Leo Ureel Receives 2020-21 CTL Award for Innovative Teaching

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The 2020-2021 CTL Instructional Award for Innovative or Out of Class Teaching is being presented to two instructors, and Assistant Professor Leo Ureel, Computer Science, and Libby Meyer, senior lecturer, Visual and Performing Arts.

Ureel was nominated in recognition of his “student-centric efforts which have increased retention and diversified the cohort of first-year computing students.”

Ureel’s presentation, “Three course innovations to support communication,” will be presented at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 18, 2021, as part of the CTL Instructional Award Presentation Series.

Link here to register for the event.

Ureel is a member of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems’s (ICC) Computing Education Center.

Meyer’s presentation, “Beyond Carrots and Sticks: Mastery Based Grading and Narrative Assessment” will also be presented on February 18.

During spring 2017, academic deans were asked to begin recognizing instructors making contributions in these areas as part of the Deans’ Teaching Showcase, effectively nominating them for instructional awards.

CTL and Provost’s office members along with previous awardees then select one individual in each category from a pool composed of the Showcase and those nominated to the Academy of Teaching Excellence.

Ureel Lecture Abstract

Three course innovations to support communication Introductory courses present many communication challenges between faculty and first year students. In this context, we discuss three innovations used in our introductory computer science courses.

The first is the use of Snap, a high-level, visual programming language, as a form of pseudocode during the first five weeks of the course to build student vocabulary and problem solving skills before tackling programming in Java.

The second is a Code Critiquer developed as a Canvas plugin to provide immediate guidance and feedback to students when they submit their programming assignments.

The third is a grade visualization tool that helps students understand their current performance in the course and project a range that will contain their final grade. While not everyone teaches introductory computer science, we discuss how these or similar innovations and tools might apply to your course.

Leo Ureel, Computer Science
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