WEARABLES MAY ENHANCE SMARTPHONE SECURITY Wearables, such as Apple Watch or Google Glass, offer ways to further immerse ourselves in personal technology.
P
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
S
Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor Yuzhe Tang has been awarded a Cyber Research Institute grant to investigate optimization techniques for providing access to valuable data and analytics and put it all to good use in a practical and secure manner. Tang’s work will enable privacy-preserving data analytics in health information exchange networks and streamline or eliminate the need for time-consuming organizational reviews that are currently required to establish trust between different health care organizations.
As it stands today, smartphone users’ only line of defense is a weak password or PIN. Once a password or PIN is cracked, the attacker gains unfettered access to the device and the personal data within. What is needed is a way for the smartphone to continuously check and unobtrusively verify if the person using it is its owner. Phoha is developing methods that leverage the multitude of sensors embedded in handheld and wearable devices. Certain cues sent from wearables to the smartphone, and vice versa, capture and measure users’ movements in interactions with their wearables.
Once his research is complete, Tang anticipates opensourcing his technique and collaborating with regional and statewide health information networks to facilitate the adoption of privacy-preserving multi-domain analytics in real-world information networks.
The project is studying how these cues can yield a smartphone authentication system that can avoid inconvenience for the device’s owner and block deliberate attacks.
THWARTING SNOOPS IN DISTRIBUTED INFERENCE NETWORKS
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
With your help, there is no limit what your Department can achieve. Please consider giving online at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
haring electronic medical records between hospitals and doctors’ offices helps ensure that doctors have complete, up-to-date information about their patients’ health. But, with significant hacks in the news day-in and day-out, are electronic medical records safe? On top of security concerns, managing the sheer volume of health care data is a tall order. Existing security solutions fail to deliver an efficient way to deal with this avalanche of data.
rofessor Vir Phoha believes these devices can also be used to protect our mobile devices from hackers. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he is exploring how wearable devices can contribute to smartphone security.
Gifts from donors like you contribute to classroom upgrades like the Sandra and Avi Nash Collaborative Classroom used by our faculty. They pay for state-of-the-art laboratory equipment needed to conduct groundbreaking research like in our Smart Grid Lab. Gifts provide students like Christina Tobias with research endeavors and other opportunities that simply could not exist without our donors’ steadfast commitment.
IN DEFENSE OF ONLINE MEDICAL RECORDS
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
I VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
n the civilian and military world, distributed inference networks are used in surveillance, environment monitoring, cognitive radio networks, and cyber physical systems. These networks are made up of a set of connected sensors that observe a chosen phenomenon, then work together to make inferences about that phenomenon. Each sensor processes the large amount of information that it collects down to a small, summarized message before sending it back to the network’s core, where all of the collected data is fused. The fusion center takes all of the sensors’ data and decides if the phenomenon of interest is present.
By their very nature, these systems are often vulnerable to eavesdroppers. Professor Pramod Varshney and fellow researchers have researched ways to stop unauthorized parties from listening in. In published research, they studied networks under secrecy constraints, described currently available methods to thwart eavesdroppers, and proposed avenues for future solutions. Paper: “Distributed Inference in the Presence of Eavesdroppers: A Survey,” Communications Magazine, IEEE, Issue Date: June 2015, Kailkhura, B.; Nadendla, V.S.S.; Varshney, P. K.
INTRODUCING ENGINEERING @SYRACUSE ONLINE DEGREES
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and 2U, Inc. announced a partnership to launch Engineering@Syracuse, which will include three online master’s programs: computer engineering, computer science, and cybersecurity. The three degree offerings will combine 2U’s advanced learning platform and technology-enabled services with the College’s innovative, real-world curriculum and award-winning faculty. Each will feature live face-to-face online classes taught by College of Engineering and Computer Science professors, dynamic course content, and real-world learning experiences. Syracuse will begin accepting applications for the Engineering@ Syracuse programs this May, with classes beginning in October 2016.
SU HOSTS IEEE ANTENNA WORKSHOP
L
ast year more than 65 leaders from industry and academia gathered for “Current Innovations in Wireless,” an IEEE workshop hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Throughout the event, attendees discussed theoretical and practical advances in antenna design, measurement techniques, and emerging antenna research for wireless communications. The exchange of technical information and research ideas will serve to benefit the microwave industry in the foreseeable future. Professor Jun Choi organized the event and Professor Tapan Sarkar delivered a keynote presentation titled, “The Physics and Mathematics of Radio Wave Propagation in Cellular Wireless Communication.”
FASTER WIRELESS DATA FROM BEYOND THE RADIO SPECTRUM Tapping into higher frequencies will improve mobile access to video and multimedia content.
E
verything we do that requires a wireless connection uses the radio spectrum. Each application is assigned its own frequency within the spectrum. The problem is that space is limited and our demand is only increasing. But what if we weren’t bound by this crowded spectrum?
favor a line-of-sight connection. Buildings, rain, and even the position of a user’s hand on their device can block these shorter wavelengths or have significant impact on the quality of their reception. Attenuation is also a concern. Millimeter waves simply don’t travel the same distances as radio waves.
Professor Cenk Gursoy sees potential in using higher frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter wave frequency band to allocate more bandwidth to delivering faster, higher-quality video and multimedia content to mobile devices.
