Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Qinru Qiu Named Distinguished Professor  

Qinru Qiu

Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) professor Qinru Qiu has been named a Distinguished Professor by the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS).   

Qiu previously received the Associated for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGDA Distinguished Service Award and the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. She has also been a Distinguished Member of ACM since 2022 and was recognized as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2023. Qiu also serves as the EECS Graduate Program Director in ECS.  

Her current research focuses on improving the energy efficiency of computing, from runtime power and thermal management of computer systems, and energy harvesting real-time embedded systems, to her recent works in brain-inspired hardware and software for neuromorphic computing.  

“I am delighted to learn that Professor Qinru Qiu is being elevated to the rank of Distinguished Professor,” says EECS Distinguished Professor, Pramod Varshney. “Qinru is widely known for her seminal work on energy-efficient computing as well as neuromorphic computing. Her contributions to scholarship, education, and service at Syracuse University are exemplary.  She truly deserves this timely recognition.”  

“I am very excited and truly honored to receive this special award,” says Qiu. “I want to thank my colleagues for their support and trust. This is a new start for me, and I will continue performing my best.” 

Professor Endadul Hoque Receives NSF CAREER Award to Research Context Sensitive Fuzzing for Networked Systems

Despite advances in cybersecurity, even the most protected networks are vulnerable to cyberattacks due to software bugs or security flaws. Though vulnerability detection methods such as fuzzing can detect bugs, these methods have some limitations. Endadul Hoque, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has made significant progress researching computer networks and systems security and is working to enhance network security by developing an innovative automated solution. 

Hoque has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to research context-sensitive fuzzing for networked systems. This grant supports early career faculty with their professional development and will build upon Hoque’s research on computer networks and systems security, program analysis, and software engineering.  

“Many big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have been investing in fuzzing techniques and have seen the importance of finding bugs in existing software,” Hoque says. “The National Institute of Standards in Technology (NIST) also endorses fuzzing as an automated technique for security testing. This project will push boundaries within the field and have an impact on cybersecurity.” 

Hoque’s project has three research goals. The first goal is to create a language that can encode complex structures of inputs that change depending on the context and develop algorithms that can quickly generate correct inputs based on this language. The second goal is to create techniques that can mutate these inputs without losing their context sensitivity, which is essential for the process of fuzzing.  The final goal is to create mechanisms that ensure the internal state of a protocol is accurately maintained. This will allow each fuzz input to be tested in a suitable state for the protocol being tested. 

“In this area of research, people tend to focus on strengthening the system by finding flaws in the existing system that we use in our day-to-day life,” Hoque says. “How can we find loopholes in real-world security-critical systems? This research award falls under that category to advance the limitations of existing methodologies.” 

As part of his project, Hoque plans to improve cybersecurity courses and hold K-12 workshops to promote cybersecurity awareness, integrating his research findings into these initiatives. The project will also encourage undergraduate and graduate students from historically marginalized communities to get involved with educational and research activities. 

Additionally, Hoque will form a team for cybersecurity competitions such as capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions, where participants search for hidden text strings in vulnerable websites or programs. These gamified competitions are also an effective way to improve cybersecurity education.  

“This project has the potential to significantly enhance the robustness of protocol implementations and cybersecurity education, benefiting society. I’m happy to have received this prestigious award.”  

Alex K. Jones Joins Syracuse University as the Klaus Schroder Endowed Professor for Engineering and Chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department

The College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) is proud to welcome Professor Alex K. Jones as the Klaus Schroder Endowed Professor for Engineering and the Chair of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS). He joins Syracuse from the University of Pittsburgh where he had a 21-year career in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) with courtesy appointments in Computer Science (CS) and Physics and Astronomy. 

“I’m thrilled to join Syracuse University at this important time,” said Jones.  “The designation of Syracuse University as a core partner in a Regional Tech Hub for computer chips along with the establishment of the new Micron fabrication facility is a tremendous opportunity to become a national leader in the semiconductor space with direct access to opportunities through the CHIPS and Science Act.  I am also excited about the outstanding potential within the EECS Department in topics like artificial intelligence, sustainable energy, quantum science and information, and many others thanks to the talented faculty, students, and staff.  In partnership with ECS and Syracuse University, broadly, I think you will see great things from EECS in the coming years that will benefit our students, our city, our state and beyond.”

Jones’ research interests are broadly in the areas of computer architecture and compilers. He is best known for research and leadership advancing the field of sustainable computing.  His contributions are related to applying full lifecycle thinking to the study of environmental impacts and optimizations for computing systems including projections of environmental impacts, such as with servers in data centers.

Jones demonstrated that the critical environmental impacts from manufacturing these servers can meet or exceed those from the powering their operation in data centers.  This trend has started to be noted by industry over the last half decade.  More importantly, in handheld systems like mobile phones, 80% or more of the greenhouse gas emissions comes from manufacturing. 

Among his research contributions in this area, Jones’ work has demonstrated that leveraging existing silicon in novel ways, such as processing-in-memory, creates an opportunity to holistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  He has created a tool suite called GreenChip to help encourage the use of environmental-related metrics in the development of next generation computing systems. Jones has received a Carnegie Science Award, a Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation Faculty Fellowship, and was elevated to Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to sustainable computing.

Jones has a significant background in academic leadership. He served as Pitt’s Director of Computer Engineering from 2011—2017, a joint program comprised of faculty from the CS and ECE departments.  He led the program to unprecedented growth and an increase in visibility and rankings nationally.  Jones’ philosophy combined better engagement between students and faculty in the program and a curriculum that included the newest developments in the field and aspects of the excellent research undertaken by computer engineering program faculty.  During his tenure as director, Computer Engineering at Pitt became a top 50 program nationally, where it remains today.

Following his tenure with Computer Engineering, Jones joined the NSF Space, High Performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC) Center and served as Associate Director from 2018—2020.  He led a project team in memory reliability for high performance and space applications.  He demonstrated that off-the-shelf dynamic random access memory (DRAM) used in commodity computers had specific radiation properties such that 95—99% of the faults were from predictable locations.  He developed a technique that combined a fault repository and low-level error correction that could protect standard DRAM from radiation faults in space, avoiding the need to use radiation hardened devices that are expensive and trail the state of the art by several generations.

In August of 2020, Jones joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program manager in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate in the Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Division as part of the Computer Systems Research (CSR) cluster.  A significant accomplishment was his creation of the Design for Environmental Sustainability of Computing (DESC) program.  He was also the managing program director of the ATHENA AI Institute led by Duke University.  In his third year at the NSF, he was elevated to serve as cluster lead for CSR.  In his fourth year, he was appointed as the Deputy Division Director for the Electrical, Communications, and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division, which is a member of the senior leadership team of the Engineering (ENG) Directorate.

While at NSF, Jones established a new personal research direction in quantum computing.  Attracting nearly three million dollars in funding from Foundation and Department of Defense grants with his physics colleague Michael Hatridge (Pitt/Yale) and the latter with Hatridge and Robert Schoelkopf (Yale) to develop modular computer architectures, Jones’ research demonstrates better target quantum gates and interconnection topologies that can be realized with high fidelity superconducting systems.  These approaches improve the size of quantum applications that can be solved in noisy quantum machines.

Jones received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, where he was a Walter P. Murphy Fellow.  His first major paper at Northwestern on translating MATLAB applications into hardware descriptions went on to be a seminal work (top 25 paper of all time) in the IEEE Field Programmable and Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) Conference.  His Ph.D. work in compilation/high-level synthesis of C/C++ codes into hardware descriptions crystallized his interest in compilation and configurable computing.  This work informed some of his early work at Pitt in design automation of coarse-grain reconfigurable computing fabrics and radio frequency identification (RFID) devices.  Compilation remains a core focus of Jones’ research as applied to configurable architectures and most recently in terms of programming quantum systems (transpilation).

In his spare time, Jones is a freelance clarinetist.  In Pittsburgh he was the principal clarinetist of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic, where he has been a featured soloist, served briefly as its artistic director, and served as guest conductor. He also enjoys downhill skiing.

Computer Science Student Cheryl Olanga ’25 Receives Deloitte Foundation Scholarship

The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) has selected computer science student Cheryl Olanga ‘25 as the recipient of the Deloitte Foundation Scholarship.  

The Deloitte Foundation is committed to investing in education and equity by supporting underrepresented students. Through grants that help students develop critical skills in business, accounting, and STEM, the foundation seeks to promote the success of students, educators, and schools by collaborating with academic institutions and nonprofit organizations to drive social impact. 

Olanga is currently the assistant treasurer for the Syracuse University NSBE chapter. The organization engages in community service and outreach with high school students, and members discuss their experiences, introduce students to STEM subjects, and help students with science projects. Olanga also works in the Office of Admissions in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, giving tours and talking with prospective and admitted students. She’s also a peer leader for the Office of Success Advising and a member of the Engineering Ambassadors.

Olanga is also researching the implications of AI on policing in Syracuse with the Lender Center for Social Justice. “For me, winning this scholarship is like receiving an affirmation that the future of underrepresented groups within the study and practice of engineering and computer science is bright.”

Engineering and Computer Science Alumni Establish Scholarship to Honor Professor C.Y. Roger Chen

Roger Chen

For nearly 37 years, Professor C.Y. Roger Chen has been a guide to many students on their academic and professional journey. Teaching electrical engineering and computer science courses at Syracuse University since 1988, Chen has continued to mentor several doctoral students who have gone on to have successful careers in big tech.  

Naresh Sehgal G’88, Ph.D.’94 is one of many former students whose career was shaped by Chen’s mentorship. As one of Chen’s first master’s students, the two developed a close bond that lasted beyond Sehgal’s time at Syracuse University. Now, after retiring from a 32-year career at Intel Corporation, Sehgal and other alumni are seeking to give back.  

“After leaving Syracuse in 1988, Chen agreed to continue being my Ph.D. advisor remotely before the advent of the internet, Skype, Zoom, or any online meetings. He’s extremely humble and flexible,” says Sehgal. “Along with my former Intel colleagues, Bill and Bharat, who also studied under Chen, we wanted to give something back to him and Syracuse University.” 

Sehgal, along with Bill Halpin ’88, G’95, Ph.D.’05, Bharat Krishna G’94, Ph.D.’05, Nagbhushan Veerapaneni G’87 and Uminder Singh G’91, Ph.D.’94 established the Dr. Roger Chen Scholarship to honor their professor and advisor for his unwavering guidance and support.  For five years, the scholarship will provide financial assistance of up to $10,000 per year to undergraduate students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and will support students studying computer engineering, electrical engineering, or computer science.  

“Syracuse played a huge role in my success and that of my friends. Many of us were able to afford college through assistantships and scholarships,” says Halpin. “The investment by Professor Chen and Syracuse has led us to have fantastic careers and blessed lives. Recognizing him was something that we talked about for a long time.” 

The alumni hope this scholarship sets a precedent of appreciation for the college and its faculty who have played a vital role in shaping the careers of many students. They hope to inspire students to pursue their dreams by supporting them, just as Chen and the University once did for them. 

“During my master’s studies, Syracuse generously supported me through a teaching assistantship which was a big help,” says Sehgal. “We are glad to have attended this university and studied under Professor Chen. We’re forever grateful for his patience and encouragement.” 

“It was natural for us to want to help make college affordable for the next generation of students,” says Halpin. “We hope that this scholarship creates a virtuous cycle where more Alums donate today thereby creating the next generation of Alums who feel the same desire to donate.” 

If you would like to make a gift in honor of Dr. Roger Chen and pay it forward, please visit Dr. Roger Chen’s Scholarship Fund. Thank you! 

An Inside Look at Professor Pankaj Jha’s New Quantum Technology Lab 

Dr. Aswini Pattanayak
Dr. Aswini Pattanayak working in the quantum technology lab.

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are the thinnest nanomaterials known to exist. Being only about a single or few layers of atoms thick, these delicate sheets have found many applications in electronic devices, quantum optics, and photovoltaic technology.  Pankaj K. Jha, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, is leading a quantum technology laboratory with members Aswini Pattanayak, Jagi Rout G’28, Amir Targholizadeh G’28, Theodore Todorov ’26, and Grisha Nikulin ’27 to understand emerging 2D materials and use their findings to develop transformative devices for applications in quantum information science.

Professor Pankaj Jha in his quantum technology lab
Professor Pankaj Jha working on a home-built confocal microscope to investigate the optical properties of 2D materials and heterostructures

Jha is developing single-photon detectors using iron-based superconductors that could work at higher temperatures. Currently, superconducting photodetectors require low temperatures to operate. Pattanayak, a post-doctoral scholar, is leading this project to understand photodetection in iron-chalcogenide-based superconductors and investigating the interaction between these superconductors with other 2D van der Waals (vdWs) materials, exploring unique quantum phenomena at their interfaces. 

“High-temperature single photon detectors will have both scientific and fundamental impact. Any application that requires sensitive photon detectors will benefit from these devices,” Jha says.   

Pattanayak is also mentoring Todorov, an undergraduate student, in light interferometry. Interferometers combine light to create an interference pattern that can be measured and analyzed. “Interferometry is the basis of optics because it allows you to analyze the classical and quantum optical properties of light,” Todorov says. “The resulting interference can allow one to understand properties of the laser such as path length, wavelength, and refractive index of the medium it has passed through.”  

“In this era of quantum exploration, the investigation of superconductors serves as the cornerstone for unlocking unparalleled frontiers in quantum technologies and devices,” says Pattanayak. 

Pankaj Jha and his Research Team
Professor Pankaj Jha, Theodore Todorov, Aswini Pattanayak, Amir Targholizadeh, and Jagi Rout (left to right)

Rout, a graduate student, is exploring heterostructures using nanofabrication techniques. Her research focuses on studying high-temperature superconductivity. In addition to working on single-photon detectors, Rout is developing Josephson junctions, devices made by placing thin, non-superconducting materials between two superconductors, and she’ll be using iron-chalcogenide-based superconductors.  

“The interplay among topology, magnetism, and superconductivity makes our material an intriguing platform to investigate the strange yet promising interactions in the subatomic realm,” says Rout.   

Rout is also mentoring Todorov and Nikulin in the exfoliation of 2D materials. Nikulin’s interest is Superconducting Qubit Architecture and Quantum Algorithms.  “Superconducting-based photon detection also has significant applications towards reducing quantum decoherence in quantum computation systems,” says Nikulin. 

Targholizadeh, a graduate student, is developing flat photonic devices based on metasurfaces capable of functioning at extremely low temperatures. He aims to address and solve some of the outstanding challenges that single photon detectors face, such as polarization sensitivity, and near-normal incidence requirements, among other issues. 

“Metasurfaces are recently introduced as a new paradigm for nanophotonic devices, and in our laboratory, we are working on conceiving, designing, fabricating, and testing these metasurface-based devices,” Targholizadeh says.  

Jagi Rout working on creating heterostructures with 2D materials with a fully motorized transferred setup.

In addition to research, Jha started a quantum information science and engineering seminar (QISE) at Syracuse University with support from an internal FCAR Grant. With speakers from academia, industry, and national labs, seminars are open to all and cover experimental and theoretical topics in QISE and adjacent research.

“The response to the QISE Seminar Series has been outstanding, with 60-70 % student audience participation,” Jha says. “I see a bright future for quantum science at the University.” 

Click here to learn more about the QISE Seminar

Theodore Todorov working with Aswini Pattanayak on building an interferometer to study the quantum properties of light.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Younes Radi Appointed as Senior Member and Associate Editor of IEEE

Younes Radi in his lab

Younes Radi, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has been recognized as a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contributions to research in applied electromagnetics and microwave engineering. He has also been chosen as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. 

The IEEE is a global organization devoted to advancing technology for humanity’s benefit. Senior Membership is awarded to members who have made a significant impact within their fields. Only 10% of the IEEE’s more than 400,000 members hold this grade, which requires extensive experience, professional maturity, and documented achievements of significance.  

Radi’s research focuses on the physics of fields and waves, with emphasis on tailoring electromagnetic wave-matter interaction. He has made significant scientific contributions on a broad range of topics in theoretical and applied electromagnetics, optics, and photonics, including artificial electronic and photonic materials, RF/microwave circuits, antennas, and propagation. His papers have been published in several high-impact journals including Nature Physics, Nature Communications, National Science Foundation, and IEEE family journals. 

In addition to his Senior Membership and becoming an Associate Editor at IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Radi has also been chosen by the University as one of the two faculty to compete in the 2024 Moore Inventor Fellows Program. These recent achievements reflect Radi’s focused efforts to re-establish Syracuse University as a renowned center of electromagnetics and microwave engineering research. 

Professor Younes Radi and his research group

“Syracuse University has a rich history in applied electromagnetics and microwave engineering and was one of the leading universities in the world in this field,” says Radi. “I’ve been to many places in Europe and the US and have never seen a city like Syracuse where you can find so many high-end companies in applied electromagnetics and microwave engineering. This creates a great platform to bridge the research in my team with the local industry.   

“I am extremely grateful to the department, college, and also the office of VPR for their amazing support in establishing a state-of-the-art RF and mm-Wave laboratory, which we have named ‘RadLab.’ This facility will pave the way for new collaborations with local industry and position Syracuse as a highly active hub for advanced research in applied electromagnetics and microwave engineering.” 

Syracuse University Online Information Technology Programs Move Up in U.S. News and World Report Rankings

Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Information Studies (iSchool) have been ranked 26th for Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs by U.S. News & World Report for 2024.

Syracuse University moved up eight spots in the rankings from 2023.

In the rankings for Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs for Veterans, Syracuse University was ranked 14th, an increase of one spot from 2023.

The full rankings, released earlier today, are available on the U.S. News & World Report website.

The College of Engineering and Computer Science offers online master’s degree programs in cybersecurity, computer science and computer engineering.

The iSchool offers M.S. degree programs in applied data science, information systems and library and information science online.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Wenliang (Kevin) Du Recognized as Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery 

Wenliang (Kevin) Du, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has been recognized as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to cybersecurity education and research.  

The ACM is the world’s largest society of computing professionals, and their member grade recognizes the top 1% of ACM members worldwide for their groundbreaking contributions to computing and information technology. All 2023 inductees have been well-established ACM members who were chosen by their peers.  

Du has been at Syracuse University since 2001 and his research focuses on computer and network security. He founded the SEED open-source project in 2002 and the cybersecurity lab exercises developed from this project are now being used by 1,100 institutes worldwide. Additionally, his self-published book, “Computer & Internet Security: A Hands-on Approach”, has been adopted by 280 institutes worldwide. His research papers have been cited 17,800 times, and he has won two Test-of-Time Awards. Du was also elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2023.

“This very prestigious award means a lot to me, as it recognizes over 20 years’ of my work on cybersecurity education and research, especially my work on cybersecurity education,” says Du. “I was told by many friends not to spend too much time on the education part, as it won’t help my tenure case – I am glad that I didn’t listen to them. Now the global impact of my work on cybersecurity education is huge.”  

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Qinru Qiu Recognized as IEEE Fellow

Qinru Qiu

Electrical engineering and computer science professor, Qinru Qiu, has been recognized as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for her impactful contributions to the modeling and optimization of energy-efficient computing systems.  

IEEE is a global organization that is committed to advancing technology for the betterment of humanity. With over 409,000 members in more than 160 countries, less than 0.1% of voting members are chosen for elevation to this member grade each year.  

Qiu’s research interest focuses on improving the energy efficiency of computing, from runtime power and thermal management of computer systems, and energy harvesting real-time embedded systems, to her recent works in brain-inspired hardware and software for neuromorphic computing.  The goal of her research is to provide machine intelligence to today’s computing platforms to achieve autonomous resource management with energy and thermal awareness and explore emerging computing paradigms.  

“Professor Qiu has been leading the research community to seek solutions for highly energy-efficient machine intelligence through adopting biologically inspired models and processing mechanisms,” says nominator Diana Marculescu. “Her ground-breaking research has enabled a completely new computing paradigm, which leverages the unique property of different types of spike coding to replace the numerical calculation with simple logic operations, resulting in significant energy reduction.” 

“I am excited and thankful for the recognition and truly grateful for all the support that I have received,” says Qiu. “I look forward to continuing my work in developing and promoting techniques to improve the energy efficiency of emerging computing systems.” 

Engineering and Computer Science Staff Spotlight – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Get to know the incredible staff who keep electrical engineering and computer science running smoothly!

Shawn Knight

Name: Shawn Knight

Title: Assistant to the Department Chair

Tell us about your role at ECS:

I am the administrative assistant to the department chair and assist the director of academic operations with the daily administrative operations of the department and I also serve as the departmental search administrator for hiring faculty and staff.

What is your favorite part of working here at ECS?

Learning something new every day!

Rebecca Noble

Name: Rebecca Noble  

Title: Office Coordinator III 

Tell us about your role at ECS:

I started as a member of the EECS team in August 2011, working for ISR at 621 Skytop in conjunction with BMCE. In 2013, I moved into my current position where I mainly handle scheduling and enrollment issues for the EECS department which covers CSE, ELE, CIS, and Cyber programs as well as CPS classes for non-engineering majors.   

What is your favorite part of working here at ECS? 

My favorite part of working at SU is when we work convocation in May.  It is a real joy to see the students I’ve worked with through the years taking the next steps on their journey. A close second is walking through the Thornden Park Rose Garden (with tea in hand) in June. 

Sarah Collins

Name: Sarah Collins

Title: Director, Academic Operations

Tell us about your role at ECS:

Work with Chair and Program Directors to review, assess, design and implement administration policies and procedures. Assist Chair, Program Directors, faculty, staff and students with various needs and requests.

What is your favorite part of working here at ECS?

Being in a new role (since June) I have enjoyed the challenges that come with learning a new role and working with new people. I have learned a lot and continue to come across new things that I haven’t necessarily been involved with previously supporting my professional and personal growth.

Cynthia M. Bromka-Skafidas

Name: Cynthia Bromka-Skafidas

Title: Administrative Assistant II

Tell us about your role at ECS:

I work with our budget manager, Linda Lowe, in ordering supplies and other special orders, and make sure our Graduate Assistants, Fellows and hourly workers get paid in a timely manner.  I also assist with academic matters related to our graduate students.  I have been with EECS over 30 years.

What is your favorite part of working here at ECS?

Watching students present their projects at the end of the year and seeing their achievements.

Cynthia Salanger

Name: Cynthia Salanger

Title: Admin Specialist I

Tell us about your role at ECS:

Helping students from the time they arrive on campus until they are certified to graduate.

What is your favorite part of working here at ECS?

Helping students achieve their goal of graduating.

Smart Speakers, Smarter Protection

Whether you’re looking to try a new recipe, dimming the lights in your living room, or curious about the species of bacteria living inside your mouth, Amazon Alexa has got you covered. With a simple voice command, Alexa’s ability to perform various tasks or answer questions has made it widely popular, with over 40 million users in the United States alone. Despite the convenience smart speakers like Alexa offer, these devices have also raised some privacy concerns. 

Amazon has been known to collect data on users which includes their shopping habits, preferences, and even their location for personalized marketing. But that’s not all. When using waking words such as “Hey Alexa” to activate smart speakers, the audio of your voice command is also recorded and stored, becoming Amazon’s property. This means that Amazon owns your voice audio and can do whatever they want with it. 

“Big tech companies are using our personal information. We’re less like customers and more like their product,” says graduate student Brian Testa ’24. “I’ve always been sensitive to that. I don’t use a lot of technology at home for that reason.” 

Using voice data, companies like Amazon and Google have now developed technology that poses even more threats to privacy: AI and machine learning that can determine people’s emotional state or mood from their voice. This patented technology can even pick up on feelings from emotionally neutral phrases like “What’s the weather?” Since there are no laws in place to prevent this, there’s no protection against it. 

“In the US for the last five to 10 years, lots of researchers have been working on how they can use voice to infer emotions, mood or even mental health,” says assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, Asif Salekin. “In my own lab, we have previous works on tech that can infer mental disorders like depression, social anxiety, manic disorder, and even suicidal tendencies from one’s voice.” 

While this technology can be useful in certain circumstances, most users, if not all, have not consented to having their emotions detected by smart speakers. These privacy concerns led Testa, Professor Salekin, graduate students Harshit Sharma ’26 and Yi Xiao 26, and undergraduate student Avery Gump ’24 to begin researching ways to protect users’ privacy from smart speakers. 

“Consent is key,” Salekin says. “We’d still like to use smart speakers since they’re quite useful – I have them in my own home. This project was about finding a way to use these devices without giving companies the power to exploit us.” 

Led by Testa, the group conducted extensive research and developed a device that can be attached to a smart speaker or downloaded as software onto a laptop. This device emits a mild noise that only the smart speaker can hear and masks the emotional tone in your voice, providing a new level of privacy protection for concerned users.

“Through the use of a speech emotion recognition (SER) classifier, a smart speaker can analyze how people are feeling based on how they sound. We created a microphone device that listens for the wake word ‘Hey Alexa’”, Testa says. “When the smart speaker activates, our device activates too and begins to emit a noise that disrupts the smart speaker from detecting your emotions. However, only the smart speaker hears this noise.”  

Currently, their device masks your emotional state by presenting it as a completely different emotion. When you speak, the smart speaker may detect from your voice that you’re sad, angry, or frustrated when you’re not feeling any of these emotions. This unpredictability makes it difficult for smart speakers to accurately determine your true emotions or mood and also prevents machine learning from picking up on any patterns and mood correlations. The group hopes to improve the device’s functionality by making it mask your emotions as neutral rather than presenting them as a different emotion. 

“To create the mild noise our device emits, we utilized genetic programming to identify a combination of specific frequencies that disrupt the smart speaker from determining a person’s mood,” Salekin says. “Only the speaker hears this noise, but it can hear your speech commands clearly, so the utility of the smart speaker remains intact.”  

Though the sound is only detected by the smart speaker, the group wanted to see how loud it would be when the device is used. Testa played the sound in the lab when Professor Salekin was having a meeting and Salekin didn’t even realize it was playing, which showed that the noise wasn’t disruptive. Additionally, they also conducted a survey with others to see if the noise was loud enough to be disruptive. 

Testa, Salekin, Sharma, Xiao, and Gump are currently working on patent submissions, form factors, and speaking with companies about commercializing their device. What sets their patent apart from similar concepts is that while past technology focused on determining people’s moods or emotions, their technology is all about protecting them. This unique approach makes their device the first of its kind.

“It was a fun project,” Testa says. “This paper was published by me and as the first listed author, I’m excited about it. I’ve been working towards my Ph.D., and this is another step towards that goal.”  

“Working with the students in real-world applications and research with real results was exciting,” Salekin says. “This research has many components and the collaboration between us was great. We’re excited to see what the future for this tech holds.” 

Student Spotlight: Navigating the Financial Market with Adya Parida ’25  

Balancing academics, club meetings, and extracurriculars can be demanding for engineering students but make for impressive resumes that are likely to land them any internship they desire. However, having a strong resume doesn’t necessarily guarantee success at an internship. Though hard skills are crucial, computer science student Adya Parida discovered that it takes more than this to succeed in these roles. To make the most of your experience, Parida believes you’ve got to get in tune with the company culture and learn how to be a team player. 

“It’s something that I think a lot of college students may not know unless they work in a professional setting,” she says. “At the workplace, there are certain norms, and an internship is the best way to learn about that.” 

During the summer of 2023, Parida had her first corporate workplace experience as a technology intern at the Federal Reserve Bank. Before that, she conducted research projects on malware and anomaly detection in cybersecurity and also worked as a residential assistant on campus. Despite the differences between research projects and corporate work, Parida found the transition to be a refreshing change of pace and her expertise in data analytics and coding allowed her to seamlessly fit into her new role. 

She worked in the information security department and focused on analyzing data using machine learning algorithms and often collaborated with other departments, such as the tech group, to share her findings. The market group would then use this information to make informed decisions, which showcased the company’s collaborative culture and how interconnected each department was. 

At the Federal Reserve Bank, communication played a vital role in Parida’s experience. It was not only limited to the stand-up meetings with management, which involved assignments, updates, and check-ins. She also met with other interns for coffee chats or lunches and these interactions provided her with insights into how other departments functioned. Additionally, she was able to apply the workplace norms and professional etiquette she learned from Career Services, something she believes more college students should learn to grow in a professional setting. 
 
“Hard skills are important but so are soft skills like communicating effectively with team members. It also helps you ask good questions when you’re facing difficulties on a project,” Parida said. “The team was more than happy to answer questions and help.” 

By immersing herself into the workplace culture and getting to know the organization, the benefits the Federal Bank had to offer its interns and employees left a strong impression on Parida, especially the work-life balance. You weren’t expected to work more than 8 hours, which she says is unheard of in the finance industry. 
 
“I’ve had roommates who used to work in private banks and would leave home at 6 am and come back past 9 pm. Those work hours are crazy” she says. 

The company further prioritized the team’s well-being with a gym, basketball courts, and wellness center in the building to ensure the team was getting everything they needed and didn’t feel burnt out or stressed.  

“Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve Bank is on Wall Street, and it’s a cutthroat industry, it’s such a great place to work, especially since it’s a mission-driven organization,” Parida says. “They don’t look at you as a profit-making machine like other companies do.” 

The positive culture within the company was also reflected in the way leadership operated. Even interns had the opportunity to schedule appointments with management and executives, who were always willing to speak with them, despite their busy schedules. Parida was surprised to have the chance to speak with both the president and vice president of the company. Attending professional networking events for women and roundtable conferences further highlighted the company’s commitment to promoting inclusivity and creating a supportive environment for its employees. 

“I was able to schedule an appointment with the vice president and talked in her office for an hour. That’s something I feel isn’t common in other companies,” Parida says. “This was a learning experience for me that taught me internships and jobs are more than being confined to your cubicle or keeping to yourself. It’s about connection and networking and I’m incredibly grateful for the time I spent at the Federal Reserve.” 

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Farzana Rahman Awarded as TACNY’s College Educator of the Year

Farzana Rahman

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Professor Farzana Rahman was honored by the Technology Alliance of Central New York (TACNY) as the organization’s College Educator of the Year at the 23rd Celebration of Technology awards banquet in October 2023.

Rahman joined the College of Engineering and Computer Science in the spring of 2020. Since then, she has taught critical core gateway courses involving foundational knowledge of the computing discipline to all three majors of the EECS department. Central to her teaching approach is an active learning style, which pairs hands-on programming exercises with challenging projects that demand students to cultivate skills in problem-solving, debugging, and software engineering in general. She is dedicated to creating equitable education and learning experiences for all students by providing inclusive, educational opportunities that support women, genderqueer, non-binary, underrepresented and minority (URM) students.

As a diversity spokesperson of the department, Rahman spearheads various DEIA initiatives. One of her most impactful initiatives is Research Exposure on Socially Relevant Computing (RESORC), funded by Google Research, to increase both the exposure and visibility of undergraduate research at EECS. With more than 200 students participating in RESORC over the past 3 years, she has designed and facilitated multiple virtual workshops to help undergraduate students develop computing identity, research skills, practice teaching strategies, and explore research topics in the computing and engineering domains. The project formalizes best practices in research experiences to reach more students, particularly women from historically excluded groups and prepares them for graduate study.

Rahman’s research and mentoring initiatives have been supported by many funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, Google, NCWIT, Google TensorFlow, and the American Association of Colleges and Universities to develop effective pedagogy in undergraduate computer science (CS) education. She’s won the NCWIT Extension Services (NCWIT ES-UP) award, ABI Systers PIO (Pass-It-On) award, Google ExploreCSR Award, and NCWIT educator award. She published numerous peer-reviewed articles in venues, including the Special Interest Group of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM SIGCSE), IEEE RESPECT, and IEEE Frontiers in Engineering Education, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) conference.

Her overarching research interests are:

  • To explore the impact of active learning pedagogy in undergraduate computing courses.
  • The effectiveness of online and inverted classrooms.
  • How different pedagogical practices can increase underrepresented student performance in computing courses.
  • How effective re-entry pathways can facilitate the transition of returning women in computing-based discipline.
  • Best practices in undergraduate research.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Bryan S. Kim Receives Funding for Rack Scale Computing Research

Bryan Kim

Bryan S. Kim, assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has received funding from semiconductor company FADU to explore how CXL, a new open standard for connecting computer components, would transform data center applications.

With CXL, an entire rack of computers can be connected through the peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) bus with shared memory coherency, rethinking how computers access and share data.

“CXL is still in its infancy with only limited publicly available hardware. After all, its specification is only a few years old” Kim explained. “Furthermore, how CXL and its hardware would affect software system design is completely unexplored.”

Kim’s collaborative project will investigate the fundamental technologies for building a software system with CXL memory, the designs for resilient and reliable CXL fabric, and the transformation of data center applications due to CXL.

“While there is a large research community interest in CXL, there are only a handful of research groups who have published in this area,” Kim said. “I am grateful to be at the leading front and continuing the success of this project.”

Dean J. Cole Smith Recognized as a Fellow by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) announced that College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith will be part of the INFORMS Fellows Class of 2023.

INFORMS is the largest professional association for the decision and data sciences. It brings together academic and industry experts in operations research, analytics, management science, economics, behavioral science, statistics, artificial intelligence, data science, applied mathematics and other fields.

Smith was recognized for his “sustained leadership and service to INFORMS and the profession; impactful research in integer programming, network interdiction, and multilevel optimization; and for distinguished leadership in academia.”

“This is such a humbling honor to receive from an organization like INFORMS. The award recognizes students who’ve worked alongside me, mentors who guided my career, and leaders who provided me so many opportunities in research and administration,” said Smith.

“As we launch our own Master’s degree in Operations Research and System Analytics (OR/SA) at Syracuse, I encourage people to learn more about the INFORMS organization and the breadth of career opportunities afforded with an OR/SA degree.”

The new INFORMS Fellows will be honored during the organization’s annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona from October 15th to 18th 2023.

Charting a Pathway to Renewable Energy

Ian Storrs, Brendan Murty and Ryan Mussaw
Ian Storrs, Brendan Murty and Ryan Mussaw

Imagine a city where streetlights and crosswalks no longer rely on electric grids for power. Instead, they draw their energy from the construction material that makes up several buildings and sidewalks: concrete. While it sounds far-fetched, three College of Engineering and Computer Science students, Ian Storrs, Brendan Murty, and Ryan Mussaw, are working to make this a reality. Through research and testing, their discoveries have the potential to be a new commercial technology that harnesses an overlooked source of energy and makes an impact on sustainability.   

Their invention, ConCurrent, relies on the principles of thermodynamics, a field of physics that involves energy, temperature, and heat. Concrete on its own can’t generate electricity. But heat can – and construction materials like concrete and asphalt can soak up a large percentage of the sun’s heat. With a huge amount of heat being absorbed into the concrete, the engineering trio discovered an ingenious way to transform this wasted energy into a power source by turning heat absorbed by concrete into electricity. This began their journey into the world of renewable energy research.   

Originally a pitch for Invent@SU, their prototypes were concrete blocks fused with a thermoelectric generator, which transforms heat absorbed by the block into electricity when one side of the block is hot, and the other side is cool. The temperature difference between each side is crucial to generating electricity—the greater the temperature difference, the more electricity can be generated. 

Brendan Murty, Matthew Brewster and Ian Storrs working on a prototype during Invent@SU
Brendan Murty, Matthew Brewster, and Ian Storrs working on a prototype during Invent@SU

“We were thinking our invention could power things in close proximity to roadways and illumination for sidewalks like embedded lights, kind of like what you’d see at movie theatres when you’re walking down the aisle,” Murty said.  

However, a single concrete block isn’t enough to generate power for crosswalks or streetlights, so they’ll need a considerable number of these devices to achieve this. These blocks have been helpful in exploring the concept of heat, concrete, and electricity and they’ve included other materials in their prototypes to amplify the temperature difference on each side of the block. 

