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ACIA Networking Mixer is Tues., Sept. 24, 4-6 pm

Published September 19, 2019

The Alliance for Computing, Information, and Automation (ACIA) and Michigan Tech Career Services invite students to a casual networking mixer with industry employment recruiters on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., in the Rozsa Center lobby. The event is free and appetizers and refreshments will be served.

Students in the following majors are encouraged to attend: Computer Network and System Administration (CNSA), Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Electrical Engineering Technology (EET), and Software Engineering.

Recruiters interested in hiring Michigan Tech students and graduates in the above majors will be in attendance.

The Alliance for Computing, Information, and Automation (ACIA) at Michigan Technological University is a collaborative effort between the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the College of Computing. The mission of the ACIA is to provide faculty and students the opportunity to work across organizational boundaries to create an environment that is a reflection of contemporary technological innovation. The research arm of the ACIA is the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC).

Download the event flyer

Recruiters interested in hiring Michigan Tech students and graduates in the above majors will be in attendance. Invited companies include the following:

3M
Amcor (fka Bemis)
ArcelorMittal
Black & Veatch
Caterpillar

CCI Iron Mountain
Continental
Cummins
Denso
Dow
DTE Energy
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA)
Ford Motor Company
Georgia-Pacific
Gerdau
Greenheck
Kimberly-Clark
Kohler

Leidos

Los Alamos National Lab (LANL)
Marathon Petroleum
Mercury Marine
Michigan Scientific Corporation

Milwaukee Tool

National Air and Space Intelligence Center
Nexteer Automotive
Nucor
Oshkosh Corporation

Palantir
Plexus
Schneider
Superior Technologies
Systems Control

Zhen Liu Co-author of Publication in Cold Regions Science and Technology

Published September 13, 2019

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Zhen Liu, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and member of the ICC’s Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), is co-author of the article, “A multivariate freezing-thawing depth prediction model for spring load restriction,” which was published August 6, 2019, in the journal Cold Regions Science and Technology, which is published by Elsevier. Co-authors of the article are Ting Bio and John Bland.

Abstract: Road damages induced by heavily loaded truck traffic during the spring thaw are a major road distress in cold regions. To minimize these damages, Spring Load Restriction (SLR) is widely applied in the U.S., Canada, and other countries during the early thawing season by controlling the movement of freight-carrying trucks and heavy equipment travel until the thawing ends. Most SLR policies rely on the Freezing Depth (FD) and Thawing Depth (TD), especially the latter one. Therefore, accurate predictions of FD and TD are important to prevent both the extensive damage to the pavement due to the late placement or early removal of SLR and the economic loss of road users due to an unnecessarily long SLR period. Here, we propose a new multivariate model for predicting FD and TD in support of SLR decision-making. The model gives a curving surface of FD and TD in a 3-dimensional space, instead of 2-dimensional in traditional methods, by considering both the freezing and thawing indices in the entire freeze-thaw cycle. For model evaluations, yearly field data measured at five typical sites from 104 sites in Michigan were adopted. The evaluation results showed that the proposed model is accurate in predicting FD and TD for most sites. Compared to the previous TD predictions in the existing study, the TD predictions with the proposed model have been significantly improved. In addition, this study provides field data that have not been reported earlier in the literature and that can be used for validating other prediction models. The reported work is ready for practice for roadways in cold regions to support SLR decision-making.

https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/406

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2019.102856

Citation: Bao, T., Liu, Z., & Bland, J. (2019). A multivariate freezing-thawing depth prediction model for spring load restriction. Cold Regions Science and Technology, 167.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coldregions.2019.102856

Bo Chen Receives $250K NSF Award for Mobile PDE Systems Research

Published September 13, 2019

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Bo Chen, assistant professor of computer science and member of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems Center for Cybersecurity, is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $249,918 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is entitled, “SaTC: CORE: Small: Collaborative: Hardware-Assisted Plausibly Deniable System for Mobile Devices.” This is a potential three-year project.

