MS Thesis Defense

Analyzing Opinions in the Mom Community on Youtube

Morgan Madeira

2:00pm Wednesday, 30 June 2014, ITE 325b

The “Mom Community” on YouTube consists of a large group of parents that share their parenting beliefs and experiences to connect and share information with others. Although there is a lot of positive support in this community, it is often a hotspot for debate of controversial parenting topics. Many of these topics have one side that represents the belief of “crunchy” moms. Crunchy is a term used to describe parents that intentionally choose natural parenting methods and eco-friendly products to raise their children. Debate over these practices has led to “mompetition” and the idea that there is a right way to parent. This research investigates these claims such as how different crunchy topics are discussed and how the community has changed over time. Video comments and user data are collected from YouTube and used to understand parenting practices and opinions in the mom community.

Committee: Drs. Anupam Joshi (chair), Tim Finin, Karuna Joshi

MS Thesis Defense

Comparison of Cloud Security Standards and a
Cloud Security Control Recommendation System

Amit S. Hendre

8:30am Thursday, 31 July 2014, ITE346

Cloud services are becoming an essential part of many organizations. Cloud providers have to adhere to security and privacy policies to ensure their users’ data remains confidential and secure. On one hand, cloud providers are implementing their own security and privacy controls. On the other hand, standards bodies like Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), International Organization for Standards (ISO), National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), etc. are developing broad standards for cloud security. In this thesis we provide a comprehensive analysis of the cloud security standards that are being developed and how they compare with the security controls of cloud providers. Our study is mainly focused on policies about mobility of resources, identity and access management, data protection, incident response and audit and assessment. This thesis will help consumer organizations with their compliance needs by evaluating the security controls and policies of cloud providers and assisting them in identifying their enterprise cloud security policies.

Committee: Drs. Karuna Joshi, Tim Finin and Yelena Yesha

MS Thesis Defense

Android Malware Detection and Classification
using Machine Learning Techniques

Satyajit Padalkar

10:30am Wednesday, 30 July 2014, ITE 325b

Android is popular mobile operating system and there exists multiple marketplaces for Android applications. Most of these market places allow applications to be signed using self-signed certificates. Due to this practice there exists little or very limited control over the kind of applications that are being distributed. Also advancement of Android root kits are increasingly making it easier to repackage existing Android application with malicious code. Conventional signature based techniques fail to detect such malware. So detection and classification of Android malware is a very difficult problem. We present a method to classify and detect such malware by performing a dynamic analysis of the system call sequences. Here we make use of machine learning techniques to build multiple models using distributions of syscalls as features. Using these models we predict whether given application is malicious or benign. Also we try to classify given application to specific known malware family. We also explore deep learning methods such as stacked denoising autoencoder algorithms (SdA) and its effectiveness. We experimentally evaluate our methods using a real dataset of 600 applications from 38 malware families and 25 popular benign applications from various areas. We find that a deep learning algorithm (SdA) is most accurate in detecting a malware with lowest false positives while AdaBoost performs better in classifying a malware family.

Committee: Drs. Anupam Joshi (chair), Tim Finin and Charles Nicholas

Earlier this year HP and the Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security (SWSIS) selected UMBC undergraduate Victoria Lentz (Computer Science, 2015) and ten other female cybersecurity students from across the U.S. to receive scholarships.

Lentz was in the first cohort of students to be accepted into the UMBC Cyber Scholars Program, which began in Fall 2013. The program prides itself on influencing minorities and women to become involved in the cyber security and computing industries.

With particular interests in malware and digital forensics, Lentz plans to work in the cybersecurity industry after finishing her undergraduate education to gain experience before returning to school for a Master’s degree.

More from Lentz appears in Technically Baltimore.

from a post by Achsah Joseph on UMBC Insights

Title:
eFX Data Scientist, AVP

Job Role:
Quantitative Analysis, Global Markets Sales & Trading, Boston

JOB DESCRIPTION

Purpose of Role:
To enhance the bank’s real-time Electronic FX market making trading system, improving quality and distinctiveness of price generation and risk management.

Major Responsibilities:

• Analyze proprietary order flow data to find patterns in client behavior, using results to improve client pricing and optimize risk management.
• Analyze large, high frequency time series data sets and develop short term price forecasting models.
• Using public and proprietary data, identify new opportunities to increase trading volume and generate new business.
• Justify models/algorithms through appropriate out-of-sample backtesting periods and cross-validation techniques. Evaluate performance in practice and provide further improvements as needed.
• Develop research all the way from prototype to production.

Specific Qualifications/ Experience:

• Masters and/or PhD in Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Statistics or related field
• Knowledge of big data lake structures, algorithms and techniques including classification, clustering, and regression.
• Experience implementing data analytics techniques within an academic research setting and/or real business problems.

Level of Education:

• Masters and/or PHD

Skills – interpersonal, numerical, problem-solving, analytical, etc

• Object oriented programming skills: Java or C++.
• Proficiency in statistical packages such as Matlab, Python or R.
• Solid statistical foundations
• Familiar with Hadoop frameworks.

