Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Blog

Bo Chen’s Research on COVID-19 Prevention Method to be Published in IEEE IoT Magazine

Published August 27, 2020

A paper authored by Michigan Tech Assistant Professor Bo Chen, Computer Science, and Data Science master’s student Shashank Reddy Danda, has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Internet of Things Magazine special issue on Smart IoT Solutions for Combating COVID-19 Pandemic. The special issue will be published in September 2020.

The paper focuses on Chen’s research of COVID-19 prevention through the leveraging of computing technology. The project is currently supported by a Michigan Tech College of Computing seed grant, and external funding for further development is being pursued.

Chen is a member of the ICC’s Center for Cybersecurity.

Download a preprint of the paper here.

Abstract:
Recently, the impact of coronavirus has been witnessed by almost every country around the world. To mitigate spreading of coronavirus, a fundamental strategy would be reducing the chance of healthy people from being exposed to it. Having observed the fact that most viruses come from coughing/sneezing/runny nose of infected people, in this work we propose to detect such symptom events via mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, smart watches, and other IoT devices) possessed by most people in modern world and, to instantly broadcast locations where the symptoms have been observed to other people. This would be able to significantly reduce risk that healthy people get exposed to the viruses. The mobile devices today are usually equipped with various sensors including microphone, accelerometer, and GPS, as well as network connection (4G, LTE, Wi-Fi), which makes our proposal feasible. Further experimental evaluation shows that coronavirus-like symptoms (coughing/sneezing/runny nose) can be detected with an accuracy around 90%; in addition, the dry cough (more likely happening to COVID-19 patients) and wet cough can also be differentiated with a high accuracy.

Bo Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science. His areas of expertise include mobile device security, cloud computing security, named data networking security, big data security, and blockchain.

Shashank Reddy Danda is an MS student in Data Science. He is currently working as a research assistant in MTU Security and Privacy (SnP) Lab under the supervision of Dr. Bo Chen.

IEEE Internet of Things Magazine (IEEE IoTM) is a publication of the IEEE Internet of Things Initiative, a Multi-Society Technical Group.

SOSSEC / US Army ERDC Award to Study Adaptive AI

Published August 25, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Dr. Timothy Havens, College of Computing, and Dr. Anthony Pinar, Electrical and Computer Engineering, have been awarded a two-year, $428,707 project by the SOSSEC Inc. / U.S. Army ERDC to investigate “Modeling and Algorithm Development for Adaptive Adversarial AI for Complex Autonomy.”

The project will study how autonomous systems operate in complex and unstructured environments, focusing on sensing, processing, and decision-making capabilities.

Havens and Pinar are members of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystem’s Center for Data Sciences.

Tim Havens is associate dean for research, College of Computing, the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems, and director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems.

Tony Pinar is a lecturer and senior design coordinator in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department.

The SOSSEC Consortium was specifically formed to address the needs of the Department of Defense (DoD). It was founded on a simple concept: that collaboration, innovation, and cooperation among a broad spectrum of industry, academia and non-profit entities vastly improves the products and services delivered to its clients, according to the organization’s website.

The mission of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), an integral component of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, is to help solve the nation’s most challenging problems in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences for the benefit of the Army, the Department of Defense, civilian agencies, and the public good, according to the organizations’s website.

The Institute of Computing and Cyberersystems (ICC) promotes collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and learning experiences through six research centers in the areas of computing education, cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, data sciences, human-centered computing, and scalable architectures and systems, for the benefit of Michigan Technological University and society at large.

The ICC’s 55 members represent more than 20 academic disciplines at Michigan Tech. Member scientists are collaborating to conduct impactful research, make valuable contributions in the field of computing, and solve problems of critical national importance.

ICC’s Center for Data Sciences (DataS) focuses on the research of data sciences education, algorithms, mathematics, and applications. DataS fosters interdisciplinary collaborations by bringing together diverse faculty and students from varied disciplines to discover new knowledge and exciting research opportunities in the field of data sciences.

$243K DURIP Award will Multiply Michigan Tech Research Capabilities

Published August 25, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Dr. Timothy Havens (ICC), Dr. Andrew Barnard (GLRC), Dr. Guy Meadows (GLRC), and Dr. Gowtham (IT/ECE) have been awarded an Office of Naval Research DURIP grant titled, “Acoustic Sensing System and High-Throughput Computing Environment and Threat Monitoring in Naval Environments Using Machine Learning.”

The $243,169 award will fund procurement of new high throughput computing and underwater acoustic sensing systems for use by researchers at Michigan Tech.

The Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) supports universities through awards meant to build the infrastructures necessary for relevant, high-quality Navy research.

We believe that these resources will considerably multiply our capability and productivity in assisting the U.S. Navy, and DoD at large, to move forward on numerous fronts. We have excellent resources, but lack some infrastructure capabilities to make a leap in theory and applications.
Timothy Havens, Director, Institute of Computing and Cybersystems

Havens says that the award supports two active U.S. Navy projects in particular, “ONR Graduate Traineeship Award: Multi-Modal, Near-Shore, Ice-Covered Arctic Acoustic Propagation Measurements and Analysis (ONR #N00014-18-1-2592)” and “Localization, Tracking, and Classification of On-Ice and Underwater Noise Sources Using Machine Learning (US NSWC #N00174-19-1-0004).”

“With this new equipment we can begin to conduct more detailed, realistic, and repeatable sensor/target experiments, and facilitate expansion of current research into related areas of interest to the DoD, such as deep learning with digital phased arrays and persistent, distributed sensing with sensor arrays,” Havens notes.

“The equipment will significantly enhance Michigan Tech capabilities for six other Department of Defense (DoD)-funded projects as well, including NGA, SPAWAR, and DARPA awards,” he adds.

Finally, through graduate student participation in the research, and collaboration with the undergraduate SENSE Enterprise at Michigan Tech (Strategic Education through Naval Systems Experiences), the equipment will augment Navy STEM education and future workforce development.

Tim Havens is associate dean for research, College of Computing, the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems, and director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems.

Andrew Barnard is director of the Great Lakes Research Center,
associate professor, Mechanical Engineering—Engineering Mechanic, and Faculty advisor to the undergraduate SENSE Enterprise.

Guy Meadows is director of the Marine Engineering Laboratory, the Robbins Professor of Sustainable Marine Engineering, and a research professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics.

Gowtham is director of research computing for Michigan Tech’s Information Technology department; an adjunct assistant professor, Physics; a research associate professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; and an NSF XSEDE Campus Champion.

The Institute of Computing and Cyberersystems (ICC) promotes collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and learning experiences through six research centers in the areas of computing education, cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, data sciences, human-centered computing, and scalable architectures and systems, for the benefit of Michigan Technological University and society at large.

The ICC’s 55 members represent more than 20 academic disciplines at Michigan Tech. Member scientists are collaborating to conduct impactful research, make valuable contributions in the field of computing, and solve problems of critical national importance.

The Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) provides state-of-the-art laboratories to support research on a broad array of topics. Faculty members from many departments across Michigan Technological University’s campus collaborate on interdisciplinary research, ranging from air–water interactions to biogeochemistry to food web relationships.

One of the GLRC’s most important functions is to educate the scientists, engineers, technologists, policymakers, and stakeholders of tomorrow about the Great Lakes basin. The Center for Science and Environmental Outreach provides K–12 student, teacher, and community education/outreach programs, taking advantage of the Center’s many teaching labs.

The GLRC also contains a lake-level marine facility and convenient deep-water docking, providing a year-round home for Michigan Tech’s surface and sub-surface fleet of marine vehicles.

Chee-Wooi Ten’s Research Is Subject of Advisor News Article

Published August 13, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Associate Professor Chee-Wooi Ten, Electrical and Computer Engineering, was cited in the article, “Reports Summarize Engineering Study Results from Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (Premium Calculation for Insurance Businesses Based On Cyber Risks In IP-based Power Substations),” published August 11, 2020 in Advisor News.

Ten is a member of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) at Michigan Tech and the ICC’s Center for Cyber-Physical Systems.

The paper emphasizes a framework of premium calculation for cyber insurance businesses by modeling potential electronic intrusion with steady-state simulation results and its direct hypothesized impacts, according to the article, citing a NewsRx press release.

The article discussed Ten’s National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyber-Physical Systems grant, “CPS: Medium: Collaborative Research: An Actuarial Framework of Cyber Risk Management for Power Grids.” Assistant Professor Yeonwoo Rho, Mathematical Sciences, is co-PI on the award. The three-year $349K project was awarded in August 2017. Read the abstract and view additional CPS and ICC research projects here, . View the award at NSF.com.

The Institute of Computing and Cybersystems, founded in 2015, promotes collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and learning experiences in the areas of computing education, cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, data sciences, human-centered computing, and scalable architectures and systems for the benefit of Michigan Technological University and society at large.

It works to provide faculty and students the opportunity to work across organizational boundaries to create an environment that mirrors contemporary technological innovation.

