Faculty Research Projects & Opportunities for Students

Department of Computing Sciences September 28, 2015

Faculty are full-time and part-time members Interests range from theoretical foundations

to practical applications Some research is sponsored – funding for

assistantships sometimes available Actively seeking external sponsorship and

partnership Interdisciplinary research promoted Student involvement is welcome and

encouraged!

Overview

Devices

• CAVE• Object capture rig• Oculus Rift• Google Glass• Mindstorm robots

• Kinect• Raspberry Pi• Finch• IR keyboard• 3D printer

And much much more!

Research Outlets & Support

• Conferences• Research Projects• Fun Projects• Reading Day Events• CS Ed Week Events• Sigma Xi Event• Many others

• Travel funds• Equipment funds

• Grad Office has some• Undergrad Office also• Department might too• Research grants as well

Grand Challenges of Computing

CSC 9025

CSC 9025 – Often called “Independent Study” Optional for graduate students

(used to be required) Conduct independent research under

guidance of a faculty advisor Encouraged to tackle topics in our discipline

that interest you AND your advisor Intended for completion in a single semester Extension to second semester possible Keep your eyes open for interesting topics!

What is the “Grand Challenges of Computing” course?

Faculty Research Interests & Activities

Listen for opportunities to get involved in research

Dr. Tom WayProjects

Department of Computing Sciences 9

Active Projects

Parsing & Translation Google Glass, Machine Learning & Memory Sentiment Analysis & Tracking Misc. NLP Parsing Projects Tremor Filtering Wii Pointer SNITCH plagiarism analyzer

CS Education Loosely-Coupled Interdisciplinary Teaching Machine Learning modules Distributed Expertise learning modules

Department of Computing Sciences 10

ACT Lab Research GroupsApplied Computing Technology Laboratory

Director of Research

Dr. Tom Way

Com. Sci.

Education

High Perf.

Computing

Rehab. Engineeri

ng

Simulation & Tools

Information

Fluency

Databases

Other Groups..

.

Nanotech

Department of Computing Sciences 11

Back-burner Projects

Nanocompilers & Nanocomputers Using Magic to Teach CS Green Computing Speech Recog. for note-taking Info. literacy using science satire Many other ideas

actlab.csc.villanova.educlick on "Idea Incubator"

Department of Computing Sciences 12

Student –Ready Projects Sentiment Analysis & Tracking Tremor Filtering Wii Pointer Tremor Quantification Plagiarism detection Fake research paper detection Social network extraction from novels

Machine Learning education modules Google Glass & Machine Learning

Dr. Mirela DamianProjects

Ad-Hoc Wireless Topologies

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B

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B

TopologyControl

Topology Control: reduce overall power consumption and interference while maintaining

network connectivity.

Sensor Barrier Coverage

Barrier: chain of overlapping sensors

Folding and Unfolding Cut along edges/surface to lay flat in the

plane without overlap.

Object Selection in CG Color Picking (GPU) Ray Picking (CPU)

◦ GPU implementation?

Dr. Daniel JoyceProjects

Interests and Projects Department Web Team Lead Programming Team Coach Graduate Independent Study / Grand Challenges Coordinator

◦ http://csc.villanova.edu/academics/gradIS ◦ have contacts/ideas BEFORE your final semester starts

Research Interests◦ Software development/engineering◦ Web programming◦ Security◦ Computer Science Education

Research Project Ideas◦ Collecting and analyzing data related to the software development

process◦ Report on the use of a new technology to create a system, perhaps

comparing it to use of a different technology Development Project Ideas

◦ Camp Registration Site◦ Use of Kinnects

Prof. Najib NadiProjects

Systems Programming Systems Administration

◦ Linux◦ Solaris◦ Mac OS X

Web Application Development Current projects:

◦ Systems setup for upcoming programming contest◦ IBM ThinkPad Linux configuration for cityteam

ministries◦ Thin Client performance analysis◦ VU community Dropbox

Interests and Projects

Dr. Robert BeckA Sampling of Projects

Computing in Context

• Computing and music through inquiry-based learning (IBL)– More generally, IBL for computing– More specifically, strategies for using ChucK, the

language of the laptop orchestra• Computational sustainability– Figuring out what this means

Chronozoom

• Check out chronozoom.com, an open source system for displaying time lines– Create content, and enhance the content creating

process– Develop programs for Big History– Investigate a 3-D timeline in the CAVE

Social Network Analysis

• Mesh models of conflict resolution with models of systems thinking for applications to– Nation building– Co-opetition in SOA system building

• Examine and model social network strategies for promoting a cause– Flash mob– Philanthropy– “Pipeline” maintenance

• Map communities as social networks

UX of Smart Things

• Interacting with the internet of things– Mobile Wallet Worth Having (MWWH)– Apple Watch– Smart home monitoring– Smart driving– Smart touring: QR codes, cell phone tours

• More generally, gesture interfaces

Web Site Design

• Categories of web sites• Design principles for a particular category• Systematic evaluation against design principles• Automatic measurements

Web Site Renovation

• Help nonprofit corporations, usually small ones, upgrade their web sites

• Student works with “technical” person at nonprofit

• Gather data for web site evaluation• Challenges– Communicating with the representatives– Developing with a variety of tools– Navigating the politics of the nonprofit

Cliques, etc

• Finding a maximal clique (largest complete subgraph) in a given simple graph– Fred’s strategy– More generally, strategies for NP-hard problems– Involves creative programming and

experimentation with heuristics

Dr. Lillian (Boots) Cassel

Projects

Research interests:Digital Libraries

EnsembleMarconi Museum Library

Computing OntologyResources for computing educationData ScienceInformation and the WebInterdisciplinary Computing

Interested graduate students meet at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon, Mendel 163Undergraduates welcome then or at other times.

Well established, but with many opportunities for refinement.

Original funding has ended, so mostly volunteer work at this time.

Opportunities for research projects as we attempt to solve some interesting problems.

Proposals under development to obtain more funding.

Ensemble Computing Education Portal

Computing PortalConnecting Computing Educators

www.computingportal.org

Marconi Museum◦ We have large collection of pictures◦ How do you make a good representation of

a physical museum on the web?◦ Possible CAVE application, as well as

regular digital library ◦ Initial version complete, but opportunities

for extension continue.

More Digital Libraries/Web Information

Status◦ Still an interesting problem.◦ On the list of applications to develop for the

CAVE◦ Needs people with good imaginations and

creativity

Computing Ontology

Computing Ontology A complete definition of the computing disciplines, in collaboration with ACM

www.distributedexpertise.org/computingontology

Earlier and Broader Access to Machine Learning◦ With Dr. Way, Dr. Matuszek, Dr. Papalaskari

Data Science◦ With Dr. Goelman, Dr. Posner (statistics)◦ And colleagues from Winstson-Salem State

University

Educational Resources

Dr. William Fleischman

Projects

Ethics Research topics related to ethical issues and

themes Privacy, Surveillance, and Big Data Lethal Autonomous Robotic Weapons Electronic voting Outreach activities

Dr. Vijay GehlotProjects

Systems Modeling

• Behind every data there is a process that generates/consumes it

• To effect changes, understating of processes is crucial

• Process mining• Holistic vs reductionist• Systems thinking

Systems

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Tools/Approaches

Dr. Don GoelmanProjects

Databases for Many Majors: Customizable Visualizations to Improve STEM Learning (Dietrich & Goelman) – NSF IUSE project: 9/2014 through 8/2017

Data Computing for All: Developing an Introductory Data Science Course in Flipped Format (Cassel, Posner, Dichev, Dicheva & Goelman) – NSF IUSE project: 9/2014 through 8/2017

Details in next slides

Funded Projects

Collaborative research with Prof. S. Dietrich, Arizona State University

Enhancement of visualizations for promoting database education to diverse majors

Visualizations from the last grant: intro to relational databases and intro to querying

