UMBC CSEE Research Seminar

 Biomedical Engineering Projects at CAST

Dr. Yordan Kostov

UMBC Center for Advanced Sensing Technology

1-2pm, Friday, 9 December 2016, ITE 229

The Center for Advanced Sensor Technology is currently leading two projects: “Biologics manufacturing on demand,” funded by DARPA, and “A wearable asthma trigger monitoring system with integrated physiological monitor,” funded by NIH.  The first project is focused on shrinking the footprint of a pharmaceutical factory down to suitcase, capable of producing biologics within twelve hours from the start. There is an ample need for drastically rethinking every detail of the process, with the need to miniaturize all the fluidic components (tanks, mixers, purification columns) and to create networked versions of the shakers, pumps, valves and sensors. The presentation highlights the need for novel sensing devices for process control and drug release. The second project is focused on development of three separate sensors for measuring CO2 in blood, concentration of dust particulate in air, and respiration rate.  These sensors must be networked together to collect real time data and transfer them to a central depository via a cell phone app. The presentation highlights the different challenges in creating the sensors.

Dr. Yordan Kostov holds the B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, from Odessa Politechnic Institute, Ukraine. He received a Ph.D. Degree in Electrical/Chemical Engineering from Bulgarian Academy of Sciences for his work in the area of optical chemical sensors and biosensors. His post-doctoral training includes fellowships at University of Hannover, Germany and University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Biotechincs, Sofia Technical University, Bulgaria. Since 2000, he is a research professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), with an appointment as assistant director of the UMBC Center for Advanced Sensor Technology. He is an affiliate professor in CSEE.  Dr. Kostov is involved in the development of chemical and biochemical sensors for biotechnology and biomedical applications.

Organizers: Tulay Adali (*protected email*) and Alan T. Sherman (*protected email*)

About the CSEE Seminar Series: The UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering presents technical talks on current significant research projects of broad interest to the Department and the research community.  Each talk is free and open to the public.  We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future talks.

Other UMBC CSEE Seminar Series: The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab (CDL) meets biweekly Fridays 11:15am-12:30pm in ITE 229, for research talks about cybersecurity.

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Students, faculty, staff and community members are invited to join CWIT and  STEMRules for a lunch event to hear from and network with diverse professionals from across the cybersecurity industry.

Wanted: One Million IT Security Specialists by 2018

You Could be One of Them

12-1:30pm Friday, 2 December 2016
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery (1st floor)
Lunch will be provided

RSVP: Please respond by December 1, 2016

UMBC CWIT and STEMRules host cyber professionals from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors who will relate their personal/professional journeys, answer questions and be available for networking. Speakers  will include the following individuals:

• Veda Woods  is an executive at an undisclosed Fortune 500 financial institution, a member of multiple boards and the executive director of the International Consortium of Minority Cybersecurity Professionals.
• William McBorrough is a second-generation engineer is the founder and Managing Director of Washington, DC-based McGlobalTech and an information security and risk management consultant.
• Pamela E. Carbajal is a Cyber Security Compliance and Policy Analyst, Senior Consultant, at Booz Allen Hamilton, a global management and technology consulting and engineering services firm.
• Mahalakshmi “Maha” Venkataraman is a Senior Manager in the Software Engineering unit, and the technology lead for the anti-money laundering investigation team at Capital One, a major bank holding company.
• Lisa Jiggetts is the founder of the Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering women to succeed in the cybersecurity field. She is a also a freelance mobile security consultant.

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UMBC CSEE Seminar Series

Genetic ancestry predicts striatal dopamine D2 receptors

Dr. Corinde Wiers
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD

1-2pm Friday, 2 December 2016, ITE 229, UMBC

Genetic ancestry was recently found to be associated with cortical geometry, cortical surface, and total brain volume in humans. Despite ethnic differences in allele frequency in dopaminergic genes associated with dopamine D2/D3 receptor availability (D2R), no study to date has investigated the relationship between genetic ancestry and striatal D2R. Here, we show that genetic informative markers significantly predict dorsal striatal D2R in 117 healthy ethnically diverse residents of the New York metropolitan area using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with [11C]raclopride, while correcting for age, sex, BMI, education years, and estimated socioeconomic status based on individuals’ ZIP codes. Striatal D2R may thus be modulated by genetic ancestry, although differences in environmental factors between ethnic groups could mediate these effects. Findings may have implications for pharmacological treatment targeting D2R, such as antipsychotic D2R antagonists.

