Version 3.0 - 2023
Putting AI Into Focus Record Enrollment, Rising Rankings The Argonne Connection Forging Global Bonds
Letter from the Dean
College of Computing Magazine Dean, College of Computing Lance Fortnow Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs Mallik Sundharam Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications Chelsea Kalberloh Jackson Director of Content Andrew Wyder Editor Casey Moffitt
Dear All, 2023 has been an incredible year for computing, both at Illinois Tech and worldwide. This fall we hit a new milestone with more than 3,200 students. The College of Computing now has nearly 40 percent of the total students enrolled in the university. We have seen the largest increase in the computer science master’s program. In addition to these on-campus students, this fall the college has launched three new Coursera online degrees: Master of Data Science, Master of Information Technology, and a bachelor’s completion degree in information technology. You can find more information at www.iit.edu/coursera. We hired four new tenure-track faculty in 2023: Farzaneh Derakhshan and Mark Miller in computer science, Trevor Leslie in applied mathematics, and Ann Rangarajan in information technology and management. We plan to hire several more faculty this spring to keep up with the growing demand for our courses and degrees. I write this letter just over a year after the release of ChatGPT, and we are witnessing a new era of computing, driven by artificial intelligence and data. We’ve embarked on a conversation with alumni, faculty, and students on how our college and university should address this brave new world. We are focusing on four challenges: ● Managing AI/machine learning/data science across
the university ● Rethinking the college itself
Design Joe Goforth Scott Benbrook Photography Jamie Ceaser David Ettinger Michael Reiter Copyeditor Casey Halas
College of Computing Magazine is published annually by the Office of Marketing and Communications and the College of Computing. Send Letters to College of Computing Magazine Office of Marketing and Communications 10 West 35th Street, 13th Floor Chicago, IL 60616
Mission Statement Provide the students and faculty of Illinois Tech from all backgrounds and disciplines the best-in-class computational and data science platform to excel in their respective fields.
ADA Statement Illinois Institute of Technology provides qualified individuals with disabilities reasonable accommodations to participate in university activities, programs, and services. Such individuals with disabilities requiring an accommodation should call the activity, program, or service director. For further information about Illinois Tech’s resources, contact the Illinois Tech Center for Disability Resources at disabilities@iit.edu.
● How we can use AI to scale education ● How we can develop the resources to ensure a strong future
for the college I’d love to get your thoughts. Feel free to reach out. Lance Fortnow Dean College of Computing lfortnow@iit.edu
On the Cover An image created by an artificial intelligence image generator, showcasing the opportunities provided by AI.
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Faculty News
Learn more about our faculty’s latest research, grants, and awards.
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Student News
College of Computing students earned prestigious scholarships, won key competitions, and secured top internships.
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AI and You
What are the truths and myths of generative artificial intelligence? How can this powerful new technology benefit us, and where are the pitfalls?
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Opening the Network
The College of Computing has expanded connections with Argonne National Laboratory to provide exciting research opportunities for students and faculty.
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Alumni News
Alumni continue to push the boundaries of computing through their work.
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A College on the Move
In three years the College of Computing has seen an enormous growth in enrollment and advancements in research—and academic peers are taking notice.
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International Insights
Faculty have returned to campus from Fulbright experiences, bringing with them new perspectives on research and culture.
FACULTY NEWS
CAREER Grant to Reshape the Cloud A $632,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation will allow Kyle Hale, assistant professor of computer science, to pursue a lighter-weight, high-performance, and secure software framework that runs on
shared computing infrastructures, such as cloud and serverless computing. “Colony: A Framework for Bespoke Virtual Execution Contexts” questions the idea that hardware virtualization is slow and impractical. The
model, Colony, will reduce start-up times for cloud computing by eliminating the need to build a virtual machine on the cloud by developing a series of functions to trigger a secure application on the cloud. By designing new isolation
mechanisms using novel operating system, compiler, programming language, and virtualization technologies, Colony will help produce a more robust cloud computing infrastructure that is less susceptible to attack, less likely to leak sensitive user data, and more productive for programmers. This should result in reduced economic losses from compromised infrastructure, a strengthened national security, and increased privacy for the broader public that is using cloud services. “The problem is current infrastructure is built on legacy software stacks, which are tweaked to allow this to happen,” Hale says. “They are not designed to perform this function.”
