Kaizen CTF is this Thursday 10/15/15 in the Commons Skylight Room on Main Campus. The challenges will start at 7:00PM but folks are encouraged to show up as early as 6:30PM to setup your laptop. You will need your laptop and a virtual machine with Kali Linux and don’t forget your power cords because this event will run until 11PM.

If this is the first time you are hearing about this here is a blurb about the event —

“Booz Allen (BAH) is excited to announce Kaizen, a Capture the Flag event designed to build the skills of information security professionals through hands-on, interactive hacking challenges. The challenges represent real world scenarios which cover a wide range of hacking skills, including: web/binary exploitation, forensics, network capture analysis, and ad-hoc scripting. Previously played at Blackhat and ShmooCon, Kaizen was built to challenge participants of all skill levels; so, if you’re experienced and want to sharpen your skills or if you’re new to information security and want a healthy environment to learn then come check out Kaizen. Participants are immersed into an educational and competitive environment where continuous/on-the-fly learning is rewarded.

Kaizen: Japanese word/philosophy for Continuous Learning/Improvement of skills and self, which we feel accurately describes our participants and our mindset.”

To give an accurate head count BAH has asked us to use their website to register — please use your UMBC email to sign up. This website will also be how you view the challenges and submit flags so it is vital to sign up.

If you have any questions at all email Anh Ho (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) or Julio Valcarcel (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) with any questions you may have. Also feel free to join us on our Slack (https://umbccd.slack.com).

Multiple Tenure-track Faculty Positions Starting Fall 2016

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering invites applications for three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to begin in Fall 2016. Exceptionally strong candidates for higher ranks may be considered. Applicants must have or be completing a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, have demonstrated the ability to pursue a research program, and have a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Candidates will be expected to build and lead a team of student researchers, obtain external research support and teach both graduate and undergraduate courses.

All areas of specialization will be considered, but we are especially interested in candidates in the following areas: information assurance and cybersecurity; mobile, wearable and IoT systems; big data with an emphasis on machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing; knowledge and database systems; hardware systems and experimental methods in circuits, devices, VLSI, FPGA, and sensors; cyber-physical systems; low-power systems; biomedical and healthcare systems; and methods and tools for hardware-software co-design.

The CSEE department is energetic, research-oriented and multi-disciplinary with programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity. Our faculty (34 tenure-track, six teaching and 15 research) enjoy collaboration, working across our specializations as well as with colleagues from other STEM, humanities and the arts departments and external partners. We have 1500 undergraduate CS and CE majors and 400 M.S. and Ph.D. students in our CS, CE, EE and Cybersecurity graduate programs. We have awarded 276 PhDs since our establishment in 1986. Our research supported by a growing and diverse portfolio from government and industrial sponsors with over $5M in yearly research expenditures. We work to help new colleagues be successful by providing startup packages, reduced teaching loads and active mentoring.

UMBC is a dynamic public research university integrating teaching, research and service. As an Honors University, the campus offers academically talented students a strong undergraduate liberal arts foundation that prepares them for graduate and professional study, entry into the workforce, and community service and leadership. UMBC emphasizes science, engineering, information technology, human services and public policy at the graduate level. We are dedicated to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility and lifelong learning. The 2015 US News and World Report Best Colleges report placed UMBC fourth in the Most Innovative National Universities category and sixth in Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education named UMBC as a Great College to Work For, a recognition given to only 86 universities. Our strategic location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor puts us close to many important federal laboratories and agencies and high-tech companies, facilitating interactions, collaboration, and opportunities for sabbaticals and visiting appointments.

UMBC’s campus is located on 500 acres just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington DC, and less than 10 minutes from the BWI airport and Amtrak station. The campus includes the bwtech@UMBC research and technology park, which has special programs for startups focused on cybersecurity, clean energy, life sciences and training. We are surrounded by one of the greatest concentrations of commercial, cultural and scientific activity in the nation. Located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore has all the advantages of modern, urban living, including professional sports, major art galleries, theaters and a symphony orchestra. The city’s famous Inner Harbor area is an exciting center for entertainment and commerce. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is a great tourist attraction with its historical monuments and museums. Just ten minutes from downtown Baltimore and 30 from the D.C. Beltway, UMBC offers easy access to the region’s resources by car or public transportation.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, a brief statement of teaching and research experience and interests, a CV, and three letters of recommendation at Interfolio. Applications received by January 15, 2016 are assured full consideration and those received later will be evaluated as long as the positions remain open. Send questions to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. and see the CSEE jobs page for more information.