“We included a copper plate on top to absorb heat and pull it down from the surface of the concrete,” Storrs said. “The aluminum plate pulls heat from the bottom to try to cool it. The sides are also wrapped in foam insulation to reduce heat escaping. And on the bottom, we have a heat pipe, a copper tube with fluid that’s good for moving heat.”  

While some may think ConCurrent is solar power with extra steps, there are some differences. Solar power relies on sunlight. ConCurrent relies on solar radiation or the heat absorbed from the sun’s radiation. This means even when the sun goes down, their invention can continue functioning since concrete absorbs and retains heat.  

“It’s a resource that hasn’t really been tapped in a real effective way. We have solar, which harnesses the sun’s energy but this specific realm hasn’t been focused on,” Murty said.  

The research aspect of the project was by far the most interesting part to the engineers. They would be able to continue research on ConCurrent when offered a position at the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) at the start of fall 2022. At the assessment center, Storrs, Murty, and Mussaw assisted manufacturing companies in conserving energy by suggesting changes in lighting and other power sources. Funded by the assessment center, their work also helped them when it came to research and they spent the summer reading other academic papers and building different iterations of the design. 

“It’s a relatively small research area,” Storrs said.  “We did find other projects that were doing similar things like a solar collector, but those projects focus on asphalt road surfaces. They’re also different since they have pipes underneath roads that circulate water and air to collect heat.” 

ConCurrent’s function heavily relies on temperature difference, so the engineers have explored ways to reduce energy loss. They’ve considered filling the empty space of their thermoelectric generator with insulation materials and conducted experiments to test the effectiveness of covering pavement with absorbent black paint, as this could help increase solar radiation absorption. Their research has also allowed them to delve deeper into understanding heat absorption in asphalt pavements. Even with their many triumphs, however, the engineers did encounter some issues along the way.  
 

Ian Storrs and Brendan Murty working on an invention
Ian Storrs and Brendan Murty

“Since we’re a self-guided research team, we’ve had to narrow the scope and direction of our project as we did our literature review,” Storrs said. “This was initially overwhelming, but we were able to meet with the engineering librarian Jaun Denzer who was enormously helpful in pointing us in the right direction.” 

Despite being a self-guided group belonging to different programs within ECS, the engineering trio is far from a ragtag bunch – they’re a dream team. Whether it be Storrs’s mechanical engineering knowledge or Murty’s previous experience using modeling software in his aerospace engineering course, each member has contributed something noteworthy to the project to make it what it is today.  

Mussaw, who joined the group after Invent@SU, and his electrical engineering expertise also came in handy for ConCurrent’s electrical components, something the group initially struggled with during the competition. He discussed some things he desired to achieve with this invention.  

“We’re hoping to have multiple temperature sensors throughout the prototypes we’re using,” he explained. “We’re also hoping to pull weather data from Syracuse Airport so we can compare weather data from stations – there will be a lot of data analysis to paint a better picture of what’s going on.” 

Matthew Brewster, a civil engineering student who exited the group after Invent@SU, was credited with designing how their invention would look and even suggested using thermoelectric generators while ConCurrent was in its early stages of development.    

“One of the ideas I had initially suggested when brainstorming was developing some type of solar sidewalk where the solar cells could be laid out and pressed into wet concrete,” Storrs said. “Matthew suggested using thermo-electric generators, which I had never heard of before. We essentially just ran with it from then on.” 

What began as an Invent@SU pitch has now evolved into a research project where every member, current and former, has contributed to the project’s success. And though they didn’t place in the competition, their collective drive to make a positive impact on the environment has led to the creation of innovative solutions for renewable energy. With support from the ECS faculty and their experience at the assessment center, these engineers are paving the way for clean energy solutions and revolutionizing the way we consume power. 

New Look for the Junior Electrical Engineering Lab

The junior electrical engineering lab is the latest among several renovations taking place in the Center for Science and Technology and the lab’s layout has significantly improved teaching and interactions within the educational space.  

“It was a bit of a change when I first came back. They’ve transformed a pretty clunky environment into a usable space,” teaching assistant Kyle Maiorana said. “They also centralized a lot of the components and resources like lab instruments so you’re not running all over the lab to use them.”  

The lab was originally a long, narrow room, making it difficult to navigate and teach, but the newly renovated lab is more open, allowing for better mobility.  

“Before, we had half the students in one room, and half the students in another room. We were separated and I had to go back and forth. Now we’re all in the same room – it’s much nicer,” said Duane Marcy, associate teaching professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “It was really hard to teach in that space. Stand on one end of the room and students toward the back would have difficulty paying attention.”  

Professor Duane Marcy works with a student

According to Marcy, these renovations have been in the works for some time and he’s glad that they’ve finally been completed.  

“We actually proposed the renovations about 10 years ago. We’ve had different drawings and architects look at it. When Bruce Molino came to the college, he took the lead on this project and made it possible. The renovations have made a huge difference by encouraging active, exploratory learning which is crucial in lab environments.” 

“It invites a lot more collaboration,” Maiorana added. “With the amount of time I spent in the lab for the past couple of years, I’m a little bummed I graduated before I could use it. The renovations always happen right after you leave. It’s definitely a gift for the incoming students though. They have a lot of great space to use for their future projects.” 

Jason Pollack

Areas of Expertise:

-Quantum information

-Decoherence

-Thermalization

-Emergent spacetime and quantum gravity

My research is aimed at elucidating how, and in what circumstances, thermalization, gravitational dynamics, and classical observables can be derived from the more fundamental underlying features of a quantum theory. My research is motivated by cosmology and quantum gravity, but primarily uses tools from quantum information. One of my research programs focuses on understanding the entanglement structure of quantum states. A second research program is concerned with the physics seen by observers with only limited access to, or an imperfect ability to make measurements on, the quantum state.

Honors and Awards:

Member, Simons “It from Qubit” collaboration

Graduate Dean’s Award for Outstanding Community Service, Caltech, 2017

Chair, Caltech Graduate Student Council, 2015-6

Troesh Fellow in Physics, Caltech, 2014-5

Kusaka Memorial Prize in Physics, Princeton Physics Department, September 2011

Selected Publications:

S. Aaronson and J. Pollack, 2022, “Discrete Bulk Reconstruction,” JHEP, 2023, 37; arXiv:2210.15601.

C. Keeler, W. Munizzi, and J. Pollack, 2022, “An Entropic Lens on Stabilizer States,” Phys. Rev. A 106, 062418; arXiv:2204.07593.

J. Pollack, M. Rozali, J. Sully, and D. Wakeham, 2020, “Eigenstate Thermalization and Disorder Averaging in Gravity,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 021601 (2020); arXiv:2002.02971.

O. Kabernik, J. Pollack, and A. Singh, 2019, “Quantum State Reduction: Generalized Bipartitions from Algebras of Observables,” Phys. Rev. A 101, 032303 (2020); arXiv:1909.12851.

A. Bartolotta, S.M. Carroll, S. Leichenauer, and J. Pollack, 2015, “The Bayesian Second Law of Thermodynamics,” Phys. Rev. E 94, 022102 (2016); arXiv:1508.02421.

K.K. Boddy, S.M. Carroll, and J. Pollack, 2014, “De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations,” Found. Phys., 46, 702 (2016); arXiv:1405.0298.

Saman Priyantha Kumarawadu

Research Interests:

  • Artificial Intelligence and deep Learning
  • Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications and security
  • Data Mining
  • AI for Sustainability

My research interests broadly lie in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine, Internet-of-Things and Data Mining. Mainly, I focus on the application of deep learning and AI algorithms in developing new methodologies for real-time decision making to solve challenging real-world problems. Building deep learning-based software to make real world impact in the areas of health, agriculture, and education is one of the primary objectives of my research. I further extend my research to explore the impact of artificial intelligence in social, economic and cultural context, and the usage of machine learning to secure IoT infrastructures in various application domains such as smart homes, smart health, and smart wearables.

Selected Publications:

  1. Fathima Amira Azeer, and Priyantha Kumarawadu, Network Intrusion Detection System using Convolution Neural Networks, (2022) Proceedings of International Conference on Intelligent Application of Recent Innovation in Science & Technology (IARIST)
  2. Chameera De Silva and Priyantha Kumarawadu, Performance Analysis of Machine Learning Classification Algorithms in the Case of Heart Failure Prediction (2022) The 18th International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference
  3. Shadiya Mohammed Raly and Priyantha Kumarawadu (2022) Real-Time Burglar Recognition Based on Human Skeletal Data using OpenPose and Long-Short Term Memory Network. Asian Journal of Information Technology, 21(1), 1-5,
  4. Priyantha Kumarawadu, and Mohammed Izzath, (2022). Sinhala Sign Language Recognition using Leap Motion and Deep Learning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Capsule Networks, 4(1), 54-68.
  5. Avishka Jayasundara, Dimanthinie De Silva and Priyantha Kumarawadu, (2022) “Personality Prediction of Social Network Users using LSTM based Sentiment Analysis” Proceedings of 1st   IEEE International Conference on Smart Technologies and Systems for Next Generation Computing,
  6. Christina De Lile and Priyantha Kumarawadu, (2021) “A comprehensive Investigation Supporting Educational Development of Special Needs Students through Personification and Emotion AI”, Proceedings of   ACM 4th International Conference on Education Technology Management (ICETM)

Joseph J. Waclawski

Areas of Expertise:

  • Software Engineering Process
  • System/Software Modeling in SYSML/UML
  • Object Oriented Design and Development

I have been a Software Developer, Software Integrator, Systems Integrator, Lead Software Engineer, Software Project Manager and Software Functional Manager at various technology companies over the past 37 years, including General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and Sensis (now SAAB). My work at these companies spans the complete product life cycle. I started my career performing Systems/Hardware integration and test for one of the largest RADAR systems every developed, but have focused on Software Engineering for the past 30 years. I have been teaching at the College level for the past 23 years; 20 of these years at Syracuse University. I am a certified Lead Software Engineer and was previously a Software Manager at Lockheed Martin. I have earned my certification in Professional Scrum Product Owner I from scrum.org. While I have been primarily focused on industry, my real passion is teaching and mentoring our future generation of engineers.

Honors and Awards:

  • Lockheed Martin, RMS Certified Software Leader
  • General Electric, DMAIC and DFSS Green Belt
  • Lockheed Martin, Certified Cost Account Manager
  • scrum.org, Professional Scrum Product Owner I Certified
  • Patents:
    • 9841836 Control of non-destructive testing devices
    • 11403748 Method and system for articulation of a visual inspection device

International Experiences: Computer Science Study Abroad in London

Within weeks of arriving in London, computer science student Jovanni Mosca ’24 knew his semester abroad would be a life changing experience. He was living just outside central London, had traveled to multiple other countries in Europe and getting an up-close look at how global companies operate.

“We have a global major since we are creating software and technologies that spread around the world but we often don’t have knowledge of all the context that our work is going to be part of. So this is a valuable experience,” says Mosca.

A program uniquely designed for Syracuse University computer science students allows them to take courses they need in London and stay on track for a four year graduation. Kwaku Amofah-Boafo ’24 was thrilled to be taking his required classes mixed in with experiences across the United Kingdom.

“The best part of Study Abroad is interacting with the city,” says Amofah-Boafo. “Seeing that my major is computer science, visiting these places has given me the opportunity to see if I want to work abroad or work oversees in the future.”

Syracuse University’s London Center is based out of Faraday House in the West End. Students can take classes there and receive support from Syracuse University faculty and staff.

“I feel like Faraday House is your own little home space in London,” says Mosca. “Having the diverse faculty is cool. They are people of all different backgrounds who are either working in industry or teaching.”

“The classes are smaller, you interact more and I think that leads to better experiences in the classroom and the work you do,” says Amofah-Boafo.

The Syracuse Abroad computer science program is London is designed for the fall semester of a student’s junior year.

“Getting a chance to see what it is like to live here on a day to day basis and see people working has made me think about it in the future,” says Amofah-Boafo.

“It is an opportunity that will change your life, how you look at the world and it is invaluable,” said Mosca.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student Theodore Todorov Joins Young Research Fellowship

First-year aerospace engineering student, Theodore Todorov, has been selected as a CFSA-SOURCE Young Research Fellow at Syracuse University. For the next two years, he’ll work with assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, Pankaj K. Jha, and his team in the Quantum Technology Laboratory on classical and quantum optics projects.  

Quantum optics involves studying the nature of light and how it interacts with matter. For decades, researchers have used quantum optics to better understand quantum mechanics, the study of how atomic particles interact with each other. This research has led to numerous technological developments that have now become known as the quantum revolution, or Quantum 2.0, and with his team, Professor Jha has continued conducting research on quantum technology in his lab.  

Offered by Syracuse University’s Center for Fellowship and Scholarship and the Syracuse Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement, the Young Research Fellows Program supports students passionate about research. With guidance from their faculty mentors, this fellowship gives students practical experience in early research and creative inquiry development. 

Some of Jha’s research focuses on novel materials that can be thinned down to a single layer of atoms and used to build extremely sensitive photodetectors that can detect light at the level of single photons. In the fellowship, Todorov’s projects will involve studying and characterizing these photodetectors and photon counting for space applications, including quantum communications, imaging distant objects, and extending the range of clear air turbulences.   

Todorov first discovered his passion for writing abstracts, collecting data, and drawing conclusions through a research course he took in high school. His fascination with telescopes, quantum optics and space exploration also piqued his interest in aerospace engineering, and following his arrival at Syracuse University, he desired to connect with other students and faculty who had similar interests – this made the fellowship program at Syracuse University more than ideal for him. 

“I’m happy to be a part of the Young Research Fellows Program and the community that this program wants to foster,” Todorov said.  

“Quantum optics and photonics for space applications is exciting research, and we are delighted to have Theodore join our team,” Jha added.  

The fellowship hasn’t stopped Todorov from pursuing other projects this summer. He’s currently working with Syracuse University’s Center of Excellence in Environmental Energy Systems on research, creating sensor boxes so the team can position them around campus and measure air quality.  

In the upcoming fall, he also plans to study the principles of classical and quantum optics and get trained in the Quantum Technology Laboratory in various experimental techniques and equipment, including lasers, single-photon detectors, and counters. He’ll focus on understanding and conducting classical and quantum interference experiments at the single photon level, analyzing the data, and writing a research paper by the end of the semester to present his work at a conference the following spring.  

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Yuzhe Tang Receives Grant to Protect Ethereum Security

Yuzhe Tang

Yuzhe Tang, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, and his research team have been awarded a grant by the Ethereum Foundation for research to advance the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. This grant will support Tang and his Ph.D. students in designing, developing, and evaluating the security hardening code to protect the Ethereum network stack.

Ethereum is a network made up of several communities and toolsets that allow users to communicate or make transactions with digital money. Since the network is decentralized, users are in complete control of their data and what’s being shared, so they don’t need to give up any personal information – all users need to access Ethereum is an internet connection.

Denial of service security is critically important to the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem, and the research will explore ways to protect the Ethereum network from cyberattacks, involving systematic vulnerability discovery using applied formal methods. As cyber criminals attack networks like Ethereum and security concerns grow, Tang believes this research could have a lasting impact on the current landscape of cybersecurity and blockchain platforms.

“With this grant, we can help solve some of the most critical problems in the real world. We expect to continue developing code merged into Ethereum codebase,” Tang says. “I am most excited about making real-world impacts out of the research works from my group.”

Researchers’ Artificial Intelligence-Based Speech Sound Therapy Software Wins $2.5M NIH Grant

Three Syracuse University researchers, supported by a recent $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, are working to refine a clinically intuitive automated system that may improve treatment for speech sound disorders while alleviating the impact of a worldwide shortage of speech-language clinicians.

The project, “Intensive Speech Motor Chaining Treatment and Artificial Intelligence Integration for Residual Speech Sound Disorders,” is funded for five years. Jonathan Preston, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders, is principal investigator. Preston is the inventor of Speech Motor Chaining, a treatment approach for individuals with speech sound disorders. Co-principal investigators are Asif Salekin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, whose expertise is creating interpretable and fair human-centric artificial intelligence-based systems, and Nina Benway, a recent graduate of the communication sciences and disorders/speech-language pathology doctoral program.

Their system uses the evidence-based Speech Motor Chaining software, an extensive library of speech sounds and artificial intelligence to “think” and “hear” the way a speech-language clinician does.

The project focuses on the most effective scheduling of Speech Motor Chaining sessions for children with speech sound disorders and also examines whether artificial intelligence can enhance Speech Motor Chaining—a topic Benway explored in her dissertation. The work is a collaboration between Salekin’s Laboratory for Ubiquitous and Intelligent Sensing in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and Preston’s Speech Production Lab in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Clinical Need

In speech therapy, learners usually meet with a clinician one-on-one to practice speech sounds and receive feedback. If the artificial intelligence version of Speech Motor Chaining (“ChainingAI”) accurately replicates a clinician’s judgment, it could help learners get high-quality practice on their own between clinician sessions. That could help them achieve the intensity of practice that best helps overcome a speech disorder.

The software is meant to supplement, not replace, the work of speech clinicians. “We know that speech therapy works, but there’s a larger issue about whether learners are getting the intensity of services that best supports speech learning,” Benway says. “This project looks at whether AI-assisted speech therapy can increase the intensity of services through at-home practice between sessions with a human clinician. The speech clinician is still in charge, providing oversight, critical assessment and training the software on which sounds to say are correct or not; the software is simply a tool in the overall arc of clinician-led treatment.”

170,000 Sounds

A library of 170,000 correctly and incorrectly pronounced “r” sounds was used to train the system. The recorded sounds were made by 400-plus children over 10 years, collected by researchers at Syracuse, Montclair and New York Universities, and filed at the Speech Production Lab.

Benway wrote ChainingAI’s patent-pending speech analysis and machine learning operating code, which converts audio from speech sounds into recognizable numeric patterns. The system was taught to predict which patterns represent “correct” or “incorrect” speech. Predictions can be customized to individuals’ speech patterns.

During speech practice, the code works in real time with Preston’s Speech Motor Chaining website to sense, sort and interpret patterns in speech audio to “hear” whether a sound is made correctly. The software provides audio feedback (announcing “correct” or “not quite”), offers tongue-position reminders and tongue-shape animations to reinforce proper pronunciation, then selects the next practice word based on whether or not the child is ready to increase word difficulty.

Early Promise

The system shows greater potential than prior systems that have been developed to detect speech sound errors, according to the researchers.

Until now, Preston says, automated systems have not been accurate enough to provide much clinical value. This study overcomes issues that hindered previous efforts: Its example residual speech sound disorder audio dataset is larger; it more accurately recognizes incorrect sounds; and clinical trials are assessing therapeutic benefit.

“There has not been a clinical therapy system that has explicitly used AI machine learning to recognize correct and distorted “r” sounds for learners with residual speech sound disorders,” Preston says. “The data collected so far shows this system is performing well in relation to what a human clinician would say in the same circumstances and that learners are improving speech sounds after using ChainingAI.”

So Far, Just ‘R’

The experiment is currently focused on the “r” sound, the most common speech error persisting into adolescence and adulthood, and only on American English. Eventually, the researchers hope to expand software functionality to “s” and “z” sounds, different English dialects and other languages.

Ethical AI

The researchers have considered ethical aspects of AI throughout the initiative. “We’ve made sure that ethical oversight was built into this system to assure fairness in the assessments the software makes,” Salekin says. “In its learning process, the model has been taught to adjust for age and sex of clients to make sure it performs fairly regardless of those factors.” Future refinements will adjust for race and ethnicity.

The team is also assessing appropriate candidates for the therapy and whether different scheduling of therapy visits (such as a boot camp experience) might help learners progress more quickly than longer-term intermittent sessions.

Ultimately, the researchers hope the software provides sound-practice sessions that are effective, accessible and of sufficient intensity to allow ChainingAI to routinely supplement in-person clinician practice time. Once expanded to include “s” and “z” sounds, the system would address 90% of residual speech sound disorders and could benefit many thousands of the estimated six million Americans who are impacted by these disorders.

Written by Diane Stirling

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Senem Velipasalar Awarded Patent for Room Occupancy Detection Platform

Remembering to turn the lights off when leaving a room is easy, but letting the furnace that you’re headed out isn’t as simple. About 37% of all energy used by commercial buildings and 40% of energy used in residences go toward heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). The costs related to heating and cooling unoccupied spaces in homes and office buildings have been a challenge for decades.

Current occupancy sensors only detect movement, so they can’t tell if someone is stationary. They also have trouble distinguishing between people and large pets, and often require an external power source and data processing. When a room is occupied, not being able to detect occupancy can cause user discomfort. On the other hand, not reliably knowing when a room is empty adds up to massive amounts of unnecessary heating and cooling costs for spaces without any people in them.

A collaboration between Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professors Senem Velipasalar and Pramod Varshney, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Ed Bogucz, Professor Tarek Rakha from Georgia Tech and SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, has developed a new sensor platform, MicroCam, which addresses many of the limitations that current systems face. Their project received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) and had to meet certain requirements. The platform had to be highly accurate, low-maintenance, affordable and easily self-commissioned for consumers while still providing more than 30% energy savings.

“It was important to us and ARPA-E that this platform be highly reliable, practical and inexpensive,” says Velipasalar. “This needed to be useful in real-world spaces, and it was designed to be battery-powered.”

The MicroCam is equipped with multi-modal sensors that can process motion, audio and video data. The camera can operate under daylight, low light or even no light conditions and it can be powered for more than a year on just three AA batteries – all the sensor processing is done inside one small unit.

“We do not use cloud computing, everything is captured and processed on this platform,” says Velipasalar. “You are not transferring or saving data, so it alleviates privacy concerns.”

While the MicroCam can detect occupancy, it does not share potentially private information.

“It senses your presence but only sends a 0 or 1 signal to the HVAC system,” says Velipasalar. “That binary occupancy result is the only data shared with the lead platform.”

Industrial and Interactive Design Professor Don Carr and his students worked with Velipasalar and Bogucz to design a prototype case for the MicroCam.

“Eventually we want a peel and stick and ideally you want to install one per room,” says Velipasalar. “If you have one of these in each room, you could monitor the entire space.”

Velipasalar was granted a patent in March 2023 titled “Low Power and Privacy Preserving Sensor Platform for Occupancy Detection.” It is the sixth patent she has been awarded over her career.

“This was a challenging project. We had to meet low cost and high accuracy requirements but it has incredible potential,” says Velipasalar.

The platform may have additional uses in the future including smart home integration and security monitoring. Velipasalar also sees possibilities for the MicroCam to provide activity monitoring and fall detection for families and nursing homes.

Spring 2023 Engineering and Computer Science Academic Department Awards

Unique View of Carnegie Library

The College of Engineering and Computer Science is proud to announce the students who received awards at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year from their academic department.

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering

The Bioengineering Founders Award

Grace Haas

Karen M. Hiiemae Outstanding Achievement Award in Bioengineering

Gabriel Khan

Oren Nagasako Award 

Megan Perlman

Outstanding Achievement Award in Chemical Engineering

Adam Klinger

The Allen J. Barduhn Award

Jacob Shellhamer

Outstanding Graduate Student in Biomedical Engineering

Tackla Winston

Outstanding Graduate Student in Chemical Engineering

Robson Schuraca

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Outstanding Achievement Award in Environmental Engineering

Benjamin Cavarra

K.L. Lui Memorial Award

Aymeric Destrée

The John Burch McMorran ’22 Award

Adam Landry

Outstanding Graduate Student in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Joseph Wasswa

Dr. James A. Mandel Prize for Achievement in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Haben Legesse

Samuel P. Clemence Prize for Outstanding Senior Design

Nagdalina Baez

Masson Bruening

Benjamin Cavarra

Kate Kemnitz

Adam Landry

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Awards

Kate Kemnitz

Paige Yamane

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The Warren Semon Prize

Ryan M. May

Outstanding Achievement Award in Computer & Information Science

Matthew J. Cufari

Outstanding Achievement Award in Computer Engineering

Kyle D. Maiorana

The Outstanding Achievement Award in Electrical Engineering

Jared W. Welch

Outstanding Graduate Student in Computer Engineering

Sihao Ren

Outstanding Graduate Student in Computer Science

Sai Saran Macha

Outstanding Graduate Student in Electrical Engineering

Nicholas S. Connolly

The IEEE Computer Engineering Award

Mehak Jetly

The IEEE Electrical Engineering Award

Jemma Mallia

IEEE PES Scholarship

Jemma Mallia

Outstanding Graduate Student in Cybersecurity

Kyungrok Won

William Peil Awards

Kyle Maiorana

Julia Pepin

Wyatt G. Bush

Samsondeen Batula

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Outstanding Aerospace Engineering Academic Achievement Awards    

Anthony Tricarico

Christian Fitzgerald

Award for Excellence by Aerospace Engineering Senior

Evan Moore

Award for Achievement by Aerospace Engineering Senior

Madeline Phelan

The Richard Heimburg Achievement Award in Aerospace

Zachary Stahl

Charles Libove Memorial Award for Outstanding Aerospace Senior

Melissa Yeung

Award for Excellence by Aerospace Engineering Junior

Sydney Jud

Zachary Haas

Awards for Achievement by Aerospace Engineering Juniors

Isaac Lehigh

Cody VanNostrand

Benjamin Gerard

Ross Evan-Iwanowski Memorial Award

John Michinko

Ellen H. Honnold Memorial Scholarship

William Saueressig

Awards for Excellence by Aerospace Engineering Sophomores

Jonathan Martin

Parker McMillan

Awards for Achievement by Aerospace Engineering Sophomores

Alexander Donato

Kathryn Smith

Kin-Nee Tong Award

Maximillian Lipinski

Awards for Achievement by Aerospace Engineering First Year Students

Quinn Young

Zachary Munkacsy

Jason Reid

Joshua Varkey

William Peil Inventor’s Award

Christian Fitzgerald

Madeline Phelan

Katherine Braun

Outstanding Mechanical Engineering Academic Achievement Award

Joshua Arndt

Award for Achievement by Mechanical Engineering Senior

Nathaniel Slabaugh

Jay Wyner Award for Excellence in Mechanical Engineering

Luyen Duong

Bernard Wood Creative Achievement Award in Mechanical Engineering 

Arnaud Buard

Jesse E. Rood Memorial Scholarship

Eric Silfies

Karl Carnevale Memorial Scholarships

Zachary Shuler

Awards for Achievement by Mechanical Engineering Juniors

Honorata Lubecka

Alexander Callo

Hugh C. Dugan Memorial Scholarships

Joseph Capra

Bei Luo

Award for Excellence by Mechanical Engineering Sophomore

Chloe Marie Britton Naime

Awards for Achievement by Mechanical Engineering Sophomores

Nathaniel Paradis

Jeffrey Bernstein

Aidan Bergman

James Melitski

Kin-Nee Tong Memorial Scholarship

Brinley Bruening

Kin-Nee Tong Award

Madeline Scott

Awards for Achievement by Mechanical Engineering First Year Students

Jennifer Mason

Gavin Johnson

William Peil Inventor Awards

Justin Kohan

Connor Norton

Melissa Jane Hiller

Kaelyn Rooney

Renee Allison

Louis N. DeMartini Award for Outstanding Research

Eric Silfies

Outstanding Graduate Student in Engineering Management

Ethan Tracey

Outstanding Achievement Award in Graduate Study

Camila Alexandra Humala Noriega

Outstanding Faculty Award

Professor Shalabh Maroo

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Award for Teaching Excellence

Professor Alexander Deyhim

Career Focused: Engineering and Computer Science Class of 2022 Reporting High Placement Rate

A crowd of engineering and computer science graduates sitting in chairs

The starting salaries for graduates receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) has grown steadily for the last six years.

The average starting salary for the class of 2022 was $76,679. A total increase of $17,000 since 2016.

The placement rate for the class of 2022 was 93%. More than half of all graduates have started their careers and 33% are pursuing an advanced degree.

The ECS Career Services team provides students with support to reach their professional goals. They help students build their network with connections to industry leaders and alumni through information sessions, company tabling, career fairs, on-campus interviewing and more. Additional support through workshops, seminars, and drop-in advising ensures students have access to development opportunities that give them an edge in today’s job market.

Class of 2022 Top 25 Employers

  • Applied Materials
  • Boston Scientific
  • Brainlab
  • Bristol Myers Squibb
  • Burns & McDonnell
  • Carrier
  • Deloitte
  • General Dynamics, Electric Boat
  • IBM
  • Kimley-Horn
  • L3Harris Technologies
  • Lockheed Martin
  • Meta
  • Morningstar, Inc.
  • National Grid Pfizer, Inc.
  • Pratt & Whitney, a Raytheon Technologies Company (RTX)
  • Qualcomm
  • SRC, Inc
  • The Boeing Company
  • The Walt Disney Company
  • Turner Construction Company
  • Weston & Sampson
  • Whiting-Turner Contracting Company
  • WSP

Class of 2022 Graduate Schools

  • Boston University
  • Brown University
  • Clarkson University
  • Columbia University
  • Cornell University
  • Duke University
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
  • Northwestern University
  • Princeton University
  • SUNY Binghamton
  • SUNY Stony Brook
  • Syracuse University
  • University North Carolina, Wilmington
  • University of Maryland, College Park
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Minnesota
  • University of Southern California

Data reflects information on 281 of 312 undergraduate degree recipients in 2022, representing a 90% knowledge rate.

Life Lessons: Nick Donofrio G’71, H’11 Shares Insights From a Career in Business and Technology

Upon publication of his autobiography “If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes: The Nick Donofrio Story,” former executive vice president of innovation and technology at IBM and Syracuse University Life Trustee Nick Donofrio, G’71, H’11 came to campus to share insights and learnings from his six decades in business and technology. During a conversation at the Schine Student Center with current computer science student Maya Lee ’24, Donofrio discussed leadership, emerging technologies and the importance of diversity and inclusion.

“I learned early on that if you want to be an innovator, you should enable everyone to be their best,” said Donofrio. “I am all about bringing opportunity to talent.”

After the conversation, Donofrio signed copies of his book for the Syracuse University faculty, staff and students in attendance. In his book, Donofrio covers the development and launch of key technological advances from IBM and shares strategies on leadership and collaboration. Each chapter of the book is framed with important moments and lessons from Donofrio’s childhood with his mother and father.

“I want all of you to be leaders,” said Donofrio. “Have a view of the horizon and have the courage of your conviction to move towards it.”

Donofrio earned a master’s degree in 1971 from Syracuse University while working for IBM and taking classes as part of an extension program in the Hudson Valley. He has been a strong supporter of Syracuse University ever since he graduated. His philanthropy has supported the highly successful Donofrio Scholars and Ambassador Scholars programs that strengthen the College’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in every aspect of a student’s experience. Donofrio was awarded with Syracuse University’s highest alumni honor, the George Arents Award in 2005 and received an honorary doctoral degree in 2011.

National Science Board Awards Electrical Engineering Alumnus Betty Lise Anderson ’78 with Public Service Award

The National Science Board (NSB) honored Betty Lise Anderson ‘78, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Ohio State University with its 2022 Public Service Award. The award honors exemplary service in promoting public understanding of science and engineering.

“Dr. Anderson exemplifies what this award is all about” said Maureen Condic, Chair of NSB’s Subcommittee on Honorary Awards. “Not only is she helping shape the next great minds of our STEM enterprise at the university level, she also enlists those minds to help cultivate and motivate young minds at a fundamental level. Her work exemplifies the priorities put forward in NSB’s Vision 2030 to expand STEM opportunities to all Americans.  She’s invaluable.”

Dr. Anderson has led a program – free to participants – that has reached 35,000 students at over 100 different schools, libraries, after-school programs, and scout troops. The program  delivers hands-on engineering activities to K-12 students throughout central Ohio and beyond.  Graduate and undergraduate students, as well as over 600 volunteers operate the program, which hosts an average three events each week. Many volunteers are still students, while others are alumni who want to stay involved or who want to bring the program into their own communities.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at Syracuse University and a Master of Science from the University of Vermont where she also obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Science and Electrical Engineering. Her technical area is photonics, or the physical science of light waves.

Dr. Anderson’s achievements include: Fellow of the Society for Photo-Instrumentation Engineers, senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Optical Society of America. She is also co-author of “Fundamentals of Semiconductor Devices.”

Fall 2022 Engineering and Computer Science Dean’s List

SU Campus
The Einhorn Family Walk stretches out in front of the Hall of Languages on a autumn day.

In recognition of superior scholarship, the following students have been entered on the Engineering & Computer Science Dean’s List for Fall 2022.

To be eligible for Dean’s List recognition, the minimum semester grade point average must be 3.40 or higher, must have earned a minimum of 12 graded credits and must have no missing or incomplete grades.