Grants Propel Cutting-Edge Research Five research teams from Illinois Institute of Technology have received $20,000 seed grants from the university’s Active Computational Thinking (ACT) Center to promote computing methods throughout various research fields. • Xian-He Sun, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and the Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair of Computer Science, has teamed up with Britt Burton-Freeman, professor of food science and nutrition, for “Ambrosia: Harnessing the Power of Data Analytics to Capture Metabolic Health Insights” to combine smaller studies’ impact of food types on human metabolic responses. • Sanjiv Kapoor, professor of computer science, Nicole Legate, associate professor of psychology, Arlen Moller, associate professor of psychology, and Kai Shu, Gladwin Development Chair Assistant Professor of Computer Science, have teamed up for “Behavioral and Game-Theoretic Parameterized Models for Pandemic Prediction,” analyzing social media data to see how COVID-19-stemming policies have affected behavior patterns. • Yue Duan, Gladwin Development Chair Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has teamed with Shiyan Jiang, assistant professor of learning design and technology at North Carolina State University, to examine effective educational software for distance learning. •D avid Minh, Robert E. Frey Jr. Endowed Chair in Chemistry and associate professor of chemistry, and Lulu Kang, associate professor of applied mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, examine “Direct Estimation of Binding Free Energies via Learned Mappings,” by applying deep learning methods to predict where and how tightly ligands bind to proteins, and mapping between bound and unbound states to calculate free energies. •S hu earned another grant with Matthew Shapiro, professor of political science, for “Developing Trustworthy and Accessible Tools to Mitigate Disinformation in Marginalized Communities” to see how social media users perceive and understand disinformation “Overall, it was very exciting to see the wide range of proposals for interdisciplinary projects using computation in very creative ways to not only address problems in other disciplines, but also to develop new concepts and ways of thinking about those problems,” says Shlomo Argamon, ACT Center interim director and professor of computer science.
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Math Meets Energy Scalability
Optimizing a massive system, such as an energy grid presents complex mathematical issues, Sonja Petrović, associate professor of applied mathematics, has joined a team at Argonne National Laboratory to help solve this question. Petrović’s expertise in Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and probabilistic algorithms for symbolic computation is
assisting the Argonne team in the United States Department of Energy-funded research program, “High-Performance Algorithms Research for Complex Energy Systems and Processes.” The team received a $2.8 million grant to advance randomized algorithms for scientific computing. The integrated system of a power grid includes combining the design of building energy systems, the design of co-generation and dispatch models, the scheduling of black-start generators, the design and layout of concentrating solar plants, attacker-defender models, and the protection of cyber infrastructure. Petrović has joined Argonne mathematicians Sven Leyffer, Kibaek Kim, and Matt Menickelly to develop a new kind of algorithm that accommodates the massive number of variables the system creates. “Conventional algorithms of any type for any application hit a scalability wall, as I like to call it, when they are attempted on massively sized problems,” Petrović says. “The massive size often comes because of some combinatorial explosion. It is impossible to get the exact answer in the way that can be done for ‘small’ and moderately sized problems.”
Investment Transparency
“ I was thrilled, honored, and humbled to get the news. The award is unparalleled in value. I treasure it highly.” —Xian-He Sun, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Ron Hochsprung Endowed Chair, on earning the Computer Science and Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, Michigan State University.