We are committed to inclusive excellence and innovation and welcome applications from women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. UMBC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.

Multiple Tenure-track Faculty Positions Starting Fall 2016

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering invites applications for three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to begin in Fall 2016. Exceptionally strong candidates for higher ranks may be considered. Applicants must have or be completing a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, have demonstrated the ability to pursue a research program, and have a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Candidates will be expected to build and lead a team of student researchers, obtain external research support and teach both graduate and undergraduate courses.

All areas of specialization will be considered, but we are especially interested in candidates in the following areas: information assurance and cybersecurity; mobile, wearable and IoT systems; big data with an emphasis on machine learning, analytics, and high-performance computing; knowledge and database systems; hardware systems and experimental methods in circuits, devices, VLSI, FPGA, and sensors; cyber-physical systems; low-power systems; biomedical and healthcare systems; and methods and tools for hardware-software co-design.

The CSEE department is energetic, research-oriented and multi-disciplinary with programs in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Cybersecurity. Our faculty (34 tenure-track, six teaching and 15 research) enjoy collaboration, working across our specializations as well as with colleagues from other STEM, humanities and the arts departments and external partners. We have 1500 undergraduate CS and CE majors and 400 M.S. and Ph.D. students in our CS, CE, EE and Cybersecurity graduate programs. We have awarded 276 PhDs since our establishment in 1986. Our research supported by a growing and diverse portfolio from government and industrial sponsors with over $5M in yearly research expenditures. We work to help new colleagues be successful by providing startup packages, reduced teaching loads and active mentoring.

UMBC is a dynamic public research university integrating teaching, research and service. As an Honors University, the campus offers academically talented students a strong undergraduate liberal arts foundation that prepares them for graduate and professional study, entry into the workforce, and community service and leadership. UMBC emphasizes science, engineering, information technology, human services and public policy at the graduate level. We are dedicated to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility and lifelong learning. The 2015 US News and World Report Best Colleges report placed UMBC fourth in the Most Innovative National Universities category and sixth in Best Undergraduate Teaching, National Universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education named UMBC as a Great College to Work For, a recognition given to only 86 universities. Our strategic location in the Baltimore-Washington corridor puts us close to many important federal laboratories and agencies and high-tech companies, facilitating interactions, collaboration, and opportunities for sabbaticals and visiting appointments.

UMBC’s campus is located on 500 acres just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington DC, and less than 10 minutes from the BWI airport and Amtrak station. The campus includes the bwtech@UMBC research and technology park, which has special programs for startups focused on cybersecurity, clean energy, life sciences and training. We are surrounded by one of the greatest concentrations of commercial, cultural and scientific activity in the nation. Located at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore has all the advantages of modern, urban living, including professional sports, major art galleries, theaters and a symphony orchestra. The city’s famous Inner Harbor area is an exciting center for entertainment and commerce. The nation’s capital, Washington, DC, is a great tourist attraction with its historical monuments and museums. Just ten minutes from downtown Baltimore and 30 from the D.C. Beltway, UMBC offers easy access to the region’s resources by car or public transportation.

Applicants should submit a cover letter, a brief statement of teaching and research experience and interests, a CV, and three letters of recommendation at Interfolio. Applications received by January 15, 2016 are assured full consideration and those received later will be evaluated as long as the positions remain open. Send questions to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. and see the CSEE jobs page for more information.

We are committed to inclusive excellence and innovation and welcome applications from women, minorities, veterans, and individuals with disabilities. UMBC is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer.

The UMBC CSEE Seminar Series Presents

Grounded Language Acquisition: A Physical Agent Approach

Dr. Cynthia Matuszek

Interactive Robotics and Language Lab
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, UMBC

12:00-1:00pm Friday, 9 Oct. 2015, ITE 325b

A critical component of understanding human language is the ability to map words and ideas in that language to aspects of the external world. This mapping, called the symbol grounding problem, has been studied since the early days of artificial intelligence; however, advances in language processing, sensory, and motor systems have only recently made it possible to directly interact with tangibly grounded concepts. In this talk, I describe how we combine robotics and natural language processing to acquire and use physically grounded language specifically, how robots can learn to follow instructions, understand descriptions of objects, and build models of language and the physical world from interactions with users. I will describe our work on building a learning system that can ground English commands and descriptions from examples, making it possible for robots to learn from untrained end-users in an intuitive, natural way, and describe applications of our work in following directions and learning about objects. Finally, I will discuss how robots with these learning capabilities address a number of near-term challenges.

