News
Jason Eisner Wins Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award
Jason Eisner has been selected to receive the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching award for the 2012-2013 academic year. This award is funded by the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association to recognize excellence in teaching. Past recipients have been honored for their enthusiasm in the classroom, interest in their students, and ability to teach complex and difficult information.
Congratulations Jason!
Michael Paul receives Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship
PhD student Michael Paul has been awarded a 2013 Microsoft PhD Research Fellowship. The Microsoft Fellowship program supports men and women in their third and fourth years of PhD graduate studies who have been nominated by their universities.
Michael is in his 3rd year in the PhD program. He is working under the guidance of Dr. Jason Eisner and Dr. Mark Dredze natural language processing, text mining, and machine learning with an emphasis on building unsupervised models to find meaningful patterns in text as well as applications to social media and health informatics.
Michael will receive a 2 year award which will cover stipend, tuition and fees. Congratulations Michael!
JHU Team Takes Top Prize at iGEM
A team of 4 undergraduates from the JHU CS and BME departments competed in the iGEM World Championship Jamboree in Cambridge MA November 2-5, 2012. The team was awarded the First Place for the Best Software Tools Project.
Congratulations to CS students Emily Scher ’15 and Robert Eisinger ’13 and BME students Xiaotian 'Album' Shen ’14 and George Chen ’15.
Rene Vidal Receives J. K. Aggarwal Prize
Professor Rene Vidal has been name the 2012 recipient of the J. K. Aggarwal Prize. This award is given by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). The prize, awarded every two years, is given to a young investigator under 40 years of age in recognition of a technical contribution of far-reaching significance and impact on the field of pattern recognition or its closely allied fields.
The award will be given to Professor Vidal at ICPR 2012 in November 2012.
Alex Szalay invited to speak at the NITRD Symposium
Professor Alex Szalay has been invited to speak at the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Symposium to be held in February 2012 in Washington DC to mark the 20th anniversary of the NITRD program.
Michael Kazhdan Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure
Congratulations to Michael Kazhdan who has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure effective July 1, 2011.
Braverman to be honored as Outstanding Doctoral Student
CS Assistant Professor Vladimir Braverman will be honored as the Edward K. Rice Outstanding Doctoral Student at the 2011 UCLA Engineering Awards Dinner on November 4, 2011.
Dr. Braverman completed his Ph.D. in 2011 and joined the faculty of the Computer Science department in July 2011.
Congratulations Vladimir!
To Clear Digital Waste in Computers, ‘Think Green,’ Johns Hopkins Researchers Say
A digital dumping ground lies inside most computers, a wasteland where old, rarely used and unneeded files pile up. Such data can deplete precious storage space, bog down the system’s efficiency and sap its energy. Conventional rubbish trucks can’t clear this invisible byte blight. But Johns Hopkins computer scientists Ragib Hasan and Randal Burns say real-world trash management tactics point the way to a new era of computer cleansing.
http://releases.jhu.edu/2011/09/01/digital-waste-in-computers/
Kazhdan Wins Software Award at SGP 2011
Assistant Professor Michael Kazhdan and his former PhD student Matthew Bolitho were the recipients of the newly established Software Award at SGP 2011.
"To encourage the free distribution of useful, high quality software in computer graphics, the Symposium on Geometry Processing has instituted an annual Software Award – aimed at recognizing and acknowledging individuals who released high impact code to the community. This year’s recipients were Professor Misha Kazhdan and his former graduate student, Matthew Bolitho, for their release of the code for Poisson Surface Reconstruction."
Congratulations Misha and Matthew!
Video Wins Audience Choice at Robot Film Festival
At the first annual Robot Film Festival, held July 16-17, 2011 in New York City, a short video by CS/LCSR students Kel Guerin, Carol Reilly and Tom Tantillo was selected as the audience favorite. The film, entitled "Operation da Vinci" shows the application of modern technology to a favorite children's game.
CS Welcomes New Faculty Members
The CS Department is p leased to welcome our new faculty hires for 2011 – Dr. Vladimir Braverman and Dr. Suchi Saria.