$$$ $$$
Yong Zheng, assistant professor of information technology and management, has earned a grant from Morningstar, Inc. to develop a visualization tool that will help the Chicago-based financial technology outfit’s clients make informed decisions about their investment portfolios. Zheng’s goal is to build an interactive visualization platform that will allow Morningstar clients to interact with a user interface and visualize the pros and cons of portfolio options. This tool will ensure that clients are aware of the impacts on their assets based on risk/returns changes and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores, which outline investments that promote sustainable development and practices, such as concerns related to climate change, pollution, human rights, shareholder rights, and political contributions. This should result in more transparency and trust in Morningstar’s financial portfolios. Last year Zheng and his research team collaborated with Morningstar to develop intelligent and effective solutions for financial portfolio optimization. A multiobjective optimization framework was built that considers expected returns, potential risks, and corresponding metrics in ESG standards. Zheng says the tool has two major functions. “On one hand, clients can observe the characteristics of the financial portfolio through a comparison with a benchmark, such as a portfolio without ESG considerations or an existing portfolio from the current client,” he says “On the other hand, the platform will provide interactive components on a user interface which will allow clients to change inputs, such as client preferences on ESG factors, so that clients can change their preferences and locate their preferred portfolio through these interactions.”
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STUDENT NEWS
‘Voyager’ Earns Prestigious Obama Foundation Award Ryan Manthy (CS 3rd Year) says he believes that technology has the great potential to help people gain access to health care resources. He now has an opportunity to explore that potential further as a Voyager Scholarship recipient. “There’s a broad cohort of student leaders selected who have liberal arts backgrounds, health care backgrounds, and technology backgrounds,” Manthy
says. “Hearing ideas from those people is really exciting.” Manthy is one of 100 inaugural Voyager Scholarship recipients, out of 1,800 applicants. The scholarship was created by former United States President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky to support young leaders who can bridge divides and help solve the world’s biggest challenges. Distributed by the Obama Foundation, the scholarship grants up to $50,000 toward tuition costs, a $10,000 stipend, free Airbnb housing, and helps find an internship or mentorship for a summer work-travel experience. The goal of the scholarship is to allow students to pursue a career in public service, as well as gain exposure to new communities. Manthy says that the goal appeals to his own career ambitions. “I’ve always had a passion for social impact innovation, and I aspire to work in this field in the future,” Manthy says.
‘Tree of Life’ Claims Keysight Challenge A team of Illinois Institute of Technology students took the top prize in the 2022 Keysight Innovation Challenge for its novel “Tree of Life” Internet-of-Things device, which collects data from the soil and atmosphere around it to determine the best trees to plant for maximum carbon dioxide capture and optimum growing conditions. The Illinois Tech team came in first out of an international group of 52 teams, winning $30,000 in cash, as well as $10,000 worth of Keysight test equipment for Illinois Tech. The team includes Chloe Rubinowicz (EE, M.S. EE ’23), Saurabh Saluja (CPE, M.S. CPE ’23), Colin Prochnow (CCSE, M.S. CPE ’23), Kaya Jones (CS 3rd Year), Anthony Banuelos (CCSE, M.A.S. CYF ’23), and Katarzyna Staron (ME, M.S. ME ’23). The device is planted into the ground, where it collects information about the soil nutrients, measures local carbon dioxide levels, and uses a neural network to identify surrounding trees or other obstructions. An algorithm then evaluates these data against a database of more than 2,000 trees and recommends the optimum tree for carbon sequestra-
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tion and tree longevity for that location. “Our team learned and experienced more from this project than anything else we’ve done before,” adds Rubinowicz. “This has served as a pivotal moment for us, learning to work with a team to develop an idea and actualize it.” The 2022 Keysight Innovation Challenge asked students to create an IoT innovation that provides carbon neutrality corporate site monitoring, multi-site monitoring, or community monitoring. The device needed to be able to communicate wirelessly, be easy to deploy by a non-expert in a secure fashion, and must handle sensitive data.
Photo: Some members of the winning Illinois Institute of Technology team (from left to right): Chloe Rubinowicz, Colin Prochnow, Saurabh Saluja, and Katarzyna Staron with their prototype.
“ There were several options on which network monitor program to use and through the guidance on the pro’s and con’s by peers, I was able to choose the one that was best for my specific application.” — Michal Markevych (Computer and Cybersecurity Engineering, M.S. Cybersecurity and Forensics 6th Year) on gaining peer review for a research project using ChatGPT-4 to enhance intrusion detections systems, which earned an invitation to present at the Knowledge-Based Organization conference in Romania.