Abstract: Mobile computing devices typically use encryption to protect sensitive information. However, traditional encryption systems used in mobile devices cannot defend against an active attacker who can force the mobile device owner to disclose the key used for decrypting the sensitive information. This is particularly of concern to dissident users who are targets of nation states. An example of this would be a human rights worker collecting evidence of untoward activities in a region of oppression or conflict and storing the same in an encrypted form on the mobile device, and then being coerced to disclose the decryption key by an official. Plausibly Deniable Encryption (PDE) has been proposed to defend against such adversaries who can coerce users into revealing the encrypted sensitive content. However, existing techniques suffer from several problems when used in flash-memory-based mobile devices, such as weak deniability because of the way read/write/erase operations are handled at the operating systems level and at the flash translation layer, various types of side channel attacks, and computation and power limitations of mobile devices. This project investigates a unique opportunity to develop an efficient (low-overhead) and effective (high-deniability) hardware-assisted PDE scheme on mainstream mobile devices that is robust against a multi snapshot adversary. The project includes significant curriculum development activities and outreach activities to K-12 students.

This project fundamentally advances the mobile PDE systems by leveraging existing hardware features such as flash translation layer (FTL) firmware and TrustZone to achieve a high deniability with a low overhead. Specifically, this project develops a PDE system with capabilities to: 1) defend against snapshot attacks using raw flash memory on mobile devices; and 2) eliminate side-channel attacks that compromise deniability; 3) be scalable to deploy on mainstream mobile devices; and 4) efficiently provide usable functions like fast mode switching. This project also develops novel teaching material on PDE and cybersecurity for K-12 students and the Regional Cybersecurity Education Collaboration (RCEC), a new educational partnership on cybersecurity in Michigan.

Publications related to this research:

[DSN ’18] Bing Chang, Fengwei Zhang, Bo Chen, Yingjiu Li, Wen Tao Zhu, Yangguang Tian, Zhan Wang, and Albert Ching. MobiCeal: Towards Secure and Practical Plausibly Deniable Encryption on Mobile Devices. The 48th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN ’18), June 2018 (Acceptance rate: 28%)
[Cybersecurity ’18] Qionglu Zhang, Shijie Jia, Bing Chang, Bo Chen. Ensuring Data Confidentiality via Plausibly Deniable Encryption and Secure Deletion – A Survey. Cybersecurity (2018) 1: 1.
[ComSec ’18 ] Bing Chang, Yao Cheng, Bo Chen, Fengwei Zhang, Wen Tao Zhu, Yingjiu Li, and Zhan Wang. User-Friendly Deniable Storage for Mobile Devices. Elsevier Computers & Security, vol. 72, pp. 163-174, January 2018
[CCS ’17] Shijie Jia, Luning Xia, Bo Chen, and Peng Liu. DEFTL: Implementing Plausibly Deniable Encryption in Flash Translation Layer. 2017 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’17), Dallas, Texas, USA, Oct 30 – Nov 3, 2017 (Acceptance rate: 18%)
[ACSAC ’15] Bing Chang, Zhan Wang, Bo Chen, and Fengwei Zhang. MobiPluto: File System Friendly Deniable Storage for Mobile Devices. 2015 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC ’15), Los Angeles, California, USA, December 2015 (Acceptance rate: 24.4%)
[ISC ’14] Xingjie Yu, Bo Chen, Zhan Wang, Bing Chang, Wen Tao Zhu, and Jiwu Jing. MobiHydra: Pragmatic and Multi-Level Plausibly Deniable Encryption Storage for Mobile Devices. The 17th Information Security Conference (ISC ’14), Hong Kong, China, Oct. 2014

Link to more information about this project: https://snp.cs.mtu.edu/research/index.html#pde

Soner Onder Receives Year One Funding for $1.2M NSF SCALE Project

Published September 13, 2019

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Soner Onder, professor of computer science, was recently awarded $246,329 for the first year of a four-year NSF grant for his project, “SHF: Medium: Collaborative Research: Statically Controlled Asynchronous Lane Execution (SCALE).” The project is in collaboration with Prof. David Whalley of Florida State University. Michigan Tech is the lead institution in the project, it is expected to total $1.2 million, with Michigan Tech receiving $600,000.

