Summarizing Information in Big Data: Algorithms and Applications

Dr. Fei Liu

School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University

12:00p Friday, 27 March 2015, ITE 325b

Information floods the lives of modern people, and we find it overwhelming. Summarization systems that identify salient pieces of information and present it concisely can help. In this talk, I will discuss both algorithmic and application perspectives of summarization. Algorithm-wise, I will describe keyword extraction, sentence extraction, and summary generation, including a range of techniques from information extraction to semantic representation of data sources; application-wise, I focus on summarizing human conversations, social media contents, and news articles. The data sources span low-quality speech recognizer outputs and social media chats to high-quality content produced by professional writers. A special focus of my work is exploring multiple information sources. In addition to better integration across sources, this allows abstraction to shared research challenges for broader impact. Finally, I try to identify the missing links in cross-genre summarization studies and discuss future research directions.

Dr. Fei Liu is a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, member of Noah’s ARK. Fei’s research interests are in the areas of natural language processing, machine learning, and data mining, with special emphasis on automatic summarization and social media. From 2011 to 2013, Fei worked as a Senior Research Scientist at Bosch Research, Palo Alto, California, one of the largest German companies providing intelligent car systems and home appliances. Fei received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2011, supported by Erik Jonsson Distinguished Research Fellowship. Prior to that, she obtained her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Fei has published over twenty peer reviewed articles, and she serves as a referee for leading journals and conferences.

Host: Nilanjan Banerjee and Mohamed Younis

March is Women’s History Month!

Two  years ago Women’s History Month’s national theme was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” The theme honored generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields. At UMBC we honored this theme by partnering with the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) to feature some of their amazing students participating in technology in the engineering and information technology fields. Three years later, we still find it meaningful and important to continue spotlighting the stories of UMBC’s CWIT women and with the 2015 theme of “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives” there’s no better time than now to continue weaving the stories of our campus ITE women into the fabric of women’s history and current day lived experiences. So with that, we are honored to bring you the 3rd Annual CWIT Showcase in honor of Women’s History Month.

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Alejandra Diaz
Computer Science
CWIT  Scholar

Meet Alejandra Diaz! A CWIT Scholar and computer science major.

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major.

I’ve been interested in STEM ever since I was little. Funnily enough, the reason why I chose Computer Science as my major is because my dad forced me to take a programming elective in high school during my junior year. I whined about signing up for that class, but ended up loving programming to the point where I wanted to major in it.

Tell us about an internship, research experience or project that you are proud of.

I am really proud of my internship during the spring of my freshmen year at Ponte Technologies. This was my first major internship with a company, and I’ve learned so many things from that job. I refreshed myself in Wireshark and Nessus, and I learned the vulnerabilities a modern car has. You’d be surprised as to how easy it is to hack into a car!

Who are your role models in the engineering or IT field? How have their stories influenced your educational or career goals?

This might sound cliché, but my dad is my biggest role model in the IT field. He has come so far and now has more certifications and clearances than I can count. Seeing how he has progressed helps me outline what I want to accomplish during my career as an IT professional.

Explain your experience as a woman in a STEM major working with other women in STEM. How have you used each other to support your work and persevere in male-dominated fields?

I feel that a sense of community helps if any issue arrives because I’m a woman in STEM. My friends, who are also computer science majors, and I do homework together and study together. We don’t isolate ourselves in our classes, because we are just like the guys in our class – we’re here to learn.

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The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities.

For more information about Women’s History events and happenings, visit the Women’s Center myUMBC group page.

CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno discussed cyber warfare in Ash Hunt’s latest policy paper ‘Cyber Quantifiable Restrictions: The Requirements to Generate Agreed Restrictions on the Use of Cyber Capabilities’ appearing in The Diplomatic Courier. Among other things, Hunt attempts to show that agreed restrictions should not blanket the use of cyber capabilities, but rather the unacceptable use of a range of capabilities that could be used to harm human life.

