SUPERCHARGING INFORMATION FUSION When it comes to combining massive amounts of data, processing power and speed are key.
T
hree faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science have been awarded a grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to introduce dynamic data to the design of information fusion systems to accelerate the processing of large amounts of data. Professor Jian Tang, Professor Biao Chen, and Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney will evaluate information fusion, including sensing/data collection and information processing. Ultimately, they intend to develop a computational platform that enables scalable stream data processing for real-time information fusion.
The team will combine a widely used distributed computing framework with the powerful processing power of a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster. In doing so, they expect to dramatically increase the system’s speed. This project represents an original research effort on distributed fusion of heterogeneous stream data and will result in a first-of-its-kind distributed GPU-accelerated platform to enable low-latency information fusion.
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PLUGGING INTO SUSTAINABILITY WITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
More electric vehicles on the road means we need a smarter way to power them.
A
lab to research and test ways to connect electric vehicles to the smart grid received a grant from Syracuse University’s new Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability (CALS) program. College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Steve Chapin and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Professor Peter Wilcoxen will lead the lab at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. They will establish a student electric vehicle club and use the lab in a graduate-level course on smart grids. Funding for the grant comes from the Syracuse University Climate Action Plan. As energy efficiency efforts have been implemented in recent years, some of the savings have gone into a fund to
Department of
support CALS grants, on the theory that research and education about ways the campus interacts with climate and energy will enhance the University’s sustainability efforts.
USED GLOBALLY, CYBERSECURITY LABS SPRING FROM SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
E
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS Gifts to our College allow us to further prepare our students in ways that will differentiate them in the competitive marketplace and magnify the value of a Syracuse University engineering and computer science degree. Gifts will also support specific initiatives aimed at positioning our College as a leading model for contemporary engineering and computer science education, as presented in our Transforming Our Future plan at eng-cs.syr.edu/transformation. With your help, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Please consider making your gift today at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
very year, Professor Kevin Du hosts training workshops on a set of open-source, hands-on cybersecurity exercises.
The no-cost Security Education (SEED) lab exercises are developed at Syracuse University and used all over the world for computer and information security education.
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.
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SYRACUSE NY
RESEARCHERS FIND SECURITY FLAW IN COMMERCIAL DRONES
B
uying a drone is easier than ever. The Federal Aviation Administration estimated 1.9 million drones would be sold in 2016, but work by Syracuse University computer engineering students and faculty points to a potential security flaw: vulnerability to radio frequencies. Using a lab-assembled drone, with parts purchased online or 3D printed at Syracuse University, College of Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate Eric Jiang and Professor Kevin Du discovered that the radio frequency produced by a ham radio would stop a quadcopter’s propellers from spinning or even disable the drone’s microprocessors in flight. This would spell a loss of flight control and could lead to a crash.
In the annual workshops, Du and a team of computer science students and alumni teach approximately seventy instructors from colleges and universities across the United States how to use the labs. The attendees take the knowledge that they gained back to their own institutions where they incorporate them into their own teaching.
While initial, proof-of-concept exploration required Jiang’s radio to be physically close to a drone to disrupt the flight control components, he says that minor modifications could turn the radio into a long-distance weapon. Using a directional antenna or pumping up the power in excess of what an amateur’s radio license allows would both increase the possible attack distance. While these actions would be illegal, they are possible to perform with commercially available components.
Du’s mission is to reach 700 colleges and universities through the SEED workshops over the course of the next three years. Du is also fulfilling a goal to expand his SEED workshop to other countries by hosting international workshops. For information on future workshops and to access Du’s labs, visit www.cis.syr.edu/~wedu/seed.
Jiang and Du explain that there is an easy fix: applying a radio frequency-impervious metal shield over the on-board controls. They suspect such a shield is routinely omitted from over-thecounter drones due to the manufacturing focus on producing lightweight machines.
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
PATENT AWARDED FOR WEARABLE CAMERA TECHNOLOGY
F
or many people with limited mobility, alerting others or getting help after a fall is a serious concern. Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar began looking at the issue in 2011 and realized the camera-based monitoring systems at the time were using static, wall-mounted cameras installed at fixed locations.
