Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

 Towards Large-Scale Measurement of Vulnerabilities
and Design of Usable New Systems

Prof. Chuan Yue
University of Colorado Colorado Springs

12:00-1:00 Monday, 23 March 2015, ITE325b, UMBC

Security and privacy vulnerabilities are pervasive in computer and network systems. In my research group, we aim to accurately measure and analyze the vulnerabilities of Web, Cloud, and Mobile systems on a large scale; we also aim to design usable new systems that provide better security and privacy protection to millions of users. In this talk, I will first present our research on analyzing the vulnerabilities of popular Web browsers’ built-in password managers and some third-party browser-and-cloud-based password managers. Next, I will present a framework for automatic detection of information leakage vulnerabilities in JavaScript-based browser extensions including password managers. I will explain why it is very challenging to accurately and automatically analyze JavaScript-based browser extensions, justify why our static and dynamic combined approach is practical and appropriate, and further discuss how we may increase the capabilities of this framework to automatically measure and analyze JavaScript related security and privacy vulnerabilities on a large scale. Finally, I will discuss some of our current and future projects on security and privacy research and education, for example, one project is on measuring users’ susceptibility to sophisticated and highly insidious phishing attacks.

Chuan Yue is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. His current research focuses on Web, Cloud, and Mobile Systems Security and Privacy. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in Computer Science from Xidian University, China, in 1996 and 1999, respectively, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary in 2010. He worked as a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs China, Lucent Technologies for four years from 1999 to 2003, mainly on the design and development of the Web-based Distributed Service Management System for Intelligent Network.

For more information and directions: http://bit.ly/UMBCtalks.

Got Linux? If you’ve ever wanted to try Linux but didn’t know where to start, bring your computer to the Linux Installfest this Friday, March 13 between noon and 5:00pm at the UMBC Commons Mainstreet.  Having Linux on your own computer will give you more control and is a great learning experience.  You can also replicate the environment found on UMBC’s servers (e.g., gl.umbc.edu) which will make doing your homework on them easier.

The UMBC Linux Users Group (LUG) will hold a Linux Install Fest from Noon to 5:00pm on Friday, March 13 on Main Street in the Commons. Experts will help you install a free copy of Linux on your computer using any of several options — dual boot, virtual and more. LUG members can also advise you about the hundreds of legal, free apps available for many Linux versions.

See the LUG site for more information and pictures from previous LUG Installfest. You might also want to join UMBC’s LUG — join the LUG mailing list to get news and reminders of their regular meetings

Contact the LUG faculty adviser, Jon Squire (squire at csee.umbc.edu) with burning questions.

UMBC’s Graduate Research Conference Program (GRC) will be held on campus on Wednesday, March 25, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. There will be a variety of presentations for faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate). Featured events include professional development workshops, a keynote panel, and a research information fair.

Twenty-eight CSEE graduate students will describe their research in oral or poster presentations. Feel free to attend as many sessions as your schedule allows.

Please note that registration is required for both presenters and attendees. Registration is particularly important, in regards to securing a seat for the lunch and for the professional development workshops.

For more information, visit the Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. .

To register, please go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/37th-annual-graduate-researchconference-registration-13201250295.

Please find a link to the program guide and the events flyer listed below:

• GRC 2015 Program
• GRC Featured Events Flyer

Visual Exploration of Big Urban Data

Dr. Huy Yo
Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University

12:00-1:00pm Thursday, 12 March 2015, ITE 325b

About half of humanity lives in urban environments today and that number will grow to 80% by the middle of this century. Cities are thus the loci of resource consumption, of economic activity, and of innovation; they are the cause of our looming sustainability problems but also where those problems must be solved. Data, along with visualization and analytics can help significantly in finding these solutions.

In this talk, I will discuss the challenges of visual exploration of big urban data; and showcase our approaches in a study of New York City taxi trips. Taxis are valuable sensors and can provide unprecedented insight into many different aspects of city life. But analyzing these data presents many challenges. The data are complex, containing geographical and temporal components in addition to multiple variables associated with each trip. Consequently, it is hard to specify exploratory queries and to perform comparative analyses. This problem is largely due to the size of the data. There are almost a billion records of taxi trips collected in a 5-year period. I will present TaxiVis, a tool that allows domain experts to visually query taxi trips at an interactive speed and performing tasks that were unattainable before. I will also discuss our key contributions in this work: the visual querying model and novel indexing scheme for spatio-temporal datasets.

Dr. Huy Vo is a Research Scientist at the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), New York University. His research focuses on large-scale data analysis and visualization, big data systems, and scalable displays. He is also a Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU’s Polytechnic School of Engineering since 2011. He is one of the co-creators of VisTrails, an open-source scientific workflow and provenance management system, where he led the design of the VisTrails Provenance SDK. He received his B.S. in Computer Science (2005) and PhD in Computing (2011) from the University of Utah and was a two time recipient of the NVIDIA Fellowship awards (2009-2010 and 2010-2011).

Host: Jian Chen

Physics, Simulation, and Computer Animation

Professor Adam W. Bargteil
University of Utah

12:00-1:00 Monday, 9 March 2015, ITE325b

Physics-based Computer Animation has revolutionized the world of special effects. I will talk about several success stories including my academy award winning work on fracture, particle skinning, and large-scale splashing liquids. I will also talk about moving beyond cinematic special effects to create tools for artistic authoring of interactive animations and enabling visually predictive simulations that promise to revolutionize industrial design.