ALUMNI NEWS
HPC Pioneer Bestowed NAS Honor
Illinois Institute of Technology alumnus Jack Dongarra (M.S. CS ’73) has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his original research contributions to the field of high-performance computing. Dongarra’s pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries have enabled high-performance computational software to keep pace with more than 40 years of hardware improvements. These accomplishments were recognized by the Association of Computing Machinery when, in 2021, it awarded Dongarra the A. M. Turing Award, the highest honor in computing. Dongarra, who currently sits on Illinois Tech’s Computer Science Advisory Board, specializes in linear algebra—a form
of mathematics that underpins many of the most ambitious tasks in computer science, including a critical part of the modeling of many natural systems in physics, astrophysics, climatology, chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, social science, and engineering. He worked with researchers at several American labs to develop LINPACK, an open-source set of algorithms that help scientists across a wide range of disciplines. The algorithms benefit a wide range of users through their incorporation into software including MATLAB, Maple, Wolfram Mathematica, GNU Octave, the R programming language, and SciPy, among others. He is currently a member of the distinguished research staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Decoded Data Sparks Privacy Debate A research team at Illinois Institute of Technology has extracted protected personal information, such as age and gender, from anonymous Latin American cell phone data using machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, raising questions about data security. The team developed a neural network model to estimate gender with 67 percent accuracy, which outperforms modern techniques. They also used the model to estimate the age of individual users with an accuracy rate of 78 percent. The interdisciplinary team of Illinois Tech faculty includes Vijay K. Gurbani, research associate professor of computer science; Matthew Shapiro, professor of political science; and Yuri Mansury, associate professor of social sciences. They were joined by alumni Lida Kuang (M.S. CS ’19) and Samruda Pobbathi (M.S. CS ’19) to publish “Predicting Age and Gender from Network Telemetry: Implications for Privacy and Impact on Policy” in PLOS One. The aim of the paper is to start a dialogue that critically examines the impact of emerging machine learning, AI techniques, and privacy regulations.
“Machine learning and automated decision making will be a mainstream of business processes, and there is no escaping that reality,” Gurbani says. “The issue at hand is how to protect individual privacy, as well as societal and economic interests from fraud using the appropriate regulatory framework.”
The research team’s approach to modeling summary for the project. [Bottom] A feedforward neural network of how the information moves in the project.
College of Computing Magazine | 2023
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FEATURE
AI and You Exploring the Boundaries, Benefits, and Dangers of Generative AI
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rtificial intelligence is not going to steal your job. Artificial intelligence is not going to destroy the human race. But this powerful new technology is here, and you will be using it. Chances are that you have been using it already. If you’ve dictated a text message into Siri, asked Alexa anything, or used predictive text in an email, then you have used AI in one form or another. It’s been integrated into our daily lives in subtle ways already. When ChatGPT launched this past spring, AI flexed
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its muscle with a chatbot that produced seemingly thoughtful responses to inquiries of all things imaginable. Generative AI gave its best presentation of mimicking human interaction. What ChatGPT showed is AI’s ability to combine increased computing power with the availability of massive data sets to make quick analysis of patterns and create unique content. ChatGPT shows the future of AI is in a data-driven world, where the system can compute enormous amounts of data, and generate responses to that data.