Aerospace Engineering

Dean Nasri Abdel-Aziz

Allyson Almeida

Brady Joseph Arruda

Jonah Oliver Blanchard

Richard L Bruschi

Mathew Carpio

Curtis James Cline

Bryan Collins

Thomas James Condon

Paolo Pio Coppola

Michael Alexander Donato

Justin Ryan Esposito

Mark Gannon Ezaki

Benjamin David Faasse

Christian Scott Fitzgerald

Darren Finn Forschino

Victoria Elizabeth Forsyth

Zachary Ryan Freyman

John M Gauthier

Benjamin Daniel Gerard

Alexandre J Gill

Zachary William Haas

David Leo Hadley

Benjamin Matthew Hassett

Ryan Benjamin Hirsch

Aidan Hoff

Jiaji Hu

Paula Cristina Ibelings

Nicholas John Jacobs

Joseph Manuel Javier

Sydney F Jud

Harrison Kayton

Myat Min Khant

Trevor Anthony Knight

Thalia Patience Lee

Isaac Alan Lehigh

Emma Lee Levenson

Dante Alexander Liotta

Maximillian Lipinski

Nathaniel Fox Lipset

Jacob Eric Long

Ava Katherine Lough

Powers Craig Lynch

Brendan Michael Marquis

Elsa Adrianna Martin

Jonathan Henry Martin

William Armstrong Martin

Jason W McElhinney

Parker Byrne McMillan

John P Michinko

Kendra Teresa Miller

Evan Gregory Moore

Zachary Thomas Munkacsy

Brendan Pierce Murty

Tatiyyanah Queen-Asia Hope Nelums

Madeline G Phelan

Logan D Prye

Kazi Golam Rafee

Jason Patrick Reid

Nicholas Christopher Richard

Andrew Douglas Rockafellow

William J Saueressig

Winston James Schaumloffel

Zachari Whitaker Sekyi-Williams

Garrett Clifton Sickmon

Gregory C Slodysko Jr

Kathryn Amber Smith

Zachary Michael Stahl

Jaime S Sued Jr

Yiyuan Sun

Marco Svolinsky

Rory Lloyd Taylor

Richard A Tedeschi

Carter Alexander Thompson

Theodore Todorov

Anthony Robert Tricarico

Sasha Valitutti

Sarah Grace Vallejo

Cody Joseph VanNostrand

Joshua John Varkey

Toby Thomas Webber

Mason Alexander Weber

Owen James Weisenberger

Ethan H Weiss

Kana Li Wong

Cameron M Woodbury

Melissa Yeung

Bioengineering

Anthony Drew Acierto

Jason Bae

Mathieu Kenji Barthelemy

Paige Bencivenga

Zeynep Sue Cakmak

Evan A Campbell

Jade Ashlee Carter

Ryan Sean Clarke

Dominic Thomas Clinch

Lukas Cook

Shane A Corridore

Samirah Lamoni Crawford

Beatriz De Melo Palma Fernandes

Michael James Dreyer

Catherine Jean Durkin

Sophie Faith Grady

Grace Haas

Lauren Elizabeth Hamilton

Brenna Henderson

Maxima Camryn Zahra Herbert

James T Hrdy

Madeline Jones

Gabriel Khan

Olivia Lynne Kmito

Jakub Aleksander Kochanowski

Emily Labour

Quinn Patrick Langdon

Sara Anne Leonardo

Isabelle S Lewis

Joshua Edwin Nana Limjuico

Alejandra Eugenia Lopez

Ethan L Masters

Aelish McGivney

Caitlin R Mehl

Sadie Shaula Meyer

Katherine Grace Monroe

Aizhan Moore

Hannah V Murphy

Jonathan Ngo

Kerrin Anne O’Grady

Luiza Awuor Owuor

Alyssa Pape

Mia Dian Paynton

Megan Perlman

Ayanna Riley Peterson

Michael Steven Presunka

Lillian Kilmer Rhuda

Ruben Rojas Betanzos

Isabella M Rosales

Amira Salihovic

Alyssa Shelburne

Bridget Yong Sides

Katherine Anne Southard

Justin N Stock

Elizabeth Tarami Su

Danny Vu

Carly J Ward

Nathaniel Wellington

Haven M Wittmann

Lauren Margaret Woodford

Rui Xie

Yougang Xue

Ahlam Zokari

Julian Marcus Smucker Zorn

Samantha Yvonne Zysk

Chemical Engineering

James William Bailey

Elizabeth R Carchia

Alex Michael Castagliuolo

Olivia R Conlin

Dennis Dao

Emily C Fittante

Edward Coleman Fluker

Mia Angela Goldberg

Hannah Grossman

Avery Gunderson

Christopher Max Hansen

Lucas Joseph Heffler

Aiden A Jacobs

Natalia Jarmain

Hope Irene Johnson

Sonia Julius

Emma Grace Klein

Adam J Klinger

Eden Tess Leavitt

Gabe Lipsitz

Annika Daphne Meyers

Cole Parker Nordby

Erin Marie Odonnell

Eli Irvin Paster

Isabella Noelani Perkins

Riley Madison Schmerber

Jacob Matthew Shellhamer

Jason Tan

Maria Jose Velez

Seojun Yu

Jackson Richard Yuen

Civil Engineering

Juan Pablo Arosemena Graziadei

Henry C Bievenue

Leila Christine Boughton

Masson Bruening

Zoya Bukhari

Alexander Burrows

Daniel Thomas Caraceni

Isabel Cardoso

Olivia Carmella Cross

Aymeric Pierre Alexis Robert Destree

Brendan Dwyer

Marlee Ann Ecton

Xuanjie Fan

Jacob C Hotchkin

Kristen Caroline Huddleston

Julia Ann Johnson-Milstein

Rhitwik Karmakar

Rachel Katz

Jakob Lamond Keller

Kate Astrid Kemnitz

Alexander Gregory Klee

Adam Paul Landry

Evangelia Birget Larson

Haben Legesse

Emma Marie Liptrap

Emilija Alise Lizins

Lucas James Meiers

Sumit Harshad Mistry

Trevor Robert Napoli

Abigail Micah Neitch

Justin Wayne Pettit

Maxwell Robert Pozar

Benjamin Joseph Putrino

Kaylin Janet Richards

Lesley S Rojas

Keisha Zefanya Rorimpandey

Anthony K Schnaufer

Aaron Presley Shinn

Samuel Paul Smith

Caitlin Jane Spillane

Alex Gabriel Torres

Jose Artuto Venegas

Zhou Wang

Christian E Ward

Sarah Wong

Paige H Yamane

Garrett J Zito

Computer Engineering

Adekunle J Akinshola

Chikeluba K Anierobi

Jackson Thomas Bradley

Ryan Joseph Brennan

Samanta S Correa

Wenhan Cui

Nathan James Czarnecki

Lyn El Sayed Kassem

Melvin Ruben Escobar Gonzalez

Elizabeth A Fatade

Gabriel Akinloluwa Babatunde Fatade

Ralph Lawrence Graham

Alexander Joseph Hai

Aidan Robert Harrington

Ashton Jeter Hernandez

Kasey Jackson

Cedrik Jethro Jean-Baptiste

Benjamin N Johnson

Jessica K Lat

Tyler Alexander Lavaway

Matthew B Leight

Jiaxiong Li

Joseph Anderson Lodato

Kyle Maiorana

Aksel James Malatak

Jacob Stephen Masrouri

Isabel M Melo

Pierce Austin Neubert

Jayden Ahamefula Okorougo

Jose L Olivera

Adedeji Nathaniel Oyefeso

Ellie Grace Parkes

Alexander C Perez

Jessica A Reslan

Anel Rizvic

Kevin Robertson

Brian Rodriguez

Samuel M Rosenthal

Mia Elizabeth Russo

Jared Anthony Santiago

Alexander Segarra

Thomas John Vitarelli

Declan Wavle

Manling Yu

Computer Science

Bamidele Benjamin Adeyemo

Aaron Alakkadan

Sajjad Abdullah Albadri

Joseph Algerio

Anas Abdallah Hussein Alkhashroom

Brianna Danielle Anthony

Ian Edward Asbury

Fiona Asungedib Azumah

Garret W Babick

Giovanna Elizabeth Barsalona

Niloy Basak

Sophia Anne Basile

Samantha E Bastien

Maxwell Robert Beam

Anas Ahmed Benhamida

Duncan Anthony Benitz

Luke S Bonenberger

Joshua Jordan Boucher

Brian Michael Bourne

Amanda Leigh Bowdren

Spencer H Bradkin

Nathan Thor Brekke

Bryan Bladimir Bueno Reyes

Kelly Jane Burke

Andy Daniel Cai

Jonathan David Callahan

Benjamin Elliott Canfield

Andrew Miles Champagne Jr

Lawrence Chen

Daniel Chmielewski

Nicholas Chopliani

Season Chowdhury

Noah John Cirks

Rahnaya T Clarke

Ta’Nasia Zhara Coleman

Miguel Angel Cruz Flores

Matthew John Cufari

Lucas John Czarnecki

Ryan Matthew Czirr

Akosua Danso

Philippe Alexandre Daubert

Nicholas Davis

Aidan Christopher DeGooyer

Julian Joseph Delucia

Christian Despecci

Lucille Jennifer Disalvo

Russell Carl Doucet

Annica Claudia Dubert

Theodor Dan Dumitru

Christopher Edmonds

Curtis Ryan Edwards Jr

Braimah Bolade Eleshin Jr.

Ryan Siebe Elsinga

Neha Eregodu Laxminarayana

Evan J Espina

Spencer Evans-Cole

Matthew J Faiola

Bennett Ferrari

Francisco Emiliano Franco Leon

Ruihong Gao

Kelly Jane Geiwitz

Aren Sevag Gharibian

Brianna S Gillfillian

Justin Gluska

Meagan Anessa Gonzalez

John Martin Gorman

Aicha Gory

Nolan Pasquale Groothuis

Avery T Gump

Jessica Gabriela Gutierrez

Alexander Peter-Anthony Haas

Talal Hakki

Ashley Marie Hamilton

Jillian Elizabeth Handrahan

Liam Gordon Hannah

Alisha Hassan

Karen Herrera

Richard Ho

Isaiah J Hollensworth-Wooten

Laurel Howell

Noah Thomas Howell

Jacob Howlett

Helou Huang

Xuanye Huang

Eda Imer

Chengyi Jiang

Tianyiming Jing

Frederick Jackson Jones

Alan Jos

Lauren Keona Kaaiakamanu

Brunon Donovan Kaminski

Xiaoya Kang

Matthew Keenan

Nicolas Walter Ketterer

Ekaterina Kladova

Joshua Jayvant Zachary Koshy

Matthew Peter Kovalcik

Polina Kozyreva

Vivien E Latt

Maya J’Nai Lee

Jack M Lefebvre

Andy Li

Modi Li

Yuxuan Li

Daniel Lim

Joshua Lim

Alicia Lin

Sandy Lin

Jing Liu

Joshua Zhou Liu

Yuyuan Liu

Cayden Thomas Lombard

Yiheng Lu

Sophia Luo

Runzhi Ma

Shizhan Ma

Gavin Thomas Macisaac

Mihir Ulhas Mahale

Juliette Eloise Mangon

Ryan M May

Anthony Louis Mazzacane

Philip Anthony Moceri

Thomas J Montfort

Jovanni Nicholas Mosca

Ryan Murphy

Krutartha Nagesh

Christopher Scott Nemeth Jr

Jillienne Judith Ness

Arianna Kassandra Nguyen

John Viet P Nguyen

Joshua Nielson

Olivia O’Hanlon

Cheryl Hadasa Olanga

Adya Aditi Parida

Brian Joseph Pellegrino

John Arthur Peters

Amlan Pradhan

Alexander Lawrence Reid

Boyu Ren

Eric Rodriguez

Andrew Frank Scerbo

Jonathan Lee Schwenk

Sean J Shin

Chad Thom Smith

Megan C Snow

Anthony Logan Solt

Townsend Garner Southard Pantano

Samuel Thomas Stowers

Kevin Sullivan

Nicholas P Sweet

Melissa Li Tang

Andrew Jeffrey Tedesco

Eduardo Torres-Garcia

Winston Tsui

Matthew Alistair Twigg

Zimuzo Somadi Udedibia

Robert Anthony Valliciergo

Kevin Anthony Verdeschi

Christopher Mark Vinciguerra

Guozheng Wang

Zijian Wang

Jacob Wansor

Robert Ward

Samantha Maureen Weir

Ryan Thomas Welch

Daniel Z Whelan

Lauren Rae Wilson

Sarah Grace Wlodkoski

Brian Matthew Wong

Hassan Wouliyou

Zongxiu Wu

Tianyi Xiang

Yujie Xu

Jishuo Yang

Naomi Lum Yokoo

Mingyan Zhang

Rixiang Zhang

Ruihao Zhang

Weiwei Zhang

Junjie Zheng

Mochen Zhou

Yiming Zhou

Yitao Zhou

Yi Zhu

Engineering Undeclared

Hunter Bertucci-Bissonnette

Gulliver Finn Brower

Fernando De Oliveira Poli

Brady Utah Denaburg

Nicholas James Harten

Kevin Paul Leger

Juwei Lin

Jacob E Manhardt

Kathleen Rose Meleski

William Matthias Morgan

Nicholas Edward Napalit

Alexander Romanofsky

Santiago Jose Sanabria

Rylee Marie Smith

Sebastian Enrique Velez

Iving Yang

Electrical Engineering

Alston Herve Abobi

Yohaan Matthew Abraham

Minghao Ai

Saul Batista Filpo

Tianle Bu

Kevin E Buciak

Wyatt Glenn Bush

Yushang Cai

Leshui Chen

Mingfu Chen

Ellison How-Sheen Chiang

Brian Sylwester Chudzik

Timothy Nehemias De Leon De La Rosa

Kevin James Donnelly

Henry C Duisberg

Anthony John Giovannini

Davis   Hood

Xingtai Huang

Myles Hudson

Hayden Huy Le

Davis James Lipetzky

Jemma Mallia

Liam Fuller Marcato

Ryan   Mussaw

Zixun Nian Nian

Gabriel Brian Noble

Jayson V Okhman

Julia Pepin

Savion Vernon Pollard

Gilberto E Ruiz

Gabriel E Ruoff

Harrison James Skilling

Jenna Mei Stapleton

Jared William Welch

Sierra Lauren Yang

Environmental Engineering

Jack Arnstein

Mark Bauerschmidt

Maren Behnke

Jasper Matthew Blake

David Michael Brodsky

Benjamin R Cavarra

Hollygrace Chamberlain

Ananya P Chandra

Emma Lauren Cloud

Emma Crandall

William Robert Croteau

Eleanor Elizabeth Gettens

Elisabeth Haggerty

Brady E Hartnett

Naomi Rebecca Imhoff

Muhammad Atekul Islam

Emma Charlotte Kaputa

Morgan Jean Kingdeski

Hunter Cordes Kline

Samuel Robert Livingston

Henry David Long

Molly M Matheson

Trygve Owen Moler

Connor Joseph Moulton

Matthew Edward Nosalek

Michael Joseph O’Connor

Liesel Marie Odden

Brinda Hetal Parikh

Ella Hope Phipps

Oliver D Raycroft

Audrey Elizabeth Recko

Marisol Allegra Russo

Mary H Schieman

Noah Michael Sherman

Evelyn Junting Tang

Gabriella Terry

Husna Myaza Tunje

Jacob M Tyler

Andrew Michael Vanderwege

Madeline Rose My Vo

Emily Jean Vogel

Sydney Elizabeth Youngs

Qiuyu Zhou

Reilly Zink

Mechanical Engineering

Arfeen Armaghan

Joshua Carl Arndt

Rachael O Beresford

Aidan Paul Bergman

Jeffrey Trent Bernstein

Chloe Marie Britton Naime

Renee Allison Brogley

Brinley   Bruening

Alexander Joseph Callo

Joseph Timothy Capra

Massimo Casciaro

Robin Amelia Cesario

Jun   Chen

Kaifeng Chen

Giancarlo D’Amore

Joanna Eilleen Delacruz

Colby John Doane

Troy Bradley Drummond

Luyen Duong

Gabriel Emilio Rangel Purnhagen

Andrew J Esposito

Griffin Thomas Estes

Thomas John Fabiano

Luke Samuel Fink

Elan Fullmer

Cameron Joseph Galloway

Xumeng   Ge

Charles James Germosen

Samuel Ryan Getman

Derrick Edward Goll

James Brady Goodreau

Laura Pandora Graziosi

Daniel Robert Greene

Alec Michael Grogan

Jack T Hassett

Meagan Emily Hernandez

Melissa Jane Hiller

Elliott J Holdosh

Yue Hu

Jeffrey Huang

Jiayuan Huang

Gavin Johnson

Dong Myeong Kang

Macauley J Kastner

Teagan L Kilian

Cherry Kim

Justin Kohan

Savannah Mae Kreppein

Jasmine Anne Lin

Honorata Lubecka

Bei Luo

Matthew Macfarlane

Ryan Patrek Martineau

Jennifer Alana Mason

Ian Walter McCollom

Michael J McElroy

Kalhaku D McLester

Ryan A Melick

James Patrick Melitski

Andrew Charles Moreno

Wiley Robert Moslow

Beau M Norris

Michael John Palmer

Nathaniel Ryan Paradis

Patrick Limsuksrikul Phanichyakarn

Emma Tiffany Platten

Regina Ann Reisig

Kaelyn R Rooney

Jeremy Vinton Rosh

Teagan Isabella Marie Rowland

Michael Patrick Rzasa

Sidarth Umrith Sarathy

Madeline Celia Scott

Zachary Ryan Shuler

Eric Silfies

Dionysios Skaltsas

Nathaniel Paul Slabaugh

Daniel Michael Stich

Ian Storrs

Kittapas Tulananda

Evan R Tulsky

Alexandra Rose Vaida

Griffin Riley Vollers

Nicholas Eric Waller

Xu Wang

Michael David Wehrle

Taj Asim Whitney

Thomas Chandler Williams

Michael Wong

Zhihan Zhou

Electrical Engineering Student Selected as an IEEE Power and Energy Society Scholarship Recipient

Electrical engineering student Jemma Mallia ’23 was selected as a 2022 IEEE Power and Energy Society Scholarship Plus Initiative recipient.

Mallia, vice president of the IEEE student branch, was chosen to receive the competitive scholarship by industry and academic representatives. The committee recognized Mallia for obtaining the knowledge and skills necessary to make an impact across the power and energy industry.

She was presented with the award by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Jay K. Lee, Student Activities Chair of the IEEE Syracuse Section. Mallia was recommended for the scholarship by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Sara Eftekharnejad. The research Mallia has done with Eftekharnejad’s research group was highlighted in her application.

“I am honored to be selected for this award knowing how many students are recommended for it,” said Mallia. “I’m very grateful for the support IEEE Power and Energy Society is showing for students and for supporting research related to integrating renewable energy into the power grid.”


This program includes a financial stipend along with complimentary one-year membership in IEEE and in the Power & Energy Society. 

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Attain Prestigious IEEE Fellow Recognition

Electrical engineering and computer science faculty members Wenliang (Kevin) Du and Vir Phoha have been recognized as Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for 2023, a high professional honor conferred on less than 0.1% of the organization’s membership annually.

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. It has 409,000 members in more than 160 countries who are engineers, scientists and allied professionals whose technical interests are rooted in electrical and computer sciences, engineering and related disciplines.

The Fellow designation is the IEEE’s highest level of membership, attained through nomination by peers and approval by the IEEE Board of Directors.

Du is being recognized for contributions to cybersecurity education and research. Phoha is being honored for his work developing attack-averse active authentication in computing systems using behavioral patterns.

Du’s research focuses on system security for web, mobile, smartphone/tablet and Android operating systems. He has also developed improved access control for mobile systems. In the area of computer security education, work that he began in 2002 to develop hands-on labs for student computer security education, is now used by more than 1000 universities and colleges in more than 80 countries.

This year, he also received the IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation (Academic) Award. Du also recently was named principal investigator for a National Science Foundation grant of $399,000, “Building and Internet Emulator for Cybersecurity Education.”

Phoha’s research in systems security involves studying malignant systems, active authentication, machine learning, decision trees and statistical and evolutionary methods. He looks at large-time series data streams and static data sets and anomalies and optimization of computer networks to build defensive and offensive cyber-based systems.

Phoha was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2020 and a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science in 2018. He has achieved 13 patents for inventions in machine learning, biometrics, user identification and authentication, data decision-making and cybersecurity attacks. He is currently an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems and two other journals.

Du and Phoha were nominated for Fellow status by Distinguished Professor Pramod Varshney, of the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who was himself recognized an IEEE Fellow in 1997.

Two other professors of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University, Biao Chen (2015) and Jian Tang (2019), have also been named IEEE Fellows.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Qinru Qiu Named as a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery

Qinru Qiu Portrait

Electrical engineering and computer science Professor Qinru Qiu has been named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest and most prestigious association of computing professionals.

Qiu was selected by her peers for her outstanding scientific contributions to computing. The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of ACM worldwide membership based on professional experience and significant achievements in the computing field. To be nominated, a candidate must have at least 15 years of professional experience in the computing field, five years of professional ACM membership in the last 10 years and must have achieved a significant level of accomplishment or made a significant impact in the field of computing, computer science, or information technology. A Distinguished Member is expected to have served as a mentor and role model by guiding technical career development and contributing to the field beyond the norm.

 “This is an important and well deserved honor for Dr. Qiu,” said Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith. “Throughout her career she has been an innovator in the field of green computing, and I have been fortunate to learn about some of her contributions in brain-inspired neuromorphic computing techniques. In addition to her brilliant scholarly innovations, the College of Engineering and Computer Science has also benefited from her very significant leadership and instruction efforts. Dr. Qiu is thoughtful and reliable in every component of her job, and we are thrilled to see her honored by the ACM.”

Micron Technologies Announces Plans to Invest $100 Billion to Build a Semiconductor Fabrication Facility Near Syracuse

In a historic announcement for the Syracuse area, Micron Technology has committed an investment of up to $100 billion to build the largest semiconductor fabrication facility in the United States in Clay, NY.

The facility will create up to 9,000 jobs at four semiconductor fabrication plants on a 1,300 acre site just north of Syracuse and support up to 40,000 additional jobs in local supply chain and construction industries.

“It is hard to dream up an event that is more impactful for the Syracuse area, Syracuse University and the College of Engineering and Computer Science. To say that this investment will transform the region is a dramatic understatement,” said College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith.

“The electrical engineering and computer science department’s historical strength in chip design will lead to cutting edge research and educational collaborations between Syracuse University and Micron,” said Edelstein Professor for Broadening Participation and electrical engineering and computer science department chair Jae C. Oh. “We see incredible potential on research involving telecommunications, supercomputing, cloud storage systems, neuromorphic computing, microwave photonics, and quantum microwave communication and sensing.”

The site could eventually include four 600,000 square foot cleanrooms – the size of approximately 40 football fields. Site preparation work will start in 2023 with construction beginning in 2024.

“A semiconductor chip is the brain of almost everything that we use in everyday life, from washers and dryers to cars and cellphones. To fabricate a chip, we use photolithographic technology to ‘print’ circuits onto silicon wafers. The ‘printing’ has very high resolution, such that the size of an object (e.g., a transistor or a piece of wire) on the chip is only 1/10,000 of a hair and a typical chip may have billions of transistors,” said electrical engineering and computer science professor Qinru Qiu. “The semiconductor manufacturing process needs to be carried out in an extremely clean environment with no dust, and it takes many complicated steps.”

As part of the project, Syracuse University will partner with Micron on research, education, and workforce development needs that stem from this investment.

“Micron will need engineering and computer science talent, especially in the fields electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, and chemical engineering,” says Smith. “But the opportunities will extend to every area of this College, and to many other programs outside the College at Syracuse University.”

“We are prepared to play an essential role in educating electrical and computer engineers capable of making an impact in the chip design and fabrication industry.  Micron’s commitment to research and development provides an exciting new opportunity for our students at all levels,” said electrical engineering and computer engineering undergraduate program director Jennifer Graham.

The facility will make dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips as part of Micron’s plan to significantly increase DRAM production.

“DRAM is such a central component in modern computing, so much so that it is called ‘main’ memory. When we think of computers, we first associate them with the verb compute, but compute is meaningless if the computed values are not stored in memory,” said electrical engineering and computer science professor Bryan Kim. “DRAM is that very component that stores the program’s data. Today’s data-intensive applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning consume a tremendous amount of data and produce large models to capture hidden details in the data, all of which are stored in DRAM. Advances in DRAM technology will continue to enable next-generation computing systems and applications.”

Micron plans to use 100% renewable energy at the new facility and to use green infrastructure and sustainable building attributes for the construction of the New York fab to attain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status. Micron is also aiming to achieve a 42% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from operations by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

Syracuse University Research Team Receives Grant to Advance the Ethereum Blockchain Ecosystem

Yuzhe Tang

Electrical engineering and computer science Professor Yuzhe Tang and his research team received a grant from the non-profit Ethereum Foundation for research to advance the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem.

The grant is part of the peer to peer (P2P) network grants from the Ethereum Foundation’s recent Academic Grants Round.

A blockchain network is an open-membership peer-to-peer network that stores the information of crypto-asset ownership. Thus, the security and availability of the blockchain network are essential to maintaining asset safety. For instance, if the blockchain network is down, crypto-asset owners cannot withdraw their assets, and traders cannot trade.

Tang’s proposed research aims to secure Ethereum’s P2P network against existing and emerging attacks. Ethereum is the second largest blockchain after Bitcoin and holds assets worth more than $190 billion as of August 2022. His research will involve systematic vulnerability discovery, online attack detection, and mitigation tailored to leading Ethereum client software. Tang’s research will result in automatic software tools and retrofittable mitigation subsystems. In addition, he and his team are interested in collaborating with the Ethereum developer community to integrate the software artifacts for Ethereum clients.

Four Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Receive NSF CAREER Awards in the 2021-2022 Academic Year

Sara Eftekharnejad, Ferdinando Fioretto, Zhao Qin and Teng Zeng

College of Engineering and Computer Science Professors Sara Eftekharnejad, Ferdinando Fioretto, Zhao Qin and Teng Zeng received CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development program during the 2021-22 academic year.

The highly competitive NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

Eftekharnejad and Fioretto are members of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Qin and Zeng teach in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Eftekharnejad’s project, “Modeling and Quantification of the Interdependent Power Grid Uncertainties,” examines how conditions impact the U.S. electric power grid and looks at developing better methods of predicting grid disruptions. She is using statistical modeling of power grid failures to help predict power outages within rapid timeframes. Another focus is modeling power-generation uncertainties from various types of energy supplies, including those that are weather dependent. She and her team are working on using system measurements of grid status and condition uncertainties to find a dynamic model that adjusts in real time to help predict power outages before they occur.

In his project, “End-to-End Constrained Optimization Learning,” Fioretto is researching new models for solving computer optimization problems by accelerating data-driven learning. In that effort, he and his research team are approximating near-real-time integration of constrained optimization principles into machine learning algorithms. Optimized algorithms can improve an array of computer-based processes used in industrial applications that affect everyday life, such as meeting electricity demands efficiently, matching organ donors with receivers, scheduling flights and finding a nearby driver at a ride-sharing service.

Qin’s project, “Multiscale Mechanics of Mycelium for Lightweight, Strong and Sustainable Composites” seeks to reveal the fundamental principles that govern the multiscale mechanics of mycelium-based composites and integrate research into an educational program. Mycelium, produced during mushroom growth as the main body of fungi, plays an essential role in altering soil chemistry and mechanics, enabling a suitable living environment for different plant species.

Inland lakes in the northeastern United States have shown inconsistent trends of browning, a shift toward darker water color. Many of these lakes also receive inputs of organic contaminants originating from human activities within the lake watersheds. For “Impacts of Lake Browning on the Photochemical Fate of Organic Micropollutants,” Zeng is studying the sunlight-driven transformation of organic contaminants in the context of browning. The project is a collaboration with a volunteer lake monitoring and education program. He plans to develop new data and knowledge that will support development of adaptative lake monitoring programs and water treatment practices.

A total of nine Syracuse University faculty members received CAREER awards during the 2021-22 academic year. This is the largest number of the prestigious NSF awards earned in a single year.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Gurdip Singh Appointed as a Divisional Dean at George Mason University

Electrical engineering and computer science professor Gurdip Singh has been appointed divisional dean of the School of Computing at George Mason University. The School of Computing, together with the Volgenau School of Engineering, comprise Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing.

Singh has been on leave from Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) since March of 2020, serving as division director for the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE) Directorate with the National Science Foundation (NSF). As division director, he oversees 27 program officers, 12 administrative staff, and a budget of $240 million. Singh will complete his service with the NSF through the fall semester and will join George Mason on a full-time basis in January 2023.

Prior to serving as CISE division director, Singh served as associate dean for research and graduate programs in ECS, where he strengthened multidisciplinary research in several areas such as unmanned aerial systems, smart cities and energy. He put a specific focus on mentoring early career faculty and led ECS’s effort in the Syracuse University cluster-hire initiative where ECS’s multidisciplinary focus resulted in many faculty positions. Singh also led the formation of graduate professional development program, expansion of recruitment efforts for ECS graduate programs and development of mechanisms to provide timely recruitment data and projections to ECS departments.

Dacheng Ren currently serves as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs in ECS.

“Dr. Singh provided foundations that we have grown to rapidly expand our research in the past two years,” said Ren. “This is a great opportunity for him and all of us at the College of Engineering and Computer Science know he will be very successful.”

Interdisciplinary team of Engineering and Computer Science Students Wins 2022 Invent@SU Competition

When searching a burning building for people who may be trapped inside, smoke and debris can cause firefighters to work in zero visibility conditions. They are attached to ropes but it is easy for them to become disoriented. This makes it difficult to navigate their way back to safety.

Environmental engineering student Oliver Raycroft ’25 heard about the problem from a firefighter during his first year at the College of Engineering and Computer Science and started thinking about ideas.

“I thought the problem was interesting and there was a clear need,” said Raycroft. “I wanted to help and find a solution.”

At the beginning of the six week Invent@SU program, Raycroft presented the problem to his teammates biomedical engineering student Alejandra Lopez ’22 and computer science student Adya Parida ’25. Both were interested in seeing if they could use their science and engineering skills to design a practical solution that would help firefighters orient themselves during rescue operations.

“If we could solve this problem, we could save the lives of firefighters and billions in damages,” said Parida.

During Invent@SU, student teams design, prototype and pitch new inventions with help from engineering and communications faculty. Each student receives a $2200 stipend and teams have a $1000 budget for prototyping materials. Teams spend six weeks developing their ideas during summer session one and each week a panel of Syracuse University alumni and friends evaluate the progress of their five-minute pitches.

“It was a combination of experimentation and feedback. This program taught me skills I can apply anywhere,” said Parida.

“I got better and better at presenting and communicating what we were working on,” said Lopez.

Raycroft, Lopez and Parida developed an initial prototype that would attach to rescue ropes and indicate directionality to firefighters who were working in zero-visibility. As they considered adjustments and materials for their next version, the team brought the initial prototype to the Oswego Fire Department to get their feedback and input.

“The fact firefighters liked it so much made it worth it,” said Parida.

On the final Thursday of the program, all seven teams in Invent@SU pitched their inventions to a panel of alumni judges. Raycroft, Lopez and Parida’s team named “Scale Sense” took first place and a $1500 prize.

Second place went to team “Wonder Walker” who designed a mobility assistance device for children with special needs.

Third place went to team “Silogix” – who designed a device to provide farmers with a way to prevent dangerous grain blockages in silos.

“It was a ride, it was fun, challenging and rewarding,” said Parida.

Several Invent@SU teams plan to work with the Blackstone Launchpad in Bird Library to explore business plans and patents.

Invent@SU was made possible by program sponsors Syracuse University Trustee Bill Allyn G’59 and Janet “Penny” Jones Allyn ’60 and Michael Lazar G’65. The 2022 team sponsors were Matthew Lyons ’86, Haden Land G’91 and Cathy Jo Land and Ralph Folz ’90. For more information on the program, visit invent.syr.edu.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Receives Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Ferdinando Fioretto

Electrical engineering and computer science Professor Ferdinando Fioretto and his research team received the 2022 Caspar Bowden PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies for  their paper “Decision Making with Differential Privacy under the Fairness Lens.”  The award was presented at the annual Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium.

The Caspar Bowden PET award is presented annually to researchers whose work makes an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing technology. The judges said Fioretto’s team received the award for advancing the understanding of differential privacy and fairness trade-offs in decision making, providing a theoretical framework and exploring a highly relevant practical problem.

“I am honored for our work to receive this prestigious award which recognizes influential research in privacy-enhancing technologies, especially for a project that means so much to me and my group,” said Fioretto.

The awarded paper was published in the International Joint Conference of Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in 2021. It looks at the role of a privacy-enhancing technology (called differential privacy) in the context of Census data release for decision tasks with profound societal benefits. Some of these benefits may be the allocation of funds and resources, the distribution of therapeutics, or the assignment of congressional seats. Fioretto’s research team showed that differential privacy may induce or exacerbate biases and unfairness in many classes of decision processes and proposed a theoretical framework to audit and bound these fairness impacts.

“I am very honored and humbled to receive this prestigious award. This is one of my favorite projects and it involved a lot of hard work. Our results suggest that the US government might need to consider ethical consequences when applying differential privacy techniques to protect our privacy,” said doctoral student Cuong Tran, who was one of the authors of the paper. “I am also grateful to my advisor, collaborators, friends and staff from the electrical engineering and computer science department for helping us push this work into fruition.” 

One of the main contributions of their work was to examine the roots of the induced unfairness as well as proposing guidelines to mitigate the negative fairness effects of the decision problems studied.

“I am also happy to see that the analysis proposed in our work has inspired a line of follow-up works in the field of privacy-preserving machine learning to understand why private machine learning algorithms may induce or exacerbate disparate impacts,” said Fioretto. “We are continuing our efforts in this area and are currently working with policy-makers to better understand when and how our solutions may be adopted. I am very excited to see how this direction evolves and look forward to the efforts that our community will make to build better tools to address these fairness issues in privacy-preserving processes.”

Spring 2022 Engineering and Computer Science Dean’s List

Syracuse University Campus

In recognition of superior scholarship, the following students have been entered on the Engineering & Computer Science Dean’s List for Spring 2022.

To be eligible for Dean’s List recognition, the minimum semester grade point average must be 3.40 or higher, must have earned a minimum of 12 graded credits and must have no missing or incomplete grades.

