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Yu Cai and Team Recognized by NSA National Cybersecurity Curriculum Program

Yu Cai
Yu Cai

Yu Cai (SoT) and his team are recognized as featured curriculum authors as part of the National Security Agency (NSA)’s National Cybersecurity Curriculum Program (NCCP). In the 2017 fiscal year, NSA awarded 54 grants to universities to build courses and modules in high need cybersecurity areas. All curriculum has undergone a strenuous multi-faceted review before being released. In the recognition note sent by the NSA NCCP program manager, it says “Curriculum developed by your institution has been released nationally in this unique and transformative effort as we work to secure our nation by strengthening the cyber workforce. We congratulate Cai and appreciate the institutional support provided to him for his hard work in developing this curriculum.”

Yu Cai is the principal investigator of two NSA NCCP grants. The goal of these projects is to integrate concepts and best practices of cybersecurity into undergraduate IT/Computing curricula.

Published in Tech Today, March 11, 2019

Michigan Tech 2019 Research Magazine

Published in March 2019

The following ICC members were recognized in the 2019 Research Magazine for receiving National Science Foundation Faculty Career Awards: Sumit Paudyal (“Operation of Distribution Grids in the Context of High-Penetration Distributed Energy Resources and Flexible Loads”), Ye Sun (“System-on-Cloth: A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics”), and Keith Vertanen (“Technology Assisted Conversations”). Read the full article here.

Keith Vertanen and Scott Kuhl’s research into the development of a mid-air virtual keyboard by mounting a hand-tracking device on a VR headset was featured in the article, “Ready User One.” Read the full article here.

The Research in Brief section included Keith Vertanen’s Alzheimer’s research, “H-STEM Engineering and Health Technologies Complex;” and Robert Pastel’s Keweenaw Time Traveler map and the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure. Read the full article here.

Read the 2019 Research Magazine here.

ICC Members Guy Hembroff and Yu Cai featured in Deans’ Teaching Showcase

Guy Hembroff
Yu Cai
Yu Cai

by Michael R. Meyer, Director William G. Jackson CTL

In this week’s showcase, School of Technology Dean Adrienne Minerick would like to recognize Todd Arney, Guy Hembroff and Yu Cai  for their collaborative, creative efforts in developing a new course: SAT 4411 Data Center Engineering.

Along with former faculty member Xinli Wang, the three responded in Fall 2014 to a request from the Computer Network and Systems Administration (CNSA) Industrial Advisory Board to provide students with more exposure and practical hands-on experience with virtualization, cloud computing and data center engineering for both physical and virtual data centers.

Topics included in the course during initial planning included data center planning, disaster recovery, virtualization methods and cloud computing services that provide business continuity,

The class was first offered in Spring 2016 and was co-taught by Hembroff, Arney and Wang. The original idea was to devote one third of the class to data centers, one third to virtualization and a third to cloud computing.

Labs included tours of data centers both on and off campus and detailed discussions with data center managers. Students responded positively to seeing the real-world data centers and getting information directly from data center technicians and professionals in several different fields related to data center engineering.

From Tech Today, February 22, 2019

Read the full article.

Dan Fuhrmann presents to MTU Board of Trustees on new MTU College of Computing

Dan Fuhrmann

By Garrett Neese, Staff Writer, Daily Mining Gazette, February 11, 2019

HOUGHTON — Michigan Technological University is planning to add a college of computing.

The Tech Senate heard the first public presentation on the college from Daniel Fuhrmann, chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and member of the Data Revolution and Sensing Task Force.

The college idea had come out of a Computing Information Sciences working group last year, which identified a lack of addressing the rise of cybertechnology at Tech, Fuhrmann said.

The objective is to bring computing up to the same level of recognition and visibility as Tech’s engineering, Fuhrmann said.

Read the full article.

Alex Larkin scores 17th out of 3,324 at NCL Cyber Competition

Alex Larkin

Published on the Computer Science Depart. Blog, December 18, 2018

Read the full story.

MTU Vice President of Research appoints Timothy Havens as next ICC Director

Timothy Havens
Tim Havens

By Dan Fuhrmann, published on the ECE Newsblog, August 6, 2018

Timothy C. Havens (ECE), the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems, has been named director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC), effective immediately.

As the Jackson Associate Professor, Havens holds a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science. He is also director of the interdisciplinary master of science program in data science. His technical areas of expertise are machine learning, computational intelligence, data science, and signal and image processing.

Havens was selected to lead the ICC by Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Jacqueline Huntoon and Vice President for Research David Reed, following an internal nomination and recommendation process organized by ICC Co-Director and ECE Department Chair Daniel R. Fuhrmann. Havens’ term as ICC director extends through Dec. 31, 2021.

Read the full story.

Ye Sun Wins CAREER Award

Ye Sun

By Kelley Christiansen, published in Michigan Tech News, July 18, 2018

An innovative idea to replace wearable health monitoring devices with embroidered electronics garners attention from the National Science Foundation.

Health monitoring devices—FitBit or Garmin accelerometer watches, apps on cell phones, heart monitors—are becoming ubiquitous, but they have their drawbacks. In some climates, these devices can rub irritatingly against skin. Some are heavy and bulky. So imagine if embroidery on clothing could replace these devices altogether.

Ye Sun, an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, has received an NSF CAREER Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by early career faculty. The research and development grant is for Sun’s project “System-on-Cloth: A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics.”

Sun’s project is funded for $500,000 for five years.

Read the full story.

Vertanen receives Research Excellence Fund (REF) Seed Grant

Keith Vertanen (HCC) has received a Research Excellence Fund (REF) seed grant from Michigan Tech for his project entitled, “Automatic Speech Recognition using Deep Neural Networks”. This one-year project has a budget of $45,421. This project will create a state-of-the-art speech recognition engine based on deep neural networks. The recognizer will be used to investigate speech-based interactive systems for instrumented physical environments (e.g. cars) and person-centric devices (e.g. augmented reality smartglasses). The recognizer will also be used to investigate the input of Java source code by voice.