Abstract: Enabling better performing systems benefits applications that span those running on mobile devices to large data applications running on data centers. The efficiency of most applications is still primarily affected by single thread performance. Instruction-level parallelism (ILP) speeds up programs by executing instructions of the program in parallel, with ‘superscalar’ processors achieving maximum performance. At the same time, energy efficiency is a key criteria to keep in mind as such speedup happens, with these two being conflicting criteria in system design. This project develops a Statically Controlled Asynchronous Lane Execution (SCALE) approach that has the potential to meet or exceed the performance of a traditional superscalar processor while approaching the energy efficiency of a very long instruction word (VLIW) processor. As implied by its name, the SCALE approach has the ability to scale to different types and levels of parallelism. The toolset and designs developed in this project will be available as open-source and will also have an impact on both education and research. The SCALE architectural and compiler techniques will be included in undergraduate and graduate curricula.

The SCALE approach supports separate asynchronous execution lanes where dependencies between instructions in different lanes are statically identified by the compiler to provide inter-lane synchronization. Providing distinct lanes of instructions allows the compiler to generate code for different modes of execution to adapt to the type of parallelism that is available at each point within an application. These execution modes include explicit packaging of parallel instructions, parallel and pipelined execution of loop iterations, single program multiple data (SPMD) execution, and independent multi-threading.

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.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1901005&HistoricalAwards=false

Keith Vertanen and Scott Kuhl Awarded $500K NSF Grant

Published September 5, 2019

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Keith Vertanen, assistant professor of computer science (HCC), and Scott Kuhl (HCC), associate professor of computer science, are principal investigators of a recently funded three-year National Science Foundation grant for their project, “CHS: Small: Rich Surface Interaction for Augmented Environments.” The expected funding over three years is $499,552.00.

Vertanen and Kuhl are members of Michigan Tech’s Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Center for Human-Centered Computing. A 2018 ICC research seed grant funded by ECE Alumnus Paul Williams was used to produce some of the preliminary results in the successful proposal. More info about the Williams Seed Grant can be found here: https://blogs.mtu.edu/icc/2019/07/16/appropriating-everyday-surfaces-for-tap-interaction/.

A related video can be found here: https://youtu.be/sF7aeXMfsIQ.

Abstract: Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays are increasingly being used in different computing related activities such as data visualization, education, and training. Currently, VR and AR devices lack efficient and ergonomic ways to perform common desktop interactions such as pointing-and-clicking and entering text. The goal of this project is to transform flat, everyday surfaces into a rich interactive surface. For example, a desk or a wall could be transformed into a virtual keyboard. Flat surfaces afford not only haptic feedback, but also provide ergonomic advantages by providing a place to rest your arms. This project will develop a system where microphones are placed on surfaces to enable the sensing of when and where a tap has occurred. Further, the system aims to differentiate different types of touch interactions such as tapping with a fingernail, tapping with a finger pad, or making short swipe gestures.

This project will investigate different machine learning algorithms for producing a continuous coordinate for taps on a surface along with associated error bars. Using the confidence of sensed taps, the project will investigate ways to intelligently inform aspects of the user interface, e.g. guiding the autocorrection algorithm of a virtual keyboard decoder. Initially, the project will investigate sensing via an array of surface-mounted microphones and design “surface algorithms” to determine and compare the location accuracy of the finger taps on the virtual keyboard. These algorithms will experiment with different models including existing time-of-flight model, a new model based on Gaussian Process Regression, and a baseline of classification using support vector machines. For all models, the project will investigate the impact of the amount of training data from other users, and varying the amount of adaptation data from the target user. The project will compare surface microphones with approaches utilizing cameras and wrist-based inertial sensors. The project will generate human-factors results on the accuracy, user preference, and ergonomics of interacting midair versus on a rigid surface. By examining different sensors, input surfaces, and interface designs, the project will map the design space for future AR and VR interactive systems. The project will disseminate software and data allowing others to outfit tables or walls with microphones to enable rich interactive experiences.