Aerospace Engineering

Allyson Almeida

Brady Arruda

Curtis Cline

Bryan Collins

Nicholas Crane

Brian Cronin

Christopher Doherty

Michael Donato

Sean Edelman

Nadia Elsaeidy

Benjamin Faasse

Christian Fitzgerald

Victoria Forsyth

Benjamin Gerard

Alexandre Gill

Jacob Gomez

Zachary Haas

David Hadley

Alyssa Henley

Aidan Hoff

Paula Ibelings

Nicholas Jacobs

Joseph Javier

Sydney Jud

Benjamin Kane

Harrison Kayton

Trevor Knight

Isaac Lehigh

Stephen Leung

Emma Levenson

Maximillian Lipinski

Jacob Long

Powers Lynch

Brendan Marquis

Noah Martel

Elsa Martin

Jonathan Martin

Maxwell Martin

William Martin

Jason McElhinney

Mariana McManus

Parker McMillan

Alexander Metcalf

Romeo Michelson

John Michinko

Kendra Miller

Evan Moore

Matthew Murino

Mark Namatsaliuk

Tatiyyanah Nelums

Randall Osborn

David Pham

Madeline Phelan

Logan Prye

Matthew Qualters

Mykhaylo Rafalskyy

Samantha Riedel

Brandon Riley

Tracey Rochette

Alyssa Rote

Daniela Ruano-Pinos

Gregory Ruef

Michael Saksa

William Saueressig

Fred Schaffer

Winston Schaumloffel

Justine John Serdoncillo

Kanya Shah

Vraj Shah

Prabha Singh

Gregory Slodysko Jr

Zachary Stahl

Christopher Stawarski

Ethan Stocum

Yiyuan Sun

Marco Svolinsky

Tiffany Tang

Anthony Tricarico

Cody VanNostrand

Diego Villegas

Mason Weber

Timothy Wiley

Kana Wong

Cameron Woodbury

Melissa Yeung

Bioengineering

Anthony Acierto

Ashraf Alnatour

Bianca Andrada

Jason Bae

Eric Benaroch

Colby Black

Anna Brunson

Zeynep Cakmak

Britnie Carpentier

Lukas Cook

Tessa Decicco

Mia-Marie Fields

Tessa Galipeau

Jennifer Gonzalez

Skyla Gordon

Jenna Grutzmacher

Grace Haas

Lauren Hamilton

Victoria Hathaway

Brenna Henderson

Madeline Jones

Gabriel Khan

Jakub Kochanowski

Emily Labour

Quinn Langdon

Sara Leonardo

Isabelle Lewis

Alejandra Lopez

Ethan Masters

Aidan McCarthy

Aelish McGivney

Ian McHugh

Caitlin Mehl

Lindy Melegari

Katherine Monroe

Hannah Murphy

Alexander Musselman

Jonathan Ngo

Mark Nicola

Nicole Nielsen

Kerrin O’Grady

Mia Paynton

Megan Perlman

Connor Preston

Michael Presunka

Mark Ransbottom

Lillian Rhuda

Isabella Rosales

Brandon Salazar

Amira Salihovic

Juliana Sepulveda

Bridget Sides

Katherine Southard

Justin Stock

Elizabeth Su

Kimberly Tlayaca

Zhuoqi Tong

Danny Vu

Nathaniel Wellington

Maximillian Wilderman

Haven Wittmann

Lauren Woodford

Rui Xie

Julian Zorn

Samantha Zysk

Chemical Engineering

Daud Abdullayev

Paige Adebo

Lilly Basgall

Sandy Cao

Karley Chambers

Dennis Dao

Gabriela Duarte Saadia

Samantha Esparza

Emily Fittante

Edward Fluker

Mia Goldberg

Brent Gosselin

Avery Gunderson

Christopher Hansen

Oduduabasi Isaiah

Aiden Jacobs

Natalia Jarmain

Hope Johnson

Sonia Julius

Sayf Karim

Laxmi Khatiwada

Adam Klinger

Simran Dharmendra Lakhani

Caroline Leduc

Steven M Axelsen

Haonan Ma

Rawia F A M Marafi

Annika Meyers

Erin Odonnell

Sean O’Toole

Eli Paster

Fabiana Perez

Isabella Perkins

Nora Prosak

Riley Schmerber

Jacob Shellhamer

Jason Tan

Elizabeth Wall

Murphy Waters

Jackson Yuen

Civil Engineering

Shalom Acheampong

Juan Pablo Arosemena Graziadei

Maxwell Bell

Lucas Bellandi

Henry Bievenue

Ryan Bourdeau

Shalamar Brown

Alycia Bruce

Masson Bruening

Brett Carney

Vanessa Chica

Alejandro Correa

Aymeric Destree

Brendan Dwyer

Jack Dwyer

Marlee Ecton

Maraea Garcia

Matthew Hauser

Julia Johnson-Milstein

Joshua Kaufman

Kate Kemnitz

Alexander Klee

Adam Landry

Evangelia Larson

Abigail Laschalt

Haben Legesse

Emma Liptrap

Emilija Lizins

John Mazza

Jessica McGowan

Lucas Meiers

Sumit Mistry

Salma Mohamed

Amira Mouline

Trevor Napoli

Marissa Nicole

Jenifer Pena

Joseph Penta

Brian Perez

Justin Pettit

John Pham

Maxwell Pozar

Gabriel Prepetit

Anthony Privitera

Benjamin Putrino

Kaylin Richards

Cassie Saracino

Ethan Schulz

Aaron Shinn

Caitlin Spillane

Erin Splaine

Jose Venegas

Christian Viola

Christian Ward

Angelina Wong

Isabelle Wong

Paige Yamane

Charles Zeitoune

Garrett Zito

Computer Engineering

Adekunle Akinshola

Chikeluba Anierobi

Graciela Avila

Jackson Bradley

Collin Chamberlain

Dynasty Chance

Ibrahima Diallo

Lyn El Sayed Kassem

Melvin Escobar Gonzalez

Xavier Evans

Elizabeth Fatade

Delaney Glassford

Aidan Harrington

Ethan Hensley

Kasey Jackson

Mehak Jetly

Virkin Jimenez

Fundi Juriasi

Bikash Khatiwoda

Jessica Lat

Tyler Lavaway

Matthew Leight

Jiaxiong Li

Kyle Maiorana

Aksel Malatak

Jacob Masrouri

Jas Moreno

Benjamin Murray

Pierce Neubert

Jose Olivera

Jessica Reslan

Anel Rizvic

Samuel Rosenthal

Hongyi Ruan

Mia Russo

Hanna Salem

Alexander Segarra

Ryan Wolff

Renjie Xu

Andy Zheng

Computer Science

Aaron Alakkadan

Sajjad Albadri

Huda Ali

Christian Alves-Patterson

Garret Babick

Julia Barucky

Samantha Bastien

Anas Benhamida

Luke Bonenberger

Joshua Boucher

Brian Bourne

Ella Brink

Brandon Brushwyler

Bryan Bueno Reyes

Bryce Cable

Liam Calnan

Omar Camara

Megan Campbell

Benjamin Canfield

Jackie Chen

Lawrence Chen

Siyu Chen

Yixing Chen

Daniel Chmielewski

Season Chowdhury

Konstantinos Chrysoulas

Bram Corregan

Miguel Cruz Flores

Matthew Cufari

Ryan Czirr

Salvatore DeDona

Aidan DeGooyer

Alpha Diallo

Lucille Disalvo

Christopher Edmonds

Georges Elizee

Yassin Elsharafi

Ryan Elsinga

Matthew Faiola

Xueyan Feng

Bennett Ferrari

Lucas Fox

Mason Freer

Ruihong Gao

Brianna Gillfillian

Justin Gluska

John Gorman

Alexander Haas

Athanasios Hadjidimoulas

Talal Hakki

Ashley Hamilton

Jillian Handrahan

Liam Hannah

Nicholas Hoffis

Laurel Howell

Jacob Howlett

Xuanye Huang

Chengyi Jiang

Tianyiming Jing

Frederick Jones

Michael Jones

Alan Jos

Xiaoya Kang

Aarya Kaphley

Henry Katchuba

Matthew Keenan

Ekaterina Kladova

Polina Kozyreva

Gaeun Lee

Janet Lee

Justin Lee

Andy Li

Jiashu Li

Rick Li

Yuxuan Li

Daniel Lim

Haochen Lin

Sandy Lin

Zekai Lin

Huangjin Liu

Jiaming Liu

Joshua Liu

Yiheng Lu

Runzhi Ma

Gavin Macisaac

Andrew Markarian

Konnor Mascara

Kanoa Matton

Ryan May

Anthony Mazzacane

Matthew McDaniels

Noah Mechnig-Giordano

Jose Mendoza

Philip Moceri

Thomas Montfort

Jacob Morrison

Jovanni Mosca

Ryan Murphy

Zoe Neale

Christopher Nemeth Jr

Jillienne Ness

Arianna Nguyen

Cheryl Olanga

Carlyn O’Leary

Marissa Orsley

Daniel Pae

William Palin

Xiaofeng Pan

Michael Panighetti

Adya Aditi Parida

Brian Pellegrino

Carlo Pisacane

Daniel Pomerantz

Fiona Powers Beggs

Cheng Qiu

Shane Race

Christopher Rhodes

Eric Rodriguez

Sadikshya Sanjel

Jack Schmidt

William Seeley

Huahao Shang

Nolan Shepherd

Chad Smith

Jeremy Stabile

Kevin Sullivan

Cheng Yu Sung

Nicholas Sweet

Rae Tasker

Dylan Teare

Emmanuel Teferra

Jonathan Thomas

Eduardo Torres-Garcia

Brendan Treloar

Winston Tsui

Randy Vargas

Kevin Verdeschi

Kritika Verma

Bermalyn Maricel Vicente

Christopher Vinciguerra

Ruobing Wang

Xinyi Wang

Zijian Wang

Robert Ward

Jack Willis

Nolan Willis

Brian Wong

Ethan Wong

Tianyi Xiang

Zhuoyi Xiong

Yujie Xu

Jishuo Yang

Yongcan Yang

Stella Yaunches

Elin Yaworski

Yulun Zeng

Liaotianbao Zhang

Mingyan Zhang

Ruihao Zhang

Weiwei Zhang

Junjie Zheng

Liuyu Zhou

Xinqian Zhou

Yitao Zhou

Joseph Zoll

Engineering Undeclared

Luke Lybarger

Kathleen Meleski

James Peden

Emily Schiessl

Electrical Engineering

Minghao Ai

Mohammed Aljohani

Tianle Bu

Kevin Buciak

Wyatt Bush

Yushang Cai

Arianna Cameron

Leshui Chen

Nicholas Connolly

Kevin Donnelly

Henry Duisberg

Randy Galicia

Jose Ginorio

Jemma Mallia

Tyler Marston

Ryan Mussaw

Zixun Nian Nian

Jayson Okhman

Dylan Palmer

Julia Pepin

Matthew Piciocchi

Savion Pollard

Gilberto Ruiz

Gabriel Ruoff

Luis Santin

Jenna Stapleton

Jared Welch

Environmental Engineering

Elexis Jean Bishop

David Brodsky

Benjamin Cavarra

Ananya Chandra

Bessie Chen

Emma Crandall

Eric Fitzgerald

Eleanor Gettens

Allyson Greenberg

Brady Hartnett

Christopher Harvey

Joshua Higgins

Nicholas Kohl

Audrey Liebhaber

Samuel Livingston

Henry Long

Molly Matheson

Matthew Nosalek

Andrew O’Gorman

Ella Phipps

Scott Potter

Joshua Prygon

Oliver Raycroft

Mary Schieman

Noah Sherman

Husna Tunje

Jacob Tyler

Andrew Vanderwege

Maria Antonia Villegas Botero

Emily Vogel

Anna Wojcik

Qiuyu Zhou

Reilly Zink

Mechanical Engineering

Owyn Adams

Richard Andrews

Joshua Arndt

Timothy Arnold

Charles Ball

Erin Beaudoin

Aidan Bergman

Jeffrey Bernstein

Chloe Britton Naime

Brinley Bruening

Arnaud Buard

Alexander Callo

Joseph Capra

Graham Chapman

Talina Chipantiza

Artur Chuvik

Caroline D’Addio

Peter Daniels

Ryan Dileo

Madeline Doyle

Luyen Duong

Griffin Estes

Thomas Fabiano

Charles Germosen

Samuel Getman

Kara Gorman

Laura Graziosi

Jiayuan Huang

Vian Vishal Jain

Jagger Kachmaryk

Finnian Kery

Teagan Kilian

Justin Kohan

Deanna Koppenjan

Trevor Kroells

Harrison Liberto

Cameron Lotfi

Honorata Lubecka

Bei Luo

Lauren Mack

Kalhaku McLester

James Melitski

Leilah Miller

Pablo Morales

Nicholas Papaleo

Nathaniel Paradis

Corey Phung

Nicholas Piano

Scott Reyes

Aidan Riederich

Jasmine Rodriguez

Jeremy Rosh

Nitish Satpute

Justin Sauve

Eric Silfies

Dionysios Skaltsas

Nathaniel Slabaugh

Samuel Slaiby

Ian Storrs

Matthew Swanson

Ethan Tracey

Evan Tulsky

Alexandra Vaida

Nicholas Valentin

Griffin Vollers

Michael Wehrle

Taj Whitney

Michael Wong

Systems & Information Science

Connor Gurnham

Stacy Kim

Younes Ra’di

Degrees:

Sc.D., Aalto University, 2015

Research Interests:

  • Theoretical and Applied Electromagnetics
  • RF and Microwave Engineering
  • Antennas and Propagation
  • Electromagnetics of Artificial Materials and Surfaces  

Current Research:

His research is mainly focused on engineering fields and waves, with emphasis on tailoring electromagnetic wave-matter interactions. In this context, he has made several scientific contributions on a broad range of topics in theoretical and applied electromagnetics and optics, including engineered RF/microwave materials, antennas and propagation, functional metasurfaces, plasmonics, and nanophotonics. Working with three leading research groups in the field of engineering light-matter interaction, he has successfully put forward fundamentally new concepts and ideas to go beyond the limitations of conventional designs and have investigated theoretically, numerically, and experimentally innovative aspects of wave interaction with engineered structures.

Pankaj K. Jha

Degrees:

Ph. D., Physics, Texas A&M University

Masters of Science (5-Year Integrated), Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK)

Areas of Expertise:

  • Quantum information science
  • Quantum sensing and metrology
  • Quantum nano- and meta-photonics
  • Bio-inspired materials
  • Bio-nano ​interfaces
  • Machine learning

Jha’s research focuses on developing quantum hardware using two-dimensional materials and heterostructures, III-V semiconductors, nanostructures, soft-materials, metamaterials, and hybrid combination of these materials. His research seeks to understand fundamental characteristics of these systems through combined experimental, theoretical, and computational studies and use those findings to gain control and induce novel optical, electrical, thermal, and mechanical responses in them. These responses, in turn, are leveraged to develop transformative devices and technologies for quantum information science, quantum sensing and metrology, nanophotonics, optoelectronics, and space exploration applications. Thus, his interdisciplinary research crosses the conventional scientific boundaries to merge applied physics with electrical engineering, materials science, and mechanical engineering.

Honors and Awards:

  • Tingye Li Innovation Prize for Early Career Professionals (Finalist): 2016.
  • American Physical Society, Travel Grant: 2011.
  • Herman F. Heep and Minnie Belle Heep Foundation Graduate Fellowship: 2010.
  • Robert A. Welch Foundation Graduate Fellowship: 2009-2012.

Selected Publications:

  • P. K. Jha*, H. Akbari*, Y. Kim*, S. Biswas, and H. A. Atwater, “Nanoscale axial position and orientation measurement of hexagonal boron nitride quantum emitters using a tunable nanophotonic environment,” Nanotechnology 33, 015001 (2022).
  • L. Kim*, S. Kim*, P. K. Jha, V. W. Brar, and H. A. Atwater, “Mid-Infrared radiative emission from bright hot plasmons in graphene,” Nat. Mater. 20, 805 (2021).
  • H. Ramezani, P. K. Jha, Y. Wang, and X. Zhang, “Nonreciprocal Localization of Photons,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 043901(2018).
  • P. K. Jha, M. Mrejen, J. Kim, C. Wu, Y. Wang, Y. V. Rostovtsev, and X. Zhang, “Coherence-Driven Topological Transition in Quantum Metamaterials,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 165502 (2016).
  • P. K. Jha*, X. Ni*, C. Wu, Y. Wang, and X. Zhang, “Metasurface-Enabled Remote Quantum Interference,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 025501 (2015).
  • K. E. Dorfman, P. K. Jha, D. V. Voronine, P. Genevet, F. Capasso, and M. O. Scully, “Quantum-Coherence- Enhanced Surface Plasmon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 043601 (2013).

Kirthiga Reddy G’95 Announced as 2022 College of Engineering and Computer Science Convocation Keynote Speaker

Kirthiga Reddy G’95 has many firsts to her credit. She was the first female investing partner at SoftBank Vision Fund, the first employee for Facebook in India & their Managing Director for Facebook India & South Asia. She is currently the president of Athena Technology II SPAC and a founding investment partner for f7 Ventures. She is on the Board of WeWork and Pear Therapeutics. Reddy received a master’s degree in Computer Engineering in 1995 and the College of Engineering and Computer Science is proud to announce she will be the keynote speaker at the College’s 2022 Convocation on May 14th.

Reddy brings over twenty years of experience leading technology-driven transformations. She is driven by the mantra “When businesses succeed, livelihoods flourish.”

Athena Technology II is an all-women-led SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) which brings talent and transaction experience to enable access to equity capital markets. The f7 Seed Fund’s mission is “Bold Women Investing in Bold Ventures.” Previously, Reddy was the Investment Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, manager of the $100B+ SoftBank Vision Fund where she led a portfolio of $5 Billion-plus. Her focus was fast evolving sectors like quantum computing, additive manufacturing, enterprise, health tech, gaming and crypto. She served on the investment committee of Softbank’s Emerge Program, a global accelerator to provide funding, tools and networks for top companies led by underrepresented founders.

Prior to SBIA, she was the Managing Director of Facebook India and South Asia for over six years, starting as their first employee in India. She started one of the global operations offices that now serves over 3.5B people. She grew the India business to several $100Ms of annual revenue and got investment buy-in for the vision of $1B. Her subsequent experiences at Facebook focused on emerging and high-growth markets including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and the Middle East.

Reddy is a passionate supporter of Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. She has been an active member of the Dean’s Leadership Council since 2018 and is a member of SU’s Hill Society, a dedicated network of leadership annual donors who share a common goal of supporting Syracuse University’s highest priorities.

The newly established Kirthiga Reddy Graduate Scholarship Fund provides financial assistance to ECS graduate students.

She holds an MBA from Stanford University, where she graduated with highest honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar and has served as Chair of the Stanford Business School Management Board. She acquired her B.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from Marathwada University, India. She has been recognized as Fortune India’s “Most Powerful Women” and as Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business” among other recognitions. Her upcoming book, The Opportunity Engine, is about building high-growth, sustainable businesses.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Sara Eftekharnejad Receives National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award

For a network that powers the country, the United States electric grid is increasingly fragile. Millions of people, households and industries rely on the grid’s ability to balance the supply and demand for energy but extreme weather events and challenges predicting renewable energy generation levels have put significant pressure on it. Grid failures like the one that happened in Texas in 2021 can affect millions of people.

“The only way to prevent cascading outages is to better predict them,” said electrical engineering and computer science Professor Sara Eftekharnejad. “If we can predict the most probable grid failures then mitigative actions could be taken to prevent those failures .”

Eftekharnejad received an NSF CAREER Award to research the impacts of the uncertainties within the electric power grid and develop enhanced methods to predict disruptions. Her research will focus on two main areas –

  1. Statistical modeling for power grid failures that are often caused by severe weather and interconnectivity issues.
  2. Modeling the generation uncertainties, particularly as more power is generated by renewables that depend on weather conditions like wind and solar.

The two are separate issues but can also come together to cause significant problems.

“Generation and outages are interdependent. If there is an unforeseen shortage of renewable power generation, that could potentially lead to outages. Similarly, severe outages could disconnect the distributed renewable generation resources from the grid” said Eftekharnejad. “If the grid operators are aware of the impending failures considering these uncertainties, they can take actions that prevent large-scale blackouts.”

To better predict power generation uncertainties and outages across the more than 7,000 power plants and 2.7 million miles of power lines that make up the United States power grid, Eftekharnejad and her research team will develop statistical predictive models.

“When outages cascade, it can affect millions of people. We are trying to develop better methods to estimate the probabilities of outages considering the uncertainties of the available generation resources,” said Eftekharnejad. “We are going to find a way to quantify the uncertainties using large-scale data and machine learning methods.”

Using historical or synthetic data, they will develop statistical models for outage predictions over hundreds of power lines.

“We are looking for a dynamic model that can adjust in real time. The model would learn from the system measurements and adjust itself to better capture the existing uncertainties,” said Eftekharnejad. “Once we know how to model outages and predict them – now we have a way to quickly predict outages in seconds.”

Eftekharnejad and her team also want to develop better forecast models for wind and solar power generation.

“If we can better predict the day-ahead generation uncertainties, we can better plan for those uncertainties and ensure adequate reserves are available,” said Eftekharnejad.

In addition to preventing large-scale blackouts, Eftekharnejad says better modeling of the grid uncertainties could also have significant economic benefits.

“Reducing disruptions is better for the electric utilities and customers. More reliable power could reduce costs for both,” said Eftekharnejad.

“Receiving an NSF CAREER award is an important accomplishment and recognition for new faculty. The awards support pre-tenure early-career assistant professors,” said Jae Oh, the David G. Edelstein Professor for Broadening Participation and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “The EECS department has been regularly producing CAREER awardees in recent years, and we expect this trend to continue in many future years.”

“Dr. Eftekharnejad’s research reveals the power of algorithms in modern society. We obviously cannot afford to rely on nonrenewable resources exclusively for power, nor can we always imagine what power demands and failure events will happen in the future,” said J. Cole Smith, Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “Her research will ultimately serve to make our power grid more effective in normal operations, more reliable in times of disruptions, and more efficient in using renewable energy sources. This kind of research is just so vital to addressing modern challenges to our national security and quality of life, and the College is excited to see what she and her team of students will produce with this prestigious award.”

Life Trustee Nick Donofrio G’71, H’11 Receives 2022 International Peace Honors Award

Nicholas “Nick” Donofrio G’71, H’11, a Syracuse University Life Trustee, was one of the distinguished award recipients at the 2022 International Peace Honors on February 27th. The International Peace Honors celebrates the most outstanding global leaders and change-agents of our time who make philanthropy and humanitarian service a hallmark of their lives, to advance humanity and our planet.

Donofrio spent 44 years at IBM, working his way up to become executive vice president of innovation and technology. He has dedicated much of his life to providing and expanding opportunity in STEM fields to students from underrepresented groups. Donofrio has also served as the board chairman for the non-profit PeaceTech Lab since it was founded by the United States Institute of Peace in 2014, he was appointed by the U.S. Department of Education to serve on the Commission on the Future of Higher Education and by the National Academy of Engineering for their Committee on Racial Justice and Equity.

“Nick’s commitment to making STEM fields more diverse and inclusive exemplifies the leadership he has shown throughout his career,” says Chancellor Kent Syverud. “His tireless efforts have provided pathways to countless individuals pursuing careers in STEM. I congratulate Nick on this tremendous recognition. Our community is proud and fortunate to have him as an active part of our Syracuse University family.”

He founded the Donofrio Scholars program at the College of Engineering and Computer Science that evolved into the ECS Ambassadors program. His recent gift to the Forever Orange Campaign helps support and grow holistic diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that touch on every aspect of the College, including recruiting and retaining diverse students, faculty and staff, strengthening a culture of equity and inclusion, ensuring student access to internships and co-ops, academic support, career mentoring, and professional societies.

“Nick is one of the most extraordinary people I’ve had the chance to meet,” said College of Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith. “Before you meet Nick, you know him for his elite professional success and recognition. After you get to know him, you see a man with a rare and profound dedication to helping humanity. We have long known of Nick’s sustained impact on students and his profession at Syracuse University, and I am so gratified to see him recognized worldwide with this prestigious honor.”

In an article published in 2021 by the National Academy of Engineering, Donofrio wrote that “innovation doesn’t just ‘happen.’ It is enabled by environments and organizations that foster open, collaborative, inclusive, multidisciplinary thinking and working. Time and again, I have been reminded that the more open and inclusive the team, the more successful it is—because nobody knows in advance which team member is going to supply a critical piece of the value puzzle.”

As a 2022 International Peace Honoree, Donofrio joins prestigious actor, director and social activist Forest Whitaker, MasterCard chairman Ajay Banga; internet phenomenon and “Humans of New York” creator Brandon Stanton and Advanced Micro Devices president & CEO Dr. Lisa Su.

Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Alumni Profile: Grace Lanni ’88

Grace Lanni

Great ideas often disappear into a chasm that exists between inception and execution. To help bridge that gap, Grace Lanni ’88 has an innate ability to communicate with an array of stakeholders, help entrepreneurs find clarity in their ideas, and turn them into solutions that help people. Her fluency in a diverse set of subjects and ability to adapt was apparent from the start of her time as a student at Syracuse University.

Lanni entered college on a full Airforce ROTC scholarship and chose electrical engineering and biomedical engineering as part of a dual degree, along with a minor in music. Lanni found Syracuse University provided her with opportunities and resources to pursue her differing interests.

“The professors were very entrepreneurial, and I leaned into that. I was able to work with a physician at Upstate Medical Center as a lab assistant and I had other internship activities so I could apply the stuff I was learning,” said Lanni. “I also got to join the jazz band and be part of a community of musicians.”

After graduating, Lanni accepted a position where she quickly learned she was uniquely effective at communicating between two key departments.

“I would sit with the engineers in the morning and then spend the afternoon with the marketing people to explain what it was the engineers were building, and how to sell and implement the products,” said Lanni.

Lanni admits she had more fun spending time with the marketing team, and it opened her eyes to a side of business she had never experienced. This was the first of several significant shifts Lanni used to chart her career. In her next job, Lanni got a taste for selling. Then she moved to California where she took a position at a small networking hardware company and helped them grow to 35 employees within a year. The next move was to Austin, Texas and into software sales at a startup, but suddenly her momentum was stopped. After two months of being in the role, Lanni arrived at the office to find the doors chained shut. The company had gone out of business. Lanni had moved to Austin with her kids, she didn’t know many people, and did not have a job. After briefly considering retreating back to California, Lanni made some calls to colleagues and started looking for projects. Six months later she had her own company.

At the time, companies were just beginning to move servers off site to colocation centers, but the software they needed to manage the new server set up didn’t exist. Recognizing a sound opportunity, Lanni drafted a proposal and became one of only two women to score million-dollar money from a tier one venture capital firm that year. This was Lanni’s first time working with a venture group, and she says although it came with new challenges, the experience made her want to help women entrepreneurs.

“I really didn’t have any experience in the venture community. I had some support, some mentorship, but nothing like today,” said Lanni. “One of the things I love to do is support other women who want to go into the venture community and that is why. I didn’t have the support. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to manage the money. Those are skills I learned.”

Lanni broke away to work on a new startup in collaboration with Dell engineers to develop and sell an early version of the tablet PC. Lanni booked the first order, signed up the first partner and the first distributor, and after seven years she decided it was time for another move. Healthtech allowed Lanni to enjoy bioengineering and entrepreneurship, but by 2016, she went all-in on digital marketing. Lanni went to her team and asked what they thought she should focus on, and they said, “you’re a personal branding expert.” In response, Lanni launched a new business called All About That Brand to focus on helping entrepreneurs tell their stories to attract their ideal customers.

Lanni is a pioneer in the branding influencer space. All About That Brand helped bring personal brand influence into the spotlight and it took off. The platform includes an award-winning podcast, an award-winning book, and it positioned Lanni as an influencer in marketing, personal branding, and customer experience. In February of 2020, Lanni was searching for a new opportunity to innovate, and her reputation led to an invitation to appear on the cyberbullying episode of “4 Days to Save the World,” a reality show that challenges groups of entrepreneurs to develop solutions for global social problems.

The eruption of COVID-19 nearly derailed any further participation with the show because Lanni needed to focus on managing disruption facing All About That Brand. When she notified the showrunners that she wanted to step away, they countered by asking Lanni to stay on board in a new role, associate producer. It may sound like a strange role for an engineer, but both engineering and producing require a similar way of thinking.

“You have a problem in front of you almost every hour of every day. It is 24 hours of problem solving to the emergency room level,” said Lanni.

Her engineering mindset made Lanni a natural fit and within six months she became the executive producer in charge of 4 teams responsible for recruiting show-ready entrepreneurs, sponsorships, and financing to bring the show to set.

“With all my business expertise, I was able to weigh in and work directly with the studio owner and creator. It was a wonderful, wild experience for 18 months,” said Lanni. “It was like going back to college. I loved college. I learned so many new things.”

While talking with entrepreneurs around the world for the show, Lanni would often hear about the causes that mattered most to them and why. Those conversations got her thinking about how to stand out in the increasingly crowded brand space and blend her complimentary roles as a branding influencer and executive producer with her passion for helping entrepreneurs.

“When you’re talking with really smart entrepreneurs about how to save the world, it’s pretty fun. I decided I wanted to be in the conversations about cause. I wanted to help my clients identify and lean into their cause,” said Lanni.

Cause branding became Lanni’s new lane, and her latest enterprise is called Giving Out Loud. It is a media program that focuses on helping entrepreneurs select a cause that aligns with their brand and helping them demonstrate care for that cause.

“If you’re in business and you want to interact with younger generations, figure out what matters to you and talk about it,” said Lanni. “Be in that conversation because that is where things are headed.”

In the simplest terms, Lanni is an entrepreneur who wants to help other entrepreneurs at every level. Including aspiring entrepreneurs at Syracuse University.

“I am a fan of the entrepreneurship focus at Syracuse University. I love being a judge for Invent@SU and being a mentor,” said Lanni. “Have a great time and realize it is a journey. What you’re studying today is more about the people in the room than what is on the page. Really celebrate those relationships.”

2022 Engineering and Computer Science Research Day Awards

2022 Research Day

We are happy to announce the winners from the 2022 Engineering and Computer Science Research Day held on March 25th, 2022.

Poster Competition

1st Place: Elizabeth Oguntade, PhD student in Bioengineering.

On-Demand Activation of Functional Protein Surface Patterns with Tunable Topography
Suitable for Biomedical Applications. Advisor: Dr. James Henderson

2nd Place: Natalie Petryk, MS student in Bioengineering.

Synthesis of Shape Memory Polymer Foams with Off-the-Shelf Components for Improved
Commercialization. Advisor: Dr. Mary Beth Monroe

3rd Place: Alexander Hartwell, PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering.

Introduction of a Multilayered Cathode for Improved Internal
Cathode Tubular Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Performance. Advisor: Dr. Jeongmin Ahn
Honorable Mention: Saif Khalil Elsayed, MS student in Civil Engineering.
Modeling Self-Folding Hybrid SU-8 Skin for 3D Biosensing Microstructures.
Advisor: Dr. Zhao Qin


Oral Presentation Competition


Communication and Security Session

1st Place: Kai Li, PhD student in Electrical/Computer Engineering. Detect and
Mitigate Vulnerabilities in Ethereum Transaction Pool. Advisor: Dr. Yuzhe Tang

2nd Place: Xinyi Zhou, PhD student in Computer/Information Science. “This is
Fake! Shared it by Mistake”: Assessing the Intent of Fake News Spreaders. Advisor:
Dr. Reza Zafarani


Health and Well-being Session


1st Place: Yousr Dhaouadi, PhD student in Chemical Engineering. Forming
Bacterial Persisters with Light. Advisor: Dr. Dacheng Ren


2nd Place: Henry Beaman, PhD student in Bioengineering. Gas-Blown Super
Porous Hydrogels with Rapid Gelling and High Cell Viability for Cell Encapsulation.
Advisor: Dr. Mary Beth Monroe


Energy, Environment & Smart Materials Session

1st Place: Durgesh Ranjan, PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Porous nanochannel wicks based solar vapor generation device. Advisor: Dr.
Shalabh Maroo


2nd Place: Alexander Johnson, PhD student in Civil Engineering. Estimating Dry
Deposition of Atmospheric Particles by Rain Washoff from Urban Surfaces.
Advisor: Dr. Cliff Davidson


Sensors, Robotics & Smart Systems Session

1st Place: Lin Zhang, PhD student in Computer/Information Science. Adaptive
Sensor Attack Detection for Cyber-Physical Systems. Advisor: Dr. Fanxin Kong

2nd Place: Zixin Jiang, PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Short-term occupancy prediction driven intelligent HVAC control. Advisor: Dr. Bing
Dong

Collaborative Partnership Between Syracuse University and Leading Research Universities Receives Presidential Award

Students walking to and from Carnegie Library in early spring

The GEM Consortium, a collaborative partnership between leading research universities and industry to help underrepresented students earn masters and doctoral degrees in STEM fields, received the 2021 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

Syracuse University has been a member of the GEM Consortium for almost 30 years. In the past 5 years, GEM Fellowships have been awarded to graduate students in the School of Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Computer Science as well as the School of Information Studies. The number of GEM Fellowship applications from SU students is now in the top 10 among GEM member universities. Civil and environmental engineering Professor Dawit Negussey is the current Syracuse University representative on the GEM Consortium.

“The award recognizes the contributions of the GEM Consortium in providing a scalable path to STEM careers in academia and industry for underrepresented students,” said Negussey.

“I’m grateful for all of Professor Negussey’s efforts to grow our graduate education pipeline for underrepresented graduate students at Syracuse University,” said Peter Vanable, dean of the Graduate School. “To go from relatively little activity with the GEM Consortium to being a top 10 contributor of GEM applicants is a clear marker of our commitment to increasing the diversity of our graduate student population.”

Over the past 45 years, more than 4000 GEM Fellows have earned MS and PhD degrees in STEM fields. At present, the GEM consortium membership consists of 129 private and public national universities and 61 major corporations and research laboratories.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Pramod K. Varshney Selected to Receive 2021 IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society Pioneer Award

Pramod Varshney Portrait
Pramod Varshney Portrait

Pramod Varshney, Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been selected to receive the 2021 IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) Pioneer Award. The AESS Pioneer award has been given annually since 1949 and is one of the most notable awards in the electronics and aerospace systems field. The award recognizes contributions significant to bringing into being systems that are still in existence today. The contributions for which the award is bestowed are to have been made at least 20 years prior to the year of the award.

The 2021 award will recognize Varshney’s contributions to signal processing and information fusion enabling advanced aerospace and electronic systems.

He will receive the award at 2022 IEEE Radar Conference in New York City in March.

“Professor Varshney has been a trailblazer in the field of complex information processing who has made innumerable contributions over the course of his career.  The Pioneer Award fittingly recognizes that some of his inventions paved the way for today’s rapidly evolving technologies,” said Ramesh Raina, Interim Vice President for Research.

Varshney was also selected to receive the prestigious 2021 Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for outstanding contributions in the fields of distributed inference and data fusion.

“Within a few months, Dr. Varshney won two prestigious awards from two different IEEE societies. Such an achievement is completely unheard of. He won the 2021 Shannon-Nyquist Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the 2021 IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) Pioneer Award. The EECS department is incredibly proud of the achievements and recognitions that he truly deserves,” said Jae C. Oh Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department Chair and David G. Edelstein Professor for Broadening Participation.

Fall 2021 Engineering and Computer Science Dean’s List

SU Campus
The Einhorn Family Walk stretches out in front of the Hall of Languages on a autumn day.

In recognition of superior scholarship, the following students have been entered on the Engineering & Computer Science Dean’s List for Fall 2021.

To be eligible for Dean’s List recognition, the minimum semester grade point average must be 3.40 or higher, must have earned a minimum of 12 graded credits and must have no missing or incomplete grades.