Vladimir is a recent PhD from UCLA with interests in algorithms for data streams, communication complexity and related areas. Suchi is a recent PhD from Stanford with interests in graphical models and probabilistic modeling applied to health-related problems.
LCSR Lab to Host Workshop at World Robotics Symposium
The Visual Imaging and Surgical Robotics lab (VISR) is hosting an invited workshop to be held during the World Robotics Symposium. The goal is to present technology developed recently at JHU and elsewhere to leading clinicians and build consensus on how the current training process should evolve.
The participants are from academic centers at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, University of Washington, the Uniformed Services University, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Medical School, University. Minnesota, as well as industry collaborators such as Intuitive Surgical, MIMIC Technologies, and Anthrotronix.
VISR is the organizing lab, and Intuitive and MIMIC are co-organizers.
Additional information can be found at the VISR website.
Greg Hager appointed to Computing Community Consortium
CS Chair Greg Hager has been appointed to the Computing Community Consortium. The CCC is a standing committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA) established to "mobilize the computing research community to debate long-range challenges and build consensus around specific research visions. The CCC specifically pursues the next big computing ideas that will define the future of the field, attract the very best students, and catalyze research investment and public support."
Greg will serve a 3 year term through January 2014.
Susan Hohenberger receives NSF CAREER award
Susan Hohenberger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, is the recipient of a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. CAREER awards are given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers. The grant is one of NSF’s most competitive awards and emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives.
Susan’s award for “Practical Cryptography for the Cloud” will support the development of cryptographic schemes for the cloud environment, including methods to protect the privacy and integrity of data for the growing number of consumers who utilize cloud services.
Congratulations to Susan!
Omar Ahmad paper selected for cover of JBMR December issue
A paper by PhD student Omar Ahmad and his co-authors is the cover story in the December issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.
HiNRG authors share Best Paper Award in SenSys 2010
At the 8th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2010), the award for best paper was presented to Design and Evaluation of a Versatile and Efficient Receiver-Initiated Link Layer for Low-Power Wireless
co-authored by JHU graduate students Mike Liang, Yin Chen, JHU Associate Professor Andreas Terzis, Prabal Dutta of University of Michigan and Stephen Dawson-Haggerty of UCB.
The conference, held in November 2010 in Zurich, Switzerland, is the leading conference in sensor networks research."
Russ Taylor Wins 2010 MICCAI Society Enduring Impact Award
Professor Russell H. Taylor has been awarded the 2010 MICCAI Society Enduring Impact Award by the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention Society at the 2010 MICCAI conference in Beijing, China. One of these highly prestigious awards is given annually in recognition of the awardee's research leadership in the field.
Russ is one of the founding members of the MICCAI Society and was elevated to the rank of MICCAI Fellow in 2009. Russ is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He was awarded the IEEE Third Millenium Medal in 2000, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award in 2008.
Congratulations Russ!
Andreas Terzis Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure
Congratulations to Andreas Terzis who has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. His new title takes effect July 1, 2010.
2010 Graduates from Computer Science
Congratulations to the following students who have completed programs for undergraduates, masters of science in engineering and docotoral degrees in the Computer Science Department.
PhDs
|
Matthew Bolitho |
Henry Lin |
Masters of Science in Engineering
|
Bhuwan Agarwal |
Sushant Narsale |
Bachelor of Science
|
Gregory Anderson * * Denotes Departmental Honors |
Jeffry Orthober
|
Bachelor of Arts
|
Evan Chin |
Timur Sherif |
Minor in Computer Science
|
Kristin Donato
|
Paul Nunley
|
CONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES TO THE CLASS OF 2010
Wireless Sensors in the Brazilian Rainforest
CS faculty member, Dr. Andreas Terzis, has been collaborating on a project with Microsoft Research to deploy a wireless sensor network in the rainforests of Brazil. The Microsoft Research web page has a story about the research. Be sure to click the video link on the right to see further information about the project.