Corinde Wiers, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in the Laboratory of Neuroimaging of Nora D. Volkow, M.D. After her studies in Psychology and Psychobiology at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Sussex University (UK) in 2010, she completed her PhD in Psychology at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and Free University Berlin (Germany) in 2014, where she investigated neural underpinnings of automatic approach behavior to alcohol cues, and neural effects of behavioral trainings in patients with alcohol use disorder. The main goal of Dr. Wiers’ research is to understand cognitive, neurobiological and (epi)genetic processes involved in drug addiction, using functional MRI, PET, psychophysics and molecular techniques. She currently works on how peripheral epigenetic markers relate to brain functioning in drug addiction and other psychiatric disorders. Further research interests include the neurobiology of sleep, effects of sleep deprivation, comorbidities of sleep and substance use disorders, and how neuroimaging techniques can be of use for treatment in psychiatry.

Host: Tulay Adali

About the CSEE Seminar Series: The UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering presents technical talks on current significant research projects of broad interest to the Department and the research community. Each talk is free and open to the public. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future talks.

Organizers: Tulay Adali and Alan Sherman

The post talk: Genetic ancestry predicts striatal dopamine D2 receptors, 1pm Dec 2, ITE229 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

CHMPR Distinguished Lecturers Series

The Need for Speed

Dr. Phyllis A. Schneck

Deputy Under Secretary of Cybersecurity
Department of Homeland Security

3:30pm Thursday, 1 December 2016, UC 310
3:00pm Coffee, tea, and cookies

As computers get faster, they change the world. Processors get smaller, the number of devices with processors gets bigger, and the amount of information that can be produced and transported grows exponentially. Everything on the planet, unless one can eat it, is likely to have electronic logic within – and, most recently, to be connected to other devices. Our way of life and critical infrastructures, from power and water to finance is enabled by this ability to process light, and transport information at that speed. The speed of computing is enabling new conveniences and capabilities, and furthering science in directions never before imagined from DNA studies to particle physics. This amazingly connected world, however, introduces new vulnerabilities as many connected devices were not designed to be safe from unauthorized access and use. We must pay special attention to protecting infrastructure components such as information and the intricate signaling systems that generate and distribute electricity. This requires specialized algorithms to mine the masses of data to recognize normal internet activity from potential threat indicators. The goal is to create a more self-healing network, accomplishing with information what nature does with biological responses – creating an electronic immune system. Cognitive computing can provide groundbreaking results in data mining and analysis that will enhance the Cybersecurity to protect the other applications such as genomic and physics research. Software and hardware developers need to work together to create the algorithms and custom hardware to minimize heat, maximize computation and, finally, create a secure design.

We can use the speed of computing to enhance Cybersecurity as well – thus the paradox of the need for speed to protect itself.

Dr. Phyllis Schneck is the Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity & Communications with the Department of Homeland Security, where she is also the Chief Cybersecurity Official. Previously held positions include Chief Technology Officer for Global Public Sector, McAfee, Inc.; VP of Enterprise Services, eCommSecurity; and VP of Corporate Strategy for SecureWorks, Inc. Schneck earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech and pioneered the field of info security and security-based high-performance computing at Georgia Tech. She holds seven information security patents and has six research publications in the areas of info security, real-time systems, telecom and software engineering.

If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Michelle Bobovych at *protected email* to ensure we have a sufficient number of chairs.

The post talk: Dr. Phyllis Schneck (DHS) on The Need for Speed in Cybersecurity appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

The CS Education student org, with support from the CS Matters in Maryland CS education project, is planning UMBC’s first-ever Hour of Code event. Hour of Code is an initiative that organizes hands-on learning experiences for students of all ages during CS Education Week (December 5-11, 2016, coinciding with Admiral Grace Hopper’s birthday).