Aerospace Engineering 

Lucy Genevieve Adams

Allyson Almeida

Brady Joseph Arruda

Richard L Bruschi

Curtis James Cline

Bryan Collins

Nicholas Daniel Crane

Brian James Cronin

Christopher John Doherty

Michael Alexander Donato

Benjamin David Faasse

Kassidy Fields

Christian Scott Fitzgerald

Victoria Elizabeth Forsyth

Benjamin Daniel Gerard

Alexandre J Gill

Zachary William Haas

Alyssa Henley

Aidan Hoff

Matthew James Holmes

Paula Cristina Ibelings

Nicholas John Jacobs

Sydney F Jud

Hunter John Adam Knarr

Trevor Anthony Knight

Eleanor Jane Lawler

Isaac Alan Lehigh

Emma Lee Levenson

Maximillian Lipinski

Jacob Eric Long

Powers Craig Lynch

Brendan Michael Marquis

Noah Martel

Elsa Adrianna Martin

Jonathan Henry Martin

Maxwell Joseph Martin

William Armstrong Martin

Jason W McElhinney

Mariana C McManus

Parker Byrne McMillan

Alexander Timothy Metcalf

Romeo Michelson

John P Michinko

Kendra Teresa Miller

Evan Gregory Moore

Brendan Pierce Murty

Mark Namatsaliuk

Tatiyyanah Queen-Asia Hope Nelums

Jarod I Okamura

David Dang Pham

Logan D Prye

Nicholas Christopher Richard

Brandon Walker Riley

Tracey Josephine Rochette

Daniela Maria Ruano-Pinos

Michael Chandler Saksa

William J Saueressig

Fred Evan Schaffer

William Arthur Sennett

Justine John A Serdoncillo

Kanya Kiresh Shah

Vraj Shah

Prabha Singh

Gregory C Slodysko Jr

Zachary Michael Stahl

Ethan J Stocum

Jaime S Sued Jr

Yiyuan Sun

Marco Svolinsky

Richard A Tedeschi

Anthony R Tricarico

Cody Joseph VanNostrand

Diego Roman Villegas

Mason Alexander Weber

Kana Li Wong

Cameron M Woodbury

Melissa Yeung

Bioengineering 

Anthony Drew Acierto

Ashraf Tariq Alnatour

Bianca Louise Andrada

Jason Bae

Anna Mae Brunson

Britnie Jean Carpentier

Lukas Cook

Tessa Riley Decicco

Mia-Marie Fields

Katherine Ann Gardner

Jennifer Gonzalez

Skyla Gordon

Benjamin Michael Grainger

Jenna Grutzmacher

Grace Haas

Lauren Elizabeth Hamilton

Victoria Li Rui Hathaway

Brenna Henderson

Avinash Jagroo

Madeline Jones

Gabriel Khan

Olivia Lynne Kmito

Emily Elizabeth Labour

Quinn Patrick Langdon

Sara Anne Leonardo

Alejandra Eugenia Lopez

Ethan L Masters

Aidan Theresa McCarthy

Aelish McGivney

Ian G McHugh

Lindy M Melegari

Katherine Grace Monroe

Hannah V Murphy

Alexander Patrick Musselman

Mark Nicola

Nicole E Nielsen

Kerrin Anne O’Grady

Mia Dian Paynton

Megan Perlman

Connor Preston

Michael Steven Presunka

Gavin David Richards

Mia Elizabeth Russo

Amira Salihovic

Juliana Sepulveda

Bridget Yong Sides

Katherine Anne Southard

Justin N Stock

Elizabeth Tarami Su

Zhuoqi Tong

Rochan Jitendra Urankar

Hasan Usmanov

Edgardo Velazquez

Danny Vu

Carly J Ward

Nathaniel D Wellington

Maximillian Meier Wilderman

Lauren Margaret Woodford

Rui Xie

Julian Marcus Smucker Zorn

Samantha Yvonne Zysk

Chemical Engineering 

Adriana M Archilla

Athena Andrea Basdekis

Brigitte A Belanger

Sandy Ynhu Cao

Trinity Joy Coates

Dennis Dao

Gabriela Duarte Saadia

Sophia Elizabeth Figueroa

Emily C Fittante

Edward Coleman Fluker

Mia Angela Goldberg

Brent Tadao Gosselin

Avery Gunderson

Christopher Max Hansen

Aiden A Jacobs

Natalia Jarmain

Hope Irene Johnson

Sonia Julius

Sayf Karim

Laxmi Khatiwada

Adam J Klinger

Simran Dharmendra Lakhani

Caroline J Leduc

Rawia F A M Marafi

Angela L Martinez

Sydney Rae Nowicki

Erin Marie Odonnell

Sean O’toole

Eli Irvin Paster

Daniel J Pelkey

Fabiana Nohelia Perez

Nora Swan Prosak

Ryan Gordon Ryersen

Riley Madison Schmerber

Jacob Matthew Shellhamer

Jason Tan

Elizabeth M Wall

Tyrese J Whyte

Jackson Richard Yuen

Civil Engineering 

Shalom Acheampong

Cassie Agren

Nicole Ayora

Maxwell Bell

Christian Balingit Bianco

Henry C Bievenue

Ryan Bourdeau

Matthew Emmet Brewster

Alycia Joline Bruce

Masson Bruening

David Coghiel

Alejandro E Correa

Aymeric P Destree

Kelly Diaz Rojas

Jack Dwyer

Marlee Ann Ecton

Stephen Goffredo

Elliane Reut Greenberg

Julia Ann Johnson-Milstein

Joshua Michael Kaufman

Jakob Lamond Keller

Kate Astrid Kemnitz

Alexander Gregory Klee

Adam Paul Landry

Evangelia Birget Larson

Abigail G Laschalt

Daniel Leyva

Emma Marie Liptrap

Emilija Alise Lizins

Erick Lojano-Quispe

William Ma

John M Mazza

Jessica M McGowan

Lucas James Meiers

Sumit Harshad Mistry

Amira Mouline

Mazin F Moya

Trevor Robert Napoli

Marissa R Nicole

Maxwell Robert Pozar

Kaylin Janet Richards

Alexander David Ruppe

Cassie Elizabeth Saracino

Yazbeck Thomas Sarkees

Juha Wesley Schraden

Aaron Presley Shinn

Caitlin Jane Spillane

Jose Arturo Venegas

Christian Viola

Angelina Maggie Wong

Isabelle Wong

Sarah Wong

Paige H Yamane

Sifei Zhu

Computer Engineering 

Adekunle J Akinshola

Chikeluba K Anierobi

Graciela Gicel Avila

Mergim Azemi

Kyle J Betten

Jackson Thomas Bradley

Carlon Brown

Dynasty Da’Nasia Chance

Kongxin Chen

Ibrahima Diallo

Lyn El Sayed Kassem

Melvin Ruben Escobar Gonzalez

Xavier Evans

Elizabeth A Fatade

Aidan Robert Harrington

Ethan Hensley

Kasey Jackson

Mehak Jetly

Virkin Jimenez

Benjamin N Johnson

Fundi Juriasi

Robert Nicholas Kashian

Bikash Khatiwoda

Jessica K Lat

Tyler Alexander Lavaway

Matthew B Leight

Jiaxiong Li

Nicholas Kent Magari

Kyle Maiorana

Aksel James Malatak

Jacob Stephen Masrouri

Isabel M Melo

Benjamin Hudson Murray

Pierce Austin Neubert

Jose L Olivera

Derrick Nana Yaw Osei Owusu

Alexander C Perez

Anthony Patrick Riello

Alfonso E Rivas

Daniel Rose

Samuel M Rosenthal

Hongyi Ruan

Zachary Joseph Starr

Declan Wavle

Ryan Wolff

Renjie Xu

Andy Zheng

Computer Science 

Aashutosh Acharya

Aaron Alakkadan

Labeeb Alam

Sajjad Abdullah Albadri

Huda A Ali

Anas Abdallah Hussein Alkhashroom

Joseph M Balascio

Simon C Barley

Giovanna Elizabeth Barsalona

Samantha E Bastien

Maxwell Robert Beam

Emma Bellai

Anas Ahmed Benhamida

Joshua Jordan Boucher

Brian Michael Bourne

Amanda Leigh Bowdren

Ella Maria Brink

Bryan Bladimir Bueno Reyes

Christopher Manuel Calderon Suarez

Liam M Calnan

Megan J Campbell

Chih-Chia Chen

Hong Yang Chen

Jackie Chen

Lawrence Chen

Runzhou Chen

Wenyu Chen

Yixing Chen

Yuhao Chen

Oscar Chi

Daniel Chmielewski

Season Chowdhury

Konstantinos Chrysoulas

Melissa Chu

Miguel Angel Cruz Flores

Matthew Cufari

Ryan Matthew Czirr

Salvatore DeDona

Aidan Christopher DeGooyer

Alpha Oumar Diallo

Lucille Jennifer Disalvo

Ting Dong

Christopher Edmonds

Yassin Mahmoud Elsharafi

Ryan Siebe Elsinga

Jair Espinoza

Xueyan Feng

Nathan B Fenske

Bennett Ferrari

Lucas Kuebler Fox

Mason Roy Freer

Evan Garvey

Grant Thomas Gifford

Brianna S Gillfillian

Justin Gluska

John Martin Gorman

Dayong Gu

Alexander Peter-Anthony Haas

Athanasios Hadjidimoulas

Ashley Marie Hamilton

Jillian Elizabeth Handrahan

Liam Gordon Hannah

Cameron Hoechst

Laurel Howell

Jacob Howlett

Jason Huang

Xuanye Huang

Yanju Huang

Chengyi Jiang

Tianyiming Jing

Frederick Jackson Jones

Michael Wesley Jones

Alan Jos

Lauren Keona Kaaiakamanu

Aarya Tara Kaphley

Maxwell Albert Kaufman

Matthew Keenan

Ekaterina Kladova

Joshua Jayvant Zachary Koshy

Krutartha Nagesh

Rami Lionel Kuttab

Janet Jihoo Lee

Maya J’Nai Lee

Jiashu Li

Ruowen Li

Yuxuan Li

Daniel Lim

Chengda Lin

Haochen Lin

Sandy Lin

Erxi Liu

Jiaming Liu

Joshua Zhou Liu

Junzhang Liu

Yuyuan Liu

Cayden Thomas Lombard

Kevin A Lopez

Yiheng Lu

Michael Fitzgerald Lupton Jr

Runzhi Ma

Hunter O’Neal Malley

Andrew Thomas Markarian

Kanoa Matton

Ryan M May

Anthony Louis Mazzacane

Matthew McDaniels

Noah Mechnig-Giordano

Philip Anthony Moceri

Thomas J Montfort

Aaron Masoud Moradi

Jovanni Nicholas Mosca

Chenxi Mu

Andi Muhaxheri

Zoe Anne Neale

Christopher Scott Nemeth Jr

Jillienne Judith Ness

Arianna Kassandra Nguyen

Carlyn M O’Leary

Marissa Lynn Orsley

Daniel Pae

Xiaofeng Pan

Michael J Panighetti

Adya Aditi Parida

Zizheng Pei

Brian Joseph Pellegrino

Carlo Francesco Pisacane

Daniel Pomerantz

Fiona Colleen Powers Beggs

Cheng Qiu

Shane Michael Race

Raasin Amin Rahman

Alexis Hope Ratigan

Christopher Rhodes

Robert R Robinson

Eric Rodriguez

Sadikshya Sanjel

Jonathan Lee Schwenk

Huahao Shang

Andrew Shao

Nolan Lee Shepherd

Chad Thom Smith

Anthony Logan Solt

Dongzhao Song

Yijie Song

Hayden Christopher Spelbring

Jeremy P Stabile

Kevin Sullivan

Nicholas P Sweet

Louanges Essohana Marlene Takou-Ayaoh

Jonathan Richard Constantine Templeton

Jonathan Ezra Thomas

Eduardo Torres-Garcia

Winston Tsui

Randy C Vargas

Kevin Anthony Verdeschi

Kritika Verma

Christopher Mark Vinciguerra

Lihan Wang

Ruobing Wang

Xinyi Wang

Zijian  Wang

Robert Ward

Jack Andrew Willis

Sarah Grace Wlodkoski

Ethan Wong

Zongxiu Wu

Zhuoyi Xiong

Yujie Xu

Jishuo Yang

Yisheng Yang

Yongcan Yang

Stella R Yaunches

Yulun Zeng

Liaotianbao Zhang

Mingyan Zhang

Rixiang Zhang

Ruihao Zhang

Weiwei Zhang

Zhiyuan Zhang

Haoyu Zhao

Jinchao Zhao

Junjie Zheng

Xiao Lin Zheng

Liuyu Zhou

Xinqian Zhou

Yitao Zhou

Yixuan Zhou

Joseph Patrick Zoll

Engineering Undeclared 

Sydney M Baylor

Thomas John Fabiano

Charles James Germosen

Alexander Joseph Hai

Juwei Lin

Luke Benjamin Lybarger

Kathleen Rose Meleski

Annika Daphne Meyers

James Peden

Justin Wayne Pettit

Emily Mae Schiessl

Abdullah Swati

Haoran Wang

Electrical Engineering 

Minghao Ai

Mohammed A Aljohani

Tianle Bu

Kevin E Buciak

Wyatt Glenn Bush

Vincent Alec Camarena

Arianna Maxine Cameron

Leshui Chen

Nicholas Shawn Connolly

Kevin James Donnelly

Henry C Duisberg

Randy Galicia

John Charles Garcia

Justin P Geary

Christopher Gill

Jose Ignacio Ginorio

Joseph Charles Jannello

Michael Matthew Kelly

Dong Kyu Kim

Yiwei Ling

Jemma Mallia

Liam Fuller Marcato

Tyler Sean Marston

Angel Antonio Medina

Lukas Allen Morris

Zixun Nian Nian

Jayson V Okhman

Dylan Palmer

Julia Pepin

Matthew Piciocchi

Francisco Rodriguez

Gilberto E Ruiz

Gabriel E Ruoff

Kayla Ann Saladyga

Jenna Mei Stapleton

Connor Christopher Sumner

Jared William Welch

Environmental Engineering

Tyler James Allison

David Michael Brodsky

Benjamin R Cavarra

Ananya P Chandra

Emma Crandall

Elizabeth Bryant Cultra

Eric James Fitzgerald

Eleanor Elizabeth Gettens

Brady E Hartnett

Christopher Harvey

Nicholas Colin Axel Kohl

Henry David Long

Molly M Matheson

Salma Valles Mohamed

Matthew Edward Nosalek

Liesel Marie Odden

Hennecys Darlene Perez Castro

Ella Hope Phipps

Scott M Potter

Yongfang Qi

Jasmine Victoria Rodriguez

Mary H Schieman

Hayley Shay Scott

Jacob M Tyler

Andrew Michael Vanderwege

Maria Antonia Villegas Botero

Emily Jean Vogel

Anna Wojcik

Savannah Marie Wujastyk

Qiuyu Zhou

Reilly Zink

Mechanical Engineering 

Owyn Phillip Adams

Joshua Carl Arndt

Timothy G Arnold

Charles D Ball

Arthur Barros

Michael James Battin Jr

Erin Beaudoin

Rachael O Beresford

Aidan Paul Bergman

Jeffrey Trent Bernstein

Chloe Marie Britton Naime

Brinley Bruening

Arnaud Buard

Alexander Joseph Callo

Joseph Timothy Capra

Jun Chen

Artur Chuvik

Cooper P Crone

Anthony Cruz

Peter M Daniels

Ryan Russell Dileo

Madeline Doyle

Luyen Duong

Andrew J Esposito

Luke Samuel Fink

Nicholas Andrew Frank

Elan Fullmer

Samuel Ryan Getman

Kara Ai Chun Gorman

Jiayuan Huang

Vian Vishal Jain

Jagger Kachmaryk

Dong Myeong Kang

Jeremy C Kang

Macauley J Kastner

Finnian James Kery

Teagan L Kilian

Cherry Kim

Carl Winston Rice Kjellberg

Justin Kohan

Deanna Summer Koppenjan

Savannah Mae Kreppein

Trevor D Kroells

Nathan Lemoine

Honorata Lubecka

Bei Luo

Lauren Mack

Ryan Patrek Martineau

Michael J McElroy

Ryan A Melick

James Patrick Melitski

Leilah Miller

Wiley Robert Moslow

Beau M Norris

Daniel Panchenko

Nicholas Joseph Papaleo

Nathaniel Ryan Paradis

Tanner Josiah Peck

Corey A Phung

Nicholas Patrick Piano

Alexander Richard

Aidan Riederich

Collin Roche

Jeremy Vinton Rosh

Jeffrey Ryu

Nitish Sachin Satpute

Justin Sauve

Shane Michael Sefransky

William Kaspar Sherfey

Zachary Ryan Shuler

Eric Silfies

Nathaniel Slabaugh

Samuel Theodore Slaiby

Ian Storrs

Matthew K Swanson

Ethan William Tracey

Evan R Tulsky

Alexandra Rose Vaida

Nicholas Valentin

Griffin Riley Vollers

Xu Wang

Michael David Wehrle

Justin H Westhuis

Taj Asim Whitney

Michael Wong

Systems & Information Science

Connor W Gurnham

Stacy Kim

Akshay Ram

Zachary Tyler Williams

Syracuse University Ranked #24 for Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs by U.S. News and World Report for 2022

Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies (iSchool) and the College of Engineering and Computer Science have been recognized as No. 13 in the rankings for Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs for Veterans and have been ranked No. 24 for Best Online Graduate Information Technology Programs by U.S. News & World Report for 2022.

The full rankings, released earlier today, are available on the U.S. News & World Report website.

The College of Engineering and Computer Science offers online master’s degree programs in cybersecurity, computer science and computer engineering.

The iSchool offers M.S. degree programs in applied data science, information management and library and information science online.

Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney Selected to Receive 2021 Shannon-Nyquist Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society

Electrical engineering and computer science Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney has been chosen to receive the prestigious 2021 Claude Shannon – Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for outstanding contributions in the fields of distributed inference, and data fusion.

The Claude Shannon – Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award was established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to honor those who have made outstanding technical contributions to theory and/or practice in technical areas within the scope of the society, as demonstrated by publications, patents, or recognized impact on the field. There are over 400,000 IEEE members in over 160 countries and this award is annually given to one or two individuals.

“I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award. It is a testament to the outstanding research performed by my students, post docs and collaborators in Syracuse and around the globe,” said Varshney.

“I am extremely happy about Professor Varshney receiving this well-deserved prestigious award,” said Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department Chair Jae C. Oh.  “He continues to excel in the field of data fusion and distributed inference. He is a world-renowned researcher whom our EECS department is so proud of. It is no surprise that he receives this prestigious award bearing the names of the giants such as Claude Shannon and Harry Nyquist, the names recognized by every electrical engineer in the world.”

“The Shannon-Nyquist Award is one of the most notable awards in the signal processing field and a world-renowned leader like Pramod is very deserving of it,” said Engineering and Computer Science Dean J. Cole Smith.

Natarajan Gautam

Areas of Expertise:

  • Stochastic modeling, control, and optimization
  • Data science: predictive and prescriptive analytics
  • Logistics and scheduling
  • Energy management
  • Queues and networks

Dr. Gautam’s research is on efficiently-operating systems with dynamics and uncertainty. He uses data-driven methods complemented by stochastic models for optimal design, performance analysis, and control of such systems. He has applied this work in computer systems, data centers, wireless and wireline networks, microgrids with renewable energy sources, smart manufacturing, and transportation. His methodologies are grounded in applied probability, data science, and optimization.

Honors and Awards:

  • Amazon Scholar, Amazon Corporate LLC, May 2019-present.
  • Fellow, IISE (Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, formerly IIE), May 2017.
  • Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer Award (education category), by IIE, May 2006.

Selected Publications:

  • Xu, J., Hou, I.-H. and Gautam, N. (2022) Age of information for single buffer systems with vacation server, IEEE-Trans. on Network Science and Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1198 – 1214.
  • Xu, J. and Gautam, N. (2021) Peak Age of Information in Priority Queueing Systems, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 67, No. 1, 373-390.
  • Ejaz, I., Alvarado, M., Gautam, N., Gebraeel, N. and Lawley, M. (2019) Condition-Based Maintenance for Queues with Degrading Servers, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Vol. 16, No. 4.
  • Kwon, S., Ntaimo, L. and Gautam, N. (2019) Demand Response in Data Centers: Integration of Server Provisioning and Power Procurement, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, Vol. 51, No. 4.
  • Xu, J., Tran, H., Gautam, N. and Bukkapatnam, S. (2019) Joint Production and Maintenance Operations in Smart Custom-Manufacturing Systems, IISE Transactions, Vol. 51, No. 4, 406-421.
  • Kwon, S., Ntaimo, L. and Gautam, N. (2017) Optimal Day-Ahead Power Procurement with Renewable Energy and Demand Response, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 32, No. 5, 3924-3933.
  • Hsu, Y., Abedini, N., Gautam, N., Sprintson, A. and Shakkottai, S.  (2015) Opportunities for Network Coding: To Wait or Not to Wait, IEEE Transactions on Networking, Vol. 23, No. 6, 1876 – 1889.
  • Mohapatra, A., Gautam, N., Sprintson, A. and Shakkottai, S. (2014) Optimal Network Coding Decisions in Delay-sensitive Wireless Transmission, IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 62, No. 8, 2965-2976.
  • Ko, Y.-M. and Gautam, N. (2013) Critically loaded multi-server queues with abandonments, retrials, and time-varying parameters, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, 285-301.
  • Gautam, N. (2012) Analysis of Queues: Methods and Applications, 802 pages, CRC Press (Taylor and Francis), Boca Raton, FL.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Kevin Du Receives “Test of Time” Award from the Computer Security Applications Conference

Electrical engineering and computer science Professor Kevin Du was awarded the Test of Time award at the 2021 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) for his paper “Privacy-Preserving Cooperative Statistical Analysis” that was originally published in 2001.

“This paper provided a new way to conduct joint computation while protecting data privacy. There were a lot of follow-ups on this approach,” said Du. “Many young researchers told me that they ‘grew up’ reading my papers in this field.”

This is the second time Du has won a Test of Time award. He previously won one in 2013 at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security for a paper titled “A Pairwise Pre-Distribution Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks” he published with Professor Jing Deng, Professor Yunghsiang S. Han and Distinguished Professor Pramod Varshney in 2003.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Alumni Spotlight – Niket Kothari G’02

In his current role as a partner engineering manager at Microsoft, Niket Kothari G’02 is responsible for the design, provisioning, and operations of the company’s worldwide regional and data center networks. Since starting at Microsoft in 2014, Kothari helped transform the business by leveraging the power of automation to build and manage infrastructure at scale. He currently manages a team of network engineers, software engineers and data scientists around the world.

“We worked to identify key metrics, build software systems, and deliver efficiencies in operational excellence for the hyperscale network infrastructure,” said Kothari. “We were also able to enable new cloud offerings and multiple other initiatives that reduced the overall network cost of goods sold.”

Prior to his current role, Kothari spent 7 years at Google, and 5 years at 2 different start-up companies focused on building infrastructure to support software-as-a-service offerings to international customers. During his professional tenure, Kothari has worked across different functional areas related to large scale infrastructure, with experience in content delivery network rollout, long-term network planning, infrastructure acquisition, and building networks across the globe.

“I’m passionate about solving complex technical problems along with building and mentoring high performing teams with diverse skills and backgrounds,” said Kothari. “I’m actively involved in helping recruit the next set of talent for Microsoft.”

Syracuse University and the faculty at the College of Engineering and Computer Science played a key role in helping Kothari build the strong technical foundation that he has leveraged through his professional career.

“I came to the United States to earn my degree in 2000 and Syracuse University is what I now consider my home,” said Kothari.

He met his wife Bhumika Kothari G’02 while he was at Syracuse University.

“We spent many hours working together on assignments in the lab, while also competing for the on-campus jobs and assistantship opportunities at the University,” said Kothari.

He and his wife hope their two daughters will follow in their parents footsteps and attend Syracuse University.

“If they are successful with managing its cold winters,” said Kothari with a laugh.

Lights, Camera…Cybersecurity!

Electrical engineering and computer science professor Kevin Du wanted to up the production value of the cybersecurity instruction videos he has been posting to YouTube and decided to construct a studio inside his lab space.

“I used to have one in home at my basement but that one has a problem because my family just walked around,” said Du. “So I decided I’m just going to build one in the corner of the lab.”

Introducing the Inaugural Patrick P. Lee Scholars in the College of Engineering and Computer Science

Lee Scholars

Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science is honored to announce our inaugural Patrick P. Lee Scholars. The Lee Foundation’s largest scholarship program supports students at institutions of higher learning who are pursuing careers in engineering and other technical fields.

Joli Cacciatore is a fourth year Civil Engineering student from Niagara Falls, NY. Since arriving at SU she has been part of the ECS Ambassador Scholars program which conducts outreach to local middle schools to foster interest in STEM and provide positive educational role models. She is a member of the SU student chapters of the National Society of Professional Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Stacy Kim is a fourth year Systems Information Science major from Staten Island, NY. She has several leadership positions in campus organizations including Vice President of the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers and Community Service Chair for Kappa Theta Pi through which she conducted outreach to local high schools to help with the transition to online learning. Since 2019 she has worked for the Barnes Center in health promotion for her fellow students and during the pandemic has been helping administer and process COVID tests on campus.

Aymeric Destrée is a third year Civil Engineering major from San Marcos, CA. He is a member of the Ambassador Scholars program and enjoys working with children in the Syracuse public school system to introduce engineering concepts and problem solving skills through fun after school activities. He plans a career in public infrastructure and is particularly interested in transportation and urban design.

Olivia Kmito is a third year Bioengineering student from Bridgewater MA. She is a student athlete on the SU Gymnastics team and a member of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority and the Society of Women Engineers. She has a long term commitment to the March of Dimes organization inspired by a personal connection to their work. Following in the footsteps of her father, an SU engineering alum, she believes an engineer must value “integrity, leadership, and service” and most of all take seriously the trust that their colleagues, their clients, and the public place in them and their work.

Reza Zafarani

Degree:

  • Ph.D., Arizona State University

Research Interests:

  • Big Data Analytics
  • Data Mining / Web Mining / Social Media Mining
  • Social Network Analysis / Social Computing
  • Large-Scale Information Networks
  • Behavior Analysis

Current Research:

My research lies in the intersection of data mining, machine learning, social sciences, and theory. A common pattern in my research is to collect and analyze large scale data to glean actionable patterns. I often employ theories from social sciences, psychology, or anthropology, in addition to developing and using advanced mathematical, statistical, and machine learning machinery to prove the validity of such patterns.

Courses Taught:

  • Data Mining
  • Social Media Mining

Selected Publications:

Reza Zafarani and Huan Liu, Evaluation without Ground Truth in Social Media Research, Communications of the ACM, June 2015

Reza Zafarani, Mohammad Ali Abbasi, and Huan Liu, Social Media Mining: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2014

Edmund S. Yu

Degree:

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, Syracuse University

Research Interests:

  • Text Mining
  • Social Networks
  • Social Media Mining
  • Information Retrieval
  • Multi-Agent Systems

Current Research:

Current research involves the development of algorithms for measuring the emotional contents in tweets, contained not only in words, but also in emoticons, punctuation marks and hashtags; for event prediction based on social media data; and for extending sentiment analysis to multiple languages. Current research also involves continuing work on building autonomous agent-based information gathering system for decision support.

Courses Taught:

  • Social Media Mining
  • Software Specification and Design
  • Software Implementation
  • Principles of Software Engineering
  • Web Systems

Recent Publications:

A. Panasyuk, E.S. Yu & K. Merhrotra, “Controversial Topic Discovery on Members of Congress with Twitter,” Complex Adaptive Systems, 2014.

M. Rahman, Qinyun Zhu, & E.S Yu, “TRECT: A Hashtag Recommendation System for Twitter,” 2nd International Workshop on Recommender Systems meet Big Data & Semantic Technologies, 2013.

E.S. Yu, “Social Media Marketing and Mining,” Social Media Strategies Seminar, Panama City, Panama, January 17, 2013.

E.S Yu, “From Knowledge Exchange to Knowledge Discovery,” Capstone Conference, Chicago, July 14, 2010.

Li Wang

Degrees:

  • BA of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Central South University, China
  • MS of Computer Science, Louisiana Tech University

Research Interests:

  • Intelligent Systems (Data Mining & Network Analysis)
  • Big Data Analytics
  • System Security

Courses Taught:

  • CSE 581 Introduction to Database Management System
  • CIS 342 Introduction to System Programming
  • CIS 223 Statistical Reasoning & Practice
  • CPS 196 Introduction to Programming
  • CPS 181 Introduction to Computing

Pramod K. Varshney

Degree(s):

  • Ph. D. (Illinois) 1976

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

  • Center of Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE), Executive Director

Areas of Expertise:

  • Distributed sensor networks and data fusion
  • Statistical inference
  • Wireless communications
  • Signal processing
  • Machine learning
  • Human-machine teaming

My research addresses fundamental questions in statistics-based signal processing, data/information fusion, sensor data processing, data analytics, machine learning and AI.  My research has been generously funded for over four decades by Department of Defense, NSF, ARPA-E, EPA and many companies.  Starting in the early 1980s, I have pioneered the area of data/information fusion and inference in sensor networks. While a lot of my work has been inspired by Department of Defense applications, I have also applied my research results to a wide variety of non-defense applications including IoT and health-related applications. For example, I have worked on imaging for breast cancer detection, and methods for more accurate Alzheimer disease detection. My current research includes detection and tracking, secure inference in distributed sensing systems, human-machine teaming for inference, and information fusion. 

Honors and Awards:

  • ASEE Dow Outstanding Young Faculty Award, 1981
  • IEEE Fellow 1997
  • Third Millennium Medal IEEE 2000
  • President International Society of Information Fusion 2001.
  • Judith A. Resnik Award IEEE 2012
  • Doctor of Engineering honoris causa, Drexel University, 2014
  • Distinguished Alumni Award, ECE Department, Univ. of Illinois, 2015
  • Yaakov Bar-Shalom Award for a Lifetime of Excellence in Information Fusion, 2018
  • Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award, IEEE Signal Proc. Society, 2021
  • Pioneer Award, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Society, 2021

Publications:

Books

  • P.K. Varshney, Distributed Detection and Data Fusion, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
  • G.L. Foresti, C. S. Regazzoni, and P. K. Varshney (eds.), Multisensor Surveillance Systems: The Fusion Perspective, Kluwer Academic Press, 2003.
  • K. Varshney and M. K. Arora (eds.), Advanced Image Processing Techniques for Remotely Sensed Hyperspectral Data, Springer Verlag, 2004.
  • A. Vempaty, B. Kailkhura and P. K. Varshney, Secure Networked Inference with Unreliable Data Sources,  Springer 2018

Selected Recent Papers

  • Li, Q., Kailkhura, B., Goldhahn, R., Ray, P., and Varshney, P. K., “Robust Decentralized Learning Using ADMM With Unreliable Agents”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process, pp. 2743 – 2757, June, 2022
  • Trezza, A., Bucci, D. J., and Varshney, P. K., “Multi-Sensor Joint Adaptive Birth Sampler for Labeled Random Finite Set Tracking”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process, pp. 1010 – 1025, Feb, 2022
  • Yuan, Y., Yi, W., and Varshney, P. K., “Exponential Mixture Density based Approximation to Posterior Cramér-Rao Lower Bound for Distributed Target Tracking”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process, pp. 862 – 877, Feb, 2022
  • Chen, Q., Geng, B., Han, Y., and Varshney, P. K., “Enhanced Audit Bit Based Distributed Bayesian Detection in the Presence of Strategic Attacks”, IEEE Trans. on Signal and Information Process. over Networks, pp. 49 – 62, Jan, 2022
  • Bulusu, S., Khanduri, P., Kafle, S., Sharma, P., and Varshney, P. K., “Byzantine Resilient Non-Convex SCSG With Distributed Batch Gradient Computations”, IEEE Trans. on Signal and Information Process. over Networks ., pp. 754 – 766, Nov, 2021
  • Cheng, X., Khanduri, P., Chen, B., and Varshney, P. K., “Joint Collaboration and Compression Design for Distributed Sequential Estimation in a Wireless Sensor Network”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process, pp. 5448 – 5462, Sept, 2021
  • Geng, B., Cheng, X., Brahma, S., Kellen, D., and Varshney, P. K., “Collaborative Human Decision Making with Heterogeneous Agents”, IEEE Trans. on Computational Social Systems., pp. 469 – 479, Jul, 2021
  • Li, C., Li, G., and Varshney, P. K., “Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Based on Compressed Sensing”, IEEE Internet of Things Journal., pp. 15531 – 15541, Apr, 2021
  • Geng, B., Li, Q., and Varshney, P. K., “Utility Theory Based Optimal Resource Consumption For Inference In IoT Systems”, IEEE Internet of Things Journal., pp. 12279 – 12288, Mar, 2021
  • Ciuonzo, D., Rossi, P.S., and Varshney, P. K., “Distributed Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks Under Multiplicative Fading via Generalized Score Tests”, IEEE Internet of Things Journal., pp. 9059 – 9071, Feb, 2021
  • Joseph, G., Nettasinghe , B., Krishnamurthy, V., and Varshney, P. K., “Controllability of Network Opinion in Erdos-Renyi Graphs Using Sparse Control Inputs”, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization., pp. 2321-2345, Jan, 2021
  • Joseph, G. and Varshney, P. K., “Measurement Bounds for Compressed Sensing in Sensor Networks With Missing Data”, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., pp. 905-916, Jan, 2021

Senem Velipasalar

Degrees:

  • Ph. D., Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2007
  • M.A., Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 2004
  • M.S., Electrical Sciences and Computer Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2001
  • B.S., Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 1999

Lab/ Center/ Institute affiliations:

Director of the Smart Vision Systems Laboratory (http://www.vision.syr.edu/)

Faculty Affiliate, Aging Studies Institute

Areas of Expertise:

  • Machine Learning
  • Computer Vision
  • Wireless Smart Camera Networks
  • Mobile camera applications
  • Signal Processing

Prof. Velipasalar’s primary areas of research are machine learning and computer vision. More specifically, her research has focused on human activity classification and fall detection from egocentric cameras, and applications of machine learning to (i) thermal anomaly detection from UAV-mounted infrared cameras, (ii) driver behavior analysis from in-vehicle mounted cameras, (iii) 3D object detection, (iv) person detection from video data, (v) analysis of functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data, (vi) dynamic multi-channel access, and (vii) defense against adversarial jamming attacks.

Honors/Awards:

  • NSF CAREER Award, 2011.
  • 2021 IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation (Academic) Award.
  • 2021 IAAI Deployed Application Award for our paper titled “Preclinical Stage Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Using Magnetic Resonance Image Scans”.
  • Top 25 most downloaded IEEE Sensors Journal paper in the months of January-September 2017, and June 2018.
  • Graduate School All-University Doctoral Prize, received by my former Ph.D. student Burak Kakillioglu, 2022.
  • Graduate School All-University Doctoral Prize, received by my former Ph.D. student Natalie Sommer, 2021.
  • Graduate School All-University Doctoral Prize, received by my former Ph.D. student Yantao Lu, 2020.
  • 2017 IEEE Green Communications & Computing Technical Committee Best Journal Paper Award for our paper titled “Analysis of Energy Efficiency in Fading Channels under QoS Constraints”.
  • 2nd place Poster Award at the 17th Annual SyracuseCoE Symposium Student Poster Competition for our work titled “Heat Mapping Drones”, October 2017.
  • 2014 Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award.
  • Graduate School All University Doctoral Prize, received by my former Ph.D. student Akhan Almagambetov, 2014.
  • Nunan Research Day Poster Competition EECS Departmental Winner Award, received by Danushka Bandara (co-advised by Dr.Hirshfield), 2014.
  • Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) of NY Best ITS Student Essay Award, received by my former Ph.D. student Akhan Almagambetov, based on our research on vehicle taillight tracking and alert signal detection, May 2013.
  • The college-wide award for “Applicability of Research to Business and Industry”, received by my former Ph.D. student Akhan Almagambetov, Nunan Lecture and Research Day, April 2013.
  • Third place paper award at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras for the paper titled “Energy-efficient Feedback Tracking on Embedded Smart Cameras by Hardware-level Optimization“, 2011
  • EPSCoR First Award, 2009
  • Layman Award as PI, 2007
  • Layman Award as Co-PI, 2009
  • Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) for the paper titled “Design and Verification of Communication Protocols for Peer-to-Peer Multimedia Systems,” 2006
  • IBM Patent Application Award, 2005
  • Travel Grant, Office of Graduate Affairs, Princeton University, 2005
  • Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University, 2002
  • Graduate Fellowship, Brown University, 1999

Selected Publications:

(Please visit https://ecs.syr.edu/faculty/velipasalar/ for a complete list)

  • J. Chen, B. Kakillioglu and S. Velipasalar, “Background-Aware 3D Point Cloud Segmentation with Dynamic Point Feature Aggregation,” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 60, April 2022.
  • F. Altay and S. Velipasalar, “The Use of Thermal Cameras for Pedestrian Detection,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 22, issue:12, 11489 – 11498, May 2022.
  • Y. Chu, D. Mitra, K. Cetin, N. Lajnef, F. Altay, S. Velipasalar, “Development and Testing of a Performance Evaluation Methodology to Assess the Reliability of Occupancy Sensor Systems in Residential Buildings,” Energy and Buildings, vol. 268, pp. 112148, 2022.
  • J. Wang, T. Grant, S. Velipasalar, B. Geng and L. Hirshfield, “Taking a Deeper Look at the Brain: Predicting Visual Perceptual and Working Memory Load from High-Density fNIRS Data,” IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 26, issue:5, pp. 2308-2319, December 2021.
  • J. Wang, W. Chai, A. Venkatachalapathy, K. L. Tan, A. Haghighat, S. Velipasalar, Y. Adu-Gyamfi, A. Sharma, “A Survey on Driver Behavior Analysis from In-Vehicle Cameras,” accepted to appear in the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, early access version available, November 2021.
  • F. Wang; C. Zhong, M. Cenk Gursoy, S. Velipasalar, “Resilient Dynamic Channel Access via Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning,” IEEE Access Journal, vol. 9 , pp. 163188 – 163203, December 2021.
  • N. M. Sommer, B. Kakillioglu, T. Grant, S. Velipasalar and L. Hirshfield, “Classification of fNIRS Finger Tapping Data with Multi-Labeling and Deep Learning,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 21, issue: 21, pp. 24558-24559, doi: 10.1109/JSEN.2021.3115405, Nov. 2021.
  • Y. Zheng, Y. Lu, and S. Velipasalar, “An Effective Adversarial Attack on Person Re-identification in Video Surveillance via Dispersion Reduction,” IEEE Access Journal, vol. 8, pp. 183891 – 183902, Sept. 2020.
  • N. Sommer, S. Velipasalar, L. Hirshfield, Y. Lu and B. Kakillioglu, “Simultaneous and Spatiotemporal Detection of Different Levels of Activity in Multidimensional Data,” IEEE Access Journal, vol. 8, pp. 118205 – 118218, June 2020.
  • D. Bandara, T. Grant, L. Hirshfield and S. Velipasalar, “Identification of Potential Task Shedding Events Using Brain Activity Data,” Augmented Human Research, 5. 10.1007/s41133-020-00034-y, 2020.
  • M. Cornacchia and S. Velipasalar, “Autonomous Selective Parts-Based Tracking,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 29, pp. 4349-4361, January 2020.
  • B. Kakillioglu, A. Ren, Y. Wang and S. Velipasalar, “3D Capsule Networks for Object Classification with Weight Pruning,” IEEE Access Journal, pp. 27393-27405, Febr. 2020.
  • C. Zhong, M. Cenk Gursoy and S. Velipasalar, “Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Edge Cashing in Wireless Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, vol. 6 , issue 1, pp. 48-61, March 2020.
  • Y. Hu, Y. Li, M. C. Gursoy, S. Velipasalar, and A. Schmeink, “Throughput Analysis of Low-Latency IoT Systems with QoS Constraints and Finite Blocklength Codes,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 69, issue 3, pp. 3093-3104, March 2020.
  • C. Zhong, Z. Lu, M. Cenk Gursoy and S. Velipasalar, “A Deep Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning Framework for Dynamic Multichannel Access,” IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, vol. 5, issue 4, pp. 1125-1139, Dec. 2019.
  • Y. Lu and S. Velipasalar, “Autonomous Human Activity Classification from Wearable Multi-Modal Sensors,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 19, issue: 23, pp. 11403-11412, Dec. 2019.
  • D. Qiao, M. Cenk Gursoy and S. Velipasalar, “Throughput-Delay Tradeoffs with Finite Blocklength Coding over Multiple Coherence Blocks,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, pp. 5892 – 5904, volume: 67 , Issue: 8 , Aug. 2019.
  • D. Bandara, L. Hirshfield and S. Velipasalar, “Classification of Affect Using Deep Learning on Brain Blood Flow Data,” Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy, 27(3), pp. 206-219, doi: 10.1177/0967033519837986, April 2019.
  • C. Ye, M. Cenk Gursoy and S. Velipasalar, “Power Control for Wireless VBR Video Streaming: From Optimization to Reinforcement Learning,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, pp. 5629 – 5644, volume: 67 , Issue: 8 , Aug. 2019.
  • M. Cornacchia, B. Kakillioglu, Y. Zheng and S. Velipasalar, “Deep Learning Based Obstacle Detection and Classification with Portable Uncalibrated Patterned Light,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 18, issue: 20, pp. 8416-8425, Oct 2018.
  • Y. Lu and S. Velipasalar, “Autonomous Footstep Counting and Traveled Distance Calculation by Mobile Devices Incorporating Camera and Accelerometer Data,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 17, issue: 21, pp. 7157-7166, Nov. 2017.
  • K. Ozcan, S. Velipasalar and P. Varshney, “Autonomous Fall Detection with Wearable Cameras by using Relative Entropy Distance Measure,” IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, vol. 47, issue: 1, pp. 31-39, Febr. 2017.
  • M. Cornacchia, K. Ozcan, Y. Zheng and S. Velipasalar, “A Survey on Activity Detection and Classification Using Wearable Sensors,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 17, issue: 2, pp. 386-403, Jan. 2017. Top 25 most downloaded IEEE Sensors Journal paper for nine consecutive months in 2017, and in June 2018 .
  • F. Erden, S. Velipasalar, A. Z. Alkar, A. Enis Cetin, “Sensors in Assisted Living: A Survey of Signal and Image Processing Methods ,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, volume:33, issue:2, pp. 36-44, March 2016.
  • K. Ozcan and S. Velipasalar, “Wearable Camera- and Accelerometer-based Fall Detection on Portable Devices ,” IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, volume: 8, issue: 1, pp. 6-9, March 2016.