CS Undergraduates Receive PURA awards
Three CS undergraduate students have been awarded Provost Undergraduate Research Awards (PURA) grants. This program is designed to provide undergraduates with the opportunity to engage in research activity and develop investigative skills.
Awards have been given to:
Manaswi Gupta, advised by Dr. Gregory Hager, for his project entitled: "Retinal Tool Tracking Algorithms: An Investigative Approach"
Luis Tueros-Grimaldo, advised by Dr. Andreas Terzis, for his project entitled: "Visualization of Metadata in environmental wireless sensor networks"
Greg Vorsanger, advised by Dr. Gerald Masson, for his project entitled: "RFID Protected USB Flash Drive Hub"
The students will receive funds to cover a stipend and other project related expenses. At the conclusion of their research, they will participate in a poster session and recogntion ceremony which will be held next spring.
Congratulations to these students!
Seth Billings Receives NSF Fellowship
PhD student Seth Billings has been awarded a 2010 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The NSF Fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees, including women in engineering and computer and information science. NSF Fellows are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.
Seth is beginning his 3rd year in the PhD program. He is working under the guidance of Dr. Russ Taylor on medical robotics and imaging systems with a current focus on developing autonomous motion-overlay behaviors for the da Vinci surgical robot system that aid surgeons in performing elastography imaging of internal organs using minimally invasive ultrasound probes within the body. Seth will receive a 3 year award which will cover stipend, tuition and fees.
Congratulations Seth!
Join the 2010 Robo-Challenge
Interested in robots? The JHU Computer-Integrated Surgery Student Research Sociey is hosting a robot building competition for high school and middle school students. The 2010 event will be held on Saturday April 17, 2010 on the Homewood campus. All the details are availble on their web page.
'Robots For Real' - IEEE Special Report
The IEEE Spectrum has done a special report called Robots For Real. One of the segments - "Surgeons and Robots Scrub Up" - features the work of the researchers in our Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST) lab.
You can see all the segments here.
Have an iPhone? Check out Aves
CS PhD student Omar Ahmad is the co-developer of two revolutionary gaming technologies which debuted on the iPhone in the game Aves. The game has been featured in Apple's New and Noteworthy category of iTunes. Reviews have included comments like 'beautifully detailed graphics', 'technically impressive', 'audio and graphics are world class'.
The JHU Digital Media Center has some additional information about the game and its development here.
Best Paper Award at MICCAI '09
At MICCAI '09, the Best Paper in Computer Assisted Intervention Systems and Medical Robotics Award was presented to Single Fiber Optical Coherence Tomography Microsurgical Instruments for Computer and Robot Assisted Retinal Surgery authored by Marcin Balicki (ERC/CS), Jae-Ho Han (ERC/ECE), Iulian Iordachita (ERC), Peter Gehlbach (JHU Wilmer Eye Institute), James Handa (JHU Wilmer Eye Institute), Russell Taylor (ERC/CS) & Jin Kang (ERC/ECE).
Congratulations to the authors on this notable achievement.
CS Faculty part of $20M award to Sheridan Libraries
NSF has awarded a $20M grant to the Sheridan Libraries for the purpose of 'data curation'. Two CS faculty - Dr. Randal Burns and Dr. Andreas Terzis - will participate in this effort. The JHU Gazette features a story about the project.
Johns Hopkins Engineering Magazine features CS Research
The summer issue of Johns Hopkins Engineering includes articles about the some research being conducted by two CS professors.
The article Modern Prospectors explains research involving wireless sensor networks that is being conducted by Andreas Terzis. Be sure to check out the entire article to understand how research being done in other WSE departments is contributing to the sensor research.
A second article, A Glimpse Into the Future of Medicine, highlights the work of Dr. Russ Taylor and his students using the Intuitive da Vinci Sugical System.
CS Professor receives Robert B. Pond Teaching Award
Professor Rao Kosaraju is the 2009 winner of the Robert B. Pond Sr. Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given for commitment to and excellence in instruction, success in instilling the desire to learn and dedication to undergraduate students.
Congratulations Rao on this notable award.