Dr. Theda Daniels-Race to Present Seminar September 9

Published September 4, 2019

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Dr. Theda Daniels-Race, the Michael B. Voorheis Distinguished Professor in the Division of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Louisiana State University, will present her seminar, “Deposition, Characterization, and Developments in Hybrid Electronic Materials for Next-Generation Nanoelectronics,” on Monday, September 9, at 3:00 pm in Room 6452 of the Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building.

This seminar is presented by the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems and the Michigan Tech Visiting Professor Program, which is funded by a grant to the Michigan Tech Provost Office from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative.

Dr. Daniels-Race also has a joint appointment to the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University. She is the founder of the Applied Hybrid Electronic Materials & Structures Laboratory as well as Director of the ECE Division’s Electronic Materials & Devices Laboratory. Her research has encompassed a range of studies upon electronic materials from the growth of compound semiconductors via molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), to investigations of electron transport in low-dimensional systems such as quantum wells, wires, and dots, to device design and fabrication. Her current work is in the area of hybrid electronic materials (HEMs) and involves studies of sample morphologies, nanoscale electronic behavior, and the design of apparatus for HEM deposition.

Dr. Daniels-Race received her degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rice, Stanford, and Cornell universities, for the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D., respectively. As an undergraduate, she received a GEM (Graduate Engineering Minorities) Fellowship for her future MS studies, and while working on her masters, she was selected to receive one of fewer than ten CRFP (Cooperative Research Fellowship Program) competitive fellowships awarded nationally that year by AT&T for her PhD. Throughout her academic training, Daniels-Race worked in industry with corporations such as Union Carbide, Exxon, General Electric, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. She began her academic career with the ECE Department at Duke University, where she built that institution’s first MBE laboratory and, over the next thirteen years, established a program in experimental compound semiconductor materials research. Daniels-Race was recruited to join the LSU faculty where she conducts research upon HEMs for use in next-generation nanoscale devices. To the community she has been an active member of several professional societies including the IEEE, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the National Society of Black Physicists. She is an ELATES (Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science) alumna and is a strong advocate for minorities and women in science and engineering.

Seminar Abstract: Ubiquitous dependence upon semiconductor-based technology has reached a critical turning point. In effect “small has hit the wall” (Moore’s Law) as advancements, in everything from cell phones to satellites, struggle to keep pace with demands for smaller, faster, and ever more affordable devices. Thus, researchers operating under the broadly defined umbrella of nanoelectronics inherently challenge traditional solid-state electronic design paradigms and fabrication practices. To this end, my research focuses upon that which I have dubbed HEMs or “hybrid electronic materials.” In this talk, I will present an overview of work in progress, conducted by both my graduate and undergraduate students, as part of the Applied Hybrid Electronic Materials & Structures (AHEMS) Laboratory that I have established in the Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Louisiana State University. With an eye toward the next generation of electronics, new materials and nanoscale structures must be investigated in order to understand the unique physics and potential applications of electronic phenomena “beyond the transistor.” Using hybrid (inorganic-organic) electronic materials, my group works to characterize the nanoscale formations and electronic behavior of HEMs, as well as to develop innovative yet low-cost apparatus and techniques through which these materials may be explored.

Theda Daniels-Race CV

Download the Seminar Flyer

Vertanen Teaches Workshop in Mumbai, India

Published August 1, 2019

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Keith Vertanen (CS/HCC), associate professor of computer science, traveled to Mumbai, India, in July to co-facilitate a three-day workshop on best practices for writing conference papers. The workshop was presented by ACM SIGCHI and its Asian Development C

ommittee, which works to increase its engagement with researchers and practitioners from Asia. The aim of the workshop was to encourage res

earchers from Asia to submit papers for the ACM CHI 2021 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Vertanen, who is co-chair of the Usability Subcommittee for CHI 2020, presented lectures on paper writing and experimental design to 20 PhD candidates from various universities in India, Sri Lanka, and South Korea. Vertanen also presented a talk on his text entry research and served on an advisory panel that offered feedback to the PhD students on their research in a forum similar to a doctoral consortium. Also co-facilitating the workshop were faculty members from University of Central Lancashire, UK, KAIST University, South Korea, and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Visit https://www.indiahci.org/sigchischool/paperCHI2021/ to learn more about the workshop.