Add a third visualization: conceptual modeling Add functionality for self-assessment by students Add functionality for educators to customize the setting

to diverse domains (FlashBuilder and ActionScript)◦ Home page:

http://databasesmanymajors.faculty.asu.edu/

Funded Project (NSF DUE - IUSE): Customizable Visualizations

Collaborative research with Profs. L. Cassel and M. Posner, Villanova University; and Profs. C. Dichev and D. Dicheva, WSSU

Curricular development: an introductory course in data science

Pedagogical development: inverted classroom approach

Research assistance: information gathering and presentation

Funded Project (NSF DUE-IUSE): Data Science Course in Flipped Format

Dr. Giorgi JaparidzeProjects

Computational Theory Logic Projects

◦ Computability Logic◦ Cirquent Calculus◦ Interactive Computation

Interests and Projects

Dr. Edward KimProjects

Computer Vision Revolution Convolutional Neural Networks (Deep

Learning)

Interests

Interests

Academia cannot compete with the data, processing, and human capital of Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple

How can we improve Computer Vision and Machine Learning?

Interests

Domain Shift

Interests

Interests

x X images and y Y class labels P(x,y) – data distribution at training Q(x,y) – data distribution at deployment P(x,y) ≠ Q(x,y)

P(x|y) = Q(x|y), but P(y) ≠Q(y)

Interests

Necessity for visual context…

Context gain from..CRF’s…

Ontologies…

Dr. Frank KlassnerProjects

Virtual Reality◦ CAVE◦ Immersive Video◦ Web Experiences

Interests and Projects

Dr. Anany LevitinProjects

Anany Levitin

Algorithm design techniques are general strategies for algorithmic problem solving (e.g., divide-and-conquer, decrease-and-conquer, greedy, etc.)

paramount for designing algorithms for new problems provide a framework for classifying algorithms by design idea

Algorithmic puzzles are puzzles that requires design or analysis of an algorithm

illustrate algorithm design and analysis techniques as general problem solving tools (computational thinking)

some puzzles pose interesting and still unanswered questions entertainment technical job interviews

Anany Levitin (cont.)

Algorithm design techniques projects thinking backward; design by cases how to solve it (G. Polya) vs.

how to solve it by an algorithm

Algorithmic puzzles projects a few specific puzzles (research and visualization) taxonomies of algorithmic puzzles

Dr. Mary-Angela Papalaskari

Projects

Artificial Intelligence:◦ Natural language processing

pragmatics conversational agents story telling

◦ Reasoning with incomplete information ◦ Machine learning

Computer Science Education:◦ Earlier and Broader Access to Machine Learning

With Dr. Cassel, Dr. Way, Dr. Matuszek

◦ Teaching and learning computer science through service to the community

◦ Computing for non-CS majors

Interests and Projects

Prof. Barbara Zimmerman

Projects

Manchester Mummy Database Database and functioning web interface was

sent to England◦ September 2014

Many researchers have used the Database to request mummy materials from the University of Manchester, UK where the Slides and paraffin blocks are stored

The current work involves collaboration with the users of the materials, such as the University of Zurich

Mummies on Rails Work is headed up by Ahmad Alam

◦ Ahmad is a Phd student in the University of Manchester, England

His work is entitled Mummies on Rails. He is developing an information systems

framework for archaeologists. We plan to be more involved in this work.

St. Lawrence Island mummy

THE CHURCH – 400AD

Flow from Mummy to Slides

74

Dr. Paula MatuszekProjects

• Artificial Intelligence– knowledge-based systems– ontologies and the semantic web– knowledge capture and sharing– Machine learning

• Natural Language Processing/Text Mining– Computer understanding of natural (human) languages– Finding, extracting, summarizing, visualizing information from

unstructured text• Project

– Broader and Earlier Access to Machine Learning: NSF project to develop machine learning materials for non-computer science students.

Interests and Projects