Disposition – motivation, team skills, ability to work under pressure, etc

• Pragmatic mindset – research should be targeted at solving business problems and improving profitability.
• Good communication skills are required to interact with management, traders, salespeople, developers and clients.
• Self-motivated and with ability to work with minimal supervision.

The complete job listing can be found here.

—
Interested individuals should send their resume directly to:

Toby J. Wade
State Street Global Markets
twade at statestreet dot com
+ 1 617 664-4150

CSEE professor Nilanjan Banerjee was interviewed at the Microsoft Faculty Summit on UMBC research that is developing sensors that can be sewn into textiles such as clothing or bedding and used control devices though gestures. Professor Banerjee is working with colleagues Ryan Robucci, Chintan Patel and Sandy McCombe-Waller (UMB) and students to prototype the hardware sensors and software components that can be part of an Internet of Things environment.

With support from Microsoft, their experimental systems are using Microsoft’s Lab of Things platform for research on connected devices in homes and other spaces. One of the use cases driving the research is helping people with limited mobility lead more independent lives by enabling them to control the environment. Buz Chmielewski, who became a quadriplegic after a surfing accident, is helping the team test and refine the system and its usability.

By voice vote, the US House of Representatives passed HR 5031, the STEM Education Act of 2014, to define STEM education to include computer science, and to support existing STEM education programs at the National Science Foundation.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, … For purposes of carrying out STEM education activities at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Environmental Protection Agency, the term “STEM education” means education in the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, including other academic subjects that build on these disciplines such as computer science.

UMBC was cited as a university with one of the “Top 15 Affordable Computer Science Degree Programs“. The program came in as number ten based on five key points of comparison extracted from several data sources.

“We’ve identified five key points of comparison that will enable prospective students to see differences and similarities between what are the top schools, and what are the accessible, affordable, but still high quality options. The five data points are Acceptance Rate, Graduation Rate, Recognition, Tuition, and Return on Investment. The schools are listed in order of least to greatest return on investment, because this will allow students to see what they can expect in terms of the economic value of their education. For information about sources, see the note at the end of this article.”

UMBC offers a broad range of strong undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the computing disciplines including computer science, computer engineering, cybersecurity, electrical engineering, information systems, human-centered computing, healthcare information systems, and bioinformatics. These programs currently have more than 3,000 students enrolled. Together, they give rise to an intellectually rich and diverse community of faculty, staff and students supported by a world-class computing infrastructure.

Northpoint is a free online fundraising tool that helps schools, teams, and organizations
raise money and awareness with apparel and promotional products. Founded in 2010, NP is undergoing a
significant revamp, integrating several new online user interface (UI) tools that will increase efficiency and
participation. Northpoint is seeking additional team members to support development of integral parts of the
website and mobile applications. Northpoint’s existing team currently consists of a web developer, web
designer, and project manager. Most of the Northpoint team members live in different areas of the country,
and for that reason, most correspondence is conducted through phone, email, and video conference.

The chosen web developer(s) should be self-sufficient and have experience with:

• Web-based CMS (Content Management System) (i.e. Joomla)
• PHP
• JQuery
• Ajax
• Databases
• PHP Sessions
• MVC – Model-View-Controller style programming
• CSS

As a growing company, development responsibilities may vary or change, but this is a part-time position. The
chosen web developer should be flexible, able to allot time the necessary amount to this effort, and produce
high-quality work. The development responsibilities will be discussed in more depth after initial
correspondence.

Due to high expectations of the position, integral involvement in the growth of the company, and necessary
commitment to the company’s success, compensation will be in the form of equity (i.e. ownership) and/or
royalties of Northpoint Fundraising, LLC. Terms and conditions shall be discussed and agreed upon prior to
beginning any work.

If you are interested in this opportunity or have questions, I encourage you to contact me at
Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. as soon as possible. Please include a statement of qualifications/résumé (not
required), and a reference to any applicable websites or projects that would support qualification for this
position (not required, but may be requested).

UMBC CSEE Professor Marie desJardins will be a guest on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi show from 12:00 to 1:00pm tomorrow, Tuesday, June 17, 2014. She will be one of three experts discussing Coding and the Computer Science Conundrum with Kojo and callers. Listen live over the air on WAMU (88.5 mhz) or online.  After she broadcast, you can hear it on the segment’s page or download it from their podcast archives.

The program’s description is:

“For years following the dot-com bust, computer science enrollment plunged steadily, prompting hand wringing over America’s competitiveness in technology and innovation. But a nationwide push to bring coding to classrooms, plus rapid innovation in apps and communications, has prompted a 13.4% jump in computer science majors in the 2012-13 academic year alone. But retaining those budding programmers — especially females and minorities — remains a significant challenge. Kojo explores local and national efforts to boost computer science competency, and learns how educators are revamping computational learning to give it relevance far beyond the classroom.”

The expert guests are:

• Pat Yongpradit, Director of Education, Code.org
• Marie desJardins, Prof. of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Janice Cuny, Program Director of Computing Education, National Science Foundation

Listeners can ask questions or make comments during the show via Twitter (@kojoshow) or phone (800-433-8850).