Advisor News is published by InsuranceNewsNet, which describes itself as on the forefront of communicating breaking news and original insights to the industry. With thousands of news sources and hundreds of original articles, the site provides premium content typically only available through proprietary news outlets.

Yu Cai is PI of 2-year NSA GenCyber Project

Published August 10, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Professor Yu Cai, Applied Computing, a member of the ICC’s Center for Cybersecurity, is the principal investigator on a two-year project that has received a $99,942 grant from the National Security Agency (GenCyber). The project is titled, “GenCyber Teacher Camp at Michigan Tech. ”

Lecturer Tim Van Wagner (AC) and Assistant Professor Bo Chen (CS, DataS) are Co-PIs. Cai will serve as the camp director, Tim Van Wagner as lead instructor.

This GenCyber project aims to host a week-long, residential summer camp for twenty K-12 STEM teachers in 2021 at Michigan Tech. Target educators are primarily from Michigan and surrounding states.

The objectives of the camp are to teach cybersecurity knowledge and safe online behavior, develop innovative teaching methods for delivering cybersecurity content, and provide professional development opportunities so participants will return to their home schools with contagious enthusiasm about teaching cybersecurity.

The GenCyber camp will be offered at no cost to camp participants. Room and board will be provided. Teacher participants will receive a stipend of $500 for attending and completing camp activities.

Read about the 2019 Michigan Tech GenCyber camps for teachers and students here.

Tim Havens, Tony Pinar Co-Authors of Article in IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Systems

Published August 5, 2020

By Karen Johnson

An article by Anthony Pinar (DataS/ECE) and Timothy Havens (DataS/CC), in collaboration with University of Missouri researchers Muhammad Islam, Derek Anderson, Grant Scott, and Jim Keller, all of University of Missouri, has been published in the July 2020 issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems.

The article is titled, “Enabling explainable fusion in deep learning with fuzzy integral neural networks.” Link to the article here.

Tony Pinar

Tim Havens

Abstract:
Information fusion is an essential part of numerous engineering systems and biological functions, e.g., human cognition. Fusion occurs at many levels, ranging from the low-level combination of signals to the high-level aggregation of heterogeneous decision-making processes. While the last decade has witnessed an explosion of research in deep learning, fusion in neural networks has not observed the same revolution. Specifically, most neural fusion approaches are ad hoc, are not understood, are distributed versus localized, and/or explainability is low (if present at all). Herein, we prove that the fuzzy Choquet integral (ChI), a powerful nonlinear aggregation function, can be represented as a multilayer network, referred to hereafter as ChIMP.

We also put forth an improved ChIMP (iChIMP) that leads to a stochastic-gradient-descent-based optimization in light of the exponential number of ChI inequality constraints. An additional benefit of ChIMP/iChIMP is that it enables explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Synthetic validation experiments are provided, and iChIMP is applied to the fusion of a set of heterogeneous architecture deep models in remote sensing. We show an improvement in model accuracy, and our previously established XAI indices shed light on the quality of our data, model, and its decisions.

Citation
M. Islam, D. T. Anderson, A. J. Pinar, T. C. Havens, G. Scott and J. M. Keller, “Enabling Explainable Fusion in Deep Learning With Fuzzy Integral Neural Networks,” in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, vol. 28, no. 7, pp. 1291-1300, July 2020, doi: 10.1109/TFUZZ.2019.2917124.

Kelly Steelman Presents at ASEE

Published August 5, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Kelly Steelman, interim department chair and associate professor, Cognitive and Learning Sciences, presented her paper, “Work in Progress: Student Perception of Computer Programming Within Engineering Education: An Investigation of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors” at the 2020 ASEE Virtual Conference, June 22-26, 2020.

Co-authors of the paper are Michelle Jarvie-Eggart (EF), Kay Tislar (CLS), Charles Wallace (CC), Nathan Naser (GMES), Briana Bettin (CS) and Leo Ureel (CS), all from Michigan Tech.