“It’s not necessarily new, but ChatGPT shows us the new capacities unlocked by the scaling of the parameters,” says Kai Shu, Gladwin Development Chair Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Illinois Institute of Technology. “There’s been a lot of research over the past decade in the scaling of parameters and massive training data. And now we’re seeing the phenomena.” Shlomo Argamon, professor of computer science at Illinois Tech, has spent many years conducting AI research, and says generative AI, such as ChatGPT, performs the same fundamental task as text prediction, but draws upon a much larger amount of surrounding context due to the huge data sets that have been used to train highly complex and sophisticated statistical models. This results in its ability to construct long, intelligible responses to inquiries, and mimic human-like behavior. “This is a tremendous leap forward,” Argamon says. “Until ChatGPT, systems couldn’t converse and seem nearly human-like.” Although generative AI systems can produce responses that seem like human interaction, they do not incorporate anything that we would think of as understanding, reasoning, and knowledge. In fact, these systems have no concept of reality. The responses are more akin to hallucinations generated to look plausible based on analysis of the massive data sets used for training the system. As a result, these systems can generate responses that contain made up “facts,” which can be inaccurate. “For example, if a student asks it to write a term paper complete with references, it will do that,” Argamon says. “However, none of the references will actually exist. They look realistic but are just made up.” Most of the facts contained within the paper will be accurate, as the majority of the data the AI system is analyzing to generate the content will be correct, but not because the system “knows” it’s correct. It also won’t be drawing on a limited number of references that it can list. So when it is asked to generate references, it will do just that. It will create references based on the patterns it finds within the data it is analyzing. AI systems also can be exploited to
deliberately generate misinformation by malicious users. Deep fake technology can use speech patterns to generate video showing people saying things that they never said. Generative AI technology can be used to develop news stories that aren’t factual to intentionally mislead the public. “A lot of future research will go into exploring how large language models can generate misinformation in order to combat it,” Shu says. “There is still some action needed to be able to detect AI-generated misinformation.” Malicious users also can raise the ugly head of bias through AI in a number of ways. Biased training data can be incorporated to lead systems into generating biased responses. Systems also can be programmed to extract private information from protected data, such as an individual’s race, ethnicity, age, and gender, or even their health information. There are three stages in the life cycle of training data, and Shu says mitigations can be implemented in each stage to reduce bias. During pre-process, data is collected. Bias within the data can be determined during this stage, and scrubbed before it is used as training data. During the in-process stage, data is actively used to train the AI model. A predictive layer can be added to detect and mitigate biased information. The model is fully trained by the post-process, but bias can still be mitigated at this stage. By examining the system’s responses, it can be determined what biases it is producing and steps to mitigate them can be taken before the system is deployed for real-world use. “There are a lot of challenges along the way from research to deployment,” Shu says. “If you are going to deploy AI in the real world, it must be done in a responsible and trustworthy way, or people aren’t going to be able to rely on it.” Other mitigation includes making algorithms transparent so the user can understand how AI systems draw the conclusions it reaches. New policies also should be developed, specifically in the areas of data privacy and security, Argamon and Shu argue. Although the results that AI is producing is impressive, there is little knowledge as to how, exactly, these systems operate. “AI is more of an art than a science at this
point,” Argamon says. “The capabilities of these systems are beyond what we could have believed, but how they work is still poorly understood.” However, the capabilities make AI a valuable tool that has been widely used in fields, such as health care, engineering, software development, and many more. New jobs have emerged with the deployment of new AI systems. “You’ll see that prompt engineer is a new job,” Argamon says. “It might not always be a standalone job. It most likely will be absorbed as part of another job. But at this point, it’s a new job.” Shu and Argamon agree that AI, when integrated into the workplace and under human supervision, has the capabilities to fulfill mundane tasks and increase worker productivity. Tasks such as scheduling, writing briefs, or filling out spreadsheets could be completed more efficiently with AI, freeing time for workers to work on more important duties. “It can take over some grunt work,” Shu says. “There are potentially a lot of benefits to enhance productivity and efficiency.” Illinois Tech faculty have long been leaders in AI research in a variety of areas, including enhancing cybersecurity, understanding health issues, and brain imaging. Argamon and Shu are jointly working on an AI project to determine authorship of specific documents that is being funded by a $1.6 million grant from a $11.3 million contract from the Human Interpretable Attribution of Text Using Underlying Structure program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. The pair are working to develop “AUTHOR: Attribution, and Undermining the Attribution, of Text While Providing Human-Oriented Rationales.” AUTHOR promises to capture the writing style of specific uncredited authors through natural language processing and machine learning techniques to create stylistic fingerprints. On the flip side, AUTHOR will be used to develop authorship privacy, anonymizing identities of authors, especially when their lives are in danger. AI research has also crossed fields at Illinois Tech into areas such as engineering, law, and finance.