“What if we used images from a wearable camera?” asked Velipasalar. The camera would face toward the scene and capture images of surroundings. The team developed an algorithm that can use data from a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and images from a smartphone’s built-in camera and process this data on the phone itself. When the smartphone was worn on a belt unit, a student researcher demonstrated how it worked. Velipasalar and her students found fall detection systems that
SPRING 2017
only relied on accelerometer data had high rates of false positives. Being in a fast moving vehicle or an elevator or bumping a piece of furniture would often register as a fall. When images from the camera of a phone attached to a belt were processed, and fused with the results from accelerometer data, false alerts were reduced. On February 14, 2017, Velipasalar, Akhan Almagambetov G’11, G’13, and Mauricio Casares G’14 were granted a patent for “Automatic detection by a wearable camera.” Velipasalar believes the technology could be advanced in the future so that a smartphone could interpret what the camera is seeing. “It has many applications,” said Velipasalar. “Depending on where you place the system, it can also be used for activity monitoring, driver assistance, autonomous navigation, surveillance or infrastructure inspection.”
PILOTING THE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT REVOLUTION
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE FOR VETERANS
NEW FACULTY
L
The Syracuse campus is a class-leading community for veterans.
ocated in one of the nation’s top hubs for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), Syracuse University is at the forefront of integrating UAS into society. Recently, more than $230,000 in state revitalization funding was awarded to six UAS projects across the University. Faculty and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are contributing to two of these groundbreaking efforts.
Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar, along with Assistant Professor Tarek Rakha of the School of Architecture and Assistant Professor Yang Wang of the School of Information Studies, will employ a UAS equipped with thermal cameras to conduct rapid building envelope performance diagnostics and perform aerial assessment mapping of building energy. This platform will help to maximize energy savings and improvements in building performance. The project is relevant to promoting safe and secure unmanned systems operating in urban areas, including regions with closely spaced high-rise buildings. Velipasalar will also team with fellow engineering and computer science professors Makan Fardad and Amit Sanyal to develop
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science has been recognized with a 2016 Engineering Excellence for Veterans Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. The award names the College a top military-friendly institution and a “Best for Vets” school, recognized by Military Times and US News & World Report.
a system for fully autonomous navigation and coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles by providing stability and trajectory assurance guarantees, performing onboard processing of images for detection of objects of interest and autonomously generating trajectories for collision and obstacle avoidance.
Fehime Nihan Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. University of London
Mehmet Kaya Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Patrick McSweeney Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Multimedia information retrieval, recommendation systems, and semantic web.
Data structures and algorithms, object oriented design, mobile application development, and software engineering.
Data structures & algorithms, operating systems, computational advertising, and big data & machine learning.
T
“The strength of cybersecurity education at Syracuse University stems from our belief that technology, policy and people must work in tandem to keep America safe—the theme of the interdisciplinary curricula in our Cyber Engineering Semester,” says Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The men and women that defend our country are ideally suited to master the skills needed to protect us from devastating attacks on our computing networks and infrastructure.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
SU’s cybersecurity programs include the undergraduate Cyber Engineering Semester in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory to immerse students in cybersecurity training. About half of the students are ROTC cadets. Additional programs are the certificate of advanced study in cybersecurity, master’s and online master’s in cybersecurity in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
RESEARCH AREAS
50 452 # of Faculty
# of Undergraduate Students
494 132 # of Master’s Students
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
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
Degrees Awarded May 2015–2016
68 278 9
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Currently, the Military Times’ Best for Vets: Colleges 2017 ranking places Syracuse University as the No. 1 private school in the country for service members, military veterans and their families. Cybersecurity at the University addresses an acute need in the military, government and industry sectors for specialists in key aspects of cybersecurity. The programs challenge students to develop solutions for today’s issues and future threats.
The College is part of a campus that has a strong reputation and tradition for supporting veterans. Military Times recently named the University the No. 1 private school in the country and No. 3 overall for service members, military veterans, and their families.
ASEE
MILITARY TIMES NAMES SYRACUSE CYBERSECURITY PROGRAM NO. 1 he cybersecurity program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has been ranked No. 1 by Military Times. This was the first time that Military Times evaluated cybersecurity programs. The rankings are based on academic rigor and efforts to recruit and work with veterans at colleges and universities.
“It is a great honor to accept this award, and an even greater honor to enroll and support veterans. Their experience and skills serve them extremely well in engineering and computer science disciplines. We are firmly committed to aligning our College with the needs and aspirations of veterans today and in the future,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
FACTS AND STATS
Ilyas Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Mina Jung Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Natural language processing, machine translation, computational linguistics, data mining, and recommendation systems.
Cyberphysical systems, rare event prediction and online machine learning, power aware wireless sensor network systems, fault tolerance in distributed systems, and multi-agent systems.
