Autodesk Scaleform, makers of popular user interface libraries for video games, have two positions open in their Greenbelt, MD office:

Graphics/Rendering Engineer:

https://autodesk.taleo.net/careersection/ADSK_gen/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=13WD13966

Software Engineer:

https://autodesk.taleo.net/careersection/ADSK_gen/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=13WD13819

Autodesk Scaleform, makers of popular user interface libraries for video games, have two positions open in their Greenbelt, MD office:

Graphics/Rendering Engineer:

https://autodesk.taleo.net/careersection/ADSK_gen/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=13WD13966

Software Engineer:

https://autodesk.taleo.net/careersection/ADSK_gen/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=13WD13819

Security expert Linda McCarthy has written a 48-page book, Digital Drama: Staying Safe While Being Social Online, aimed teens and their families on how to manage online behavior to enhance safety, security and privacy. McCarthy is an author and computer security consultant with more than twenty years of industry experience in educating families, security auditing, consulting, training, research and development, and leading high-performing teams.

Click to access

In support of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Microsoft has provided support to allow her to offer free downloads of Digital Drama from Amazon in both English and Spanish. The free offer is only available this week, from today through 3:00am (EDT) Saturday, September 28.

Kim Sanchez, who heads Microsoft’s Online Safety – Trustworthy Computing Communications efforts, interviewed McCarthy last week about her new book and it’s goals. “Digital Drama has something for everyone.”, McCarty said about who she write the book for. “Parents can read it and get ideas about how to talk with their kids about online safety. Even if you don’t have kids, you’ll find guidance that will help you, a family member, or a friend. So download the ebook and share it with everyone you know.”

Here’s how the book is described on McCarthy’s site:

Every day, millions of teens log on and make decisions that can compromise their safety, security, privacy, and future. If you are like most teens, you are already using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and have your smartphone super-glued to your hand. You tag your friends in photos, share your location and thoughts with friends, and post jokes online that later may be misunderstood. At the same time, you might not realize how that information can affect your reputation and safety, both online and offline. We’ve all heard the horror stories of stolen identities, cyber stalking, pedophiles on the Internet, and lost job, school, and personal opportunities. All teens need to learn how to protect themselves against malware, social networking scams, and cyberbullies. This book helps you learn crucial skills:

• Deal with cyberbullies
• Learn key social networking skills
• Protect your privacy
• Create a positive online reputation
• Protect yourself from phishing and malware scams

Microsoft (@Safer_Online) will hold an online Twitter chat at 3:00pm (EDT) on September 25 with Linda McCarthy (@ddramabook) and other online safety experts about how her ebook can help people talk with kids about digital safety. Use #ChatSTC to ask questions or join the conversation.

Professor Charles Nicholas has received research funding from the National Science Foundation to develop better ways to detect malicious software (malware) and defend computers against it. The award will provide up to $75,000 over the next year to support the research of Dr. Nicholas and his students.

The process of creating malware has become more automated in recent years, as a result of so-called exploit kits, such as the Blackhole exploit kit. The UMBC project will investigate ways of characterizing these exploit kits, as well as the malware they produce. Developing models of how current kits work will help to predict what exploit kits will look like in the future as well as suggest better techniques for detecting the malware they are used to produce.

On challenging problem the research will address is dealing with polymorphic malware, malware that makes new versions of itself as it moves from machine to machine, in the hope of avoiding detection by conventional, signature-based anti-virus software. The research will characterize malware families that exist as products of a specific exploit kit as well as those that develop through polymorphism.

Dr. Nicholas is the faculty advisor of UMBC’s Cyber Defense Team, a student group that studies information security, intrusion detection, cybersecurity, and network security and participates in competitions such as the Maryland Cyber Challenge. He is also teaching a special topics class this semester on Malware Analysis for both undergraduate and graduate students.

CSEE Professor Marie desJardins was one of three UMBC professors who spoke at a recent UMBC Provost’s luncheon and new faculty seminar on Great Teachers Talk about Teaching. She was joined by Professor James Grubb (History) and Manil Suri (Mathematics & Statistics), who also spoke at the seminar.

Dr. desJardins will also be talking on Diversity in CS Education and Research at a special Women in Data Science event hosted by the Data Innovation DC meetup group.  The group explores the “intersection of the data revolution and the art of creating value” and meets monthly in the DC area.

The event, which will also include presentations from two other women working in data science, is intended to demonstrate the impact of women technologists in the growing area of data analytics and encourage more participation by women. The meeting is free and open to the public (RSVP here) and will take place between 6:00pm and 8:30pm on Monday, September 23, 2013 at Cooley LLP (1299 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Suite 700, Washington, DC map)

UMBC students interested in learning more about pursuing a graduate program in a STEM area should consider taking advantage of a free GEM GRAD Lab event to be held at the University of Virginia on Saturday, September 28th. UMBC is a co-sponsor, along with UVA and VA Tech and will provide free bus transportation. See here for more information and details about how to reserve a seat on the bus. The event will cover topics that include why go to graduate school, how to apply to graduate school, how to fund graduate school and voices from the field.