Yuzhe Tang

Degree:

  • Ph.D. Computer Science, Georgia Tech

Lab/ Center/ Institute affiliation:

Full Stack Security Lab (FSSL) at CST 4-294

Areas of Expertise:

  • Blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
  • Cyber-security, vulnerability discovery, attack detection and mitigation.
  • Distributed systems and performance optimization.
  • Software engineering.

Dr. Tang is broadly interested in cyber-security, systems, software engineering, and system measurement. His cyber-security research covers vulnerability discovery, attack detection, attack mitigation, and measurement of deployed systems.

His current research focuses on blockchain security, blockchain systems, blockchain applications, and blockchain education. He has worked on confidential computing, trusted execution environments, and cloud security.

Honors and Awards:

  • The Ethereum Foundation academic award
  • Two NSF SaTC grants and an NSF CNS grant
  • The Best Paper award in IEEE Cloud 2012
  • The Best Paper award in ACM/IEEE CCGrid 2015
  • The AFRL visiting faculty research fellowship, 2017

Selected Publications:

  • K. Li, Y. Wang, Yuzhe Tang. “DETER: Denial of Ethereum Txpool sERvices”, ACM CCS 2021, Acceptance rate=22%
  • K. Li, J. Chen, X. Liu, Yuzhe Tang, X. Wang, X. Luo. “As Strong As Its Weakest Link: How to Break (and Fix) Blockchain DApps at RPC Service”, ISOC NDSS 2021, Acceptance rate=15.2%
  • K. Li, Yuzhe Tang, J. Chen, Y. Wang, X. Liu. “TopoShot: Uncovering Ethereum’s Network Topology Leveraging Replacement Transactions”, ACM IMC 2021, Acceptance rate=28% 
  • Y. Wang, Q. Zhang, K. Li, Yuzhe Tang, J. Chen, X. Luo, T. Chen. “iBatch: Saving Ethereum Fees via Secure and Cost-Effective Batching of Smart-Contract Invocations” ESEC/FSE 2021, Acceptance rate=24.5%
  • C. Zhang, C. Xu, J. Xu, Yuzhe Tang, B. Choi. “GEM^2-Tree: A Gas-Efficient Structure for Authenticated Range Queries in Blockchain”, IEEE ICDE 2019, Full Paper, Acceptance rate=26.8%

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Announces New Faculty

The College of Engineering and Computer Science is proud to announce four new faculty in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biom

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo joins the College as an Assistant Teaching Professor in Fall 2021. At Syracuse University, Medjo Me Biomo will teach classes in electrical engineering and computer science, including but not limited to Electrical Engineering Laboratory I and Linear Systems Laboratory. Prior to joining Syracuse University, Medjo Me Biomo was a Sessional Lecturer (2019-2021) and a Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2021) in the department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University, Canada. In his teaching capacity, he taught various courses, including Digital Communications, Algorithms and Data Structures, Computer Systems Design, and Probability and Random Processes for Engineers. In his postdoctoral researcher capacity, Medjo Me Biomo’s research work has focused on AI-enabled satellite networks within the Optical Satellite Communications Canada (OSC) framework of National Research Council Canada (NRC). He contributed to the 2021 edition of the “IEEE International Network Generations Roadmap” for satellites. Prior to that, as a graduate student, his research focused on unmanned aerial vehicles’ ad hoc networks. He has published 10+ conference and journal papers. He is an IEEE member. Medjo Me Biomo received the B.Eng degree in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal in 2010. He received the M.A.Sc and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from Carleton University in 2014 and 2019 respectively.

Nadeem Ghani

Nadeem Ghani (he/him/his) joins the College as an assistant teaching professor in fall 2021. At Syracuse University, Ghani will teach introductory classes in Computer Science. Prior to joining Syracuse University, Ghani spent many years in Silicon Valley, working at Netflix, Salesforce, IBM and various startups. Ghani earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1995 from The Ohio State University, and a B.S. in Physics in 1988 from Caltech.

Jung-Eun Kim

Jung-Eun Kim joins the College as a tenure-track assistant professor in Fall 2021. Prior to joining Syracuse University, Kim was an associate research scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Yale University. Kim’s research focuses on Cyber-Physical Systems for applications ranging from safety-critical systems to machine learning/AI. Especially the primary interest lies in systems which require safety and timing guarantees and predictability. She is a Co-PI on an NSF SaTC (Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace) CORE (2020-2023.) She was awarded GPU Grant from NVIDIA Corporation, selected for the MIT EECS Rising Stars, and a recipient of the Richard T. Cheng Endowed Fellowship. She received her PhD degree in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her MS and BS degrees in Computer Science and Engineering at Seoul National University, Korea.

Joao Paulo

Joao Paulo Oliveira Marum is joining the College as an assistant teaching professor. He earned both his MS and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Mississippi (USA). His research is focused in using multi-paradigm programming to solve accuracy issues on User Interactive System, especially in Virtual and Augmented Reality. Professional member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and Institute of Electrical and Electronical Engineering (IEEE), IEEE Computer Science Society and the Order of Engineer. For 5 years he was a graduate instructor at the University of Mississippi, teaching programming languages for major and non-major students. He was also a researcher at the Hi5 (High FIdelity Virtual Environments) laboratory at the University of Mississippi. Articles published in ICAT – EGVE (Eurotronics – Virtual Environments), IEEE SouthEastCon, ACM SouthEast and IEEE VR (Most prominent congress in the area of Virtual Reality).

Sucheta Soundarajan

Degree:

  • PhD, Computer Science (2013, Cornell University)

Areas of Expertise:

  • Social network analysis
  • Complex systems
  • Algorithmic fairness
  • Algorithms

Current Research:

Dr. Soundarajan’s research focuses on designing algorithms for analyzing social and other complex networks, including algorithms for characterizing the hierarchical structure of networks and the evolution of social networks.  She is particularly interested in designing fair network analysis algorithms for tasks such as link prediction and community/cluster detection.  Her work also explores the structure of real-world complex systems, including the behavior of individual animals in herds of dairy cows, language evolution in social media ecosystems, and stratification in scientific co-authorship networks. 

Selected Publications:

Sucheta Soundarajan and John Hopcroft. Use of Local Group Information to Identify Communities in Networks. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD). 2015.

Sucheta Soundarajan, Tina Eliassi-Rad, and Brian Gallagher. A Guide to Selecting a Network Similarity Method. SIAM Conference on Data Mining (SDM). 2014.

Bruno Abrahao, Sucheta Soundarajan, John Hopcroft, and Robert Kleinberg. A Separability Framework for Analyzing Community Structure. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD-CASIN). 2014.

Bruno Abrahao, Sucheta Soundarajan, John Hopcroft, and Robert Kleinberg. On the Separability of Structural Classes of Communities. 18th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). 2012.

Sucheta Soundarajan and John Hopcroft. Using Community Information to Improve the Precision of Link Prediction Methods. World Wide Web (WWW) 2012.

Five Questions with IBM Senior Vice President Bob Lord ‘85

IBM Senior Vice President Bob Lord

2021 Engineering and Computer Science convocation speaker Bob Lord ’85 is IBM’s Senior Vice President, Worldwide Ecosystems.

He is focused on ensuring the success of IBM customers, partners and developers using the company’s hybrid cloud and AI software as well as The Weather Company, which is an IBM business.

At the center of Bob’s work is a commitment to the open source community. He is responsible for IBM’s participation and leadership in dozens of open source communities; contribution and donation of open source code; and overall industry advocacy. A prime example is Call for Code, which Bob launched in 2018 to give developers and problem solvers access to IBM tools and technologies as a means to solve global, societal challenges. Since launch, over 400,000 developers and problem solvers from over 179 nations have built solutions for an immediate and lasting impact in society.

We asked Bob five questions about his experience at Syracuse and advice for current undergrads:

How did you know Syracuse University was the best place for your undergraduate degree?

From the moment I stepped on campus nearly four decades ago, I knew Syracuse was the place for me.

Without question it was the perfect undergraduate environment because it provided so many opportunities for me to discover what I was most passionate about. I wasn’t pigeonholed into one area of study at the tender age of 18, but rather was encouraged to take advantage of the many options available at SU. And without that breadth of exposure, who knows… maybe instead of speaking to new graduates of the College of Engineering and Computer Science this past weekend I might have become a dentist or criminal defense lawyer, which I explored as a freshman. SU helped me realize what I wanted to become, but more importantly allowed me to decide what I didn’t want to do.

What are some of your favorite memories from your time on campus as a student?

There are so many great memories. I’ll start at the beginning: move-in day my freshman year. My dad dropped me at Kimmel Hall alone for the first time in my life. But just as that reality began to set in, my new roommate arrived, followed by a slew of other new students. I quickly realized I was surrounded by people who were going through the same thing as me. That was the day I began to build some of the most enduring friendships of my life… friendships that remain strong to this day and I will be eternally grateful for.

It was also the day that I was first introduced to a population that was much more diverse than my Catholic neighborhood in Northern New Jersey. It was the beginning of my understanding of the power of diversity and inclusion. The more I learned from others, the more critical my thinking became and the more I grew as a human being.

How did your Syracuse experience help you in the early stages of your career?

I credit Syracuse for getting my career started. I was fortunate to be accepted into the engineering co-op program, so in the summers I would work at General Motors as a shift supervisor and engineer. Being immersed in that setting had a powerful effect on me. It validated that I was absolutely on the right career path, exposed me to a high-performance workplace, and gave me the relevant experience and confidence I needed to ultimately land a full-time position as an industrial engineer at Corning Glass Works.

I had countless experiences as an undergrad that equipped me to succeed in my first job and that I draw upon to this day. For instance, thanks to the rigorous and challenging course load that had me in Bird Library so much, I developed the skill of managing massive volumes of work, prioritizing what required immediate attention and developing a systematic approach to completing assignments.

What are some of the lasting influences Syracuse University has had on you?

That’s easy. I met my wife of 29 years, Robin, at Syracuse. Talk about a lasting influence! Both of my daughters also went to SU, and in fact my youngest graduated this weekend with a dual degree from the Falk and Whitman schools. I suppose you could say orange runs through the Lord family and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I also attribute much of my development as a person and as a leader to what I learned during my formative years at Syracuse. It’s where the seeds of what I now refer to as a “growth mindset” were planted – something I strive to embrace in both my personal and professional life. It can be summarized by three core tenets:

First, be a problem solver, not a problem explainer. The world doesn’t need more people to talk about the problems we’re faced with; we need people who will take action. This was ingrained in me at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, where we were presented with problems and held accountable to finding solutions. And it’s why I’m so passionate now about initiatives like Call for Code.

Second, learn it all, don’t know it all. At Syracuse, I got a healthy dose of humility early on, and it became quickly apparent that I had SO much to learn. Once I accepted that, I experienced exponential growth, and I’ve committed myself to being a perpetual student to learn all that I can.

Third, be open and transparent. Some of the best development of my life has come from constructive criticism. It’s something I was no stranger to at Syracuse and I’ve found that accepting feedback as helpful guidance has gotten me a lot further than being defensive and viewing it as an attack. On the flipside, as a manager I take care to provide candid feedback to those around me so they may also grow.

What advice would you give to current engineering and computer science students?

I cannot emphasize enough to current students that they have a golden opportunity. They have the ability to take advantage of all this world-class institution has to offer, from renowned educators and facilities, to innovative programs and activities, and an array of courses and experiences. Seize that opportunity!

Go beyond your comfort zone, keep an open mind, and challenge yourself. Take electives that force you to learn something completely different and trigger another part of your brain. Explore ways you can get exposure to the industry’s best and brightest, like through the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars. Join clubs and pursue activities that pique your interest or that you’re even just mildly curious about because it may ignite a passion you didn’t know existed.

All of these things will contribute to the quest I encourage you all to pursue: to find your purpose, and to begin charting a path to develop skills you can apply in service of that purpose.

This is perhaps the only time in your life you’ll be able to partake in such a wide range of experiences in a condensed period of time. Don’t let it pass you by. Trust me, you’ll find yourself frequently drawing upon those experiences for years to come.

A Lifetime of Service: Remembering Dean Emeritus Bradley Strait ’58, G’60, G’65

Dean Emeritus Brad Strait

For many years Dean Emeritus Bradley Strait ’58, G’60, G’65 led the Syracuse University academic procession at Syracuse University’s commencement as the Mace Bearer. The Mace Bearer is a role that recognizes the importance of the University’s mission as an education institution. It was also a role that symbolized Strait’s relationship of more than 60 years with the College of Engineering and Computer Science, helping lead students, faculty, research and academic programs forward.

“Brad exemplified what it means to be Orange.  I do not know anyone else who commanded such complete respect across campus than he did,” says electrical engineering and computer science Professor Shiu-Kai Chin ’75, G’78, G’86.

Strait passed away in his hometown of Canandaigua, NY on May 6th, 2021. He leaves behind an unparalleled legacy as a student, professor and as dean of the College from 1981-1984 and again from 1989-1992.

He came to Syracuse University after serving in the U.S. Navy from 1951-1955 as an electronics technician. After being discharged, he studied electrical engineering. Syracuse University Life Trustee Charles Beach ’58, G’67 was his roommate and fraternity brother in Phi Gamma Delta. They remained close friends for the next 67 years.

“He really bled orange. He loved Syracuse University, he loved teaching and loved his students,” says Beach.

While he was an undergraduate student, Strait met Nancy Brown, who was a student in the University’s College of Fine Arts. Brad and Nancy married in 1957 and graduated in 1958. They moved to the Syracuse suburb of Jamesville where they raised their children, Andy and Martha. Brad and Nancy later established the Jamesville Museum which collected important pieces of the town’s history and memories of its neighbors.

After graduation, Strait worked briefly at Eastman Kodak before returning to Syracuse for a master’s degree and his doctorate. He then became a faculty member known for taking extra time to work with students and young researchers and making sure they were successful in all aspects of their life, not just the classroom.

He was a member of the university’s world-renowned electromagnetics research group and became chair of the then department of electrical and computer engineering in 1974. One of his early hires was current electrical engineering and computer science Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney.

“Brad did a marvelous job in his role as the leader of a premier department,” says Varshney. “As department chair, he established a close relationship with the Rome Air Development Center (now Air Force Research Laboratory) resulting in significant research funded by US Air Force at Syracuse University.”

“Brad was my first academic advisor when I came to SU in the Fall of 1971.  He remained a near and dear mentor throughout my academic career,” says Chin. “His advice to me was always straightforward and direct. Always do what is best for the academic program, always teach a course even if you are in a leadership role and remember that the people you see on the way up are the same people you see on the way down.”

Strait went on to serve as the Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science from 1981-1984 and 1989-1992. He was a relentless advocate and recruiter for Syracuse University, always looking to bring the best students and faculty to Central New York.

“Brad was one of the main reasons why I came to Syracuse University as a faculty member,” says mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Ed Bogucz. “Brad’s personality was a big factor.”

In addition to recruiting for academic roles, Strait was always recruiting for the College’s softball team and a weekly basketball league.

“Many of the players, including myself, were young people who looked at Brad as a role model of how to live an active and fulfilling life balancing family, employment, faith and active recreation,” says mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Alan Levy. “On the court Brad was a fierce competitor and, like all of us, he liked to win. But he was gracious in victory and defeat. Brad played in the game until he was about 80 years-old and he never lost his spark racing up and down that full court.”

Strait took pride in building connections across the university through softball games played against other colleges and departments.

“A lot of relationships were cemented by getting to know people during those games,” says Beach.

Always looking forward, Strait expanded collaborations with industry partners and worked to connect them with current research activity at Syracuse University. During his tenure as Dean, New York State designed the Centers of Advanced Technology (CAT) program and under Strait’s leadership the University received one of the 6 CATS. To make sure the center got off the ground, he left his Dean position and became the Founding Director of the Computer Applications and Software Engineering Center (CASE).

“He was instrumental in getting state funds to build the Center for Science and Technology (CST). Without his vision of CASE and his leadership, CST would not be built,” says Varshney. “CASE continues to flourish even today as a preeminent center that champions economic growth in the state of New York via its outstanding research activities with New York State.”

“When I became Dean of Engineering and Computer Science, I developed the concept for the Syracuse Center of Excellence following the approach that Brad had pioneered for the CASE Center,” says Bogucz.

Strait retired but always remained an active member of the Engineering and Computer Science family, serving as Dean Emeritus. He and Nancy also established the Bradley J. and Nancy B. Strait Scholarship to assist future generations of Syracuse University students.

He leaves behind a legacy of supporting and mentoring generations of young engineers and computer scientists. During a devoted life of service to Syracuse University, he provided guidance and encouragement at a crucial point in countless lives.

“I am forever blessed because he was part of my life. Those of us who are left must do our best to help the others who come after us like Brad did,” says Chin “Every time I am in the Dome during Commencement. I can still see Brad faithfully leading the procession as Mace Bearer guiding us to where we need to be.”

A memorial service at for Bradley Strait at Hendricks Chapel is planned for June 17th, 2021 at 5:00pm. A livestream of the event will be available.  

Wearable Dehydration Monitoring Device Takes First Place at Invent@SU 2021

Students in the Invent@SU Program

For the first few weeks of Invent@SU, physics major Paul Franco ’22, aerospace engineering student Zach Stahl ’23 and computer science student Anthony Mazzacane ’24 were not always sure their concept would work out. They had identified a clear problem – 80% of NCAA athletes had suffered from dehydration but finding a solution was not simple. They wanted to design a wearable device that could monitor an athlete’s hydration level so coaches and trainers would have better information and keep athletes safe – but would also need to prove their invention worked.

“We knew the scientific principle worked, but in the first few weeks we had logistical problems with the prototype,” said Franco.

As they pushed forward, they leveraged their different skill sets to solve problems with sensors, data collection and a prototype model.

“Being interdisciplinary forces you out of your comfort zone in a really good way,” said Mazzacane.

“Sweatration” was one of seven interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate inventors competing in the six week Invent@SU program. Before the first week of the program, faculty help form three-person interdisciplinary teams that balance different skill sets. Each team comes up with a concept for an original invention, research existing patents to make sure their idea is unique, develop a prototype and pitch it to weekly guest evaluators before “Shark Tank” style final judging at the end of week six.

The Sweatration team was concerned that initial evaluators were skeptical and knew they needed to back up their idea with hard data. They also met with a Syracuse University athletic trainer to gain their input.

“After every time we pitched, I wanted as much feedback as we could get,” said Franco.

The trainer was very supportive of the idea and didn’t believe there was anything like it that existed currently. As their pitch improved, the technical challenges were also being overcome. During a week five test of their prototype at the Barnes Center, the team saw it was collecting meaningful data – and their prototype could reliably show when the wearer was getting dehydrated.

“We had improved the prototype for a better fit and better connections for the technology inside,” said Stahl. “When I saw it was delivering data and consistently indicating dehydration I was thrilled.”

The notable alumni, entrepreneurs and innovators who served as final judges awarded the Sweatration first place and a $7500 prize. They plan on continuing with their invention and will work with both the Blackstone Launchpad in Bird Library and the Innovation Law Center as they move forward.

Second place at Invent@SU went to Ambiflux – a device that can both monitor asthma conditions and deliver medication.

“It felt good that we were rewarded for all the time and energy we put into this,” said bioengineering and neuroscience major Victoria Hathaway ’22. “It is an important device that is needed for a real cause.”

“To see that the judges saw what we saw – it was very gratifying,” said computer engineering student Aidan Mickleburgh ’23. Mickleburgh is also in the H. John Reilly Dual Engineering/ MBA program.

“It felt nice they appreciated the way all the concepts and elements came together,” said chemical engineering student Trinity Coates ’24.

The third place went to Sense-A, a monitoring and alert device that can help people caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s Disease.

“It was a great experience, different from anything else I have done in college,” said computer science student Hong Yang Chen ’22. “Building a physical prototype was a great challenge.”

“Good feedback from judges and evaluators was very helpful and they saw the difficulties caregivers currently face,” said chemical engineering student Simran Lakhani ’22.

“We are definitely going to move forward with this and work with Blackstone Launchpad,” said biomedical engineering student Gabriela Angel ’21 G’22.

Honorable mention at Invent@SU went to Glisten. They designed a device aimed at helping people monitor their dental health at home and provide pre-diagnostic information to a dentist.

“To be able to research, design and build a functioning prototype in six weeks is intense, but the expertise of the faculty and the evaluators made it possible,” said bioengineering student Bianca Andrada ’22.

“Our team was a good balance of different skills and perspectives,” said industrial and interaction design major Ahn Dao ’23.

“We have a passion to keep the world smiling,” said biology student Justin Monaco ’21 G’22.

Invent@SU was sponsored by Syracuse University Trustee Bill Allyn G’59 and Janet “Penny” Jones Allyn ’60, Dr. Deborah L. Pearce and William J. Sheeran ’60, G’63, G’66, Matthew Lyons ’86, Haden Land G’91 and Cathy Land, Ralph Folz ,90, Michael Lazar G’65 and Avi Nash G’77. For more information on the program, you can visit invent.syr.edu.

Spring 2021 Engineering and Computer Science Dean’s List

In recognition of superior scholarship, the following students have been entered on the Engineering & Computer Science Dean’s List for Spring 2021.

To be eligible for Dean’s List recognition, the minimum semester grade point average must be 3.40 or higher, must have earned a minimum of 12 graded credits and must have no missing or incomplete grades.