Terzis miTag Featured on Discovery Channel
Dr. Andreas Terzis and his collaborators are featured in a video on the Discovery Channel website. The story describes the miTag, short for medical information tag. The technology would be used in to monitor vital signs of patients in hospital emergency rooms and other crisis situations until they can be seen by a doctor. Information is transmitted wirelessly to a central monitoring system. If a patient becomes unstable, medical professionals could be alerted more quickly and provide a more immediate response.
Learn more about this device by watching the video on the Discovery Channel web page: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/tech-emergency-rooms-go-wireless.html.
Randal Burns Wins Best Paper Award
At the 7th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '09), the award for best paper was presented to "CA-NFS: A Congestion-Aware Network File System" co-authored by JHU graduate Alexandros Batsakis, JHU Associate Professor Randal Burns, and Arkady Kanevsky, James Lentini and Thomas Talpey of NetApp. The conference, held in February 2009 in San Francisco, CA, is the leading conference in storage systems research.
Congratulations to Randal and the other authors!
Russ Taylor Elected Fellow at University of Tokyo
Professor Russ Taylor has been elected a fellow of the School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. A letter from Kazou Hotate, Dean of the School of Engineering, said this honor is awarded in recognition of "your distinguished contribution to the research and education of our school as well as your outstanding accomplishments in research and education in the field of engineering".
The title of “Fellow, School of Engineering, The University
of Tokyo” is granted to persons who have
their main base of activity at institutions abroad and
who have carried out distinguished achievements in
scholarship or education in the engineering field as well
as meritorious service to the education or research at
this school through exchanges with it and whose continued
support via exchanges can be expected.
Congratulations Russ!
CS student Marcin Balicki to receive 2009-2010 ARCS Scholarship
On March 20, 2009, Vice Provost Jonathan Bagger announced the JHU recipients of the 2009-2010 ARCS Scholarships. Third year Computer Science PhD student Marcin Balicki is among the winners. Marcin is currently studying with Dr. Russell Taylor in the Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST) Lab. The ARCS Foundation awards scholarships annually to students working in the science and engineering fields who have maintained high scholastic records and have proven abilities in a scientific field. The student winners participated in a site visit on April 1, 2009 during which they gave brief presentations about their work to the foundation representatives. In the fall, there will also be an awards ceremony at the U. S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. . Congratulations to Marcin on this noteworthy accomplishment.
Rene Vidal Named Sloan Research Fellow
Assistant Professor Rene Vidal has been selected to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship for 2009. Dr. Vidal is among 118 early career scientists selected for fellowships this year. His research areas include biomedical imaging, computer vision, machine learning, dynamical systems theory, and robotics.
These fellowships, awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, are given annually to "exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work," and provide resources for faculty to pursue new areas of interest.
Congratulations Rene!
Local Media Coverage for 'Facebook 101' course
CS PhD students Daniel Mirota and Carol Reiley taught "Facebook 101:
Developing Photo and Video Applications for Online Social Networks" during Intersession 2009. The 13 students enrolled came from various majors and grade levels. In three short weeks, students conceptualized, developed, and began marketing five new applications for Facebook users. To our knowledge, never before has a class been taught focused on teaching software engineering using the Facebook platform. Facebook currently has over 150 million users and 60 million photos uploaded daily. The class had an emphasis on computer vision to utilize the amount of photo data available. The projects include Mosayick (a way to assemble tiny pieces of a friend's photos to create a larger new image, resembling an online mosaic), TextTrade (a method of buying or selling used textbooks with other Facebook users), Admirer (a platform to view the photographs and albums of your friends in one centralized location), FaceMerge ("face morphing" of two friends), and Photo Search (finding mutual pictures of friends). If the new applications become popular enough, they may become a source of revenue for the student inventors.
The course drew the interest of local newspapers. Stories appeared in the JHU Newsletter, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Business Journal.
CS Student Hassan Rivaz awarded Predoctoral Traineeship Award
PhD student Hassan Rivaz has been awarded a Predoctoral Traineeship from the Department of Defense.