Abstract
Although most engineering faculty and professionals view computer programming as an essential part of an undergraduate engineering curriculum, engineering students do not always share this viewpoint. In fact, engineering students—especially those outside of computer and electrical engineering—may not realize the value of computer programming skills until after they have graduated and advanced in their career (Sterian, Dunne, & Blauch, 2005). Failure to find value in computer programming may have negative consequences for learning. Indeed, engineering students who do not view programming as interesting or useful show poorer performance on tests of programming concepts than students who do (Lingar, Williams, and McCord, 2017). This finding is consistent with theories of technology acceptance (e.g., Davis, 1989, Venkatesh, et al., 2003) that emphasize perceived usefulness as a key determinant of attitudes toward a technology and subsequent use or disuse of it. Accordingly, to better support student learning, engineering coursework should include specific interventions that emphasize the utility of programming skills for a career in engineering. Intervention effectiveness, however, may depend in part on the characteristics of the individual learners, including their prior programming experience, their openness to new experiences, and their beliefs about the nature of intelligence. The purpose of the current work is to understand engineering students’ attitudes toward and experiences with computer programming as well as to assess the relationship between their attitudes and experiences and their mindset toward their own intelligence. 101 engineering students participated in the study as part of a general education psychology course. Participants completed a computer language inventory and three surveys. The first survey inquired about students’ computer programming experiences and attitudes (Hoegh and Moskal, 2009). The second survey posed questions related to different aspects of openness to experience (Woo et al., 2014): intellectual efficiency, ingenuity, curiosity, aesthetics, tolerance, and depth. Finally, the third survey probed participants’ beliefs about the nature of intelligence and whether it is fixed or can be developed (Dweck, 1999). This paper will present the results of these surveys and explore the correlations among the various scales. The implications for engineering education interventions will be discussed.

Download the paper here.

Citation
Steelman, K. S., & Jarvie-Eggart, M. E., & Tislar, K. L., & Wallace, C., & Manser, N. D., & Bettin, B. C., & Ureel, L. C. (2020, June), Work in Progress: Student Perception of Computer Programming within Engineering Education: An Investigation of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . https://peer.asee.org/35683

Tim Havens Gives Talk at Los Alamos National Lab

Published August 3, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Dr. Timothy Havens presented the lead talk at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ISR-2 Seminar Series on Advancing Toward Modern Detection and Estimation Techniques for Multi-Sensor Scenarios, presented online July 9, 2020.

Tim Havens is associate dean for research for the College of Computing, director of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC), and the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems.

The talk, “Explainable Deep Fusion,” described Havens’s sensor fusion systems research that seeks to combine cooperative and complementary sources to achieve optimal inference from pooled evidence.

Havens specifically discussed his innovations in non-linear aggregation learning with Choquet integrals and their applications in deep learning and Explainable AI.

Michigan Tech Produces Best Software Engineers in U.S.

Published August 3, 2020

By Karen Johnson

Michigan Tech ranks 5th on a list of 13 non-ivy league schools that produce the best software engineers in the U.S., recently published by DesignRush.

The demand for software developers is steadily increasing, with 21% expected growth from 2018 to 2028. To help industry meet this need, DesignRush has published a list of non-ivy league schools that produce the best software engineers in the U.S.

University of California, Irvine
Stevens Institute of Technology
California Polytechnic State University
Iowa State University
Michigan Technological University
Milwaukee School of Engineering
The University of Texas at Dallas
Drexel University
Auburn University
Miami University
Grantham University
University of Louisiana Lafayette
Robert Morris University

DesignRush.com is a B2B marketplace connecting brands with agencies. DesignRush features the top agencies around the world, including the best Digital Agencies, Software Developers, Logo Design, Branding, Digital Marketing, Website Design, eCommerce Web Design Companies and more.

Moving to Final Step of Return to Campus Plan

Published August 3, 2020

By Karen Johnson

by MTU Flex Task Force

On Monday, July 27, Michigan Tech will enter the final step of our Return to Campus Plan. Step Three concludes our return to campus and marks our transition to the Health and Safety Levelssystem that we will maintain from the fall semester forward.

Beginning July 27, we plan to resume campus operations at the level at which Michigan Tech will function when students return. Previous expectations outlined in Steps One and Two remain in effect, including enhanced hygiene and social distancing protocols. Of course, those who need to work from home due to health concerns are encouraged to do so, using either a flexible work agreement with their supervisor or a COVID-19 accommodation.

Please remember that all those who come to campus are required to submit the Daily Symptom Monitoring Form. This form can also be found on the MTU Flex Portal. Employees must remain six feet apart while working. While working indoors, employees who can medically tolerate them must wear protective face coverings unless working alone in their office with the door closed. If you are unable to medically tolerate a face covering, please reach out for an appropriate COVID-19 accommodation.

If you are returning to campus as an employee, you must complete the online COVID-19 trainingwithin seven days of your return to campus. All employees returning prior to the fall semester must have training completed no later than August 26, 2020.

If you have questions about this transition, please visit the Fall 2020 Return to Campus Three-Step Plan page on the MTU Flex website. Information about the Health and Safety Levels can be found in the website’s Campus Operations section.