College of Engineering and Computer Science Spring 2021 Dean’s List

Aerospace Engineering 

Zar Nigar Ahmad

Juanitta Acheampomah Bekoe

Justin Douglas Blowers

Madeline Constance Brooks

Richard L Bruschi

Jakob Samuel Bryant

Nishkreenchan Chowdhury

Owen P Clyne

Nicholas Daniel Crane

Brian James Cronin

Ryan Demis

Aleksandar Dzodic

Kaleb Jonah Eddy

Hans-Christian Esser

Jacob Fastov

Kassidy Fields

Christian Scott Fitzgerald

Benjamin Daniel Gerard

Alexandre J Gill

Sareta Rose Gladson

Jacob D Gomez

Hali Morgan Goodwin

Zachary William Haas

Aidan Hoff

Sydney F Jud

Hunter John Adam Knarr

Trevor Anthony Knight

Zachary Andrew Kubala

Thomas Matthew Lane

Isaac Alan Lehigh

Xinyu Liu

Powers Craig Lynch

Noah Martel

Maxwell Joseph Martin

William Armstrong Martin

Phillip Anthony Mazany

Mariana C McManus

Gian Ettore Mecca

Alexander T Metcalf

Romeo Michelson

John P Michinko

Vincent Anthony Miczek

Kendra Teresa Miller

Paul Robert Mokotoff

Evan Gregory Moore

Brendan Pierce Murty

Mark Namatsaliuk

Jarod I Okamura

Daniel Oluwalana

Randall McGinnis Osborn

David Dang Pham

Madeline G Phelan

Logan D Prye

Nicholas Christopher Richard

Brandon Walker Riley

Kip Risch-Andrews

Emily Muriel Rivard

Tracey Josephine Rochette

Andrew Douglas Rockafellow

Gregory Joseph Ruef

William J Saueressig

Fred Evan Schaffer

Justine John A Serdoncillo

Vraj Shah

Prabha Singh

Gregory C Slodysko Jr

Amanda Marie Stafford

Zachary Michael Stahl

Christopher Stawarski

Ethan J Stocum

Marco Svolinsky

Maria Tarulli

Richard A Tedeschi

Anthony R Tricarico

Cody Joseph VanNostrand

Nicklas M Vinci

Mason Alexander Weber

John T Whitney

Aliza Marie Willsey

Cameron M Woodbury

Melissa Yeung

Bioengineering 

Samantha Abate

Jordyn Danielle Abrams

Bianca Louise Andrada

Gabriela Angel

Colin J Babick

Eric A Benaroch

Paige Bencivenga

Ailla Frances Bishop

Anna Mae Brunson

Zeynep Sue Cakmak

Britnie Jean Carpentier

Jade Ashlee Carter

Elizabeth Ann Clarke

Mya R Cohen

Lukas Cook

Shane A Corridore

Linzy M Dineen

Anthony Mark Dragone

Alejandro J Durand

Jillian P Durand

Bailey M Felix

Mia-Marie Fields

Akweshie A Fon-Ndikum

Gabriela Renee Gonzalez-Beauchamp

Skyla Gordon

Grace Haas

Lauren Elizabeth Hamilton

Victoria Li Rui Hathaway

Brenna Henderson

Avinash Jagroo

Madeline Jones

Simran Karamchandani

Gabriel Khan

Mohamed F Khan

Sara Anne Leonardo

Isabelle S Lewis

Trevor Daniel Amnott Liimatainen

Xinyan Lin

Alejandra Eugenia Lopez

Ethan L Masters

Aelish McGivney

Ian G McHugh

Caitlin R Mehl

Lindy M Melegari

Connor G Mulligan

Hannah V Murphy

Alexander Patrick Musselman

Jeffrey Ng

Jonathan Ngo

Mark Nicola

Nicole E Nielsen

Matthew Evan Orlando

Megan Isabel Perlman

Natalie Marie Petryk

Connor Preston

Beatrice Elizabeth Reilly

Lillian Kilmer Rhuda

Gavin David Richards

Rebecca A Schaefer

Brielle L Seidel

Alyssa Shelburne

Adam M Spadafora

Justin N Stock

Elizabeth Tarami Su

Bearett Ann Tarris

Kimberly Tlayaca

Zhuoqi Tong

Edgardo Velazquez

Carly J Ward

Royce Robert Weber-Pierson

Nathaniel D Wellington

Maximillian Meier Wilderman

Haven M Wittmann

Lauren Margaret Woodford

Rui Xie

Alina Zdebska

Julian Marcus Smucker Zorn

Samantha Zysk

Chemical Engineering

Daud Ansarovich Abdullayev

Paige O Adebo

Keerthivanan Annadorai

Adriana M Archilla

Athena Andrea Basdekis

Lilly Basgall

Sandy Ynhu Cao

Karley M Chambers

Trinity Joy Coates

Olushola Coker

Hao Dai

Dennis Dao

Samantha Esparza

David Anthony Fikhman

Edward Coleman Fluker

Priya S Ganesh

Brent Tadao Gosselin

Hannah Grossman

Avery Gunderson

Oduduabasi James Isaiah

Aiden A Jacobs

Stanley Jimenez

Jake Tyler Jock

Sayf Karim

Laxmi Khatiwada

Adam J Klinger

Simran Dharmendra Lakhani

Gabriel Lipsitz

Nicole Helene Llewellyn

Rawia F A M Marafi

Angela L Martinez

Oliver Mutu

Thomas A O’Brien Jr

Sean O’toole

Fabiana Nohelia Perez

Seth Reed

Ryan Gordon Ryersen

Ivan Yankov Sarbinov

Jacob Matthew Shellhamer

Dakota Alexander Story

Jason Tan

Spencer T Tardy

Megan Varcoe

Briana Nicole Vlacich

Elizabeth M Wall

Connor Andrew Wescott

Melita Zejnilovic

Civil Engineering 

Orges Agolli

Cassie Agren

Anna Rose Arcaro

Nicole Ayora-Gonzalez

Lucas Bellandi

John Blum

Luke S Bonenberger

Arielle Bramble

Matthew Emmet Brewster

Emma Jane Brown

Alycia Joline Bruce

Joli L Cacciatore

Brett M Carney

Trevor Caviness

David Coghiel

Alejandro E Correa

Aymeric P Destree

Thomas Driscoll

Brendan Dwyer

Bradley Charles Frederick

Maraea K Garcia

Stephen Goffredo

Elliane Reut Greenberg

Alyssa Jeannine Griffin

Bensen Gu

Shawn G Gulamerian

Zelin Guo

Matthew Paul Hauser

Qifan He

Catherine E Henn

Maxwell J Karl

Joshua Michael Kaufman

Alexander Gregory Klee

Christopher J Klein

Adam Paul Landry

Abigail G Laschalt

Haben Legesse

Daniel Leyva

Emma Marie Liptrap

Emilija Alise Lizins

Erick Lojano-Quispe

Lluvia Margarita Lopez Garces

John M Mazza

Jessica M McGowan

Amira A Mouline

Mazin F Moya

Marissa R Nicole

Erin E O’Brien

Kevin B Ordonez

Gabriel Jacques Prepetit

Svetislav Radovic

Alexander David Ruppe

Isabella Salgado

Cassie Elizabeth Saracino

Stephanie D Schein

Emma Hayes Schoonover

Juha Wesley Schraden

Ravyn Smith

Caitlin Jane Spillane

Adrian Stiefelmann

Alec Spencer Thompson

Anand Veeraswamy

Christian Viola

Nathan Viramontes

Abigail Meghan Wischerath

Isabelle Wong

Paige H Yamane

Computer Engineering

Chikeluba K Anierobi

Malkiel Asher

Mergim Azemi

Gavin M Beaudry

Kyle J Betten

Jackson Thomas Bradley

Jinzhi Cai

Dynasty Da’Nasia Chance

Yifei Che

Dana Marie Castillo Chea

Guoliang Chen

Hossain Delwar

Xavier Evans

Elizabeth A Fatade

Aidan Robert Harrington

Mehak Jetly

Virkin Jimenez

Benjamin N Johnson

Bikash Khatiwoda

Nicholas Gerard Lee Landry

Jessica K Lat

Matthew B Leight

Jiaxiong Li

Nicholas Kent Magari

Kyle David Maiorana

Isabel M Melo

Nicholas J Mohan

Benjamin Hudson Murray

Jose L Olivera

Jiannuo Pei

Jessica A Reslan

Alfonso E Rivas

Brian Rodriguez

Daniel Rose

Samuel M Rosenthal

Hongyi Ruan

Alexander Segarra

Ritwik Takkar

Shu Wang

Ryan Wolff

Hanyi Xu

Renjie Xu

Ziyun Zhang

Andy Zheng

Computer Science 

Aaron Alakkadan

Sajjad Abdullah Albadri

Kwaku Amofah-Boafo

Giovanna Elizabeth Barsalona

Brian H Belluscio

Dazhi Bi

Maxwell William Hans Bockmann

Joshua Jordan Boucher

Spencer H Bradkin

Bryan Bladimir Bueno Reyes

Bryce Cable

Christopher Manuel Calderon Suarez

Liam M Calnan

Megan J Campbell

Yuecheng Cao

Abby Chapman

Jackie Chen

Runzhou Chen

Siyu Chen

Yixing Chen

Yuhao Chen

Doung Lan Cheung

Season Chowdhury

Konstantinos Chrysoulas

Matthew Cufari

William Stuart Devitt

Ting Dong

Russell Carl Doucet

Nathan B Fenske

Evan Garvey

Grant Thomas Gifford

Brianna S Gillfillian

Brian J Giusti

Justin S Glou

Justin Gluska

Dayong Gu

Tighe Gugerty

Alexander Peter-Anthony Haas

Athanasios Hadjidimoulas

Erika R Hall

Andrew Hamann

Jillian Elizabeth Handrahan

Miranda Rose Heard

Wendy Hesser

Cameron Hoechst

Laurel Howell

Jacob Howlett

Natalie Huang

Xuanye Huang

Nathakorn Jitngamplang

Michael Wesley Jones

Jamed K Kamara

Jaehun Kim

Ekaterina Kladova

Gavin William Kline

Polina Kozyreva

Miksam Kurumbang

Rami L Kuttab

Eric C Lee

Andy Li

Jiaqi Li

Ruowen Li

Arvin Lin

Haochen Lin

Erxi Liu

Jiaming Liu

Jing Liu

Junzhang Liu

Steven Liu

Tiara I Logan

Vikas Gautam Lohana

Cayden Thomas Lombard

Yiheng Lu

Runzhi Ma

Hunter O’Neal Malley

Kanoa Matton

Ryan M May

Anthony Louis Mazzacane

Noah Mechnig-Giordano

Preston Mohr

Thomas J Montfort

Jacob Morrison

Jovanni Nicholas Mosca

Andi Muhaxheri

Paige C Mundie

Krutartha Nagesh

Zoe Anne Neale

Maduakolam Nicholas Onyewu

Maya Ostoin

Daniel Pae

William Anderson Palin

Xiaofeng Pan

Michael J Panighetti

Brian Joseph Pellegrino

Siwei Peng

Anthony Perna

Fiona Colleen Powers Beggs

Akshay Hari Prasad

Shane Michael Race

Lauryn Ashley Rivers

Eric Rodriguez

Sadikshya Sanjel

Jonathan Lee Schwenk

Benjamin William Smrtic

Louanges Essohana Marlene Takou-Ayaoh

Melissa Li Tang

Jonathan Richard Constantine Templeton

Jonathan Ezra Thomas

Kyra Danielle Thomas

Griffin E Timm

Courtney Patricia Tuozzo

Randy C Vargas

Bermalyn Maricel Vicente

Christopher Mark Vinciguerra

Puxuan Wang

Ruobing Wang

Xinyi Wang

Robert Ward

Daniel Weaver

Jonathan Williams

Ethan Wong

Yurui Xiang

Yujie Xu

Chen Yang

Jintao Yang

Jishuo Yang

Stella R Yaunches

Elin J Yaworski

Yian Yu

Yulun Zeng

Chengyuan Zhang

Liaotianbao Zhang

Rixiang Zhang

Weikun Zhang

Zhiyuan Zhang

Hang Zhao

Junjie Zheng

Liuyu Zhou

Xinqian Zhou

Raymond Zhu

Sida Zhu

Joseph Patrick Zoll

Engineering Undeclared

Olivia R Conlin

Michael J McElroy

Electrical Engineering

Minghao Ai

Rebecca Corrine Andino

Tianle Bu

Kevin E Buciak

Yushang Cai

Vincent Alec Camarena

Arianna Maxine Cameron

Yuang Cao

Brendan Robert Ciarlone

Eli Aiden Clark

Nicholas Shawn Connolly

Alex Lev Cramer

Trevonne Davis

Henry C Duisberg

Nicholas Fazzone

Justin P Geary

Matthew R Gelinas

Christopher Gill

Jose I Ginorio

Jack Orlando Guida

Emerson Iannone

Jemma Mallia

Liam Fuller Marcato

Tyler Sean Marston

Zixun Nian  Nian

Kylie Elizabeth Nikolaus

Dylan D Palmer

Julia Pepin

Matthew Piciocchi

Stephen Joseph Rogers

Gilberto E Ruiz

Gabriel E Ruoff

Kayla Ann Saladyga

Jenna Mei Stapleton

Jaime S Sued Jr

Jared William Welch

Ernest C Whitbeck

Abigail Wile

Chongfang-James Xu

Zheyuan Zhang

Environmental Engineering

Ana Cristina Baez Gotay

Luke M Borden

Benjamin R Cavarra

Bessie Chen

Evan James Cibelli

Cambre Rae Codington

Elizabeth Bryant Cultra

Cameron Nicole Edwards

Anna Feldman

Allyson Greenberg

Jessenia Paola Guzman

Brady E Hartnett

Christopher Graham Harvey

Anna M Holdosh

Erica G Jenson

Eva Rose Kamman

Abigail Rose King

Nicholas Colin Axel Kohl

Birch Lazo-Murphy

Audrey B Liebhaber

Samuel Robert Livingston

Carleigh Ann Lutz

Kevin A Lynch

Jiayu Ma

Nicole A Mark

Molly M Matheson

Steph Ricky Millan

Sydney Mitchell

Matthew Edward Nosalek

Scott M Potter

Yongfang Qi

Kaura Yanse Reyes

Jacob Thomas Sardino

Mary H Schieman

Noah Michael Sherman

Husna M Tunje

Jacob M Tyler

Maria Antonia Villegas Botero

Anna Wojcik

Savannah Marie Wujastyk

Yifan Zhong

Qiuyu Zhou

Reilly Zink

Mechanical Engineering

Owyn Phillip Adams

Arfeen Armaghan

Joshua Carl Arndt

Arda Arslan

Rachael O Beresford

Charles Shaw Bowman

Arnaud Buard

Ryan G Burns

Adrian L Caballero

Alexander Joseph Callo

Joseph Timothy Capra

Caleigh J Casey

Rishov Chatterjee

Samuel Joseph Corrigan

Cooper P Crone

David Matthew Denneen

Madeline Doyle

Andrew J Esposito

Cameron Barry Frechette

Elan Fullmer

Clinton Edward Farina Garrahan

Samuel Ryan Getman

Emily Ann Greaney

David M Griffin

Connor Hayes

Zhao Jin

Dong Myeong Kang

Jeremy C Kang

Macauley J Kastner

Daniel Jacob Kenney

Finnian James Kery

Teagan L Kilian

Cherry Kim

Jason T King

Savannah Mae Kreppein

Elizabeth Marcy Kretzing

Trevor D Kroells

Lily Larkin

Peter Le Porin

Honorata Lubecka

Bei Luo

Katherine Elizabeth Macbain

Lauren Mack

Ryan Patrek Martineau

Sarah Ann Michael

Georgios Michopoulos

Leilah Miller

Nicholas Mink

Wiley Robert Moslow

Allison Mullen

Beau M Norris

Aidan T O’Brien

Nicholas Joseph Papaleo

Corey A Phung

Pei Ren

Aidan Riederich

Jeremy Vinton Rosh

Jeffrey Ryu

Colin Santangelo

Nitish Sachin Satpute

Nathan Schnider

Shane M Sefransky

William Kaspar Sherfey

Zachary Ryan Shuler

Eric Silfies

Nathaniel Slabaugh

Owen Nicholas Smith

Ian Storrs

Austin James Sumner

Yiyuan Sun

Matthew K Swanson

Ethan William Tracey

Evan R Tulsky

Taj Asim Whitney

Michael Wong

Tszho Wong

Sean T Wuestman

Maxwell James Yonkers

Xiaoqing Yu

Antony Zheng

Systems & Information Science

Yiyang Dai

Jonathan Richard Deiss

Rodcliff Hall

Skyler Marie Hall

Luke Gregory Hedges

Stacy Kim

Niara A Phoenix

Nadia Olivia Shelburne

Zachary Tyler Williams

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Sucheta Soundarajan Receives NSF CAREER Award

Large networks like social media platforms, highway systems, and even our genes contain vast amounts of data hiding in plain sight. However, the techniques scientists design to learn about the nonlinear relationships within these structures often result in unintentional discrimination against historically disadvantaged groups. These biased outcomes are what electrical engineering and computer science professor Sucheta Soundarajan is working to prevent by bringing fairness to network algorithms.

Soundarajan has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her research on algorithms for network analysis. The grant is a single investigator award intended to support Soundarajan’s professional development. In addition to providing funding for research, it will support a number of non-research service projects.

“Anytime I get a grant it feels great because it is validation from the larger scientific community,” said Soundarajan. “This one especially because it is tied to me as an individual and not just the project. It feels like I am being validated as a scientist. It means a lot.”

Although the award is an individual accomplishment, it is supporting research that has potential to benefit communities around the world. Increasingly, information is becoming acquired from network analysis and what scientists are finding is that despite algorithms not having access to protected attributes like age, disability, gender identification, religion and national origin, they still end up discriminating against these groups.

“What we’re seeing is that people from these minority and disadvantaged groups are being wrongfully discriminated against at a higher rate,” said Soundarajan. “We want to create algorithms that automatically find people central within a network but do it in a way that is fair.”

Soundarajan says criminal sentencing and lending are two examples of areas where algorithms are used to make crucial decisions and where scientists have detected potential wrongful discrimination. Another example of a fairness issue is in the way we connect with each other on social platforms. Friendship recommendation algorithms can exacerbate a tendency for people to seek out those who are similar to themselves.

“Taken to an extreme, if people follow these recommendations, people end up in silos where they only connect to people who are like them and that is how you end up with echo chambers,” said Soundarajan.

Outside of her research, Soundarajan will have the opportunity to hire a graduate student to help develop ethics-based modules that can become part of computer science courses with the hope it will help students develop ethics focused thinking.

“We’re going to design these labs where we will give students a data set and they will apply some algorithms to it and then they will look at the results and they will have to think about are these results fair,” said Soundarajan.

Soundarajan will also be looking into developing continuing education for lawyers. She hopes to create classes that focus on explaining how algorithms can cause discriminatory issues.

Committing her time and talent to something societally meaningful is important to Soundarajan. She credits the support she has received throughout her life as a factor in choosing her research area, and she recognizes the help she has received from members of her department contributed to her latest achievement.

“There has been so much invested in me as a scientist, I feel like I have the moral obligation to do something that benefits everybody,” said Soundarajan. “I have been really fortunate to be surrounded by people who really want to see me succeed and that’s been true at Syracuse University as well. People have given me their time, spending hours reading the proposal that got me this award, and that means a lot to me.”

Engineering and Computer Science Students Attend 2021 ACM Tapia Conference

The Life Sciences Complex at night from above.

Seven students from the College of Engineering and Computer Science attended the 2021 ACM Tapia Conference with help from a STARS Ignite grant awarded to electrical engineering and computer science Professor Farzana Rahman. The ACM Tapia Conference is designed to promote diversity, connect undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers, and professionals in computing from all backgrounds and ethnicities. Before attending the ACM Tapia conference, the student cohort participated in monthly webinar series facilitated by STARS Ignite leadership to mentor students so they can bring the best out of attending diversity conferences, develop value for diversity and inclusiveness in Computing, and contribute to institutional broadening participation activities.

The students had opportunities for workshops and presentations by nationally recognized labs, academic leaders and industry leading companies. A career fair at the conference gave students a chance to meet with recruiters.

“I could have individual meetings with recruiters of different companies in the conference. During meeting with researchers and engineers, I could become more familiar with the culture and projects of companies,” said graduate student Reyhaneh Abdolazimi. “Tapia was also a great opportunity to connect with diverse students from different backgrounds who are looking for job or doing research in the related areas.”

“The early career workshops were very helpful and I was able to connect with some of the presenters to ask about their area of specialization,” said Jemma Mallia ‘23 In many of the career workshops they had a very energetic presenting style that motivated me. Some of the most helpful information included how to optimize my resume, effectively network, seek opportunities, and create opportunities.

“At the Tapia Conference, you can choose the people to speak with. If you choose a recruiter, you may know more about the recruiting process. If you choose a developer, you may know more about the company culture and techniques,” said graduate student Xin Chen.

“I feel as though attending the ACM Tapia conference allowed me to see the diverse paths ahead of me in computing,” said Michael Perry ’22. “I plan to give a talk at our school’s hack-a-thon about broadening participation in computing to hopefully spread the awareness among my community.”

Asif Salekin

Degree:

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Virginia
  • Master of Computer Science, University of Virginia
  • B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Lab Affiliation:

Ubiquitous and Intelligent Sensing (UIS Lab)

Areas of Expertise:

  • Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
  • Machine Learning
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Human Centric Computing and Sensing
  • Wireless, Connected, and Mobile Health.

I am directing the Laboratory for Ubiquitous and Intelligent Sensing (UIS Lab) at Syracuse University. My research takes a multi-disciplinary approach to develop novel and practical human event sensing technologies that capture observable low-level physical signals from human bodies and surrounding environments and employ new machine learning, signal processing, and natural language processing techniques to rectify the existing sensing technologies. My research exquisition goes beyond the conventional learning or sensing approaches and addresses the research challenges, such as the uncertainties in physical world sensing, interpretability of ML inference, human factors such as the user-context and mobility, limitation of current technologies (i.e., IoT, CPS), and resource constraints of the sensing data and computation platform. A core focus of my research program is to integrate passive sensing and interpretable AI to advance human health assessment, identify latent markers, and automate health monitoring and interventions. Major ongoing funded research projects are (1) NSF SCH (Medium): Psychophysiological Sensing to Enhance Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Self-Regulation of Opioid Cravings, (2) NIH R021 and NIH R-01: Understanding speech, speech-motor-control, and emotional process in early childhood stuttering, (3) NSF CPS (Small): Developing a Socio-Psychological CPS for the Health and Wellness of Dairy Cows. 

Honors and Awards:

  • IAAI Deployed Application Award, The Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21)
  • Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Research, Department of Computer Science, UVA, 2018
  • Nominated for the best paper award (AsthmaGuide), Wireless health 2016

Selected Publications:

  • Harshit Sharma, Yi Xiao, Victoria Tumanova, Asif Salekin, “Psychophysiological Arousal in Young Children Who Stutter: An Interpretable AI Approach”, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2022. (and Ubicomp 2022)
  • Jingyu Xin, Vir V. Phoha, Asif Salekin, “Combating False Data Injection Attacks on Human-Centric Sensing Applications”, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2022. (and Ubicomp 2022)
  • Cramer et al., “Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States”, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), 2022.
  • Fatih Altay, Guillermo Ramón Sánchez, Yanli James, Stephen V. Faraone, Senem Velipasalar, Asif Salekin. Preclinical Stage Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Using Magnetic Resonance Image Scans, The Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21).
  • Tianjia He, Lin Zhang, Fanxin Kong, and Asif Salekin. Exploring Inherent Sensor Redundancy for Automotive Anomaly Detection, The 57th Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2020.
  • Salekin, Jeremy W. Eberle, Jeffrey J. Glenn, Bethany A. Teachman, and John A. Stankovic. 2018. A Weakly Supervised Learning Framework for Detecting Social Anxiety and Depression, ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 2, No. 2, Article 81 (June 2018), 26 pages. (and Ubicomp 2018)
  • Salekin, Z. Chen, M. Ahmed, J. Lach, D. Metz, K. de la Haye, B. Bell, and J. Stankovic, Distance Emotion Recognition, ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable, and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 1, Issue 3, Sept. 2017, 96:1-96:24 (Ubicomp 2017)

Farzana Rahman

Degrees:

  • Ph.D., Computer Science, Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA (2013)
  • M.S., Computer Science, Marquette University, Wisconsin, USA (2010)
  • B.S., Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Bangladesh (2008)

Research interests:

  • Mobile and pervasive health technologies
  • Internet-of-Things
  • Computer science education
  • Impact of active learning pedagogy in CS courses
  • Broadening participation of women and underrepresented students in CS

Current research:

Her research spans the domains of mobile healthcare, healthcare data analytics, and pervasive health technologies. Broadly, her research focuses on integrating mobile and pervasive technologies in health and wellness environments to improve users’ quality of life, mental and physical wellbeing. Her research also expands in the direction of mobile security, information and communication technology for development (ICT4D), Computer Science education, broadening participation in computing, best practices in undergraduate research, and how different pedagogical practices can increase diversity in CS. She is also interested in finding why and how people from diverse backgrounds are learning programming in 21stcentury and how the development of new kind of scalable programming environments or platform can support all kind of learners.

Teaching Interests:

  • Introduction to Programming
  • Object-Oriented Programming
  • Data Structure
  • Mobile Application Programming
  • Mobile and Pervasive Computing
  • Computer Architecture

Honors:

  • Provost LA Initiative Award, Florida International University, Spring 2018-2019
  • Best paper award, IEEE Conference on Networking Systems and Security (NSysS’ 16), 2016
  • Systers Pass-It-On (PIO) Award, Anita Borg Institute, 2014
  • Best paper award, IEEE International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom’ 12), 2012

Recent Publications:

  1. Claire Fulk, Grant Hobar, Kevin Olsen, Samy El-Tawab, Puya Ghazizadeh, and Farzana Rahman. Cloud-based Low-cost Energy Monitoring System through the Internet of Things. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop of Mobile and Pervasive Internet of Things (PerIoT 2019), in Conjunction with IEEE Percom ’19. Japan, March 2019.
  2. Farzana Rahman and Samy El-Tawab. App Development for the Social Good: Teaching Socially Conscious Mobile App Development in an Upper-Level Computer Science Course. In Proceedings of the 2019 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition (ASEE ’19), Orlando, FL, July 2019.
  3. Farzana Rahman. Leveraging Visual Programming Language and Collaborative Learning to Broaden Participation in Computer Science. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE ’18), Ft Lauderdale, FL, Oct 2018.
  4. Saiyma Sarmin, Nafisa Anzum, Kazi Hasan Zubaer, Farzana Rahman, A. B. M. Alim Al Islam. Securing Highly-Sensitive Information in Smart Mobile Devices through Difficult-to-Mimic and Single-Time Usage Analytics. In Proceedings of the 15th EAI International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems, Computing, Networking and Services (MobiQuitous ’18), Nov 2018.
  5. Farzana Rahman. From App Inventor to Java: Introducing Object-oriented Programming to Middle School Students Through Experiential Learning. In Proceedings of the 2018 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition (ASEE ’18), Salt Lake City, UT, July 2018.
  6. Farzana Rahman, Healthy Hankerings: Motivating Adolescents to Combat Obesity with a Mobile Application. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International ’18), NV, July, 2018.
  7. Farzana Rahman, Perry Fizzano, Evan M. Peck, Shameem Ahmed, and Stu Thompson. How to Build a Student-Centered Research Culture for the Benefit of Undergraduate Students. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’18), Maryland, Feb 2017.

Qinru Qiu

Degree(s):

  • PhD

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

  • AMPS (Advanced Microprocessor and Power-aware Systems)

Research Interests:

  • Dynamic power and thermal management for computer systems
  • Power and performance optimization of energy harvesting real-time embedded systems
  • Neuromorphic computing and high performance computing for cognitive applications

Current Research:

Excessive energy dissipation has become one of the limiting factors that prevents the sustained growth of computation power of IT facilities. High power consumption reduces system reliability, increases energy and cooling cost, and cuts the battery cycle time of mobile devices. Aiming at curbing the system energy dissipation, green computing has attracted substantial interests in recent years. Dr. Qiu’s primary research interest covers different areas in green computing, from runtime power and thermal management of computer systems to energy harvesting real-time embedded system. The goal of her research is to provide machine intelligence to today’s computing platforms to achieve autonomous resource management with energy and thermal awareness.

Her second research area is architecture design of neuromorphic computing. Neuromorphic computing refers to the emerging computation concept inspired by the principles of information processing in human neural system. It is widely accepted that human beings are much superior to machines in some areas such as image recognition. With the increase of our knowledge on brain function and our capability in realizing massive parallel computation and communication, it is time to investigate new algorithm and hardware architecture for signal processing and perception. Dr. Qiu’s research focuses on the software and hardware development for such computing systems.

Courses Taught:

  • VLSI Design
  • Computer architecture

Honors:

  • ACM SIGDA Distinguished Service Award (2011)
  • NSF Career Award (2009)
  • American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Summer Research Faculty Fellowship (2007)

Selected Publications:

Shen, Y. Tan, J. Lu, Q. Wu and Qinru Qiu, “Achieving Autonomous Power Management Using Reinforcement Learning,”ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, Vol. 18, Iss. 2, pp. 24032, March 2013.

Ge, Qinru Qiu, and Q. Wu, “A Multi-Agent Framework for Thermal Aware Task Migration in Many-Core Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Volume: 20 , Issue: 10, pp. 1758 – 1771, 2012.

Liu, J. Liu, Q. Wu and Qinru Qiu, “Harvesting-Aware Power Management for Real-Time Systems with Renewable Energy,” IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Volume: 20 , Issue: 8, pp. 1473 – 1486, 2012.

Qinru Qiu, Q. Wu, M. Bishop, R. Pino, and R. W. Linderman, “A Parallel Neuromorphic Text Recognition System and Its Implementation on a Heterogeneous High Performance Computing Cluster,” IEEE Transactions on Computers, Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/TC.2012.50.

H. Lu, Qinru Qiu, A. R. Butt and K. W. Cameron, “End-to-End Energy Management,” Computer, 44 (11), November 2011.

Vir V. Phoha

Degree:

  • Ph.D. Texas Tech University

Research Interests:

  • Cyber Security – Cyber offense and defense
  • Machine Learning
  • Smart phones and tablets security
  • Biometrics — network based and standalone

Current Research:

My focus is to do original research that cuts across conventional rigorously defined disciplines and unifies basic and common concepts across disciplines. In particular, my research centers around security (malignant systems, active authentication, for example touch based authentication on mobile devices) and machine learning (decision trees, statistical, and evolutionary methods) with a focus on large time series data streams and static data sets, and computer networks (anomalies, optimization). I am also using these methods to build field realizable defensive and offensive Cyber-based systems.

Courses Taught:

  • Security and Machine learning; Biometrics
  • Applied Cryptography

Honors:

  • IEEE Fellow
  • AAAS Fellow (elected 2018);  NAI Fellow (elect 2020)
  • IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation  Award, 2017
  • SDPS Fellow (elected 2010)
  • ACM Distinguished Scientist (elected 2008)
  • ACM Distinguished Speaker (2012-2015)

Selected Publications:

  • Amith K. Belman, Vir V. Phoha. Discriminative Power of Typing Features on Desktops, Tablets, and Phones for User Identification.ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security. 23(1): 4:1-4:36 (2020)
  • Jin, Vir V. Phoha and R. Zafarani, “Graph-based Identification and Authentication: A Stochastic Kronecker Approach,” in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, doi: 10.1109/TKDE.2020.3025989.
  • Li, W. Wang, Y. Gao, Vir V. Phoha and Z. Jin, “Wrist in Motion: A Seamless Context-Aware Continuous Authentication Framework Using Your Clickings and Typings,” in IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 294-307, July 2020, doi: 10.1109/TBIOM.2020.2997004.
  • Yang Gao; Wei Wang; Vir V Phoha; Wei Sun; Zhanpeng Jin. EarEcho: Using Ear Canal Echo for Wearable Authentication.Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 3, No. 3, Article 81. Publication date: September 2019. Presented in The 2019 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2019), London, UK, September 11-13, 2019.
  • Shukla and Vir V. Phoha, “Stealing Passwords by Observing Hands Movement,” in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 14, no. 12, pp. 3086-3101, Dec. 2019, doi: 10.1109/TIFS.2019.2911171.

Susan Older

Degrees:

  • B.S. in Computer Science, Washington University
  • Ph.D. in Pure & Applied Logic, Carnegie Mellon University

Research Interests:

  • Semantics of programming languages
  • Logics of programs
  • Access control, security, and trust
  • Concurrency theory

Current Research:

My research primarily focuses on the development and application of mathematical models and specialty logics that support reasoning about complex system behavior, such as concurrency and cyber security. My recent work (joint with Shiu-Kai Chin) has centered on a modal logic for reasoning about access control, security, and trust. This logic can be applied at all levels of abstraction, from organizational policies to network protocols to operating-system requirements to hardware.

I am also interested in the technology transfer of these ideas (specifically, through undergraduate and graduate education): how does one best enable budding engineers and computer scientists to deploy these methods to develop assured systems?

Courses Taught:

  • Discrete mathematics
  • Functional programming
  • Programming languages
  • Applications of formal methods for assurance

Selected Publications:

Textbook

Shiu-Kai Chin and Susan Older, Access Control, Security, and Trust: A Logical Approach, Taylor & Francis CRC Press, 2011.

Articles

Susan Older and Shiu-Kai Chin, “Engineering Assurance at the Undergraduate Level,” IEEE Security & Privacy, Volume 10, Number 6, pages 74-77, Nov/Dec 2012.

Shiu-Kai Chin, Erich Devendorf, Sarah Muccio, Susan Older, and James Royer, “Formal Verification for Mission Assurance in Cyberspace,” Proceedings of the 16th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, Orlando, Florida, June 2012.

Glenn Benson, Shiu-Kai Chin, Sean Croston, Karthick Jayaraman, and Susan Older, “Credentials Management for High-Value Transactions,” in Igor Kotenko and Victor Skormin (Eds.), Computer Network Security, 5th International Conference on Mathematical Methods, Models and Architectures for Computer Network Security (MMM-ACNS), St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2010.

Jae C. Oh

Degree(s):

  • Ph.D in Computer Science, The University of Pittsburgh

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

  • Distributed Multi-agent Systems Laboratory (Director)

Areas of Expertise:

  • Distributed systems, multi-agent systems, Game Theory, and Symbolic and Non-Symbolic AI.
  • Studying Interaction dynamics among multiple entities in networked and non-networked environments.

I am interested in studying interaction dynamics among multiple entities in networked and non-networked environments, resource allocation and management in distributed environments, dialogical artificial intelligence, and studies on visual dialogues and visual art.

Honors and Awards:

  • Distinguished Scholar, International Society of Applied Intelligence, 2011.

Selected Publications:

Nathaniel Gemelli, Jeffrey Hudack, Steven Loscalzo and Jae Oh, “”Using Coalitions with Stochastic Search to solve Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence. 2015

A Game Theoretic Framework for Community Detection, The 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2012. Best Paper Award. with K. Mehrotra and P. McSweeny

An Open Co-op Model for Global Enterprise Technology Education: Integrating the Internship and Course Work. SIGCSE 2012. With J. Saltz.

Joo Lee and Jae C. Oh, A Node-Centric Reputation Computation Algorithm on Online Social Networks, in Lecture Notes in Social Networks: Application of Social Media and Social Network Analysis, Springer International Publishing, Eds:, Kazienko, Przemyslaw and Chawla, Nitesh, Pages 1-22.

Jae C. Oh, Emergence of self-reflection through visual dialogues based on evolutionary algorithms,” a description of Informatrix III from a computer science perspective, in the Art Catalogue of 14th International Festival of Intermedia Art, Maribor, Solvenia, October 13, 2008, English), ISBN 978-961-6154-19-2, an Art Catalogue

Wonkyung Park and Jae C. Oh, \New Entropy Model for Extraction of Structural Information from XCS Population,” Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2009 (GECCO 2009), July, Montreal, Canada, ACM, Best paper award.

Chilukuri K. Mohan

Degree(s):

  • Ph. D., State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook
  • B.Tech., Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Lab/Center Affiliation(s) :

  • Syracuse Evolutionary and Neural Systems Exploration (SENSE) Lab
  • Smart Grid Lab

Research Interests:

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Evolutionary algorithms
  • Data mining
  • Social networks
  • Bioinformatics

Current Research:

Recent work has involved the development of algorithms for:

the recognition of patterns in promoter regions of genome sequences,
unsupervised detection of anomalies in data (including time series), and
optimization problems in the design of multiband cognitive radio networks.
Other current work includes the investigation of robustness properties of social networks, as well as the use of network models in understanding the dynamics of evolutionary algorithms.

Teaching Interests:

  • Smart grid
  • Social networks
  • Evolutionary algorithms
  • Neural networks

Honors:

  • Distinguished Scholar Award, International Society of Applied Intelligence, July 2011.

Selected Publications:

Linkage Sensitive Particle Swarm Optimization (D. Devicharan and C.K. Mohan), in Handbook of Swarm Intelligence – Concepts, Principles, and Applications (eds. B.K. Panigrahi, Y. Shi, and B. Lim), pp. 119-132, 2011.

Rank-Based Outlier Detection with (HuaMing Huang, Kishan Mehrotra Chilukuri K. Mohan), in Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Oct. 2011.

Distributed In-Network Path Planning for Sensor Network Navigation in Dynamic Hazardous Environments (D. Chen, C.K. Mohan, K.G. Mehrotra, and P.K. Varshney), in Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 12(8): 739-754, 2012.

SMAlign: Alignment of DNA Sequences with Gap Constraints (F. Alobaid, K. Mehrotra, C.K. Mohan, and R. Raina), in Proc. BICOB, Las Vegas, March 2012.

Reference Set Metrics for Multi-Objective Algorithms (C.K. Mohan and K. Mehrotra), in Proc. SEMCCO, pp.723-730, Dec. 2011.

Joao Paulo Marum

Degrees: 

Ph.D. in Computer Science – University of Mississippi (2021)

Areas of Expertise:

  • Programming Languages
  • Software Engineering
  • Augmented Reality
  • Virtual Reality

My research is focused in using multi-paradigm programming to solve accuracy issues on User Interactive System, especially in Virtual and Augmented Reality.  This research uses dependency relationships between loosely coupled components. We use techniques of Functional Reactive Programming and Change Propagation to identify how a change may cause additional modification in other several components and force the systems to wrap all these modification in a single update cycle. This research resulted in a design pattern that was applied into User Interfaces, Virtual Reality and it can be applied on many other research fields. I am also currently interested in research about CS Education and Accessibility technologies especially focused on education and autonomy.

Honors and Awards:

Dissertation Fellowship Award, University of Mississippi, 2019.

Outstanding Doctoral Student Award, University of Mississippi, 2021.

Order of Engineer inductee, School of Engineering. University of Mississippi. 2021.

Pledge of Computing Professional inductee, School of Engineering. University of Mississippi. 2021.

Upsilon Pi Epsilon inductee, School of Engineering. University of Mississippi. 2021.

IEEE Computer Science Society Professional Member. IEEE. 2021.

IEEE Education Society Professional Member. IEEE. 2021.

ACM SIGSOFT (Special Interest Group – Software Engineering) Professional Member. ACM. 2021

ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group – Computer Science Education) Professional Member. ACM. 2021

ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group – Computer-Human Interaction) Professional Member. ACM. 2021

Brazilian Computing Society (SBC) Professional Honor Member. SBC. 2021.

Selected Publications:

Joao Paulo O. Marum, J. Adam Jones, and H. Conrad Cunningham (2019), Towards a reactive game engine, in Proceedings of the 50th IEEE SouthEastCon, IEEE, Huntsville, AL, USA.

Joao Paulo O. Marum, H. Conrad Cunningham, and J. Adam Jones (2020), Unified library for dependency graph reactivity on web and desktop user interfaces, in Proceedings of the ACM Southeast Conference (ACMSE 2020), ACM, Tampa, FL, USA

Joao Paulo O. Marum, J. Adam Jones, and H. Conrad Cunningham (2020), Dependency graph-based reactivity for virtual environments, in Proceedings of the IEEE VR 2020 Workshop on Software Engineering and Architectures for Interactive Systems (SEARIS), IEEE, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo

Education:

       Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carleton University

       M.A.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carleton University

       B.Eng., Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal

Areas of Expertise:

Routing protocols

Medium access control protocols

Wireless ad hoc networks

Unmanned aerial vehicles’ networks

LEO satellite networks

My research has focused on wireless ad hoc networks, especially the mobile/flying ones. I specialize in the design of routing protocols (Network layer) and medium access control (MAC) protocols (Link layer) for such networks, with the goal of increasing the packet delivery ratio and reducing the end-to-end packet delay/latency while keeping a low overhead. I am interested in integrating artificial intelligence (deep learning, reinforcement learning) in the design. Some applications networks are networks of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV/drones) and networks of LEO satellites.

Selected Publications:

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “A Novel Routing Protocol for Reducing Packet Latency with Multi-Beam Antennas,” in Computer Networks, Vol. 220, 2023.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “MBA-DbMAC: A random-access MAC protocol for MBAs,” in Proceedings of the 11th EAI International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks (AdHocNets 2019), Queenstown, New Zealand, November 2019.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “Exploiting multi-beam antennas for end-to-end delay reduction in ad hoc networks,” in Mobile Networks and Applications, Vol. 23, No. 5, pages 1293-1305, October 2018.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, Marc St-Hilaire, “Exploiting multiple beam antennas for end-to-end delay reduction in ad hoc networks,” in Proceedings of the 9th EAI International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks, Niagara Falls, Canada, September 2017.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “Directional antennas in FANETs: A performance analysis of routing protocols,” in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Selected Topics in Mobile & Wireless Networking (MoWNet’17), Avignon, France, May 2017.

Thomas Kunz, Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, and Marc St-Hilaire, “NetAnalyzer: Analyzing dynamic network topologies,” in Proceedings of the 8th IEEE-IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2015), pp. 64-71, Munich, Germany, October 2015.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, Marc St-Hilaire, and Yifeng Zhou, “Unmanned aerial ad hoc networks: Simulation-based evaluation of entity mobility models impact on routing performance,” in Aerospace Journal, special issue on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 392-422, June 2015.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “An enhanced Gauss-Markov mobility model for simulations of Unmanned Aerial Ad hoc networks,” in Proceedings of the 7th IEEE-IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2014), pp. 1-8, Vilamoura, Portugal, May 2014.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “Routing in Unmanned Aerial Ad hoc networks: Introducing a route reliability criterion,” in Proceedings of the 7th IEEE-IFIP Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (WMNC 2014), pp. 1-7 , Vilamoura, Portugal, May 2014.

Jean-Daniel Medjo Me Biomo, Thomas Kunz, and Marc St-Hilaire, “Routing in unmanned aerial ad hoc networks: A recovery strategy for greedy geographic forwarding failure,” in Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC 2014), pp. 2236-2241, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2014.

Kristopher Micinski

Degree:

  • Doctorate of Philosophy, Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park
  • Bachelor of Science, Computer Engineering, Michigan State University

Areas of Expertise:

  • Programming Languages
  • Static Analysis
  • Formal Methods
  • Foundations of Computer Security and Privacy

My research lies at the intersection of the theory and application of program analyses. Program analyses are tools that examine programs and determine (prove) facts about them. For example, a program analysis might prove that a program can never crash due to a type error. In general, however, program analyses can be arbitrarily complex and infer subtle program invariants relating to myriad applications (such as computer security).

Because program analyses must always approximate program behavior (otherwise they could solve the halting problem), there is an inherent tradeoff between analysis precision and analysis performance. Currently, program analyses are often applied only in limited contexts, as gaining acceptable performance requires too many compromises in terms of analysis precision. My current work focuses on three concurrent threads: tackling fundamental issues relating to scaling static analysis (specifically, scaling analyses to run on supercomputers rather than a single machine as all current analyses do); engineering those analyses (to allow analysis reuse); and applying those analyses to computer security (e.g., to check properties such as information flow and to support complex reverse engineering tasks).

Recent Publications:

  • Symbolic Path Tracing to Find Android Permission-Use Triggers. NDSS Workshop on Binary Analysis Research (BAR 2019).
  • User Comfort with Android Background Resource Accesses in Different Contexts Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2018).
  • User Interactions and Permission Use on Android (CHI 2017).

Andrew C. Lee

Degree(s):

Ph.D. (U. of Maryland, College Park, 1998); M.A. (U. of Maryland, College Park, 1996); M.A. (U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1988); B.A. (U. of Hong Kong, 1987).

Research Interests:

  • Discrete Mathematics
  • Computability Theory
  • Computational Learning
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Logic and Formal Methods

Current Research:

I study the role of queries and the associated learning strategies in solving computational problems. For example, the strategies for playing many board games and on-line games often resemble a basic paradigm in machine learning, namely, to learn a target concept via queries. By studying the (winning) strategies in specific concrete games, we may gain insights to determine the right set of queries and related parameters that are of interest in machine learning applications. I am also interested in graph coloring and graph labeling type problems. Many arise quite naturally in the study of social structures and networks. To better understand them it often requires new algorithms and analysis.

As an educator, I am interested in engaging students to do research. In addition, I like to explore new pedagogies to improve students’ reasoning ability, develop their inquisitiveness and strengthen their problem solving skills. Along in this direction I like to cast some of the research problems listed above in elementary settings and make them accessible to undergraduates and beginning graduate students.

Courses Taught:

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Data structures
  • Algorithms
  • Automata and Computability
  • Formal methods

Selected Publications:

Andrew C. Lee, Sin-Min Lee and Ho-Kun Ng, On the balance index set of bi-regular and tri-regular graphs, 78, Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, August 2011, pp.169-186.

Man Kong, Andrew C. Lee and Sin-Min Lee, On the Balance Index Sets of Homeomorph of Regular Graphs, Congressus Numerantium, vol. 204, Dec. 2010, pp. 193-203.

Andrew C. Lee and Sin-Min Lee and Hsin-Hao Su, On the balanced indexed set of generalized friendship graphs, envelope graphs of cycles and cubic graphs, Congressus Numerantium, 196 (2009), pp. 3-22.