Gurdip Singh Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Programs Ph.D. Stony Brook University Elevating the prominence of the College’s research activities, fostering interdisciplinary and translational research, directing funds and support for collaborations, and developing research infrastructure and expertise.
From Syrian Immigrant to Syracuse Graduate— Hani Sulieman ’16, Electrical Engineering Hani Sulieman escaped the revolution in Syria and got on one of the last flights out of the Aleppo airport, not knowing if he would ever see his family again. In 2013, he arrived in Syracuse and was admitted to the College of Engineering and Computer Science as a transfer student. With a commitment to his coursework and the guidance of faculty like Associate Professor Duane Marcy, Sulieman thrived. Three years after he first arrived in the United States, he earned a degree in electrical engineering—graduating summa cum laude.
Sulieman says, “Both my parents are engineers, so it is probably in my DNA, but really everything is related to engineering somehow. You can do so much with technology and the internet nowadays. Every day, engineers are creating something new.” Today, he is relieved to call the United States home and is pursuing his Ph.D. Best of all, the parents he left behind in Syria have joined him in Syracuse. His two sisters have also fled the chaos of their homeland—settling in Minnesota and Spain. He takes solace in knowing that he and his loved ones have escaped a land in turmoil for a home of promise, equality and freedom, where opportunity abounds.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Oh Appointed Department Chair Jae Oh, the Edelstein Endowed Professor for Broadening Participation, has been named the new chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Oh is an expert researcher, focusing on multi-agent systems, swarm robotics, big data visualizations, game theory, and social
network analysis. He has served the College of Engineering and Computer Science for the past 17 years. “Jae’s qualifications and commitment to our College make him an ideal candidate for this leadership position. I am positive that he will serve the department well and the department will flourish under his leadership,” said Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
SUPERCHARGING INFORMATION FUSION When it comes to combining massive amounts of data, processing power and speed are key.
T
hree faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science have been awarded a grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to introduce dynamic data to the design of information fusion systems to accelerate the processing of large amounts of data. Professor Jian Tang, Professor Biao Chen, and Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney will evaluate information fusion, including sensing/data collection and information processing. Ultimately, they intend to develop a computational platform that enables scalable stream data processing for real-time information fusion.
The team will combine a widely used distributed computing framework with the powerful processing power of a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster. In doing so, they expect to dramatically increase the system’s speed. This project represents an original research effort on distributed fusion of heterogeneous stream data and will result in a first-of-its-kind distributed GPU-accelerated platform to enable low-latency information fusion.
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PLUGGING INTO SUSTAINABILITY WITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
More electric vehicles on the road means we need a smarter way to power them.
A
lab to research and test ways to connect electric vehicles to the smart grid received a grant from Syracuse University’s new Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability (CALS) program. College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Steve Chapin and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Professor Peter Wilcoxen will lead the lab at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. They will establish a student electric vehicle club and use the lab in a graduate-level course on smart grids. Funding for the grant comes from the Syracuse University Climate Action Plan. As energy efficiency efforts have been implemented in recent years, some of the savings have gone into a fund to
Department of
support CALS grants, on the theory that research and education about ways the campus interacts with climate and energy will enhance the University’s sustainability efforts.
USED GLOBALLY, CYBERSECURITY LABS SPRING FROM SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
E
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS Gifts to our College allow us to further prepare our students in ways that will differentiate them in the competitive marketplace and magnify the value of a Syracuse University engineering and computer science degree. Gifts will also support specific initiatives aimed at positioning our College as a leading model for contemporary engineering and computer science education, as presented in our Transforming Our Future plan at eng-cs.syr.edu/transformation. With your help, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Please consider making your gift today at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
very year, Professor Kevin Du hosts training workshops on a set of open-source, hands-on cybersecurity exercises.
The no-cost Security Education (SEED) lab exercises are developed at Syracuse University and used all over the world for computer and information security education.
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.
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SYRACUSE NY
RESEARCHERS FIND SECURITY FLAW IN COMMERCIAL DRONES
B
uying a drone is easier than ever. The Federal Aviation Administration estimated 1.9 million drones would be sold in 2016, but work by Syracuse University computer engineering students and faculty points to a potential security flaw: vulnerability to radio frequencies. Using a lab-assembled drone, with parts purchased online or 3D printed at Syracuse University, College of Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate Eric Jiang and Professor Kevin Du discovered that the radio frequency produced by a ham radio would stop a quadcopter’s propellers from spinning or even disable the drone’s microprocessors in flight. This would spell a loss of flight control and could lead to a crash.