Gursoy, in collaboration with investigators at Ohio State University, received a National Science Foundation grant to address these key challenges as part of the Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum collaborative research program. They foresee millimeter waves being incorporated into mobile devices and the upcoming 5G network in the near future.
While lower-frequency radio waves can be received over great distances and through weather and structures, millimeter waves
SPRING 2016
HANGING WITH A BETTER CROWD
PROTECTING POWER SYSTEMS
NEW FACULTY
P
Crowdsourcing through mobile devices has proven to be a valuable tool for accomplishing a wide range of things by tapping into the skills and devices of a wide range of people.
rofessor Sara Eftekharnejad has been awarded a $499,550 National Science Foundation grant to secure smart grids from threats on devices that can measure voltage and currents remotely. The findings of this research will establish the foundations for protecting critical assets in power grids.
M
Of course, the success of any good crowdsourcing app really depends on how capable the people in the crowd are at undertaking the tasks at hand. So far, there hasn’t been much of a concerted effort to determine how to recruit a crowd with particular sets of skills. Professor Jian Tang’s research aims to fill this gap. With a National Science Foundation grant, Tang is designing a new lifestyle-aware approach for mobile crowdsourcing. The basic idea is to learn the lifestyles of mobile users via sensing in their smartphones to gain a comprehensive view of their capabilities so that once a mobile crowdsourcing task is received, a good crowd, whose capabilities match the task, can be quickly found.
Sara Eftekharnejad Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Jennifer W. Graham Assistant Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Sucheta Soundarajan Assistant Professor Ph.D. Cornell University
Research focus: Integration of renewable energy into power systems, power system stability and control, power system reliability and security, and phasor measurement unit in smart grids.
Research focus: Electromagnetics, complex media, and antenna design and modeling.
Research focus: Data mining, social network analysis, community detection, and applications to social and life sciences.
“The collaborative environment that Syracuse University fosters allowed me and my peers to become well-rounded engineers. I can be an advanced problem-solver and collaborate with other engineering disciplines to meet the needs in industry and also interact effectively with customers. That is a skill that I developed at SU. It provided the academic and social platform that propelled my career.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
420 97 # of Master’s Students
Eftekharnejad’s research will determine the impacts of data intrusion on remote sensing devices and will propose mitigation strategies. The outcomes will identify incorrect measurements as a result of cyberattacks or malfunction that can result in cascading blackouts as well as the most critical components of power systems that are likely to be targeted by cyberthreats. This multidisciplinary research will focus on three fundamental goals: quantifying the impact and severity of false data injection; detecting anomalies; and mitigating the impacts.
Richardson is a system engineer for SRC, Inc., a research and development corporation in Syracuse, New York. He supports the design, analysis, and testing of advanced radar systems, as well as technology development, business development, and strategic planning for the company’s ground surveillance radar business unit.
Research focus: Intelligent systems, data mining and network analysis, big data analytics, and system security.
Yanzhi Wang Assistant Professor Ph.D. University of Southern California
Reza Zafarani Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Research focus: Near-threshold computing for next-gen devices, neuromorphic systems for hardware acceleration and cognitive frameworks, and non-volatile systems for ambient energy-harvesting wearable devices.
Research focus: Big data analytics, data/web/social media mining, social network analysis, social computing, large-scale information networks, and behavior analysis.
Cognitive Wireless Systems and Networks
Hardware Design and Computer Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Energy and Signal Processing
Controls
Electromagnetics
Cybersecurity
Formal Methods
# of Ph.D. Students
74 215 19
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Professor Kevin Du Professor Kevin Du is a leading researcher of computer, network, and information security. His work has been published at conferences and in multiple information security journals, and he has spoken at a range of symposiums on cybersecurity around the world. Du is the creator of a series of free security education lab exercises that cover the spectrum of cybersecurity principles. These labs, currently used by over 400 institutions, advance the
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
Degrees Awarded May 2014–2015
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Li Wang Instructor M.S. Louisiana Tech University
# of Undergraduate Students
The mitigation methods uncovered by this research could be extended to other complex networks, and the proposed methods for identifying most critical components could be employed in other industries.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT David Richardson ’08, Electrical Engineering
RESEARCH AREAS
44 429 # of Faculty
Power system operators have access to tools that measure and make critical decisions about dispatching power. With more utilities adopting these tools for real-time system monitoring, power systems become increasingly exposed to cyberthreats that target these devices.
obile crowdsourcing apps help manage traffic, locate open Wi-Fi networks, track wildlife, fact-check the news, and gather weather reports, just to name a few.
FACTS AND STATS
educational experience for the next generation of computer scientists in Syracuse and around the world. Recently, when the nation’s attention turned to Apple’s dispute with the F.B.I. over unlocking a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone’s encryption, Du was prepared to discuss the implications from a highly informed position, providing commentary for USA Today, among other media outlets.
Christina Tobias ’18, Computer Engineering Christina Tobias is sure of two things —she was born to row and become an engineer. In high school, her passion for math gave way to coding. Her time outside of class was spent competing with her rowing team. When it came time for college, she found her niche at Syracuse University. Never one for rest, Tobias spent last summer participating in a Google app development program. This summer, she’ll be working
for Microsoft. While she excels as a student-athlete today, she has her mind on where she will apply her talents in the future. “I see myself helping communities in underdeveloped countries, like providing fresh water. That may not be the work of a programmer, but it is the work of an engineer.”