College of Computing Magazine | 2023
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FEATURE
UPWARD TRENDS Illinois Institute of Technology founded the College of Computing in 2020 to recognize the seismic shifts in business and industry created by the rapid expansion of computation and data. Three years later, the college has been recognized by academic peers, attracted record numbers in enrollment, and expanded programming to reach more students. 8
BY THE NUMBERS Illinois Tech Rankings
#23
Wall Street Journal/College Pulse’s 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S.
#98
U.S. News & World Report’s Best National University Rankings, +29 spots
#29
U.S. News & World Report ’s Best Value Schools
College of Computing Rankings
43%
Increased enrollment in College of Computing programs
#83
U.S. News & World Report ’s 2024 Best Graduate Schools in Computer Science, +16 spots
3,342
Total enrollment in College of Computing programs
2,278
Enrollment in computer science undergraduate and graduate programs
#94
U.S. News & World Report ’s Best Undergraduate Computer Science Programs, +12 spots
The College of Computing also has developed groundbreaking online programs that are designed to remove access barriers and to provide new high-quality education pathways for students from all backgrounds through a new partnership with Coursera. The partnership with Coursera, a leading online learning platform, offers three new industry-aligned degree programs. Students can earn degrees in three College of Computing programs through the Coursera partnership:
• Master of Data Science
Combines high-level mathematics, statistics, and computer science to analyze data, with a curriculum featuring industry partner content for real-world experience.
• Master of Information Technology
A dynamic and adaptable program that helps professionals master the latest IT trends, applications, and management strategies, with entrance courses for learners without a bachelor’s degree and course credit for prior learning and industry credentials.
• Bachelor of Information Technology
A bachelor completion program designed for students with an associate’s degree that allows them to receive course credit for 61 credit hours of prior study, fast-tracking their way to graduation and preparing graduates for careers in IT or cloud computing.
College of Computing Magazine | 2023
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FEATURE
Opening the A
leksei Sorokin (Ph.D. AMAT 3rd Year) found a wealth of resources while spending a summer conducting research with Argonne National Laboratory, while also gaining a glimpse as to what it is like to conduct research at a national laboratory as a possible career. “Having experience at a national laboratory is a big help,” he says. “I’m still trying to decide if I want to get into teaching, a national lab, or the industry.” Sorokin says the opportunity to work at Argonne came as a suggestion from his Ph.D. adviser, Fred Hickernell, vice provost for research and professor of applied mathematics. Hickernell found a scientist working on a project that overlapped Sorokin’s Ph.D. work. After connecting with Vishwar Rao at Argonne, Sorokin began working on “Credible Intervals for Probability of Failure with Gaussian Processes.” “The computing resources and access to the supercomputers they have at Argonne makes training these Gaussian models really easy,” Sorokin says. “You just need to make time to use these machines to do your large-scale modeling. It’s really nice to have easy access to those.”
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Sorokin explained it would be possible to conduct the research using third party resources at companies such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. However, it would have cost a lot of money and time to use those resources, making it more difficult to conduct the research. Illinois Institute of Technology has been strengthening ties with the research community at Argonne to expand research opportunities for its students, in addition to the resources of a national laboratory for faculty research. To strengthen its commitment to research excellence and experiential learning, Illinois Tech recently appointed joint faculty of five staff scientists from Argonne. Valerie Taylor has accepted an appointment as a research professor, while Xingfu Wu and Michael Kruse have been named research associate professor through Argonne and Illinois Tech’s joint appointment program. The program’s goal is to maximize the intellectual and physical resources of both Argonne and Illinois Tech in order to promote research and collaboration in areas that align with the scientific priorities of Argonne and the United States Depart-
ment of Energy. Taylor, Wu, and Kruse are collaborating with several computer science faculty members at Illinois Tech in high-performance computing. Argonne computer scientists Bogdan Nicolae and Michael E. Papka also joined Illinois Tech’s Department of Computer Science as research professors to enhance stronger research connections between the laboratory and Illinois Tech faculty and students. Nicolae is a technical lead of a project that develops a checkpoint-restart framework for HPC applications. Papka’s research focuses on scientific visualization, large data analysis, and enabling science with computers and computing technology. “We are delighted to announce these new appointments, which will bring a wealth of opportunity to our faculty and students, including additional funding, more diverse research, and increased collaboration,” says Professor Shlomo Argamon, the former chair of Illinois Tech’s Department of Computer Science. “This brings great benefits to our department, the College of Computing, and the university as a whole.” The appointees may serve as coadvisers to Ph.D. candidates at Illinois
Network
Illinois Tech and Argonne Collaborate for Research Excellence
Tech, exposing them to the cuttingedge research projects, as well as open networking pathways and full-time internships at a Department of Energy lab. Although the program has focused on high-performance computing research, the program could expand to collaborations in other computer science areas, such as computational science, data science and learning, environmental science, and bioscience.