Cynthia Matuszek is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2014, where she was a member of both the Robotics and State Estimation lab and the Language, Interaction, and Learning group. She is published in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, ubiquitous computing, and human-robot interaction. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, natural language processing, and machine learning.

Hosts: Professors Fow-Sen Choa (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) and Alan T. Sherman (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. )

· directions and more information ·

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Hack, Play, Win: Lessons Learned Running
The Maryland Cyber Challenge

Richard Forno, UMBC

11:15am-12:30pm, Friday, 9 Oct 2015, ITE 231

An oft-cited and prominent concern facing the Internet security community is the need to identify and hire qualified cybersecurity practitioners able to fill critical technical, analytical, and managerial positions within the global technology workforce. A 2014 report from the Education Advisory Board discusses the “exploding” demand for qualified cybersecurity practitioners, noting that cybersecurity jobs grew by 73% between 2007-2012 compared to 6% in all other industry sectors. Similarly, Burning Glass, a national employment research firm, notes that there are nearly 23,000 available cybersecurity positions in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Nowhere is this need more evident, or discussed more frequently, than in Maryland, a region some dub the ‘epicenter of cybersecurity’ education, research, and industry.

In response to this concern, events in the cybersecurity discipline, known as cyber competitions” or “cyber challenges” seek to motivate and encourage high school and college students toward careers in cybersecurity by developing their technical and teamwork skills while also allowing more experienced cybersecurity professionals an opportunity to practice their expertise in a challenging venue for professional recognition. The popularity and number of these events as a form of intellectual competition at industry security conferences like the DEFCON CTF or Department of Defense DC3 Digital Forensics Challenge and those within educational communities such as the National Cyber League (NCL), CyberPatriot, or the Collegiate CyberDefense Competition (CCDC) are but a few examples of prominent cyber challenges drawing worldwide participation. Other competitions, both large and small, are under continual development, as is a National Science Foundation-backed effort to create a national federation to support and standardize the rules, activities, and conduct of cyber competitions.

Given the popularity of these events, and the ongoing global desire to launch new ones, this talk will draw upon the experiences of organizing and coordinating the Maryland Cyber Challenge (MDC3) from 2011-2014 in offering advice to current and future cyber competition planners. What lessons from current competitions can help future competition organizers run successful challenges of their own? And are such events enough to prepare the next generation of cybersecurity professional? While no event will ever run perfectly, organizers must always strive to “get it right” – or as close to “right” as possible!

(This talk previews a paper accepted for publication in the December 2015 USENIX ;login;)

Dr. Richard Forno directs the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Graduate Cybersecurity Program, serves as the Assistant Director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, and is a Junior Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS). His twenty-year career spans the government, military, and private sector, including helping build a formal cybersecurity program for the US House of Representatives, serving as the first Chief Security Officer for the InterNIC, and co-founding the Maryland Cyber Challenge. Richard was also one of the early researchers on the subject of “information warfare” and he remains a longtime commentator on the influence of Internet technology upon society.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

CSEE Professor Nilanjan Banerjee and collaborators at UMass Amherst, Microsoft Research, Williams College, and the Holyoke Gas and Electric have been awarded a $1M dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The award is part of the National Smart Cities Initiative launched by the White House last month. The the three year project, Utility-driven Smart Energy Services, will help design web service based analytics for energy management in residential homes.

The project will focus on developing a utility-driven energy service platform. Since buildings consume a large fraction of society’s total energy usage, even modest improvements in building energy efficiency have the potential to yield significant benefits. In recent years, utilities have deployed tens of millions of smart electric meters that record building energy usage over short intervals (e.g., every few minutes). While the original purpose of smart meters was to support basic utility operations (e.g., automated meter reading), this project uses them as the foundation for developing a new class of smart energy service systems.

The project will analyze the vast amount of data available from utility smart meters and other networked sensors to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and the electric grid. The research is utility-driven, since utilities have (i) access to massive amounts of customer energy data, (ii) a way to deliver the results of analytics to customers, and (iii) strong incentives to improve customer energy efficiency (e.g., by reducing peak demand to reduce their own operational costs). The approach is scalable, since it leverages already available building smart meter data, rather than requiring the installation of new smart devices and control systems.

UMBC Professors Nirmalya Roy (IS), Nilanjan Banerjee (CSEE), and Ryan Robucci (CSEE) have been awarded a $500K National Science Foundation Cyber-physical Systems Grant to develop sensing systems that can automate energy consumption and wastage estimation in low income homes in Baltimore.