WEARABLES MAY ENHANCE SMARTPHONE SECURITY Wearables, such as Apple Watch or Google Glass, offer ways to further immerse ourselves in personal technology.
P
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
S
Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor Yuzhe Tang has been awarded a Cyber Research Institute grant to investigate optimization techniques for providing access to valuable data and analytics and put it all to good use in a practical and secure manner. Tang’s work will enable privacy-preserving data analytics in health information exchange networks and streamline or eliminate the need for time-consuming organizational reviews that are currently required to establish trust between different health care organizations.
As it stands today, smartphone users’ only line of defense is a weak password or PIN. Once a password or PIN is cracked, the attacker gains unfettered access to the device and the personal data within. What is needed is a way for the smartphone to continuously check and unobtrusively verify if the person using it is its owner. Phoha is developing methods that leverage the multitude of sensors embedded in handheld and wearable devices. Certain cues sent from wearables to the smartphone, and vice versa, capture and measure users’ movements in interactions with their wearables.
Once his research is complete, Tang anticipates opensourcing his technique and collaborating with regional and statewide health information networks to facilitate the adoption of privacy-preserving multi-domain analytics in real-world information networks.
The project is studying how these cues can yield a smartphone authentication system that can avoid inconvenience for the device’s owner and block deliberate attacks.
THWARTING SNOOPS IN DISTRIBUTED INFERENCE NETWORKS
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
With your help, there is no limit what your Department can achieve. Please consider giving online at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
haring electronic medical records between hospitals and doctors’ offices helps ensure that doctors have complete, up-to-date information about their patients’ health. But, with significant hacks in the news day-in and day-out, are electronic medical records safe? On top of security concerns, managing the sheer volume of health care data is a tall order. Existing security solutions fail to deliver an efficient way to deal with this avalanche of data.
rofessor Vir Phoha believes these devices can also be used to protect our mobile devices from hackers. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he is exploring how wearable devices can contribute to smartphone security.
Gifts from donors like you contribute to classroom upgrades like the Sandra and Avi Nash Collaborative Classroom used by our faculty. They pay for state-of-the-art laboratory equipment needed to conduct groundbreaking research like in our Smart Grid Lab. Gifts provide students like Christina Tobias with research endeavors and other opportunities that simply could not exist without our donors’ steadfast commitment.
IN DEFENSE OF ONLINE MEDICAL RECORDS
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
I VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
n the civilian and military world, distributed inference networks are used in surveillance, environment monitoring, cognitive radio networks, and cyber physical systems. These networks are made up of a set of connected sensors that observe a chosen phenomenon, then work together to make inferences about that phenomenon. Each sensor processes the large amount of information that it collects down to a small, summarized message before sending it back to the network’s core, where all of the collected data is fused. The fusion center takes all of the sensors’ data and decides if the phenomenon of interest is present.
By their very nature, these systems are often vulnerable to eavesdroppers. Professor Pramod Varshney and fellow researchers have researched ways to stop unauthorized parties from listening in. In published research, they studied networks under secrecy constraints, described currently available methods to thwart eavesdroppers, and proposed avenues for future solutions. Paper: “Distributed Inference in the Presence of Eavesdroppers: A Survey,” Communications Magazine, IEEE, Issue Date: June 2015, Kailkhura, B.; Nadendla, V.S.S.; Varshney, P. K.
INTRODUCING ENGINEERING @SYRACUSE ONLINE DEGREES
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and 2U, Inc. announced a partnership to launch Engineering@Syracuse, which will include three online master’s programs: computer engineering, computer science, and cybersecurity. The three degree offerings will combine 2U’s advanced learning platform and technology-enabled services with the College’s innovative, real-world curriculum and award-winning faculty. Each will feature live face-to-face online classes taught by College of Engineering and Computer Science professors, dynamic course content, and real-world learning experiences. Syracuse will begin accepting applications for the Engineering@ Syracuse programs this May, with classes beginning in October 2016.
SU HOSTS IEEE ANTENNA WORKSHOP
L
ast year more than 65 leaders from industry and academia gathered for “Current Innovations in Wireless,” an IEEE workshop hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Throughout the event, attendees discussed theoretical and practical advances in antenna design, measurement techniques, and emerging antenna research for wireless communications. The exchange of technical information and research ideas will serve to benefit the microwave industry in the foreseeable future. Professor Jun Choi organized the event and Professor Tapan Sarkar delivered a keynote presentation titled, “The Physics and Mathematics of Radio Wave Propagation in Cellular Wireless Communication.”
FASTER WIRELESS DATA FROM BEYOND THE RADIO SPECTRUM Tapping into higher frequencies will improve mobile access to video and multimedia content.
E
verything we do that requires a wireless connection uses the radio spectrum. Each application is assigned its own frequency within the spectrum. The problem is that space is limited and our demand is only increasing. But what if we weren’t bound by this crowded spectrum?
favor a line-of-sight connection. Buildings, rain, and even the position of a user’s hand on their device can block these shorter wavelengths or have significant impact on the quality of their reception. Attenuation is also a concern. Millimeter waves simply don’t travel the same distances as radio waves.
Professor Cenk Gursoy sees potential in using higher frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter wave frequency band to allocate more bandwidth to delivering faster, higher-quality video and multimedia content to mobile devices.
Gursoy, in collaboration with investigators at Ohio State University, received a National Science Foundation grant to address these key challenges as part of the Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum collaborative research program. They foresee millimeter waves being incorporated into mobile devices and the upcoming 5G network in the near future.