“As working scientists today, we have a responsibility to help develop the workforce of tomorrow.”— Michael E. Papka “As working scientists today, we have a responsibility to help develop the workforce of tomorrow,” Papka says. “Ideally, the expertise and experience we can bring to the Illinois Tech community will get more students interested in pursuing computational science careers. After all, they have some of the world’s most powerful computing resources available to them, and practically in their backyard.” Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) laboratory located 20 miles from Illinois Tech’s Mies Campus in suburban Lemont, Illinois, operates world-class user facilities for the research community. “It’s a great opportunity for students to learn more about our lab and experience hands-on research,” Nicolae says. Argamon says additional collaboration with Argonne will expand the university’s research possibilities. “We are very excited about our deepening partnership with Argonne, as exemplified by these new appointments,” Argamon says. “The collaborations that this enables will not only broaden our research activities and extend our impact, but also open up new opportunities for our students to gain practical and interdisciplinary experience by working with scientists at a DOE national lab.” With these appointments, Papka and Nicolae say they hope to encourage more faculty-led projects, too. Illinois Tech computer science professors have used Argonne resources to work on problems at the forefront of HPC research, with Papka co-supervising Illinois Tech doctoral students working in the same field. Nicolae says he’s had several discussions
with Illinois Tech faculty members covering topics at the intersection of HPC and artificial intelligence. “It’s a rapidly evolving area that will have a lasting impact and presents plenty of new collaboration opportunities and research topics for the students,” he says. “I look forward to becoming more engaged with the Illinois Tech community, to continue working with Illinois Tech faculty, and to help students advance and enable the use of computing in discovery science,” Papka says. For Sorokin, it meant a summer exploring how Gaussian regression models can be used to detect failure within systems. It is important to make sure that a system is reliable and robust enough subject to withstand uncertain forces. “The nice thing about the Gaussian process is you can make predictions between the data points that you’ve seen,” Sorokin says. “You can use a machine learning models to get this sort of prediction, and it will give you an accurate prediction. With a Gaussian process, it gives you some notion of how confident it is in that prediction. That confidence is something that we used in looking at this probability in the failure metric we developed.”