Electricity usage of buildings, including offices, malls and residential apartments, represents a significant portion of a nation’s energy expenditure and carbon footprint. Buildings are estimated to consume 72% of the total electricity production in the US. Unfortunately, however, 30% of this energy consumption is wasted. Energy assessment is an approach that can optimize building energy efficiency and minimize waste at a low cost with minimal expert intervention. A virtual energy assessment includes a thorough and near real time analysis of different sources of building energy usage, individualized energy footprints of load appliances and devices, and proactive identification of energy holes.

The three-year project, Low-cost Continuous Virtual Energy Audits in Cyber-Physical Building Envelope, will build a low cost solution that combines the use of non-intrusive single point energy monitoring and low cost sensors to provide continuous energy assessment reports to residential users or landlords. The system will be deployed in low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, where poor insulation problems are assumed to be a problem and low cost solutions to determining these issues is important for the landlords.

The award was part of a highly competative Breakthrough solicitation from the NSF Cyber-Physical Systems program in which only 5%-8% of the grant proposals were recommended for awards this year.

The UMBC CSEE Seminar Series Presents

 Capturing Brain Activity at Rest: Recent Development of Resting-State Functional MRI and Its Potential in Clinical Applications

Dr. Yihong Yang
Neuroimaging Research Branch
National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH

12noon-1pm Friday, 2 Oct. 2015, ITE 102

There has been growing interest in the intrinsic brain activity at “rest” that may be used to reveal circuit-level information of brain functions. Alterations of resting-state brain activity have been implicated in various neurological and psychiatric disorders. In this seminar, the recent development of resting-state fMRI techniques will be introduced and discussed. Applications of these new imaging techniques in clinical applications such as cocaine addiction and traumatic brain injury will be demonstrated.

Dr. Yihong Yang received his Ph.D. in Biophysics, 1995, at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, under Paul C. Lauterbur who share 2003 Physiology or Medicine Nobel price with Peter Mansfield on the development of MRI. He is currently a senior investigator and the chief of MR Imaging and Spectroscopy Section at NIDA. Dr. Yang has made significant contributions to the development of MRI methodology and application of neuroimaging techniques to neurological and psychiatric disorders. He has published over 130 original research papers in leading journals and contributed several book chapters in the fields of functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging and MR spectroscopy, as well as applications of MRI technology to the assessment of brain disorders, particularly in drug addiction. He has served on many NIH Study Sections and other research foundations including Medical Research Council (UK), Alzheimer’s Association, and National Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He is an editorial board member of the Brain Connectivity and Open Neuroimaging Journal. He has trained many post-doctoral and pre-postdoctoral fellows in neuroimaging.

Hosts: Professors Fow-Sen Choa (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) and Alan T. Sherman (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. )

Appropriately Valuing Inter-Disciplinary Research
between Computer Science, Creativity and the Arts

Professor Celine Latulipe
Software and Information Systems
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

2:00pm Friday 2 October 2015, PAHB 132

Scientists and technologists conducting research in creativity and engaging with artists face political pressure to justify their work. A case study of the NSF-funded Dance.Draw project is used to illustrate the problematic aspects of pressure. I argue that a shift in dialogue is needed to appropriately value this type of inter-disciplinary research.

Dr. Celine Latulipe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Software and Information Systems in the College of Computing and Informatics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research involves developing and evaluating novel interaction techniques, creativity and collaboration support tools and technologies to support the arts, and developing innovation computer science curriculum design patterns. Dr. Latulipe examines issues of how to support expression and exploration in complex interfaces and how interaction affordances impact satisficing behavior. She also conducts research into how to make computer science education a more social experience, both as a way of more deeply engaging students and as an approach to broadening participation in a field that lacks gender and racial diversity.

If you plan on applying to graduate school for next year or are currently a graduate student in your first or second year and are a US citizen or permanent-resident, you should consider applying to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This program makes approximately 2000 new fellowship awards each year.

The GRFP program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based Master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $32,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, and opportunities for international research and professional development.

GRFP is the country’s oldest national fellowship program directly supporting graduate students in STEM fields. The hallmark features of the program are: 1) the award of fellowships to individuals on the basis of merit and potential, and 2) the freedom and flexibility provided to Fellows to define their own research and choose the accredited U.S. graduate institution that they will attend.

US citizens and permanent residents who are planning to enter graduate school in an NSF-supported discipline next fall, or in the first two years of such a graduate program, or who are returning to graduate school after being out for two or more years, are eligible. Applications for computing and engineering areas fields are due October 27. The applicant information page and the solicitation contain the necessary details.