While lower-frequency radio waves can be received over great distances and through weather and structures, millimeter waves
SPRING 2016
HANGING WITH A BETTER CROWD
PROTECTING POWER SYSTEMS
NEW FACULTY
P
Crowdsourcing through mobile devices has proven to be a valuable tool for accomplishing a wide range of things by tapping into the skills and devices of a wide range of people.
rofessor Sara Eftekharnejad has been awarded a $499,550 National Science Foundation grant to secure smart grids from threats on devices that can measure voltage and currents remotely. The findings of this research will establish the foundations for protecting critical assets in power grids.
M
Of course, the success of any good crowdsourcing app really depends on how capable the people in the crowd are at undertaking the tasks at hand. So far, there hasn’t been much of a concerted effort to determine how to recruit a crowd with particular sets of skills. Professor Jian Tang’s research aims to fill this gap. With a National Science Foundation grant, Tang is designing a new lifestyle-aware approach for mobile crowdsourcing. The basic idea is to learn the lifestyles of mobile users via sensing in their smartphones to gain a comprehensive view of their capabilities so that once a mobile crowdsourcing task is received, a good crowd, whose capabilities match the task, can be quickly found.
Sara Eftekharnejad Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Jennifer W. Graham Assistant Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Sucheta Soundarajan Assistant Professor Ph.D. Cornell University
Research focus: Integration of renewable energy into power systems, power system stability and control, power system reliability and security, and phasor measurement unit in smart grids.
Research focus: Electromagnetics, complex media, and antenna design and modeling.
Research focus: Data mining, social network analysis, community detection, and applications to social and life sciences.
“The collaborative environment that Syracuse University fosters allowed me and my peers to become well-rounded engineers. I can be an advanced problem-solver and collaborate with other engineering disciplines to meet the needs in industry and also interact effectively with customers. That is a skill that I developed at SU. It provided the academic and social platform that propelled my career.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
420 97 # of Master’s Students
Eftekharnejad’s research will determine the impacts of data intrusion on remote sensing devices and will propose mitigation strategies. The outcomes will identify incorrect measurements as a result of cyberattacks or malfunction that can result in cascading blackouts as well as the most critical components of power systems that are likely to be targeted by cyberthreats. This multidisciplinary research will focus on three fundamental goals: quantifying the impact and severity of false data injection; detecting anomalies; and mitigating the impacts.
Richardson is a system engineer for SRC, Inc., a research and development corporation in Syracuse, New York. He supports the design, analysis, and testing of advanced radar systems, as well as technology development, business development, and strategic planning for the company’s ground surveillance radar business unit.
Research focus: Intelligent systems, data mining and network analysis, big data analytics, and system security.
Yanzhi Wang Assistant Professor Ph.D. University of Southern California
Reza Zafarani Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Research focus: Near-threshold computing for next-gen devices, neuromorphic systems for hardware acceleration and cognitive frameworks, and non-volatile systems for ambient energy-harvesting wearable devices.
Research focus: Big data analytics, data/web/social media mining, social network analysis, social computing, large-scale information networks, and behavior analysis.
Cognitive Wireless Systems and Networks
Hardware Design and Computer Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Energy and Signal Processing
Controls
Electromagnetics
Cybersecurity
Formal Methods
# of Ph.D. Students
74 215 19
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Professor Kevin Du Professor Kevin Du is a leading researcher of computer, network, and information security. His work has been published at conferences and in multiple information security journals, and he has spoken at a range of symposiums on cybersecurity around the world. Du is the creator of a series of free security education lab exercises that cover the spectrum of cybersecurity principles. These labs, currently used by over 400 institutions, advance the
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
Degrees Awarded May 2014–2015
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Li Wang Instructor M.S. Louisiana Tech University
# of Undergraduate Students
The mitigation methods uncovered by this research could be extended to other complex networks, and the proposed methods for identifying most critical components could be employed in other industries.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT David Richardson ’08, Electrical Engineering
RESEARCH AREAS
44 429 # of Faculty
Power system operators have access to tools that measure and make critical decisions about dispatching power. With more utilities adopting these tools for real-time system monitoring, power systems become increasingly exposed to cyberthreats that target these devices.
obile crowdsourcing apps help manage traffic, locate open Wi-Fi networks, track wildlife, fact-check the news, and gather weather reports, just to name a few.
FACTS AND STATS
educational experience for the next generation of computer scientists in Syracuse and around the world. Recently, when the nation’s attention turned to Apple’s dispute with the F.B.I. over unlocking a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone’s encryption, Du was prepared to discuss the implications from a highly informed position, providing commentary for USA Today, among other media outlets.
Christina Tobias ’18, Computer Engineering Christina Tobias is sure of two things —she was born to row and become an engineer. In high school, her passion for math gave way to coding. Her time outside of class was spent competing with her rowing team. When it came time for college, she found her niche at Syracuse University. Never one for rest, Tobias spent last summer participating in a Google app development program. This summer, she’ll be working
for Microsoft. While she excels as a student-athlete today, she has her mind on where she will apply her talents in the future. “I see myself helping communities in underdeveloped countries, like providing fresh water. That may not be the work of a programmer, but it is the work of an engineer.”
WEARABLES MAY ENHANCE SMARTPHONE SECURITY Wearables, such as Apple Watch or Google Glass, offer ways to further immerse ourselves in personal technology.