Hembroff Attends KEEN Workshop

Published August 1, 2019

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Guy Hembroff, associate professor and director of the Medical Informatics graduate program (CC/CyberS), attended the three-day workshop, “Teaching With Impact – Innovating Curriculum With Entrepreneurial Mindset,” in Milwaukee, Wisc., this July.

The workshop, presented by KEEN, a network of engineering faculty working to instill within student engineers an entrepreneurial mindset, introduced faculty participants to the framework of entrepreneurially minded learning (EML), which is centered on curiosity, connections, and creating value. Hembroff and other participants identified opportunities for EML integration into existing coursework, developed a personal approach to integrating EML within the course design process, and learned how to implement continual improvement of their own EML practice.

Visit https://engineeringunleashed.com for more information about KEEN.

Susanta Ghosh is PI on $170K NSF Grant

Published July 30, 2019

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Susanta Ghosh (ICC-DataS/MEEM/MuSTI) is Principal Investigator on a project that has received a $170,604 research and development grant from the National Science Foundation. The project is titled “EAGER: An Atomistic-Continuum Formulation for the Mechanics of Monolayer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides.” This is a potential 19-month project.

Dr. Ghosh is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Tech. Before joining the Michigan Tech College pof Engineering, Dr. Ghosh was an associate in research in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University; a postdoctoral scholar in the departments of Aerospace Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and a research fellow at the Technical University of Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. His research interests include multi-scale solid mechanics, atomistic modeling, ultrasound elastography, and inverse problem and computational science.

Abstract: Two-dimensional materials are made of chemical elements or compounds of elements while maintaining a single atomic layer crystalline structure. Two-dimensional materials, especially Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs), have shown tremendous promise to be transformed into advanced material systems and devices, e.g., field-effect transistors, solar cells, photodetectors, fuel cells, sensors, and transparent flexible displays. To achieve broader use of TMDs across cutting-edge applications, complex deformations for large-area TMDs must be better understood. Large-area TMDs can be simulated and analyzed through predictive modeling, a capability that is currently lacking. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award supports fundamental research that overcomes current challenges in large-scale atomistic modeling to obtain an efficient but reliable continuum model for single-layer TMDs containing billions of atoms. The model will be translational and will contribute towards the development of a wide range of applications in the nanotechnology, electronics, and alternative energy industries. The award will further support development of an advanced graduate-level course on multiscale modeling and organization of symposia in two international conferences on mechanics of two-dimensional materials. Experimental samples of TMDs contain billions of atoms and hence are inaccessible to the state-of-the-art molecular dynamics simulations. Moreover, existing crystal elastic models for surfaces cannot be applied to multi-atom thick 2D TMDs due to the presence of interatomic bonds across the atomic surfaces. The crystal elastic model aims to solve this problem by projecting all interatomic bonds onto the mid-surface to track their deformations. The actual deformed bonds will, therefore, be computed using the deformations of the mid-surface. Additionally, a technique will be derived to incorporate the effects of curvature and stretching of TMDs on their interactions with substrates. The model will be exercised to generate insights into the mechanical instabilities and the role of substrate interactions on them. The coarse-grained model will overcome the computational bottleneck of molecular dynamics models to simulate TMDs samples comprising billions of atoms. 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.

Mari Buche Attends HERS Institute

Published July 26, 2019

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Mari W. Buche (DataS/SBE) attended the HERS Institute July 8-20, at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, Along with 63 women from a variety of colleges and universities across the country, Buche participated in professional development sessions focused on fine-tuning leadership skills unique to higher education. Visit hersnetwork.org for more details.

Category: ICC