In the annual workshops, Du and a team of computer science students and alumni teach approximately seventy instructors from colleges and universities across the United States how to use the labs. The attendees take the knowledge that they gained back to their own institutions where they incorporate them into their own teaching.
While initial, proof-of-concept exploration required Jiang’s radio to be physically close to a drone to disrupt the flight control components, he says that minor modifications could turn the radio into a long-distance weapon. Using a directional antenna or pumping up the power in excess of what an amateur’s radio license allows would both increase the possible attack distance. While these actions would be illegal, they are possible to perform with commercially available components.
Du’s mission is to reach 700 colleges and universities through the SEED workshops over the course of the next three years. Du is also fulfilling a goal to expand his SEED workshop to other countries by hosting international workshops. For information on future workshops and to access Du’s labs, visit www.cis.syr.edu/~wedu/seed.
Jiang and Du explain that there is an easy fix: applying a radio frequency-impervious metal shield over the on-board controls. They suspect such a shield is routinely omitted from over-thecounter drones due to the manufacturing focus on producing lightweight machines.
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
PATENT AWARDED FOR WEARABLE CAMERA TECHNOLOGY
F
or many people with limited mobility, alerting others or getting help after a fall is a serious concern. Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar began looking at the issue in 2011 and realized the camera-based monitoring systems at the time were using static, wall-mounted cameras installed at fixed locations.
“What if we used images from a wearable camera?” asked Velipasalar. The camera would face toward the scene and capture images of surroundings. The team developed an algorithm that can use data from a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and images from a smartphone’s built-in camera and process this data on the phone itself. When the smartphone was worn on a belt unit, a student researcher demonstrated how it worked. Velipasalar and her students found fall detection systems that
SPRING 2017
only relied on accelerometer data had high rates of false positives. Being in a fast moving vehicle or an elevator or bumping a piece of furniture would often register as a fall. When images from the camera of a phone attached to a belt were processed, and fused with the results from accelerometer data, false alerts were reduced. On February 14, 2017, Velipasalar, Akhan Almagambetov G’11, G’13, and Mauricio Casares G’14 were granted a patent for “Automatic detection by a wearable camera.” Velipasalar believes the technology could be advanced in the future so that a smartphone could interpret what the camera is seeing. “It has many applications,” said Velipasalar. “Depending on where you place the system, it can also be used for activity monitoring, driver assistance, autonomous navigation, surveillance or infrastructure inspection.”
PILOTING THE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT REVOLUTION
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE FOR VETERANS
NEW FACULTY
L
The Syracuse campus is a class-leading community for veterans.
ocated in one of the nation’s top hubs for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), Syracuse University is at the forefront of integrating UAS into society. Recently, more than $230,000 in state revitalization funding was awarded to six UAS projects across the University. Faculty and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are contributing to two of these groundbreaking efforts.
Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar, along with Assistant Professor Tarek Rakha of the School of Architecture and Assistant Professor Yang Wang of the School of Information Studies, will employ a UAS equipped with thermal cameras to conduct rapid building envelope performance diagnostics and perform aerial assessment mapping of building energy. This platform will help to maximize energy savings and improvements in building performance. The project is relevant to promoting safe and secure unmanned systems operating in urban areas, including regions with closely spaced high-rise buildings. Velipasalar will also team with fellow engineering and computer science professors Makan Fardad and Amit Sanyal to develop
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science has been recognized with a 2016 Engineering Excellence for Veterans Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. The award names the College a top military-friendly institution and a “Best for Vets” school, recognized by Military Times and US News & World Report.
a system for fully autonomous navigation and coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles by providing stability and trajectory assurance guarantees, performing onboard processing of images for detection of objects of interest and autonomously generating trajectories for collision and obstacle avoidance.
Fehime Nihan Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. University of London
Mehmet Kaya Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Patrick McSweeney Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Multimedia information retrieval, recommendation systems, and semantic web.
Data structures and algorithms, object oriented design, mobile application development, and software engineering.
Data structures & algorithms, operating systems, computational advertising, and big data & machine learning.