P
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
S
Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor Yuzhe Tang has been awarded a Cyber Research Institute grant to investigate optimization techniques for providing access to valuable data and analytics and put it all to good use in a practical and secure manner. Tang’s work will enable privacy-preserving data analytics in health information exchange networks and streamline or eliminate the need for time-consuming organizational reviews that are currently required to establish trust between different health care organizations.
As it stands today, smartphone users’ only line of defense is a weak password or PIN. Once a password or PIN is cracked, the attacker gains unfettered access to the device and the personal data within. What is needed is a way for the smartphone to continuously check and unobtrusively verify if the person using it is its owner. Phoha is developing methods that leverage the multitude of sensors embedded in handheld and wearable devices. Certain cues sent from wearables to the smartphone, and vice versa, capture and measure users’ movements in interactions with their wearables.
Once his research is complete, Tang anticipates opensourcing his technique and collaborating with regional and statewide health information networks to facilitate the adoption of privacy-preserving multi-domain analytics in real-world information networks.
The project is studying how these cues can yield a smartphone authentication system that can avoid inconvenience for the device’s owner and block deliberate attacks.
THWARTING SNOOPS IN DISTRIBUTED INFERENCE NETWORKS
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
With your help, there is no limit what your Department can achieve. Please consider giving online at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
haring electronic medical records between hospitals and doctors’ offices helps ensure that doctors have complete, up-to-date information about their patients’ health. But, with significant hacks in the news day-in and day-out, are electronic medical records safe? On top of security concerns, managing the sheer volume of health care data is a tall order. Existing security solutions fail to deliver an efficient way to deal with this avalanche of data.
rofessor Vir Phoha believes these devices can also be used to protect our mobile devices from hackers. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he is exploring how wearable devices can contribute to smartphone security.
Gifts from donors like you contribute to classroom upgrades like the Sandra and Avi Nash Collaborative Classroom used by our faculty. They pay for state-of-the-art laboratory equipment needed to conduct groundbreaking research like in our Smart Grid Lab. Gifts provide students like Christina Tobias with research endeavors and other opportunities that simply could not exist without our donors’ steadfast commitment.
IN DEFENSE OF ONLINE MEDICAL RECORDS
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
I VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
n the civilian and military world, distributed inference networks are used in surveillance, environment monitoring, cognitive radio networks, and cyber physical systems. These networks are made up of a set of connected sensors that observe a chosen phenomenon, then work together to make inferences about that phenomenon. Each sensor processes the large amount of information that it collects down to a small, summarized message before sending it back to the network’s core, where all of the collected data is fused. The fusion center takes all of the sensors’ data and decides if the phenomenon of interest is present.
By their very nature, these systems are often vulnerable to eavesdroppers. Professor Pramod Varshney and fellow researchers have researched ways to stop unauthorized parties from listening in. In published research, they studied networks under secrecy constraints, described currently available methods to thwart eavesdroppers, and proposed avenues for future solutions. Paper: “Distributed Inference in the Presence of Eavesdroppers: A Survey,” Communications Magazine, IEEE, Issue Date: June 2015, Kailkhura, B.; Nadendla, V.S.S.; Varshney, P. K.
INTRODUCING ENGINEERING @SYRACUSE ONLINE DEGREES
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and 2U, Inc. announced a partnership to launch Engineering@Syracuse, which will include three online master’s programs: computer engineering, computer science, and cybersecurity. The three degree offerings will combine 2U’s advanced learning platform and technology-enabled services with the College’s innovative, real-world curriculum and award-winning faculty. Each will feature live face-to-face online classes taught by College of Engineering and Computer Science professors, dynamic course content, and real-world learning experiences. Syracuse will begin accepting applications for the Engineering@ Syracuse programs this May, with classes beginning in October 2016.
SU HOSTS IEEE ANTENNA WORKSHOP
L
ast year more than 65 leaders from industry and academia gathered for “Current Innovations in Wireless,” an IEEE workshop hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Throughout the event, attendees discussed theoretical and practical advances in antenna design, measurement techniques, and emerging antenna research for wireless communications. The exchange of technical information and research ideas will serve to benefit the microwave industry in the foreseeable future. Professor Jun Choi organized the event and Professor Tapan Sarkar delivered a keynote presentation titled, “The Physics and Mathematics of Radio Wave Propagation in Cellular Wireless Communication.”
FASTER WIRELESS DATA FROM BEYOND THE RADIO SPECTRUM Tapping into higher frequencies will improve mobile access to video and multimedia content.
E
verything we do that requires a wireless connection uses the radio spectrum. Each application is assigned its own frequency within the spectrum. The problem is that space is limited and our demand is only increasing. But what if we weren’t bound by this crowded spectrum?
favor a line-of-sight connection. Buildings, rain, and even the position of a user’s hand on their device can block these shorter wavelengths or have significant impact on the quality of their reception. Attenuation is also a concern. Millimeter waves simply don’t travel the same distances as radio waves.
Professor Cenk Gursoy sees potential in using higher frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter wave frequency band to allocate more bandwidth to delivering faster, higher-quality video and multimedia content to mobile devices.
Gursoy, in collaboration with investigators at Ohio State University, received a National Science Foundation grant to address these key challenges as part of the Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum collaborative research program. They foresee millimeter waves being incorporated into mobile devices and the upcoming 5G network in the near future.