Recently, it has become apparent that “we’re in a [cyber] arms race” in a largely unregulated domain—the cyber wild west. With the increased diffusion of technology, nations have begun amassing offensive cyber capabilities: utilizing zero-day exploits, distributed denial of server (DDOS) attacks, and weaponized malware technology. Already, “the U.S. has poured billions of dollars into an electronic arsenal,” whilst the “stockpile of exploits runs into the thousands, aimed at every conceivable device.” This exponential growth of cyber arms is particularly dangerous considering the lack of rules and conventions governing the fifth arena of warfare. Dr. Richard Forno from the University of Maryland concedes, “there is no international agreement over what level of cyber warfare is acceptable.” He further recognizes that national systems such as power grids, water treatment plants and medical facilities “do not have adequate protection from hackers.” Clearly, “principles and agreements on cyber warfare must designate sensitive infrastructure as red lines.” It is necessary to afford our critical organizations the same level of protection from cyber hostility as we do from the multitude of other tangible threats.

Source: The Diplomatic Courier Volume 9, Issue 1, January/February 2015

Applications are open until 04/30/2015; however, interviews may begin on a rolling basis once applications have been COMPLETED. Priority will be given to those who apply by APRIL 3rd.  To learn more and/or apply, see the link below.  If you have any questions, contact Eloise Grose at elgrose1@umbc.edu. 

UMBC’s 37th Annual Graduate Research Conference will take place between 9:00am and 5:00pm on Wednesday, 25 March 2015. The GRC program includes both oral and poster presentations, lunch and a keynote panel, a research information fair and a reception. The event is free, but online registration is requested.

Here is a summary of the presentations from Computer Science and Electrical Engineering students. See the GRC program for abstracts and a complete list of presentations and posters from all UMBC graduate programs.

Session I 9:00am-10:15am in UC 312

• Prajit Das – Computer Science
  FaceBlock: Semantic Context-Aware Privacy for Mobile Devices
• Ari Rapkin Blenkhorn – Computer Science
  Real-time GPU Rendering of Atmospheric Glories
• Tanmay Kulkarni – Electrical Engineering
  Palladium Nanowire Based Enzymatic Biofuel Cell
• Robert Weiblen – Electrical Engineering
  Increased Laser Damage Threshold in As2S3 Motheye Structures
• Muhammad Rahman – Computer Science
  Semantic Information Extraction from RFP Documents

Session II 10:30am-11:45am in Commons 329

• Muhammad Rahman – Computer Science (Oral Presentation)
  Open Information Extraction and Topic Modeling on Academic Profiles
• Vladimir Korolev – Computer Science (Oral Presentation)
  PROB: A Tool for Tracking of PRovenance of Big data Computational Experiments
• Jennifer Sleeman – Computer Science (Oral Presentation)
  Improving Entity Disambiguation for Wild Big Data Through Contextualization and FineGrained Entity Type Recognition

Session II 10:30am-11:45am in Sherman Hall 145

• Jon Ward – Electrical Engineering (Oral Presentation)
  Distributed Beamforming Relay Selection to Increase Base Station Anonymity in Wireless Sensor Networks
• Yin Huang – Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
  An Eigensolver for large sparse graph with Accumulo and D4M
• Abhay Kashyap – Computer Science (Oral Presentation)
  Rapalytics: When Data Science meets Rap!
• Zheng Li – Computer Engineering (Oral Presentation)
  Tongue-n-Cheek: Non-contact Tongue Gesture Recognition

Session II 10:30am-11:45am in Sondheim 103

• Piyush Waradpande – Computer Science (Work in Progress)
  Use of Doppler Radars in Activity Recognition
• Genaro Hernandez – Computer Science (Work in Progress)
  Toward Category Detection for Physically-Grounded Language
• Deepak Krishnankutty – Computer Engineering (Work in Progress)
  Multi Vantage Point Analysis of Power Supply Signatures
• Jorge Teixeira – Electrical Engineering (Work in Progress)
  Advantages and Improvements of BER/WER Performance Evaluation of Error Correcting Codes Using Dual Adaptive Importance Sampling (DAIS)