Adam W. Bargteil is an assistant professor at the University of Utah. His primary research interests lie in the area of physics-based animation. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. From 2005 to 2007, he was a consultant at PDI/DreamWorks, developing fluid simulation tools that were used in “Shrek the Third” and “Bee Movie.”

CSEE Ph.D. student Kavita Krishnaswamy was featured in a recent CNN story, Will robots help the bedridden see the world?. She has been getting a lot of visibility in the last few months via a collaboration with Suitable Technologies, a Palo Alto based company that makes ‘telepresence robots’. They loaned the department one of their high-end Beam systems last Fall to use in our robotics related research, lead by professors Tim Oates and Cynthia Matuszek, and have been inviting Kavita to use their systems in various ways.

For example she presented her dissertation proposal in December via Beam, participated in a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show show in January, has been visiting museums via Beam this month, helped lead a debate on the ethics of brain-computer interfaces this past Monday, and will take part in in a SWSX panel in March.

Here is an excerpt from the CNN story:

“A PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Krishnaswamy has spinal muscular atrophy and requires assistance 24 hours a day. She was able to make the museum trips using a Beam telepresence robot — a remotely controlled 16-inch screen mounted five feet above motorized wheels.
…
“I really enjoy the autonomy. It allows me to focus in on the things I want to see,” said Krishnaswamy. “And it’s not controlled by somebody else. I really like being independent.”

Since her first experience using a Beam to attend a computing conference in Seattle, Krishnaswamy says her life has changed drastically. She has more confidence and her calendar is suddenly filled. In a single day this week, she will take part in a debate on her campus, drop in on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and be in Washington D.C. for the Human Robot Interaction conference.

Krishnaswamy has never had the ability to stand. The Beam puts her at eye-level and gives her a new perspective on the world, she says.”

The MITRE Human Language Technology department is looking to add a talented intern to work on a research project aimed at developing automated methods for detecting dropped pronouns in informal Chinese text. The intern will contribute to the development and evaluation of algorithms and documentation of results in a technical report. Depending upon results, the report will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific publication.

Start: April – mid-June (flexible)

Duration: 8-10 weeks

Location: Annapolis Junction MD preferred, McLean VA/Bedford MA possible

For more information, see here.

The MITRE Human Language Technology department is looking to add a talented intern to work on a research project aimed at developing automated methods for detecting dropped pronouns in informal Chinese text. The intern will contribute to the development and evaluation of algorithms and documentation of results in a technical report. Depending upon results, the report will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific publication.

Start: April – mid-June (flexible)

Duration: 8-10 weeks

Location: Annapolis Junction MD preferred, McLean VA/Bedford MA possible

For more information, see here.

The College Qualified Leaders (CQL) program offers interested students (undergraduates and graduates) the opportunity to spend the summer working on research in a Department of Defense laboratory. These are paid internships.

The Multilingual Computing Branch (MLCB) at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), based in Adelphi, Maryland is looking for talented computer science and engineering interns this summer. Interns will work closely with ARL researchers on current projects to develop cutting-edge natural language processing and machine learning software. The MLCB has several ongoing projects in computational linguistics/natural language processing, including active projects in machine translation, human-robot communication, and social media analysis.

Interested applicants should have a strong academic record and be willing to take the initiative on projects.

Proficiency in Java, C++, Python, Scala, or similar languages is desired. Proficiency in natural language processing, speech processing, machine learning, or pattern recognition is a plus. Proficiency in multiple natural languages is a plus. Two references are required. Applicants must be U.S. Citizens.

The CQL program is not restricted to the summer months and, thus, it may be possible for the intern to continue working with ARL during the school year.

Interested students should apply via the following URL: http://www.usaeop.com/programs/apprenticeships/cql/

It is strongly recommended that interested students apply soon, as the window of opportunity for researchers to select summer interns is rapidly closing.

For more information about ARL, please visit http://www.arl.army.mil

Note that additional CQL positions may also be available for students in other disciplines and/or at other locations (e.g., Aberdeen Proving Ground).

The College Qualified Leaders (CQL) program offers interested students (undergraduates and graduates) the opportunity to spend the summer working on research in a Department of Defense laboratory. These are paid internships.

The Multilingual Computing Branch (MLCB) at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), based in Adelphi, Maryland is looking for talented computer science and engineering interns this summer. Interns will work closely with ARL researchers on current projects to develop cutting-edge natural language processing and machine learning software. The MLCB has several ongoing projects in computational linguistics/natural language processing, including active projects in machine translation, human-robot communication, and social media analysis.

Interested applicants should have a strong academic record and be willing to take the initiative on projects.

Proficiency in Java, C++, Python, Scala, or similar languages is desired. Proficiency in natural language processing, speech processing, machine learning, or pattern recognition is a plus. Proficiency in multiple natural languages is a plus. Two references are required. Applicants must be U.S. Citizens.

The CQL program is not restricted to the summer months and, thus, it may be possible for the intern to continue working with ARL during the school year.

Interested students should apply via the following URL: http://www.usaeop.com/programs/apprenticeships/cql/

It is strongly recommended that interested students apply soon, as the window of opportunity for researchers to select summer interns is rapidly closing.

For more information about ARL, please visit http://www.arl.army.mil

Note that additional CQL positions may also be available for students in other disciplines and/or at other locations (e.g., Aberdeen Proving Ground).