The Breast Cancer Research Program Predoctoral Traineeship Award supports the training of promising graduate students studying breast cancer under the guidance of a designated mentor for careers in breast cancer research. Under this award mechanism, the predoctoral trainee is considered the Principal Investigator (PI) and should write a grant proposal with appropriate direction from the mentor. PI must be a graduate student (Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. program). Funding is $90,000 for direct costs for up to a 3 year performance period.
Hassan's mentors and collaborators in his proposal are Dr. Gregory Hager (mentor), Dr. Richard Zellars (mentor), Dr. Emad Boctor (collaborator), Dr. Gabor Fichtinger (collaborator), Dr. Russell Taylor (collaborator), Dr. Ali Khamene (collaborator) and Dr. Theodore DeWeese (collaborator).
Michael Kazhdan Receives NSF CAREER Award
Congratulations to Michael (Misha) Kazhdan who has been named a 2008 recipient of an NSF CAREER Award. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.
CAREER: Reconstructing 3D Models from Today's Scanning Devices
Abstract:
In this research project we study the problem of reconstructing watertight 3D models from scanned data. Motivated by the recent improvements in acquisition modalities, we propose a novel out-of-core algorithm for addressing the surface reconstruction problem, focusing on the challenge of defining a principled solution that is capable of processing the multi-gigabyte sized point-sets that have started becoming available recently.
Randal Burns Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure
Congratulations to Randal Burns who has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. His new title takes effect July 1, 2008.
Two CS Students Receive NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
PhD students Maria Ayad and Tian Xia have been awarded 2008 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. The NSF Fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees, including women in engineering and computer and information science. NSF Fellows are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.
Both Maria and Tian are beginning their 3rd year in the PhD program. Maria is working with the Image Analysis and Communications Lab (IACL)and is advised by Dr. Jerry Prince of ECE and Dr. Gabor Fichtinger of CS. Tian is with the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR). His adviser is Dr. Peter Kazanzides of CS.
Each student has received a 3 year award which will cover their stipends, tuition and fees.
Congratulations to Maria and Tian.
Baruch Awerbuch Wins 2008 Dijkstra Prize
Baruch Awerbuch has been chosen as a recipient of the 2008 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing. The prize was awarded for his paper "Sparse Partitions" co-authored with David Peleg and published in FOCS 1990.
This Prize, sponsored jointly by the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC) and the EATCS Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), is awarded annually. This year it will be presented at PODC 2008.
Congratulations Baruch!
Russ Taylor Receives 2008 IEEE Pioneer Award
Congratulations to Russ Taylor, Professor in Computer Science and Director of the Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems (CISST). He has been selected as a co-recipient of the 2008 Pioneer in Robotics and Automation Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.
Recipients of this award are being recognized for significant impacts on the fields of robotics and/or automation by initiating new areas of research, development or engineering. Taylor recently began research in the use of imaging, model-based planning and robotic systems to augment human performance in surgical procedures. His other research interests include robot systems, programming languages and model-based planning.
Congratulations Russ!
Susan Hohenberger Receives Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship
Congratulations to Susan Hohenberger, Assistant Professor in Computer Science. She has been selected as a 2008 recipient of a Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship. "Each year, five up-and-coming new faculty members are chosen for these awards from universities throughout North America". Faculty Fellows are awarded a $200,000 (USD) grant to stimulate creative research in their respective fields.
Hohenberger's research focuses on cryptography: the art of securely communicating. She is interested in designing secure solutions for pervasive settings, where devices everywhere are constantly talking to their environments, which may require low energy, short overhead and the ability to quickly process a large number of incoming messages. Her research includes an emphasis on developing privacy-friendly technologies, such as anonymous communication and electronic cash.
Congratulations to Susan.
CS student Hassan Rivaz awarded Link Foundation Fellowship
Congratulations to Hassan Rivaz who has been awarded a fellowship from the Link Foundation for 2008-2009. Hassan is one of four recipients from U.S. and Canadian universities. These particular fellowships are awarded annually for projects related to advanced simulation and training.
Congratulations to Hassan on this noteworthy achievement.