Session II 10:30am-11:45am, Poster Presentations in Library 7th floor

• Shaokang Wang – Electrical Engineering
  Soliton Wake Instability in a SESAM Modelocked Fiber Laser
• Isaac Mativo – Computer Science
  Clinical Predictive Modeling with Patient Reported Data
• Yichuan Gui – Computer Science
  A Pairwise Algorithm to Overcome the Local Minimum Problem in Training
• David Harris – Computer Science
  Developing User Interface Frameworks to Facilitate Usage Amongst Technologically UnderServed Populations
• Hsiao-Chi Li – Electrical Engineering
  Progressive Band Processing of Orthogonal Subspace Projection in Hyperspectral Imagery
• Lisa Mathews – Computer Science
  A Collaborative Approach to Situational Awareness for CyberSecurity
• Yu Wang – Computer Science
  Isosurface Smoothing using Marching Cubes and PN-Triangles
• Yue Hu – Electrical Engineering
  Impact of the Coulomb Interaction on the Franz-Keldysh Effect in a High-Current Photodetector
• Hadis Dashtestani – Computer Science
  Massively Distributed Online Neuroscience for Improving Virtual Experience

Session III 1:45pm-3:00pm, Poster Presentations in UC 312

• Bryan Wilkinson – Computer Science
  A Resource for Evaluating Adjective Scales
• Adam Price – Computer Science
  Big Data Analytics for Expanding Alice Analysis for the United States
• Seyed Ehsan Jamali Mahabadi and Yue Hu – Electrical Engineering
  Gain Recovery in Quantum Cascade Lasers
• Brian Stevens – Computer Engineering
  Characterization of Glucose Responsive Phenylboronic Acid-Based Hydrogel Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Website, Media, and Communications Internship (9273202)
Sierra Club Maryland Chapter - College Park, Maryland

Assist the Maryland Chapter or one of the local Sierra Club Groups to design and improve webpages. Solicit and edit materials and post newsletters and alerts. Create insightful blog posts on national and local environmental issues, events and opinions. Train volunteers to post to events and meetings calendars. Update contact information, databases, and more!

Parks & People Foundation - Baltimore, Maryland
Summer URI Internship Program

Recreation Center Enrichment Program (9273253)
Recreation & Physical Activity GIS Mapping (9273259)
Park Nature Programming (9273256)
Outdoor Recreation Activities/Health Baltimore Initiative (9273254)
Landscape Design at Cylburn Arboretum (9273258)
Facility Project Inventory and Planning (9273262)
Administrative Policy and Planning Intern (9273251)

Summer Graphic Design Intern- paid (9273166)
Sharma & Associates - Laurel, Maryland

Learn and assist in Graphic Design, Logo Design, digital media, sign making, and printing. Will work with Photo Shop, InDesign, and Illustrator.

Grace Summer Intern Program - Business (9273241)
W. R. Grace & Co. - Columbia, Maryland

The W. R. Grace Summer Internship Program is a 10 to 12 week paid internship program that offers assignments which will challenge interns. At Grace, you will benefit from a professional environment that is conducive to learning, with the opportunity to work and interact with some of the most knowledgeable and respected professionals in our industry.

Summer 2015- B&O Railroad Museum 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (9273231)

B&O Railroad Museum - Baltimore, Maryland

The B&O Railroad Museum (Museum) in Baltimore, Maryland invites applications for its 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. The SURF will commence on or about June 15, 2015 and culminate with the submission of a paper no later than December 15, 2015.

March is Women’s History Month!

Two  years ago Women’s History Month’s national theme was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” The theme honored generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields. At UMBC we honored this theme by partnering with the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) to feature some of their amazing students participating in technology in the engineering and information technology fields. Three years later, we still find it meaningful and important to continue spotlighting the stories of UMBC’s CWIT women and with the 2015 theme of “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives” there’s no better time than now to continue weaving the stories of our campus ITE women into the fabric of women’s history and current day lived experiences. So with that, we are honored to bring you the 3rd Annual CWIT Showcase in honor of Women’s History Month.