College of Computing Magazine | 2023
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FEATURE
International Insights U Fulbright Scholars Return with New Perspectives on Research and Culture
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nited States Fulbright Scholar program fellowships not only provide exceptional research opportunities for American academics abroad, but they also afford them cultural opportunities and a chance to expand networks across borders that build future collaboration. Two faculty members from Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Computing completed Fulbright fellowships this year, bringing a wealth of new experience back to campus with them. Cynthia Hood, associate professor of computer science and engineering, traveled to Poznań University of Technology in Poland, where she collaborated with fellow academics on research that explored wireless spectrum management for smart cities through the Fulbright Scholar program, which is granted by the United States Department of State. Hood studied the differences between spectrum management in Poland and the United States and developed graph-based
models to improve understanding of spectrum usage. “We traveled all over Poland,” Hood says. “I enjoyed exploring the history and culture of Poland and learning about its higher education system. It broadened my perspective and gave me ideas that I’ve brought back to Illinois Tech.” Hood says along with visiting various universities, historical sites, and museums, she was able to attend a speech given by U.S. President Joe Biden in Warsaw, who spoke on the importance of supporting Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. “I was standing right behind him, and it was a super cool experience,” she says. “It was especially meaningful since I have family in Ukraine and my Fulbright award was relocated from Ukraine to Poland due to the war.” Maurice Dawson, assistant professor of information technology and management, recently wrapped up a two-week seminar in cybersecurity at AAB College in Pristina, Kosovo, through his fifth award from the Fulbright Scholar program. “The experience was enlightening as I learned about the region, its historical importance, their concerns, and how Illinois Tech can assist,” Dawson says. “My expertise of this particular area has increased as a result of this experience. Civil wars, dictatorships, and political turmoil have all occurred in the Balkans. The panorama of human migration and technological adoption is, however, altering dramatically in nations from Albania to Montenegro.” Dawson says cybersecurity needs in Kosovo are not too different from those in other nations, specifically the need for trained cybersecurity specialists. “Cybersecurity education is relatively new, so even developing that talent is an uphill battle,” Dawson says. “Coupled with low wages, retaining that talent will be an issue. Kosovo has to figure out how to build its cybersecurity capacity while retaining the necessary talent to maintain it. My goal is to continue relations and work with faculty to include government entities on paths forward to accomplish this.” Many of the students that Dawson spoke with at AAB College were highly motivated to enter the cybersecurity field, but were looking to move to countries such as Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to pursue their careers because of the low wages offered in Kosovo. “This made me consider how things are in the U.S., and how we would be faced with a similar issue if another country were to compete with us in terms of wages,” Dawson says. “This would drive away the necessary talent, which would be sufficient to produce massively disastrous issues on its own.” Hood says the experience of living in another country for six months has given her greater empathy toward international students who attend Illinois Tech. Navigating a different culture is challenging, whether it means learning a new calendar based on national holidays, finding foods you are accustomed to, or communicating with native speakers. “Being part of a large Fulbright cohort in Poland helped with the adjustment. It was fun to get to know Fulbrighters in different fields and at different career stages. Fulbright meetings facilitated both formal and informal collaborations,” she says. “As a result, I had the opportunity to work with a political scientist on a NATO project involving content tracking
on Cossack websites in Russia. I also participated in a weekly English-language speaking club for displaced Ukrainians with other Fulbrighters.” Dawson says he was able to develop meaningful connections and relationships that will benefit students at Illinois Tech through a new study away program in Kosovo, a faculty member from Rochester Institute of Technology Kosovo visiting Illinois Tech, and connecting with officials at KOS-CERT—Kosovo’s national Computer Incident Response Team. Dawson says his main goal was to raise students’ awareness, knowledge, and abilities for new cybersecurity threats through workshops and lectures. Objectives included addressing modern cybersecurity challenges, threats and attacks, and how cybersecurity policies and procedures protect against cyberattacks, as well as increasing internet safety and cybersecurity awareness. Topics covered included security foundations and fundamentals, network defense and security, threats and vulnerabilities, risk management, computer forensics, cryptography, and developing a career in cybersecurity. Hood was invited to visit six universities across Poland and Estonia during her Fulbright experience. She met with faculty and students at each university and presented her research on spectrum explainability. She also gave an invited talk at the Wireless World Research Forum and presented her work to the International Telecommunication Union working group on autonomous networks. Since returning home, Hood has presented part of the research that she did in Poland at the Research Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy. She is looking forward to leveraging her new perspectives and connections to develop international projects. Dawson says the introduction of visa-free travel in January 2024 could bring Kosovo enormous potential to deepen business connections with its Balkan neighbors through unrestricted travel. However, this new modification could alter the nature of cyber threats. “In order for newly independent states to understand what to expect in terms of cybersecurity difficulties, including recognizing errors that could have catastrophic consequences, this would serve as an excellent case study,” Dawson says.
Maurice Dawson
College of Computing Magazine | 2023
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