T
“The strength of cybersecurity education at Syracuse University stems from our belief that technology, policy and people must work in tandem to keep America safe—the theme of the interdisciplinary curricula in our Cyber Engineering Semester,” says Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The men and women that defend our country are ideally suited to master the skills needed to protect us from devastating attacks on our computing networks and infrastructure.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
SU’s cybersecurity programs include the undergraduate Cyber Engineering Semester in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory to immerse students in cybersecurity training. About half of the students are ROTC cadets. Additional programs are the certificate of advanced study in cybersecurity, master’s and online master’s in cybersecurity in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
RESEARCH AREAS
50 452 # of Faculty
# of Undergraduate Students
494 132 # of Master’s Students
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
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
Degrees Awarded May 2015–2016
68 278 9
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Currently, the Military Times’ Best for Vets: Colleges 2017 ranking places Syracuse University as the No. 1 private school in the country for service members, military veterans and their families. Cybersecurity at the University addresses an acute need in the military, government and industry sectors for specialists in key aspects of cybersecurity. The programs challenge students to develop solutions for today’s issues and future threats.
The College is part of a campus that has a strong reputation and tradition for supporting veterans. Military Times recently named the University the No. 1 private school in the country and No. 3 overall for service members, military veterans, and their families.
ASEE
MILITARY TIMES NAMES SYRACUSE CYBERSECURITY PROGRAM NO. 1 he cybersecurity program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has been ranked No. 1 by Military Times. This was the first time that Military Times evaluated cybersecurity programs. The rankings are based on academic rigor and efforts to recruit and work with veterans at colleges and universities.
“It is a great honor to accept this award, and an even greater honor to enroll and support veterans. Their experience and skills serve them extremely well in engineering and computer science disciplines. We are firmly committed to aligning our College with the needs and aspirations of veterans today and in the future,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
FACTS AND STATS
Ilyas Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Mina Jung Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Natural language processing, machine translation, computational linguistics, data mining, and recommendation systems.
Cyberphysical systems, rare event prediction and online machine learning, power aware wireless sensor network systems, fault tolerance in distributed systems, and multi-agent systems.
Gurdip Singh Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Programs Ph.D. Stony Brook University Elevating the prominence of the College’s research activities, fostering interdisciplinary and translational research, directing funds and support for collaborations, and developing research infrastructure and expertise.
From Syrian Immigrant to Syracuse Graduate— Hani Sulieman ’16, Electrical Engineering Hani Sulieman escaped the revolution in Syria and got on one of the last flights out of the Aleppo airport, not knowing if he would ever see his family again. In 2013, he arrived in Syracuse and was admitted to the College of Engineering and Computer Science as a transfer student. With a commitment to his coursework and the guidance of faculty like Associate Professor Duane Marcy, Sulieman thrived. Three years after he first arrived in the United States, he earned a degree in electrical engineering—graduating summa cum laude.
Sulieman says, “Both my parents are engineers, so it is probably in my DNA, but really everything is related to engineering somehow. You can do so much with technology and the internet nowadays. Every day, engineers are creating something new.” Today, he is relieved to call the United States home and is pursuing his Ph.D. Best of all, the parents he left behind in Syria have joined him in Syracuse. His two sisters have also fled the chaos of their homeland—settling in Minnesota and Spain. He takes solace in knowing that he and his loved ones have escaped a land in turmoil for a home of promise, equality and freedom, where opportunity abounds.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Oh Appointed Department Chair Jae Oh, the Edelstein Endowed Professor for Broadening Participation, has been named the new chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Oh is an expert researcher, focusing on multi-agent systems, swarm robotics, big data visualizations, game theory, and social
network analysis. He has served the College of Engineering and Computer Science for the past 17 years. “Jae’s qualifications and commitment to our College make him an ideal candidate for this leadership position. I am positive that he will serve the department well and the department will flourish under his leadership,” said Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
SUPERCHARGING INFORMATION FUSION When it comes to combining massive amounts of data, processing power and speed are key.
T
hree faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science have been awarded a grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to introduce dynamic data to the design of information fusion systems to accelerate the processing of large amounts of data. Professor Jian Tang, Professor Biao Chen, and Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney will evaluate information fusion, including sensing/data collection and information processing. Ultimately, they intend to develop a computational platform that enables scalable stream data processing for real-time information fusion.
The team will combine a widely used distributed computing framework with the powerful processing power of a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster. In doing so, they expect to dramatically increase the system’s speed. This project represents an original research effort on distributed fusion of heterogeneous stream data and will result in a first-of-its-kind distributed GPU-accelerated platform to enable low-latency information fusion.
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PLUGGING INTO SUSTAINABILITY WITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
More electric vehicles on the road means we need a smarter way to power them.