William I. Gasarch and Andrew C. Lee, Inferring answers to queries, Journal of Computing and Systems Sciences Volume 74, No 4, 2008, 490-512.

Bryan S. Kim

Degree:

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, Seoul National University
  • M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Seoul National University
  • B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

Areas of Expertise:

  • Flash and non-volatile memory-based systems
  • Data storage systems
  • File systems and key-value stores
  • Next-generation storage architecture and hardware

I am broadly interested in computer systems and particularly focused on data storage systems. Current research directions include, but are not limited to, capacity-variant storage systems, self-learning systems, and next-generation key-value storage.

Recent Publications:

  • Hyeongyu Lee, Juwon Lee, Minwook Kim, Donghwa Shin, Sungjin Lee, Bryan S. Kim, Eunji Lee, and Sang Lyul Min. “SpartanSSD: a Reliable SSD under Capacitance Constraints,” in ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, 2021
  • Jinhyung Koo, Junsu Im, Jooyoung Song, Juhyung Park, Eunji Lee, Bryan S. Kim, and Sungjin Lee. “Modernizing File System through In-Storage Indexing,” in USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, 2021
  • Jeseong Yeon, Leeju Kim, Youil Han, Hyeon Gyu Lee, Eunji Lee, and Bryan S. Kim. “JellyFish: A Fast Skip List with MVCC,” in ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference, 2020
  • Youil Han, Bryan S. Kim, Jeseong Yeon, Sungjin Lee, and Eunji Lee. “TeksDB: Weaving Data Structures for a High-Performance Key-Value Stores,” in International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS), 2019
  • Bryan S. Kim, Eunji Lee, Sungjin Lee, Sang Lyul Min. “CPR for SSDs,” in ACM SIGOPS Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS), 2019
  • Bryan S. Kim, Jongmoo Choi, and Sang Lyul Min. “Design Tradeoffs for SSD Reliability,” in USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST), 2019
  • Geonhee Lee, Hyeon Gyu Lee, Juwon Lee, Bryan S. Kim and Sang Lyul Min. “An Empirical Study on NVM-based Block I/O Caches,” in ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys), 2018
  • Bryan S. Kim, Hyun Suk Yang, and Sang Lyul Min. “AutoSSD: an Autonomic SSD Architecture,” in USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC), 2018
  • Bryan S. Kim. “Utilitarian Performance Isolation in Shared SSDs,” in USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage), 2018
  • Bryan S. Kim, Yonggun Lee, and Sang Lyul Min. “Framework for Efficient and Flexible Scheduling of Flash Memory Operations,” in IEEE Non-Volatile Memory Systems and Applications (NVMSA), 2017
  • Bryan S. Kim and Sang Lyul Min. “QoS-aware Flash Memory Controller,” in IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2017

Garrett Ethan Katz

Degrees:

  • B.A. Philosophy, Cornell University, 2007
  • M.A. Mathematics, City College of New York, 2011
  • Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017

Areas of Expertise:

  • Automated Planning
  • Automated Program Induction and Synthesis
  • Robotic Manipulation
  • Neural Computation

Current Research:

My research focuses on “vertically integrated” artificial intelligence, ranging from low-level robotic motor control and synaptic learning rules to high-level planning and abstract reasoning.  My recent work has focused on neurocomputational systems for cognitive-level robotic imitation learning.

Honors and Awards:

  • Best Paper Award at the SAI Computing Conference, 2020
  • Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation Award, UMD, 2018
  • Best Student Paper Award at the 9th International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence 2016

Selected Publications:

  • Katz GE, Tahir N.  Towards Automated Discovery of God-Like Folk Algorithms for Rubik’s Cube.  In 2022 AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.  AAAI.
  • Katz GE, Akshay, Davis GP, Gentili RJ, Reggia JA. Tunable Neural Encoding of a Symbolic Robotic Manipulation Algorithm. Frontiers in Neurorobotics. 2021:167.
  • Tahir N, Katz GE. Numerical Exploration of Training Loss Level-Sets in Deep Neural Networks. In 2021 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2021 (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
  • Katz GE, Gupta K, Reggia JA. Reinforcement-based Program Induction in a Neural Virtual Machine. In 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2020 (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Can Isik

Degree(s):

  • Ph.D. University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 1985.
  • M.S. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 1980.
  • B.S. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 1978.

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

  • Syracuse Center of Excellence
  • CASE Center

Research Interests:

  • Intelligent systems applications
  • Indoor environment control
  • Modeling and forecasting for financial systems
  • Medical Instrumentation

Current Research:

Modeling complex systems for improved control, forecasting, and signal processing is at the heart of my current research. I use a combination of analytical and computational methods, such as neural nets, fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms, validated by experimental and simulated data. We have applied this approach to process control, indoor environmental control, medical instrumentation, diagnostics and prognostics, and computational finance.

Courses Taught:

  • Controls

Honors:

  • Eta Kappa Nu, Member
  • Tau Beta Pi, Member
  • Golden Key, Honorary Member
  • Who is Who in Science and Engineering, 9th Edition, 2006
  • Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher, Eta Kappa Nu Syracuse University Chapter, 1998
  • K.S. Fu Award, North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, 1997
  • Outstanding Service Award, Syracuse University, College of ECS, 1997
  • Who is Who in American Education, 4th Edition, 1994
  • University of Florida, Presidential Recognition, 1983

Selected Publications:

Dhummi, V., D. W. Demetriou, H. Palanthandalam-Madapusi, H. E. Khalifa, C. Isik, “Robust Occupancy-based Distributed Demand Ventilation”, International J. of Ventilation, Volume 9, No 4, March 2011.

Colak, S., C. Işık, H. E. Khalifa, J. Dannenhoffer, J. Grunewald, “Heat and Moisture Transport Modeling for a Protective Garment with an Active Sweating Device”, in ASME Congress, Vancouver, Canada, 2010.

Demetriou, D., O. Ozdemir, H. E. Khalifa and C. Isik, “Distributed Demand Controlled Ventilation for Improving IAQ”, Proc. Indoor Air 2008, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008.

Sazli, M.H., Isik, C., “Neural Network Implementation of the BCJR Algorithm”, Digital Signal Processing, Volume 17, January 2007, pp 353-359.

Ari, S., I. Cosden, H. E. Khalifa, J. Dannenhoffer, P. Wilcoxen, and C. Isik, “Individual Thermal Comfort and Energy Optimization”, Proc. Clima2007, Helsinki, Finland, 2007.

S. Zhang, C.K. Mohan, P. Varshney, C. Isik, K. Mehrotra, S. Wang, Z. Gao, and R. Rajagopalan, “Coupling of Airflow and Pollutant Dispersion Models with Evacuation Planning Algorithms for Building System Controls”, ASHRAE Transactions. Vol. 112. Part 1. 2006.

Isik, C., “Blood Pressure Measurement”, invited chapter, the Encyclopedia of Medical Devices and Instrumentation, 2nd Ed, Vol 1. John G. Webster (Ed), Wiley, 2006.

Endadul Hoque

Degree:

  • Ph.D., Computer Science, Purdue University, 2015
  • M.S., Computer Science, Marquette University, 2010
  • B.S., Computer Science and Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, 2008

Research interests:

  • Security of computer networks and systems
  • IoT systems security
  • Program analysis, software testing and verification
  • Vulnerability detection

Current Research:

His research focuses on the security of computer networks and systems. The software of computer networks and systems continues to have exploitable vulnerabilities, which are lucrative targets for adversaries. Within this broad domain, his particular emphasis is on automated detection of vulnerabilities as well as creating resilient protocols and systems. His research primarily builds on and expands program analysis, software engineering, and formal verification. His interests span several domains of computing, including network communication protocols, operating systems, distributed systems, internet-of-things (IoT) systems and embedded devices.

Honors:

  • Distinguished Paper Award at NDSS (Network and Distributed System Security Symposium) 2018
  • Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship Award from the Graduate School at Purdue University, 2015
  • Graduate Teaching Fellowship Award from Dept. of Computer Science at Purdue University, 2014

Recent Publications:

  1. Yahyazadeh, P. Podder, E. Hoque, and O. Chowdhury. Expat: Expectation-based Policy Analysis and Enforcement for Appified Smart-Home Platforms. In the proceedings of the 24th ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT 2019), Toronto, ON, Canada, June 2019
  2. Samuel Jero, Endadul Hoque, David Choffnes, Alan Mislove, and Cristina Nita-Rotaru. Automated Attack Discovery in TCP Congestion Control Using a Model-guided Approach. In the proceedings of Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), San Diego, California, Feb 2018. [Distinguished Paper Award]
  3. Endadul Hoque, Omar Chowdhury, Sze Yiu Chau, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, and Ninghui Li. Analyzing Operational Behavior of Stateful Protocol Implementations for Detecting Semantic Bugs. In the Proceedings of IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), Denver, CO, June 2017.
  4. Sze Yiu Chau, Omar Chowdhury, Endadul Hoque, Huangyi Ge, Aniket Kate, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, and Ninghui Li. SymCerts: Practical Symbolic Execution For Exposing Noncompliance in X.509 Certificate Validation Implementations. In the Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), San Jose, CA. May 2017.

M. Cenk Gursoy

Degree(s):

  • Ph.D. , Princeton University, 2004.
  • B.S., Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, 1999.

Lab/ Center/ Institute Affiliations:

Director, Wireless Communication and Networking Lab.

Senior Research Associate and Core Faculty Member, Autonomous Systems Policy Institute

Areas of Expertise:

Wireless Networking

Signal Processing

Communication/Information Theory

Machine Learning

Decision Making Theory

Optimization

Unmanned Systems

Dr. Gursoy has broad research expertise in the general areas of wireless communications and networking, signal processing, information theory, optimization, and machine learning. In particular, he has conducted research in detection and estimation, hypothesis testing, anomaly detection, optimal resource allocation, wireless performance evaluation, cognitive radio networks, dynamic spectrum access, energy efficiency analysis, multiple-antenna communication, millimeter wave communications, low-latency communications, physical-layer security, radio access networks, scheduling, edge computing, content caching, and 4G/5G/beyond-5G wireless network design. His expertise in information theory includes the analysis of wireless channel capacity and optimal signaling and coding schemes. He further has expertise in machine learning through the design, implementation and application of deep learning, reinforcement learning, and federated learning algorithms. Moreover, he has studied sequential optimization and decision-making in highly dynamic scenarios (involving autonomous and unmanned systems), and security and privacy in distributed learning.

Honors and Awards:

  • 2020 IEEE Region 1 Technological Innovation (Academic) Award
  • 2019 The 38th AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference Best of Session    Award.
  • 2017 IEEE Green Communications & Computing Technical Committee Best Journal Paper Award.
  • 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) Best Paper Award
  • 2008 EURASIP Journal of Wireless Communications and Networking Best Paper Award
  • NSF CAREER Award

Selected Publications:

Selected Publications:

  • X. Wang and M. C. Gursoy, “Resilient Path Planning for UAVs in Data Collection Under Adversarial Attacks,” in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 18, pp. 2766-2779, 2023.
  • M. Guo and M. C. Gursoy, “Joint Activity Detection and Channel Estimation for Intelligent-Reflecting-Surface-Assisted Wireless IoT Networks,” in IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 10, no. 12, pp. 10207-10221, June, 2023.
  • Y. Zhu, X. Yuan, Y. Hu, T. Wang, M. C. Gursoy and A. Schmeink, “Low-Latency Hybrid NOMA-TDMA: QoS-Driven Design Framework,” in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 3006-3021, May 2023.
  • Y. Zhu, Y. Hu, X. Yuan, M. C. Gursoy, H. V. Poor and A. Schmeink, “Joint Convexity of Error Probability in Blocklength and Transmit Power in the Finite Blocklength Regime,” in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 2409-2423, April 2023.
  • Y. Shi, Y. E. Sagduyu, T. Erpek and M. C. Gursoy, “How to Attack and Defend NextG Radio Access Network Slicing with Reinforcement Learning,” IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology, vol. 4, pp. 181-192, 2023.
  • D. Deng, X. Li, S. Dang, M. C. Gursoy and A. Nallanathan, “Covert Communications in Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Two-Way Relaying Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 12380-12385, Nov. 2022
  • X. Wang, M. C. Gursoy, T. Erpek, and Y. E. Sagduyu, “Learning-Based UAV Path Planning for Data Collection with Integrated Collision Avoidance,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 9, no. 17, pp. 16663-16676, Sep. 2022.
  • X. Wang and M. C. Gursoy, “Learning-Based UAV Trajectory Optimization with Collision Avoidance and Connectivity Constraints,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 4350-4363, Jun. 2022.
  • Z. Lu, C. Zhong, and M. C. Gursoy, “Dynamic Channel Access and Power Control in Wireless Interference Networks via Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 71, no. 2, pp. 1588-1601, Feb. 2022.
  • Z. Xu, J. Tang, C. Yin, Y. Wang, G. Xue, J. Wang, M. C. Gursoy, “ReCARL: Resource Allocation in Cloud RANs with Deep Reinforcement Learning,” EEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 2533-2545, Jul. 2022
  • M. Guo and M. C. Gursoy, “Joint Activity Detection and Channel Estimation in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks with Massive Connectivity,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 317-331, Jan. 2022.
  • H. Huang, D. Qiao and M. C. Gursoy, “Age-Energy Tradeoff Optimization for Packet Delivery in Fading Channels,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 179-190, Jan. 2022.
  • F. Wang, C. Zhong, M. C. Gursoy, and S. Velipasalar, “Resilient Dynamic Channel Access via Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 163188-163203, 2021.
  • P. Sinha, I. Guvenc, and M. C. Gursoy, “Fundamental Limits on Detection of UAVs by Existing Terrestrial RF Networks,” IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 2, pp. 2111-2130, 2021
  • X. Wang and M. C. Gursoy, “Uplink Coverage in Heterogeneous mmWave Cellular Networks with Clustered Users,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, 2021.
  • M. Guo and M. C. Gursoy, “Statistical Learning Based Joint Antenna Selection and User Scheduling for Single-Cell Massive MIMO Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 471-483, March 2021

Jennifer W. Graham

Electromagnetic, complex media, antenna design and modeling

Education:

  • B.S.E.E Syracuse University, 2000
  • M.S.E.E. Syracuse University, 2004
  • Ph.D. Syracuse University, 2012

Current Research:

My current research includes understanding the behavior of electromagnetic waves in complex media specifically anisotropic media. I have studied biaxially anistropic media with the most depth including wave propagation and reflection and transmission.

I also have research interest in antennas including antenna modeling and measurement. I have combined research areas by modeling microstrip antennas printed on biaxially anisotropic substrates.

Courses taught:

  • ECS 101:  Introduction to Engineering and Computer Science
  • ELE 331:  Digital Circuits and Systems
  • ELE 333:  Analog Circuits
  • ELE 621:  Electromagnetic Fields
  • ELE 623:  Microwave Measurements
  • ELE 722:  Microwave Filters
  • ELE 726:  Computational Methods of Field Theory

Selected Publications:

J.W. Graham, J.K. and Lee, “Electromagnetic Waves in Biaxially Anisotropic Media,” Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. 1–15 2015.

J.W. Graham and J. K. Lee, “Reflection and Transmission from Biaxially Anisotropic-Isotropic Interfaces,” Progress in Electromagnetic Research, PIER 136, 681-702, 2013.

J.W. Graham and J. K. Lee, “Rectangular Patch Antennas on Biaxial Substrates,” IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, Orlando, FL July 2013.

J.W. Graham and J. K. Lee, “Microstrip Dipoles Printed on Biaxial Substrates,” IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, Chicago, IL July 2012.

J.W. Graham and J. K. Lee, “Reflection and Transmission at Isotropic-Biaxial Interface,” URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, Istanbul, Turkey, August 2011.

J.W. Graham, G. F. Pettis, and J. K. Lee, “Symmetrical Property of Dyadic Green’s Functions for Layered Anisotropic Medium,” IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation/URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Toronto Ontario, Canada, July 2010.

Nadeem Ghani

Areas of Expertise:

Human Vision and Psychophysics

Neurophysiology

Human Factors

Software Engineering and Design

Multi-disciplinary approaches to problems like GUI design and visualizations. Biology inspired computing.

Prasanta K. Ghosh

Degree(s):

  • Ph. D. Pennsylvania State University

Research Interests:

  • Smart grid
  • Sensors and measurement
  • High speed electronic devices and integrated circuits
  • Power engineering
  • Power electronics

Current Research:

I am actively developing several research projects in the area of Smart Grid systems, including Distributed Resources, EVs, Microgrid Design and Analysis. Other projects include the design and analysis of FinFET, as well as the development of Thin Film Sensors.

Courses Taught:

  • Electronics devices
  • Circuits
  • Power engineering
  • Diversity and ethics in the workplace

Selected Publications:

Nikkhah Mojdehi, P. Ghosh, and M. Fardad, “Energy and Cost Minimization of Bidirectional Frequency Regulation Service by EV following FERC Order 755,” IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, 2015.

Mohammad Nikkhah Mojdehi and Prasanta Ghosh, “Minimization of Energy Usage and Cost for EV during Reactive Power Service”, Best Student Paper, IEEE International conference on Smart Energy Grid Engineering, 2015.

Chenrui Jin, Xiang Sheng and Prasanta Ghosh, “Optimized Electric Vehicle Charging with Intermittent Renewable Energy Sources”, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, Vol. 8, No. 6, pp 1063-1072, 2014.

Chenrui Jin, Jian Tang, Prasanta Ghosh, “Optimizing Electric Vehicle Charging with Energy Storage in the Electricity Market,” IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, vol.4, no.1, pp311-320, 2013.

Feng and P. Ghosh, “Design Consideration in the Development of Multi-Fin FETs for RF Applications” World Journal of Nano Science and Engineering, 2012.

Venkata S.S. Gandikota

Degrees:

  • Ph.D. Computer Science – Purdue University
  • MS Computer Science – Purdue University
  • MSc Mathematics – Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa, India
  • B.E. Computer Science – Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Goa, India

Areas of Expertise:

  • Coding Theory & Lattices
  • Sparse Recovery
  • Sublinear algorithms
  • Foundations of Machine Learning

Venkata’s research focuses on the algorithmic aspects of computing with structured data and their applications in various domains such as communication, data storage, health care, and collaborative learning. His research mainly aims to identify an underlying structure in the data that can be leveraged to design efficient algorithms for certain computational tasks. When the data is devoid of any favorable structure, we aim to embed one to facilitate computations. In the process, we use tools and develop techniques from several areas of mathematics and computer science like optimization, coding theory, high-dimensional geometry, the geometry of numbers, sublinear-time algorithms, and differential privacy.

Honors and Awards:

  • SOURCE 2022 — Research Assistant Grant to support undergraduate student involvement in research.
  • CUSE Seed Grant 2021.

Selected Publications:

Makan Fardad

Degree(s):

  • BSc in Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 1998.
  • MSc in Control Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, 2000
  • PhD in Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006

Areas of Expertise:

  • Convex optimization
  • Complex networks
  • Dynamical systems
  • Control theory

Makan Fardad has expertise in convex optimization and its applications in the areas of distributed control, signal processing, and social networks.

Honors:

  • Dean’s Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, 2015.
  • Recipient of 3 National Science Foundation Awards, 2009, 2013, 2015.

Selected Publications:

Fardad, F. Lin, and M. R. Jovanovic, “Design of Optimal Sparse Interconnection Graphs for Synchronization of Oscillator Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 59, pp. 2457-2462, 2014.

Lin, M. Fardad, and M. R. Jovanovic, “Algorithms for Leader Selection in Stochastically Forced Consensus Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 59, pp. 1789-1802, 2014.

Lin, M. Fardad, and M. R. Jovanovic, “Design of Optimal Sparse Feedback Gains via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 58, pp. 2426-2431, 2013.

Lin, M. Fardad, and M. R. Jovanovic, “Optimal Control of Vehicular Formations with Nearest Neighbor Interactions,” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 57, pp. 2203-2218, 2012.

Fardad and M. R. Jovanovic, “Design of Optimal Controllers for Spatially Invariant Systems with Finite Communication Speed,” Automatica, vol. 47, pp. 880-889, 2011.

Sara Eftekharnejad

Degree(s):

  • Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, Arizona State University, 2012
  • MSc. , Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, 2008
  • BSc., Electrical Engineering, University of Tehran, 2006

Research Interests:

  • Integration of renewable energy into power systems
  • Power system stability and control
  • Power system reliability and security
  • Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) in smart grids

Current Research:

My research focuses on integration of renewable energy resources and power system stability with high penetration of renewables. I investigate how power systems are impacted when various renewables are integrated into systems. I also investigate how power system operation and planning needs to be modified to accommodate more renewables while achieving reliable power systems.

I also investigate the problems at the intersection of network science theory and power system analysis. This includes identification of critical contingencies and solutions to prevent cascading blackouts.

Courses taught:

  • Introduction to Power Systems
  • Power System Analysis
  • Power Electronics

Selected Publications:

Eftekharnejad, G.T. Heydt, and V. Vittal., “Optimal Generation Dispatch with High Penetration of Photovoltaic Generation”, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, Vol 6, Issue 3, pages 1013-1020, July 2015.

Eftekharnejad, V. Vittal, G.T. Heydt, B. Keel, and J. Loehr, “Impact of Increased Penetration of Photovoltaic Generation on Power Systems”, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 28, Issue 2, pages 893 – 901, May 2013.

Eftekharnejad, V. Vittal, G.T. Heydt, B. Keel, and J. Loehr, “Small Signal Stability Assessment of Power Systems with Increased Penetration of Photovoltaic Generation: A Case Study”, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, Vol. 4, Issue 4, pages 960 – 967, October 2013.

Ehat Ercanli

Degree:

  • Ph.D. Computer Engineering, Case Western Reserve University

Research Interests:

  • Computer Architecture
  • Embedded System Design
  • System Verification
  • VLSI Design Automation

Areas of Expertise:

  • Embedded System Design
  • Computer Architecture
  • Database Systems
  • Design Automation
  • System Verification and Testing

Selected Publications:

  • Improving Memory Space Utilization in Multi-core Embedded Systems using Task Recomputation. Koc H, Tosun S, Kandemir M, and Ercanli E, International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 1, Issue 5, pp. 27-34, Oct 2012.
  • Exploiting Large On-Chip Memory Space Through Data Recomputation, Koc H, Kandemir M, Ercanli E. In Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International SoC Conference (SOCC 2010), pp. 513-518, Las Vegas, NV, Sept 2010.
  • An ILP Formulation for Recomputation Based SPM Management for Embedded CMPs. Koc H, Ercanli E, Kandemir M, Ozturk O; In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Optimizations for DSP and Embedded Systems (ODES’07). San Jose, CA. Mar 2007.
  • Reducing Off-Chip Memory Access Costs Using Data Recomputation in Embedded Chip Multi-processors. Koc H, Kandemir M, Ercanli E, Ozturk O; In Proceedings of the 44th Design Automation Conference (DAC’07). San Diego, CA. June 2007. (Ranked #3 in Most Popular Papers Category from ACM Digital Library’s Refereed Journals and Conference Proceedings Downloaded in September 2007).
  • Compiler-Directed Temporary Array Elimination. Koc H, Ercanli E, Kandemir M, Son SW. The 4th Workshop on Optimizations for DSP and Embedded Systems. NY. Feb 2006.
  • Minimizing Energy Consumption of Banked Memories Using Data Recomputation. Koc H, Ozturk O, Kandemir M, Narayanan S, Ercanli E. In Proceedings of Intl Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED’06). Tegernsee, Germany. Oct 2006.
  • Automated Code Generation For Database Applications. Ercanli E, Ozgencil N, Kahraman MG. The 14th Intl Conference on Intelligent and Adaptive Systems and Software Engineering (ISCA’05). Toronto, Canada, June 2005.
  • A Register File and Scheduling Model for Application Specific Processor Synthesis. Ercanli E, Papachristou C. The 33rd IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC’96), Las Vegas, NV, June 1996.
  • A Research Database For Improved Data Management And Analysis In Longitudinal Studies. Bielefeld R, Yamashita T, Kerekes E, Ercanli E, Singer L.  M.D. Computing. Vol. 12. NO. 3. 1995.
  • Custom Processor Design for Image Processing Applications. Ercanli E, Papachristou C. The 10th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS’95). Sept 1995.

Shiu-Kai Chin

Degree:

  • Ph. D. Syracuse University

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

  • Center for Information Systems Assurance and Trust
  • Institute for National Security and Counter Terrorism

Areas of Expertise:

  • Computer security
  • Systems assurance
  • Formal verification

Shiu-Kai Chin’s research uses mathematical logic for the design and verification of trustworthy computer systems. Examples of computer systems that must be trustworthy are command and control systems, financial services, and distributed control of the power grid. His focus is on policy-based design and verification with an emphasis on using computer-assisted reasoning using higher-order logic theorem provers.

Shiu-Kai supports the Air Force’s research in trustworthy systems and hardware-based security. His work with JP Morgan Chase was used to reason about the security and integrity of credentials and entitlements in large-value commercial transactions.

Honors and Awards:

  • Provost Faculty Fellow
  • Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence
  • Chancellor’s Citation for Outstanding Contributions to the University’s Academic Programs
  • 2005 Syracuse University Outstanding Teacher of the Year
  • Crouse Hinds Award for Excellence in Education

Selected Publications:

Shiu-Kai Chin, “Teaching Undergraduates Certified Security by Design,” 19th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, Las Vegas, NV, June 15-17, 2015.

Glenn Benson, Shiu-Kai Chin, Sean Croston, Karthick Jayaraman, Susan Older, Banking on interoperability: Secure, interoperable credential management, Computer Networks, Volume 67, 2014, pp. 235-251.

Shiu-Kai Chin, Erich Devendorf, Sarah Muccio, Susan Older, and James Royer, “Formal Verification for Mission Assurance in Cyberspace: Education, Tools, and Results,” Proceedings of the 16th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, Lake Buena Vista, FL, June 11-13, 2012, pp. 75—82.

Shiu-Kai Chin and Susan Older, Access Control, Security, and Trust: A Logical Approach, CRC Press, 2011.

Shiu-Kai Chin, “Logic Design for Access Control, Security, and Trust,” (Invited Keynote) Engineering of Reconfigurable Systems and Algorithms (ERSA’11) Las Vegas, 18-21 July 2011

Shiu-Kai Chin, Sarah Muccio, Susan Older, and Thomas N. J. Vestal, “Policy-Based Design and Verification for Mission Assurance,” in Igor Kotenko and Victor Skormin (Eds.), Computer Network Security, 5th International Conference on Mathematical Methods, Models and Architectures for Computer Network Security, MMM-ACNS 2010, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2010.

Glenn Benson, Shiu-Kai Chin, Sean Croston, Karthick Jayaraman, and Susan Older, “Credentials Management for High-Value Transactions,” in Igor Kotenko and Victor Skormin (Eds.), Computer Network Security, 5th International Conference on Mathematical Methods, Models and Architectures for Computer Network Security, MMM-ACNS 2010, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 2010.

Biao Chen

Degree(s):

  • Ph. D., University of Connecticut

Lab/Center Affiliation:

  • Communication Laboratory

Areas of Expertise:

  • Information Theory
  • Signal Processing
  • Statistical Learning Theory

Chen’s area of research interest mainly focuses on information theory, signal processing, and foundational theory to machine learning, with applications to wireless communications and sensor networks. On the applied side, he has worked extensively on software radio system design, including leading two student teams to compete as finalist in the DARPA Spectrum Challenge and DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. His most recent endeavors include the development of passive RF sensing theory and systems for a variety of indoor situational awareness missions.

Honors and Awards:

IEEE Fellow (2015)

NSF CAREER Award (2006)

Selected Publications:

  • Y. Liu, T. Wang, Y. Jiang and B. Chen, “Harvesting Ambient RF for Presence Detection Through Deep Learning” , IEEE Trans. Neural Networks and Learning Syst., vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 1571-1583, April 2022, doi: 10.1109/TNNLS.2020.3042908.
  • S. Zhu, B. Chen, Z. Chen and P. Yang, “Asymptotically Optimal One- and Two-Sample Testing With Kernels,” in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 2074-2092, April 2021, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2021.3059267.
  • G. Xu, W. Liu and B. Chen, “A Lossy Source Coding Interpretation of Wyner’s Common Information,” in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 754-768, Feb. 2016, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2015.2506560.
  • H. Chen, B. Chen and P. K. Varshney, “A New Framework for Distributed Detection With Conditionally Dependent Observations,” in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 1409-1419, March 2012, doi: 10.1109/TSP.2011.2177975.
  • X. Shang, G. Kramer and B. Chen, “A New Outer Bound and the Noisy-Interference Sum–Rate Capacity for Gaussian Interference Channels,” in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 689-699, Feb. 2009, doi: 10.1109/TIT.2008.2009793.

C.Y. Roger Chen

Degree(s):

  • Ph. D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987

Research Interests:

  • VLSI timing analysis and simulation
  • Transistor/circuit level power leakage reduction
  • Software debugging and verification
  • Distributed data sharing and collaboration

Current Research:

A current work that a doctoral student and I are working on is to develop techniques to reduce leakage power of circuits during idle times. Two specific techniques are developed: (1) Leakage power behavior is examined for reordering serially connected transistor blocks. Based on that, we can then determine a primary input vector to a circuit to reduce its leakage power during idle mode. (2) Effect of body bias is studied for nano-scale transistor. A hybrid technique (mixing reverse body bias and forward body bias) is developed to reduce power leakage during idle mode. Another current work that a doctoral student and I are working on is to develop a tool for software debugging and verification. Traditional IDE allows setting of break points, but provides minimum supports in reasoning and bug locating. The goal of this research work is to allow programmers to query various properties of programs and help locating the causes of property violations. Another current work that a doctoral student and I are working on is to design a transistor level circuit simulator, which gives an accuracy near that of SPICE, and can handles much larger circuits in much less run time. Other research work involves distributed data sharing and collaboration, design of platform and protocol for emergency response systems, etc.

Teaching Interests:

  • VLSI timing analysis
  • VLSI computer-aided design
  • Transistor level leakage power reduction
  • Multimedia information systems
  • Modeling and performance evaluation of computer/communication systems
  • Object-oriented databases
  • Computer networks
  • Parallel/distributed processing
  • Computer architecture

Select Publications:

Don P. McGarry, C.Y. Roger Chen.; “IC.NET — Incident Command “Net”: A system using EDXL-DE for intelligent message routing,” 2010 IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST), pp. 197 – 203, Nov. 2010.

Jae Woong Chun and C. Y. Roger Chen, A Novel Leakage Power Reduction Technique for CMOS Circuit Design, IEEE International SoC Design Conference (ISOCC), Nov. 1010.

Veerapaneni Nagbhushan, C. Y. Roger Chen: Modeling and reduction of complex timing constraints in high performance digital circuits. IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD) 2009

Ting-Wei Chiang, C Y Roger Chen and Wei-Yu Chen , “A Technique for Selecting CMOS Transistor Orders,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), Oct. 2007.

Ting-Wei Chiang, C Y Roger Chen and Wei-Yu Chen, “An Efficient Gate Delay Model for VLSI Design,” IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), Oct. 2007.

Tomislav Bujanovic

Degree(s):

  • Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Lab/Center Affiliation(s):

Smart Grid Lab

Smart Grid and Power Engineering Lab at Syracuse University has been developed to support teaching and research in contemporary Power Engineering.

  • Power Engineering Lab section has been designed for basic and advanced teaching and research in Power Electronics, Sensors & Measurements, Electromechanical Devices, including control systems, communication, and signal processing aspects. The advanced power electronics boards, supported by the real-time interfaces, are equipped for modern undergraduate and graduate level contemporary experimentation in power electronics and electromechanical devices.
  • Smart Grid Lab section enables continued development of a multidisciplinary research concept that includes advances in communication and control systems, cyber-security, privacy, and economics. This section consists of the setups for electrical transmission and distribution system, solar and wind energy integration, and synchrophasor measurement technology implementation.
  • Smart Home Lab section has been designed for building wired and wireless communication infrastructure and algorithm development for future smart home ideas. The lab is equipped with smart metering infrastructure, providing state-of-the-art environment to our researchers.
  • Distant learning concept implementation in Smart Grid Lab has been developed to enable the on-line lectures and student presentations, as well as the distant lab experiment demonstrations.

Research Interests:

  • Distributed generation integration and control in electric power microgrid
  • Dynamic optimization of microgrid operations and islanding capabilities
  • Microgrid secure communication and cybersecurity infrastructure
  • Singularity detection and classification and signal segmentation
  • Segmentation and motion estimation in time-varying images

Current Research:

  • Methodology for the development of sustainable microgrid infrastructure with distributed generation including difficult‑to‑predict renewable energy sources (survey of existing assets, economic feasibility study, technical feasibility study, microgrid design and pre‑deployment parameter validation, on‑site commissioning, post‑deployment metrics validation)
  • Microgrid stability and protection challenges (synchrophasor technology implementation for real time monitoring and control, protection schemes coordination with distributed generation, merging challenges of monitoring and protection infrastructure)
  • Sustainable microgrid operations by real time load scheduling optimization, using nonlinear and heuristic approaches
  • Microgrid cyber secure, distributed, and resilient communication architecture
  • Smart metering implementation for demand priority optimization and consumer’s cost reduction with energy availability and signal disaggregation constraints
  • Singularity detection and classification and signal segmentation in medical electroencephalography signals for real time epileptic seizure monitoring

Courses Taught:

Power engineering basic and advanced courses in:

  • Power electronics
  • Electromechanical devices
  • Sensors & measurements
  • Electric power systems
  • Distributed generation integration in smart grid
  • Advanced measurements in power engineering
  • Microprocessor based power system protection
  • Control of distributed generation

Signal processing and applied mathematics basic and advanced courses in:

  • Signals & systems
  • Digital signal processing
  • Functional methods and linear analysis
  • Spectral analysis and adaptive filtering
  • Wavelets

Supporting teaching courses in:

  • Introduction to Electrical Engineering
  • Introduction to Smart Grid
  • Smart grid: Security, Privacy, & Economy

Professional activities:

  • American Society for Engineering Education, St Lawrence Section Conference Co‑Chair, Syracuse, April 17‑18, 2015
  • American Society for Engineering Education, St Lawrence Section Chair, 2015

Skills:

  • Six-sigma green belt, SUNY-ESF, Syracuse, NY, 2012
  • Anti-explosion defense of electrical appliances on over-ground places imperiled from explosive blends, Institute for Nuclear Sciences “Vinca”, Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia, 1995
  • Specialist’s examination certificate (the specialist’s examination for engineers dealing with construction projects), Chamber of the Economy of Serbia, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1993 (Serbian/Yugoslavian equivalent to Professional Engineer in the USA)

Publications & Presentations:

Arnav Kavadia et al., The Smart Grid: Operational, Privacy, Security & Economic Issues, American Society for Engineering Education, St Lawrence Section Conference, Syracuse, NY, 2015

Tomislav Bujanovic & Prasanta Ghosh, Laboratory Experiments for Enhanced Learning of Electromechanical Devices, American Society for Engineering Education, Zone 1 Conference, Bridgeport, CT, 2014

Tomislav Bujanovic & Ikhlas Abdel-Qader, On Wavelet Transform General Modulus Maxima Metric for Singularity Classification in Mammograms, Open Journal of Medical Imaging, 2013, 3, 17-30

Tomislav Bujanovic et al., Development of Undergraduate Power Engineering Teaching and Learning for future Smart Grid, American Society for Engineering Education, St. Lawrence Section Conference, Buffalo, NY, 2013

Liwen Sun et al., Wavelet Application to Detect Spikes in EEG Signals Due to Epileptic Seizure, IEEE Signal Processing in Medicine and Biology Symposium, New York City, NY, 2012