Dr. Tom Narock (Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute) and Professor Tim Finin (CSEE) are part of a team that receive a one-year, $300,000 award from the National Science Foundation to apply semantic technologies to support the data representation, discovery and integration needs in EarthCube, an NSF program that aims to transform geoscience research by developing community-guided cyberinfrastructure.  The collaborative project involves researchers and students from UMBC, Columbia University, Wright State University, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Narock (PI) and Finin (CO-PI) head the UMBC effort.

A wide spectrum of maturing methods and tools, collectively characterized as Semantic Web Technologies, enables machines to complete tasks automatically that previously required human direction. For the Geosciences, Semantic Web Technologies will vastly improve the integration, analysis and dissemination of research data and results. This collaborative project will conduct exploratory research applying state-of-the-art Semantic Web Technologies to support data representation, discovery, analysis, sharing and integration of datasets from the global oceans, and related resources including meeting abstracts and library holdings. A key contribution will be semantically-enabled cyberinfrastructure components capable of automated data integration across distributed repositories.

The image above shows a pyramid-shaped multicorer on the deck of the R/V Melville off Santa Barbara in October 2012. Multicorers collect seafloor sediment samples without disrupting the uppermost sediment layers and the single-celled organisms living in them. The system sends real-time images of the seafloor to scientists aboard, allowing them to guide the sampler, and collects high-resolution images that are stored in the camera for downloading on recovery. (Photo by Ellen Roosen, WHOI).

On Wednesday, September 25, from 6:30 – 7:30PM,  Dr. Rick Forno, Cybersecurity GPD and Assistant Director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, will host an evening webinar discussing UMBC’s graduate cybersecurity programs. Topics to be discussed include:

• Program design and curriculum  (both MPS degree & Certificate)
• Eligibility and Application Information
• UMBC’s approach to graduate cybersecurity education for working professionals
• Cybersecurity scholarship opportunities
• UMBC’s many resources for cybersecurity students

Additionally, Dr. Forno will give updated details about the upcoming Maryland Cyber Challenge (MDC3) which is part of the CyberMaryland 2013 conference in October.

Interested persons may RSVP for the free webinar here.

Professor Tinoosh Mohsenin received a research award from the National Science Foundation to develop multi-physiological signal processing architectures for seizure detection. The award will provide $100,000 over a two year duration to support Dr. Mohsenin and her students in the Energy Efficient High Performance Computing Lab working on this project.

The research will explore an approach to overcome problems of sensor noise, false detection, and energy/power constraints by combining the analysis of multiple physiological signals through specialized hardware implementing a multi-layer classification technique comprised of signal processing and machine learning functions. The hybrid architecture will leverage common operations and communication patterns between digital signal processing and machine learning to support these computations more efficiently than traditional approaches. The prototype system will be evaluated for use in wearable seizure detection devices by using traces of EEG and other physiological sensor data obtained from the Epilepsy Center at University of Maryland Medical Center.

The research could significantly enhance the ability to robustly and efficiently monitor multi-physiological patient data and take appropriate actions. For epilepsy, it could enable automatic seizure detection and caregiver alerts, which are critical at night, when seizures can happen without someone to help nearby. Longer term potential impacts extend to human-centered cyber-physical systems, cyber-security, and unmanned vehicles.

CSEE Professor Gymama Slaughter received a two-year research research award from the National Science Foundation to develop and evaluate nanoelectrode probe arrays to better detect and extract intracellular signals. Data from these signals will help in restoring functional loss of limb control of individuals with spinal cord injury or stroke.

Conventional neural interfaces consist of microelectrode arrays (MEAs) that are in close contact with neurons to record extracellular potential or stimulate electrical activity. However, due to the relative large microelectrode size, these MEAs are not capable of extracting intracellular signals, which is of particular interest in restoring functional loss of limb control of individuals with spinal cord injury or stroke. MEAs electrophysiological recordings still faces two major challenges, the inherent noisy data and the limited spatial resolution. These problems especially limit the accuracy and reliability of the movement parameter due to the unreliable spike recording for long durations.

The objective of this research is the fabrication and characterization of independently addressable nanoelectrode arrays (NEAs) and nanoelectrode probe arrays (NEPAs) for high-throughput recording of extracellular and intracellular electrophysiological measurements of neural activity.  These will allow, for the first time, simultaneous extracellular and intracellular characterization of large number of neurons while maintaining high spatial resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio, and excellent selectivity of neural interfaces.

The NSF award,  a novel parallel extracellular and intracellular nanoelectrode and nanoelectrode probe array for high throughput electrophysiological recording, will provide over $150,000 over the next two years to fund Dr. Slaughter and her students research on this project.