CS student Carol Reiley named to IEEE committee
PhD student Carol Reiley has been selected chair of the Student Activities Committee to serve on the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Administrative Committee for a two year term.
For more information regarding the RAS committee, please visit http://www.ieee-ras.org/people/adcom.php
CS student Marcin Balicki to receive 2008-2009 ARCS Scholarship
On March 3, 2008, Vice Provost Ted Poehler announced the JHU recipients of the 2008-2009 ARCS Scholarships. Second year Computer Science PhD student Marcin Balicki is among the winners. Marcin is currently studying with Dr. Russ Taylor in the Computer Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST) Lab.
The ARCS Foundation awards scholarships annually to students working in the science and engineering fields who have maintained high scholastic records and have proven abilities in a scientific field.
The student winners will participate in a site visit and luncheon on April 2, 2008 during which they will give a brief presentation about their work to the foundation representatives.
Congratulations to Marcin on this noteworthy accomplishment.
Johns Hopkins ENGINEERING Magazine highlights CS faculty
The Winter 2008 ENGINEERING magazine includes stories about a variety of CS activities and research.
See page 11 for 'Beware the Eavesdropper'
See page 28 for 'Information Flow'
See page 36 for 'Final Exam'
Best Paper Award for Terzis
Congratulations to Andreas Terzis and his co-authors who received the Best Paper Award at the Third International Conference on Intelligent Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP 2007) held in Melbourne, Australia for their paper Localization in Multi-Modal Sensor Networks by Ryan Farrell (University of Maryland, USA); Roberto Garcia (Johns Hopkins University, USA); Dennis Lucarelli (Johns Hopkins University, USA); Andreas Terzis (Johns Hopkins University, USA); I- Jeng Wang (Johns Hopkins University, USA).
Senior Design Project Students Add Cross-Platform WebDAV Support to Firefox
In the past, users of Firefox who needed to access WebDAV(Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, see RFC 4918) servers only had one choice: Julian Reschke's OpenWebFolder extension which hooks into Microsoft's WebDAV component and thus only works on Windows. Now there is a second choice.
Under the guidance of Joe Feise, a team of three undergraduate students (Ayse Sabuncu, Benjamin Schuster, and Ryan McLelland) from the Department of Computer Science at The Johns Hopkins University has developed a new, cross-platform WebDAV extension called WebFolder. The extension, developed for their Senior Design Project course, implements the core WebDAV protocol in JavaScript and runs on any platform supported by recent versions of Firefox.
The WebFolder team hopes that their work will lead to more widespread use of WebDAV as an open and user-friendly collaboration infrastructure.
Monrose to be Program Chair of LEET 2008
Professor Fabian Monrose has been selected as the Program Chair of the First USENIX Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats (LEET 2008) which will be held in April 2008 in San Francisco, CA.
John Sheppard receives the IEEE Autotestcon Frank McGinnis Award
Dr. John Sheppard received the IEEE Autotestcon Frank McGinnis Professional Achievement Award during the 2007 AUTOTESTCON awards banquet held in Baltimore, September 17 - 20.
This award recognizes outstanding leadership, individual initiative, and technical contributions in the field of automatic test engineering, either for a specific accomplishment or for a body of activities during a career. The award carries a crystal trophy kept for one year, a permanent trophy, and $2,000.
Apple iPhone's Security Flaws Revealed By Professor Avi Rubin-JHU Computer Security Expert
WSE computer science faculty member, Avi Rubin, and other researchers at Independent Security Evaluators, a private company founded by Rubin, have found a way to hack into Apple's popular new iPhone, allowing them to take control of the device. Read about their findings in the New York Times.
CS Programming Languages Lab Receives Best Paper Award
Congratulations to Paritosh Shroff, Scott F. Smith, and Mark Thober, co-authors of Dynamic Dependency Monitoring to Secure Information Flow, which received the Best Paper Award at the 20th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF 2007) held in Venice, Italy.
Jason Eisner and Fabian Monrose Promoted To Associate Professor with Tenure
Congratulations to Professor Jason Eisner and Professor Fabian Monrose who have both been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. Their new titles take effect July 1, 2007.