While lower-frequency radio waves can be received over great distances and through weather and structures, millimeter waves
SPRING 2016
HANGING WITH A BETTER CROWD
PROTECTING POWER SYSTEMS
NEW FACULTY
P
Crowdsourcing through mobile devices has proven to be a valuable tool for accomplishing a wide range of things by tapping into the skills and devices of a wide range of people.
rofessor Sara Eftekharnejad has been awarded a $499,550 National Science Foundation grant to secure smart grids from threats on devices that can measure voltage and currents remotely. The findings of this research will establish the foundations for protecting critical assets in power grids.
M
Of course, the success of any good crowdsourcing app really depends on how capable the people in the crowd are at undertaking the tasks at hand. So far, there hasn’t been much of a concerted effort to determine how to recruit a crowd with particular sets of skills. Professor Jian Tang’s research aims to fill this gap. With a National Science Foundation grant, Tang is designing a new lifestyle-aware approach for mobile crowdsourcing. The basic idea is to learn the lifestyles of mobile users via sensing in their smartphones to gain a comprehensive view of their capabilities so that once a mobile crowdsourcing task is received, a good crowd, whose capabilities match the task, can be quickly found.
Sara Eftekharnejad Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Jennifer W. Graham Assistant Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Sucheta Soundarajan Assistant Professor Ph.D. Cornell University
Research focus: Integration of renewable energy into power systems, power system stability and control, power system reliability and security, and phasor measurement unit in smart grids.
Research focus: Electromagnetics, complex media, and antenna design and modeling.
Research focus: Data mining, social network analysis, community detection, and applications to social and life sciences.
“The collaborative environment that Syracuse University fosters allowed me and my peers to become well-rounded engineers. I can be an advanced problem-solver and collaborate with other engineering disciplines to meet the needs in industry and also interact effectively with customers. That is a skill that I developed at SU. It provided the academic and social platform that propelled my career.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
420 97 # of Master’s Students
Eftekharnejad’s research will determine the impacts of data intrusion on remote sensing devices and will propose mitigation strategies. The outcomes will identify incorrect measurements as a result of cyberattacks or malfunction that can result in cascading blackouts as well as the most critical components of power systems that are likely to be targeted by cyberthreats. This multidisciplinary research will focus on three fundamental goals: quantifying the impact and severity of false data injection; detecting anomalies; and mitigating the impacts.
Richardson is a system engineer for SRC, Inc., a research and development corporation in Syracuse, New York. He supports the design, analysis, and testing of advanced radar systems, as well as technology development, business development, and strategic planning for the company’s ground surveillance radar business unit.
Research focus: Intelligent systems, data mining and network analysis, big data analytics, and system security.
Yanzhi Wang Assistant Professor Ph.D. University of Southern California
Reza Zafarani Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Research focus: Near-threshold computing for next-gen devices, neuromorphic systems for hardware acceleration and cognitive frameworks, and non-volatile systems for ambient energy-harvesting wearable devices.
Research focus: Big data analytics, data/web/social media mining, social network analysis, social computing, large-scale information networks, and behavior analysis.
Cognitive Wireless Systems and Networks
Hardware Design and Computer Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Energy and Signal Processing
Controls
Electromagnetics
Cybersecurity
Formal Methods
# of Ph.D. Students
74 215 19
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Professor Kevin Du Professor Kevin Du is a leading researcher of computer, network, and information security. His work has been published at conferences and in multiple information security journals, and he has spoken at a range of symposiums on cybersecurity around the world. Du is the creator of a series of free security education lab exercises that cover the spectrum of cybersecurity principles. These labs, currently used by over 400 institutions, advance the
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
Degrees Awarded May 2014–2015
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Li Wang Instructor M.S. Louisiana Tech University
# of Undergraduate Students
The mitigation methods uncovered by this research could be extended to other complex networks, and the proposed methods for identifying most critical components could be employed in other industries.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT David Richardson ’08, Electrical Engineering
RESEARCH AREAS
44 429 # of Faculty
Power system operators have access to tools that measure and make critical decisions about dispatching power. With more utilities adopting these tools for real-time system monitoring, power systems become increasingly exposed to cyberthreats that target these devices.
obile crowdsourcing apps help manage traffic, locate open Wi-Fi networks, track wildlife, fact-check the news, and gather weather reports, just to name a few.
FACTS AND STATS
educational experience for the next generation of computer scientists in Syracuse and around the world. Recently, when the nation’s attention turned to Apple’s dispute with the F.B.I. over unlocking a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone’s encryption, Du was prepared to discuss the implications from a highly informed position, providing commentary for USA Today, among other media outlets.
Christina Tobias ’18, Computer Engineering Christina Tobias is sure of two things —she was born to row and become an engineer. In high school, her passion for math gave way to coding. Her time outside of class was spent competing with her rowing team. When it came time for college, she found her niche at Syracuse University. Never one for rest, Tobias spent last summer participating in a Google app development program. This summer, she’ll be working
for Microsoft. While she excels as a student-athlete today, she has her mind on where she will apply her talents in the future. “I see myself helping communities in underdeveloped countries, like providing fresh water. That may not be the work of a programmer, but it is the work of an engineer.”