UMBC’s Hour of Code will offer a hands-on experience for anybody who wants to try their hand at coding, December 7 and 8 from 11am-2pm on Main Street. We will have several special guests on Thursday — some students from Lakeland Elementary School will learn to code along with President Freeman Hrabowski from 11am-noon that day.

We need many volunteers to help make this event a success! Although coding experience is useful, it is NOT necessary! We will have training events in advance of the event for everyone who volunteers, and we also have some no-coding-required jobs as well, including running a Makey Makey activity and helping out with the elementary school students.

Please sign up to volunteer. Stephanie Milani (Psychology major / CS minor) is organizing the volunteer effort — please feel free to contact her if you have any questions at *protected email*

The post UMBC Hour of Code, 11-2 Dec 7-8, Main Street appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Dissertation Defense Announcement

Cross-Layer Techniques for Boosting Base-Station Anonymity in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sami Alsemairi

9:30 Wednesday, 9 November 2016, ITE 346

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) provide an effective solution for surveillance and data gathering applications in hostile environments where human presence is infeasible, risky or very costly. Examples of these applications include military reconnaissance, guarding boarders against human trafficking, security surveillance, etc. A WSN is typically composed of a large number of sensor nodes that probe their surrounding and transmit measurements over multi-hop paths to an in-situ Base-Station (BS). The BS not only acts as a sink of all collected sensor data but also provides network management and serves as a gateway to remote commend centers. Such an important role makes the BS a target of adversary attacks that opt to achieve Denial-of-Service (DoS) and nullify the WSN utility to the application. Even if the WSN applies conventional security mechanisms such as authentication and data encryption, the adversary may apply traffic analysis techniques to locate the BS and target it with attacks. This motivates a significant need for boosting BS anonymity to conceal its location.

In this dissertation, we address the challenges of BS anonymity and develop a library of techniques to counter the threat of traffic analysis. The focus of our work is on the link and network layers. We first exploit packet combining as a means to vary the traffic density throughout the network. We call this technique combining the data payload of multiple packets (CoDa), where a node groups the payload of multiple incoming data packets into a single packet that is forwarded toward the BS. CoDa cuts on the number of transmissions that constitute evidences for implicating the BS as a destination of all traffic and thus degrades the adversary’s ability in conducting effective traffic analysis.

Next we develop a novel technique for increasing BS anonymity by establishing a sleep/active schedule among the nodes that are far away from the BS, and increasing the traffic density in selected parts of the network in order to give the impression that the BS is located in the vicinity of the sleeping nodes. We call this technique Adaptive Sampling Rate for increased Anonymity (ASRA). Moreover, we develop three novel techniques based on a hierarchical routing topology. The first, which we call Hierarchical Anonymity-aware Routing Topology (HART), forms clusters and an inter-cluster-head routing topology so that a high traffic volume can be observed in areas away from the BS. The second is a novel cross-layer technique that forms a mesh topology. We call this technique cluster mesh topology to boost BS’s anonymity (CMBA). CMBA opts to establish a routing topology such that the traffic pattern does not implicate any particular node as a sink.

The third technique creates multiple mesh-based routing topologies among the cluster-heads (CHs). By applying the closed space-filling curves such as the Moore curve, for forming a mesh, the CHs are offered a number of choices for disseminating aggregated data to the BS through inter-CH paths. Then, the BS forwards the aggregated data as well so that it appears as one of the CH. We call this technique boosting the BS anonymity through multiple mesh-based routing topologies (BAMT). We validate the effectiveness of all anonymity-boosting techniques through simulation and highlight the trade-off between anonymity and overhead.

Practical Engineering of Plaintext Private Information Retrieval Systems

Dr. Russell Fink

Chief Engineer, Cyber Operations Branch
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

1-2pm Friday, 4 November 2016, ITE 229

Statistics and Big Data at Google

Dr. Tim Hesterberg, Google
5:00-6:00pm Thursday, 3 November 2016
UC 310, UMBC