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Travis Ward 
Computer Engineering
T-Site Scholar

Meet Travis… a T-Site Scholar in the CWIT Community

Tell us about your experience in the CWIT community.

By being a member of the CWIT community, I have felt a connection to other students in class and socially that I wouldn’t otherwise have. In almost every class I have, there’s someone there that I recognize and can have a rapport with. Almost every group I have hung out or worked with from class has built up from a fellow CWIT member. Recently I have had the honor to be a part of several committees to encourage young women to enter the STEM fields or work beside new members to CWIT. These events have been some of the most satisfying experiences I have had at UMBC.

Based on your experiences, what do you want other men to know about the gender gap in engineering and IT?

Personally I think that most men are already aware of the gender gap in the STEM fields. I know my own major of computer engineering is particularly lacking in gender diversity. This is a frustrating issue as one of the hardest parts of working in this field is coming up with solutions to very difficult problems. Trying to solve these in a vacuum is a near impossibility. I know I can’t do it. The women that I work with have valuable insights and perspective that has helped me through a project more then once. They make just as strong of an addition as any man would. Everybody attacks design problems from a different angle depending on how they learned to problem solve. These unique perspectives are invaluable to a project and should never be overlooked.

How do you feel you are a role model for other men majoring in engineering and IT?

I have had a lot of support from women in my life help me get to where I am today. I think it is only right that I try to be there to offer support to anybody who may struggle here at UMBC. By being a mentor to other member’s of CWIT I hope any of our community members may feel more comfortable working in STEM. By being a member of the CWIT retreat committee, I was given the opportunity to mold many student’s first impression of UMBC. As a part of the Bits and Bytes group, we helped young women better understand how to get into the STEM fields, what kind of challenges they might find, and the kinds of support that are out there. I have tried to make my workplaces and classrooms more tolerant and accepting places. I encourage others to be accepting and nonjudgmental as well. I think this is important not just for encouraging women to participate in STEM, but for anybody.

How has being a man advocating for women in engineering or IT helped you better understand how important the stories of women’s experiences are?

By being in a community dedicated to diversity in the STEM fields I have learned a lot. Everybody has their own story, and with it comes their own take on a host of issues. While many of these are different and unique, I know I have been most struck by how many of them I can relate to. I think it is important to realize that there is far more that connects me with everybody in this community. Not just the men, and not just the computer engineers. All of us have found an interest our area and an aptitude for it. For many of us it was a surprise and wasn’t even something we were looking for. I know that we are all together exploring what these interests mean to us and its important that we have the support improves that journey.

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The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities.

For more information about Women’s History events and happenings, visit the Women’s Center myUMBC group page.

A post written by Women’s Center Intern, Daniel.

So you’re out at your favorite vegan coffee shop sipping your $6 soy latte while reading City Paper and you peek over the top of it just in time to see a blue-haired cutie send a glance your way and wink as they strut out the door. When you walk into your sociology class on Monday, you scan the room and spot a classmate with pink bangs and an undercut and weave your way through the desks to sit as close to them as possible so that when the professor begins the chapter on sexuality you can roll your eyes and groan with them. Why? Cause that blue-haired cutie and the classmate with the undercut and the kid on the bus with the mohawk crusted in glitter are all totally queer just like you.

Photo Credit: Audrey Gatewood

I stepped into gay hair territory in the summer of 2012 when I cut off all my hair and never looked back. Last summer I started dying my hair bright colors and I, again, haven’t looked back. I’ve been lavender, blue, pink, purple, and now platinum blonde. My freshman year, I attended my first impromptu hair party. Armed with clippers and bleach, my suitemate, a new friend of mine, and my biggest crush at the time went to town on each other’s hair. In a terrifying turn of events, I got to use clippers for the very first time on the one person whose hair I did NOT want to mess up. I actually did okay and went on to be a part of many, many more hair parties like this one.