HANGING WITH A BETTER CROWD
PROTECTING POWER SYSTEMS
NEW FACULTY
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Crowdsourcing through mobile devices has proven to be a valuable tool for accomplishing a wide range of things by tapping into the skills and devices of a wide range of people.
rofessor Sara Eftekharnejad has been awarded a $499,550 National Science Foundation grant to secure smart grids from threats on devices that can measure voltage and currents remotely. The findings of this research will establish the foundations for protecting critical assets in power grids.
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Of course, the success of any good crowdsourcing app really depends on how capable the people in the crowd are at undertaking the tasks at hand. So far, there hasn’t been much of a concerted effort to determine how to recruit a crowd with particular sets of skills. Professor Jian Tang’s research aims to fill this gap. With a National Science Foundation grant, Tang is designing a new lifestyle-aware approach for mobile crowdsourcing. The basic idea is to learn the lifestyles of mobile users via sensing in their smartphones to gain a comprehensive view of their capabilities so that once a mobile crowdsourcing task is received, a good crowd, whose capabilities match the task, can be quickly found.
Sara Eftekharnejad Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Jennifer W. Graham Assistant Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Sucheta Soundarajan Assistant Professor Ph.D. Cornell University
Research focus: Integration of renewable energy into power systems, power system stability and control, power system reliability and security, and phasor measurement unit in smart grids.
Research focus: Electromagnetics, complex media, and antenna design and modeling.
Research focus: Data mining, social network analysis, community detection, and applications to social and life sciences.
“The collaborative environment that Syracuse University fosters allowed me and my peers to become well-rounded engineers. I can be an advanced problem-solver and collaborate with other engineering disciplines to meet the needs in industry and also interact effectively with customers. That is a skill that I developed at SU. It provided the academic and social platform that propelled my career.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
420 97 # of Master’s Students
Eftekharnejad’s research will determine the impacts of data intrusion on remote sensing devices and will propose mitigation strategies. The outcomes will identify incorrect measurements as a result of cyberattacks or malfunction that can result in cascading blackouts as well as the most critical components of power systems that are likely to be targeted by cyberthreats. This multidisciplinary research will focus on three fundamental goals: quantifying the impact and severity of false data injection; detecting anomalies; and mitigating the impacts.
Richardson is a system engineer for SRC, Inc., a research and development corporation in Syracuse, New York. He supports the design, analysis, and testing of advanced radar systems, as well as technology development, business development, and strategic planning for the company’s ground surveillance radar business unit.
Research focus: Intelligent systems, data mining and network analysis, big data analytics, and system security.
Yanzhi Wang Assistant Professor Ph.D. University of Southern California
Reza Zafarani Assistant Professor Ph.D. Arizona State University
Research focus: Near-threshold computing for next-gen devices, neuromorphic systems for hardware acceleration and cognitive frameworks, and non-volatile systems for ambient energy-harvesting wearable devices.
Research focus: Big data analytics, data/web/social media mining, social network analysis, social computing, large-scale information networks, and behavior analysis.
Cognitive Wireless Systems and Networks
Hardware Design and Computer Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
Energy and Signal Processing
Controls
Electromagnetics
Cybersecurity
Formal Methods
# of Ph.D. Students
74 215 19
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Professor Kevin Du Professor Kevin Du is a leading researcher of computer, network, and information security. His work has been published at conferences and in multiple information security journals, and he has spoken at a range of symposiums on cybersecurity around the world. Du is the creator of a series of free security education lab exercises that cover the spectrum of cybersecurity principles. These labs, currently used by over 400 institutions, advance the
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
Degrees Awarded May 2014–2015
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Li Wang Instructor M.S. Louisiana Tech University
# of Undergraduate Students
The mitigation methods uncovered by this research could be extended to other complex networks, and the proposed methods for identifying most critical components could be employed in other industries.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT David Richardson ’08, Electrical Engineering
RESEARCH AREAS
44 429 # of Faculty
Power system operators have access to tools that measure and make critical decisions about dispatching power. With more utilities adopting these tools for real-time system monitoring, power systems become increasingly exposed to cyberthreats that target these devices.
obile crowdsourcing apps help manage traffic, locate open Wi-Fi networks, track wildlife, fact-check the news, and gather weather reports, just to name a few.
FACTS AND STATS
educational experience for the next generation of computer scientists in Syracuse and around the world. Recently, when the nation’s attention turned to Apple’s dispute with the F.B.I. over unlocking a San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone’s encryption, Du was prepared to discuss the implications from a highly informed position, providing commentary for USA Today, among other media outlets.
Christina Tobias ’18, Computer Engineering Christina Tobias is sure of two things —she was born to row and become an engineer. In high school, her passion for math gave way to coding. Her time outside of class was spent competing with her rowing team. When it came time for college, she found her niche at Syracuse University. Never one for rest, Tobias spent last summer participating in a Google app development program. This summer, she’ll be working
for Microsoft. While she excels as a student-athlete today, she has her mind on where she will apply her talents in the future. “I see myself helping communities in underdeveloped countries, like providing fresh water. That may not be the work of a programmer, but it is the work of an engineer.”
WEARABLES MAY ENHANCE SMARTPHONE SECURITY Wearables, such as Apple Watch or Google Glass, offer ways to further immerse ourselves in personal technology.
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SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
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Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor Yuzhe Tang has been awarded a Cyber Research Institute grant to investigate optimization techniques for providing access to valuable data and analytics and put it all to good use in a practical and secure manner. Tang’s work will enable privacy-preserving data analytics in health information exchange networks and streamline or eliminate the need for time-consuming organizational reviews that are currently required to establish trust between different health care organizations.