"Junking the Joystick," - Professor Russell Taylor's work to create steady-hand robotic surgery devices is featured in this article in Mechanical Engineering Magazine
Jeffrey Winters, Associate Editor at Mechanical Engineering Magazine writes: "When Russell Taylor first started working on surgical robots in the late 1980s, one of the most cumbersome tasks was aligning the device to the patient's body. The joystick controller used to move the business end of IBM's robotic hip-replacement machine, called Robodoc, to the hip was plenty precise. But trying to move the tip of the instrument through x-y-z coordinates was unnatural." More
Articles on The Bot Busters and Wave Relay projects in the recent WSE Engineering Magazine
The recent WSE
Engineering Magazine has an article on the Bot Busters project of
Profs Monrose and Terzis (pp 14-19 of this pdf file), and also an article on the Wireless Lab's
Wave Relay project of a roving wireless network on Hopkins shuttle
buses (pp 6-7).
Congratulations to John Sheppard for his recent election as a Fellow of the IEEE
Congratulations to John Sheppard for his recent election as a Fellow of the IEEE, for his contributions to system-level diagnosis and prognosis.
(From the IEEE website: The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. A brief citation is issued to new Fellows describing their accomplishments.)
Computer Science BS degree receives ABET accreditation
The Computer Science department has received accreditation of its BS degree by ABET.
ABET, Inc., is the recognized U.S. accreditor of college and university programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology.
http://www.abet.org/
Unraveling 'Language of Surgery'
Computer scientists' data could improve surgeons' skills
By Phil Sneiderman
Homewood
Borrowing ideas from speech recognition research, Johns Hopkins computer scientists are building mathematical models to represent the safest and most effective ways to perform surgery, including such tasks as suturing, dissecting and joining tissue.
Johns Hopkins Joins Effort to Boost Smart Tag Security
Johns Hopkins researchers will take part in a new multi-institution project to improve the security of "smart tags," the wireless devices that allow drivers to zip through automatic tollbooths and let workers enter a secured area with the flash of a card.
Carol Reiley won the Baltimore/Washington DC regional Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Scholarship
Carol Reiley won the Baltimore/Washington DC regional Society of Women Engineers (SWE) scholarship and received an award of $1000. She also was selected as a finalist for the SWE National Collegiate Poster Competition for her research titled "Dynamic Augmented Reality for Haptic Display in Robot-Assisted Surgical Systems." As a finalist, she will receive a travel stipend to attend the National SWE conference on October 13th to compete for the top three places.
Giuseppe Ateniese has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure
Congratulations to Giuseppe Ateniese! Giuseppe Ateniese has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
Three JHU CS students won fellowships (Henry Lin = Link, Sharmishtaa Seshamani = Google, and Carol Reiley = NSF)
Three JHU CS students won fellowships (Henry Lin = Link, Sharmishtaa Seshamani = Google, and Carol Reiley = NSF). For more information, please check out the Computational Interaction and Robotics Lab web page.
Krzysztof Niski of the Computer Graphics Lab has been awarded a 2006-2007 NVIDIA Fellowship
Krzysztof Niski of the Computer Graphics Lab has been awarded a 2006-2007 NVIDIA Fellowship for his proposal, "A GPU-based Level of Detail System." Chris is one of 14 recipients of this fellowship worldwide and is the first Johns Hopkins student to receive this award. Congratulations!
Gabor Fichtinger won the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising
Gabor Fichtinger won the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising
Wireless sensor networks for monitoring soil
Andreas Terzis,Masaloiu-E, and Josh Cogan are part of an interdisciplinary team working on wireless sensor networks for monitoring soil in various city sites.
Since 1993, about 40 students each year have received PURA grants of up to $3,000 to conduct original research, some results of which have been published in professional journals. The awards, funded through a donation from the Hodson Trust, are an important part of the university's mission and its commitment to research opportunities for undergraduates.
jhu gazette
nature.com
nature.com
Andreas Terzis has won a CAREER award from NSF
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation- wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.
