Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Blog

by Allison Mills, University Marketing and Communications

Smart traffic is more than self-driving cars. One engineer is tackling these transportation systems with an early career award grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Changing lanes, upcoming merges, blind spots — wouldn’t it be great to broadcast to other vehicles what your own car is doing and where? Well, the technology does exist, and the data-rich messages in vehicle-to-vehicle communication are less salty than the ones exchanged in human languages. But the technology needs more development before it’s ready for rush hour.

Kuilin Zhang explained the challenge is forecasting traffic, which is inherently uncertain. Zhang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and affiliated assistant professor of computer science at Michigan Tech, is a recipient of an NSF CAREER Award to improve automated driving decisions using predictive, real-time feedback within and between vehicles. The project totals $500,000 over a five-year span and puts some of Michigan Tech’s prime mobility testing facilities to use.

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Thomas Oommen (GMES), was referenced in the article “Kerala proposes tough steps to tide over water crisis,” in The Hindu Business Line. The story looks at concerns for fresh water in the India state of Kerala.

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Tech Today, April 5, 2019

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

Mark Rouleau is the principal investigator on project that has received a $125,709 contract from Florida International University. The project is titled “Collaborative Research:  Design and Development of a K-12 STEM Observation Protocol.” This is the first year of a potential four-year project.

Tech Today, March 8, 2019

Read the 2019 Research Magazine here.

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

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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.

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

In Fall 2018, Alex Larkin marked a great achievement in the NCL Cyber Competition Regular Season. His national rank is 17th out of 3324 participant, a great jump from 36th in Spring 2018. In addition, our NCL team (“Michigan Tech Hackers”) ranked 81 out of 360 teams in NCL Cyber Competition Postseason.  It was the first time we had a team involved in this competition and our team did an excellent job as a starting point.

The team consists of three CS undergraduate students: Alexander Larkin, Jon Preuth, and Jack Bergman. Bo Chen, CS Assistant Professor, is the team’s faculty coach.

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