As it stands today, smartphone users’ only line of defense is a weak password or PIN. Once a password or PIN is cracked, the attacker gains unfettered access to the device and the personal data within. What is needed is a way for the smartphone to continuously check and unobtrusively verify if the person using it is its owner. Phoha is developing methods that leverage the multitude of sensors embedded in handheld and wearable devices. Certain cues sent from wearables to the smartphone, and vice versa, capture and measure users’ movements in interactions with their wearables.
Once his research is complete, Tang anticipates opensourcing his technique and collaborating with regional and statewide health information networks to facilitate the adoption of privacy-preserving multi-domain analytics in real-world information networks.
The project is studying how these cues can yield a smartphone authentication system that can avoid inconvenience for the device’s owner and block deliberate attacks.
THWARTING SNOOPS IN DISTRIBUTED INFERENCE NETWORKS
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS We share these accomplishments with you because you are a part of us. As an alumnus or a friend of this Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, you have contributed to our shared success by your very association. A great many of you have also generously helped fund the endeavors highlighted within this newsletter.
With your help, there is no limit what your Department can achieve. Please consider giving online at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
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Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
haring electronic medical records between hospitals and doctors’ offices helps ensure that doctors have complete, up-to-date information about their patients’ health. But, with significant hacks in the news day-in and day-out, are electronic medical records safe? On top of security concerns, managing the sheer volume of health care data is a tall order. Existing security solutions fail to deliver an efficient way to deal with this avalanche of data.
rofessor Vir Phoha believes these devices can also be used to protect our mobile devices from hackers. With funding from the National Science Foundation, he is exploring how wearable devices can contribute to smartphone security.
Gifts from donors like you contribute to classroom upgrades like the Sandra and Avi Nash Collaborative Classroom used by our faculty. They pay for state-of-the-art laboratory equipment needed to conduct groundbreaking research like in our Smart Grid Lab. Gifts provide students like Christina Tobias with research endeavors and other opportunities that simply could not exist without our donors’ steadfast commitment.
IN DEFENSE OF ONLINE MEDICAL RECORDS
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
I VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
n the civilian and military world, distributed inference networks are used in surveillance, environment monitoring, cognitive radio networks, and cyber physical systems. These networks are made up of a set of connected sensors that observe a chosen phenomenon, then work together to make inferences about that phenomenon. Each sensor processes the large amount of information that it collects down to a small, summarized message before sending it back to the network’s core, where all of the collected data is fused. The fusion center takes all of the sensors’ data and decides if the phenomenon of interest is present.
By their very nature, these systems are often vulnerable to eavesdroppers. Professor Pramod Varshney and fellow researchers have researched ways to stop unauthorized parties from listening in. In published research, they studied networks under secrecy constraints, described currently available methods to thwart eavesdroppers, and proposed avenues for future solutions. Paper: “Distributed Inference in the Presence of Eavesdroppers: A Survey,” Communications Magazine, IEEE, Issue Date: June 2015, Kailkhura, B.; Nadendla, V.S.S.; Varshney, P. K.
INTRODUCING ENGINEERING @SYRACUSE ONLINE DEGREES
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yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and 2U, Inc. announced a partnership to launch Engineering@Syracuse, which will include three online master’s programs: computer engineering, computer science, and cybersecurity. The three degree offerings will combine 2U’s advanced learning platform and technology-enabled services with the College’s innovative, real-world curriculum and award-winning faculty. Each will feature live face-to-face online classes taught by College of Engineering and Computer Science professors, dynamic course content, and real-world learning experiences. Syracuse will begin accepting applications for the Engineering@ Syracuse programs this May, with classes beginning in October 2016.
SU HOSTS IEEE ANTENNA WORKSHOP
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ast year more than 65 leaders from industry and academia gathered for “Current Innovations in Wireless,” an IEEE workshop hosted by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Throughout the event, attendees discussed theoretical and practical advances in antenna design, measurement techniques, and emerging antenna research for wireless communications. The exchange of technical information and research ideas will serve to benefit the microwave industry in the foreseeable future. Professor Jun Choi organized the event and Professor Tapan Sarkar delivered a keynote presentation titled, “The Physics and Mathematics of Radio Wave Propagation in Cellular Wireless Communication.”
FASTER WIRELESS DATA FROM BEYOND THE RADIO SPECTRUM Tapping into higher frequencies will improve mobile access to video and multimedia content.
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verything we do that requires a wireless connection uses the radio spectrum. Each application is assigned its own frequency within the spectrum. The problem is that space is limited and our demand is only increasing. But what if we weren’t bound by this crowded spectrum?
favor a line-of-sight connection. Buildings, rain, and even the position of a user’s hand on their device can block these shorter wavelengths or have significant impact on the quality of their reception. Attenuation is also a concern. Millimeter waves simply don’t travel the same distances as radio waves.
Professor Cenk Gursoy sees potential in using higher frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum in the millimeter wave frequency band to allocate more bandwidth to delivering faster, higher-quality video and multimedia content to mobile devices.
Gursoy, in collaboration with investigators at Ohio State University, received a National Science Foundation grant to address these key challenges as part of the Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum collaborative research program. They foresee millimeter waves being incorporated into mobile devices and the upcoming 5G network in the near future.
While lower-frequency radio waves can be received over great distances and through weather and structures, millimeter waves
SPRING 2016