Towards turnkey sensor networks for the Sciences: Software tools for designing and managing networks of sensors: Andreas Terzis
Abstract
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer the promise of revolutionizing the way scientists observe the physical environment. Unfortunately, experience from the networks deployed to date has shown that planning and managing a sensor deployment is a great challenge requiring expertise in multiple areas of Computer Science. However, future sensor networks must be implemented by researchers in other disciplines. For this to happen, the process of deploying and managing sensor networks should be radically simpler. In this project we develop a set of network design tools. These tools use site- specific signal propagation models coupled with detailed physical layer radio models to calculate packet loss rates. Based on these estimates, the tools determine the location of additional relay points and gateways necessary to create a reliable network around the required measurement locations. Furthermore, we develop a network self-monitoring tool that correlates measurements taken by individual sensor nodes to construct a global view of the operational network. Information from the deployment is fed back to the network design tool. Through this coupling, incremental adjustments to the network layout are made until the network reaches the desired level of performance. Using the tools developed by this project, sensor networks will become predictable and robust instruments, empowering scientists to observe phenomena that were previously out of reach. We are working with scientists at Johns Hopkins University as well as high school teachers to bring the results of this project to the broader academic and educational community.
Fabian Monrose has won a CAREER award from NSF
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation- wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education.
Towards Effective Identification of Application Behaviors in Encrypted Traffic: Fabian Monrose
Abstract
Several fundamental security mechanisms for restricting access to network resources rely on the ability of a reference monitor to inspect the contents of traffic as it traverses the network. However, with the increasing popularity of cryptographic protocols the traditional means of inspecting packet contents to enforce security policies is no longer a viable approach as message contents are concealed by encryption. This project encompasses the first major component of a principled investigation into the feasibility of protocol identification based solely on those features that remain intact after encryption---namely, the packet size, inter-arrival and direction. More specifically, this work attempts to provide a better understanding of the limits of protocol recognition based on a thorough statistical analysis and information theoretic assessment of the available features in protocol behaviors observed in the wild. Specifically, this project advances the current state of the art and contributes to the scientific community by building efficient mixture models for detecting protocols with multi-modal behaviors, designing practical tools for visualizing behavioral motifs in TCP sequences, providing new information-theoretic decision policies for assigning protocol class labels to these sequences, and imparting new notions for assessing realistic masquerading attacks and the appropriate defenses.
Senior high student working in the JHU CS Graphics lab has been named a finalist in the 2006 Intel Science Talent Search
Myers Abraham Davis, a senior high school student at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, has been named a finalist in the 2006 Intel Science Talent Search. 40 finalists are named nation-wide out of 1,558 entrants. Abe worked in the Graphics Lab in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Cohen on his project, "Bounding Sphere Images: A Parametric Bounding Volume Hierarchy for Collision Detection on the GPU"
http://www.sciserv.org/sts/65sts/finalists.asp
Research Professor Adam Stubblefield named as one of the Technology Review's top technology innovators under age 35
Research Professor Adam Stubblefield named as one of the Technology Review's top technology innovators under age 35
Their work is a road map to what's hot in emerging technology--and their achievements will shape the world we live in for decades to come.
They are inventors and discoverers and entrepreneurs. They are chemists and biologists and software engineers and chip designers. They create their wonders in universities, startups, and large corporations. They gravitate to the most interesting and difficult scientific and engineering problems at hand, and arrive at solutions no one had imagined. They take on big issues. They are the TR35--Technology Review's selection of the top technology innovators under age 35 (as of October 1, 2005). The winners from previous years (when it was the TR100) have changed your world. So will the people you're about to meet.
--Technology Review's top 35 innovators under the age of 35
Greg Hager has been elected an IEEE Fellow
Greg Hager has been elected an IEEE Fellow, effective January 1, 2006. This highest level of membership is conferred only by invitation of the Board of Directors upon a person of outstanding and extraordinary qualifications and experience in IEEE-designated fields, and who has made important individual contributions to one or more of these fields. Greg was cited by the committee for his contributions to vision-based robotics.