A lot of us (and by “us,” I mean young, queer/gay, and trans people) don’t have the time or money to go to a hair salon to get our hair done and, frankly, not a lot of salons are willing to give us the cuts we want. A common experience among queer women (and a lot of other types of queer people) is taking a picture of a “man’s” cut or masculine style to a stylist and ending up with feminized version of it. “Passing” as a man well enough to sit comfortably in a barber’s chair is anxiety-inducing at best, not to mention trying to safely “pass” as a woman in a salon and a world of rampant transmisogyny. Getting your hair cut by a group of friends in someone’s poorly lit bathroom may not result in the most professionally done coiffure, but it beats being misgendered or told that what you want is too masculine or too feminine for whatever gender your stylist has assigned to you.

Getting a gay haircut can be an incredible experience that feels validating and makes you feel more connected with your community, but getting my gay hair gay cut this weekend made me think about what gay hair is and how politics of gender, identity, and queerness come into play with visibility and validation.

So, what is gay hair?

“Gay Hair Squad” at Artscape

“Gay hair” is non-normative hair. It’s often brightly colored, always changing, and rarely professionally done. It blurs the lines of gendered cuts (why on earth do hair cuts have genders??) and challenges assumptions about the person wearing it. Some styles are more popular in some subcultures than others. For some, gay hair is an act of rebellion; for others, it’s a away to take control of their bodies or to step outside of them. For me, gay hair is how I make people see my queerness. When I dyed my hair lavender this summer, it was because I was worried that people were reading me as a straight, cisgender dude. I wanted them to look at me and see that I was not those things, even if they didn’t have the words for what I was, because being cisgender and straight are so far removed from my lived experience that being read that way felt like not only a big lie but a step back into the closet.

I love my gay hair and all my gay friends with all their gay hair. But I’ve come to realized that being able to have gay hair is a privilege most of us with gay hair have never thought about. The majority of people with gay hair are white, afab (assigned female at birth), and on the masculine side of the gender presentation spectrum– not because people of color or amab (assigned male at birth) or femme-presenting people don’t wear their hair in expressive and non-normative ways, but because our picture of “queer” looks like a thin, white, masc/androgynous person with colorful hair and cute shoes. Black women (cis and trans alike) don’t get to have cool and funky hair without being labeled “ghetto” and unprofessional. Queer trans women get serious criticism then they want short or masculine cuts like their cisgender counterparts because they aren’t performing femininity in the way that trans women are expected to in order to be validated and accepted.

Speaking of validation and acceptance, why is it that we assume queer people have to look a certain way, or that people who look or sound one way must be queer? Why is femme invisibility such a pervasive problem in queer circles that many queer women feel the need to cut their hair in order to be seen? In creating our own subcultures and modes of rebellion against gender norms and heternormativity, I wonder if we have not only isolated ourselves from the people for whom “gay” is not the primary mode of existence, but also created new barriers for already marginalized groups within our community. People who can’t have or don’t want gay hair should still be able to be recognized and validated in their identities, and we should be supporting our non-white and femme siblings in their pursuit of gay hair. Heck, everyone should try out gay hair. There’s something exciting about “breaking the rules” and toeing the ridiculous but still ever-present line of gender norms.

Besides, who doesn’t like a blue-haired cutie?

CSEE Ph.D. student Kavita Krishnaswamy is featured in this video created by Suitable Technologies, maker of the Beam telepresence system.

Kavita, who works with CSEE professor Tim Oates, is both a Ford Foundation Predoctoral and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She has also worked at the Quality of Life Technology Center run by CMU and the University of Pittsburgh and IBM Business consulting services.

As a professional researcher with a severe physical disability, Kavita is motivated by a powerful, innate force: autonomy is the soul of independent daily living that is achieved with the advancement of technology. Her research involves the development of robotic systems to provide assistance and increase independence for people with disabilities. She is developing several prototype robotic systems that will support transferring, repositioning, and personal care, with a focus on accessible user interfaces for control that are feasible for persons with severe disabilities.

Kavita attends many events and conferences with the Beam, allowing her independence and mobility to meet, learn, and network with professionals all over the world. The Beam gives her independence to be visible in the community to explore and expand technological boundaries from her home.

If you are interested in the Beam, you can sign up to connect to a Beam at the DeYoung Museum or test drive a BeamPro.