A
lab to research and test ways to connect electric vehicles to the smart grid received a grant from Syracuse University’s new Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability (CALS) program. College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Steve Chapin and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Professor Peter Wilcoxen will lead the lab at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. They will establish a student electric vehicle club and use the lab in a graduate-level course on smart grids. Funding for the grant comes from the Syracuse University Climate Action Plan. As energy efficiency efforts have been implemented in recent years, some of the savings have gone into a fund to
Department of
support CALS grants, on the theory that research and education about ways the campus interacts with climate and energy will enhance the University’s sustainability efforts.
USED GLOBALLY, CYBERSECURITY LABS SPRING FROM SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
E
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS Gifts to our College allow us to further prepare our students in ways that will differentiate them in the competitive marketplace and magnify the value of a Syracuse University engineering and computer science degree. Gifts will also support specific initiatives aimed at positioning our College as a leading model for contemporary engineering and computer science education, as presented in our Transforming Our Future plan at eng-cs.syr.edu/transformation. With your help, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Please consider making your gift today at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
very year, Professor Kevin Du hosts training workshops on a set of open-source, hands-on cybersecurity exercises.
The no-cost Security Education (SEED) lab exercises are developed at Syracuse University and used all over the world for computer and information security education.
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.
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SYRACUSE NY
RESEARCHERS FIND SECURITY FLAW IN COMMERCIAL DRONES
B
uying a drone is easier than ever. The Federal Aviation Administration estimated 1.9 million drones would be sold in 2016, but work by Syracuse University computer engineering students and faculty points to a potential security flaw: vulnerability to radio frequencies. Using a lab-assembled drone, with parts purchased online or 3D printed at Syracuse University, College of Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate Eric Jiang and Professor Kevin Du discovered that the radio frequency produced by a ham radio would stop a quadcopter’s propellers from spinning or even disable the drone’s microprocessors in flight. This would spell a loss of flight control and could lead to a crash.
In the annual workshops, Du and a team of computer science students and alumni teach approximately seventy instructors from colleges and universities across the United States how to use the labs. The attendees take the knowledge that they gained back to their own institutions where they incorporate them into their own teaching.
While initial, proof-of-concept exploration required Jiang’s radio to be physically close to a drone to disrupt the flight control components, he says that minor modifications could turn the radio into a long-distance weapon. Using a directional antenna or pumping up the power in excess of what an amateur’s radio license allows would both increase the possible attack distance. While these actions would be illegal, they are possible to perform with commercially available components.
Du’s mission is to reach 700 colleges and universities through the SEED workshops over the course of the next three years. Du is also fulfilling a goal to expand his SEED workshop to other countries by hosting international workshops. For information on future workshops and to access Du’s labs, visit www.cis.syr.edu/~wedu/seed.
Jiang and Du explain that there is an easy fix: applying a radio frequency-impervious metal shield over the on-board controls. They suspect such a shield is routinely omitted from over-thecounter drones due to the manufacturing focus on producing lightweight machines.
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
PATENT AWARDED FOR WEARABLE CAMERA TECHNOLOGY
F
or many people with limited mobility, alerting others or getting help after a fall is a serious concern. Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar began looking at the issue in 2011 and realized the camera-based monitoring systems at the time were using static, wall-mounted cameras installed at fixed locations.
“What if we used images from a wearable camera?” asked Velipasalar. The camera would face toward the scene and capture images of surroundings. The team developed an algorithm that can use data from a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and images from a smartphone’s built-in camera and process this data on the phone itself. When the smartphone was worn on a belt unit, a student researcher demonstrated how it worked. Velipasalar and her students found fall detection systems that
SPRING 2017
only relied on accelerometer data had high rates of false positives. Being in a fast moving vehicle or an elevator or bumping a piece of furniture would often register as a fall. When images from the camera of a phone attached to a belt were processed, and fused with the results from accelerometer data, false alerts were reduced. On February 14, 2017, Velipasalar, Akhan Almagambetov G’11, G’13, and Mauricio Casares G’14 were granted a patent for “Automatic detection by a wearable camera.” Velipasalar believes the technology could be advanced in the future so that a smartphone could interpret what the camera is seeing. “It has many applications,” said Velipasalar. “Depending on where you place the system, it can also be used for activity monitoring, driver assistance, autonomous navigation, surveillance or infrastructure inspection.”
PILOTING THE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT REVOLUTION
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE FOR VETERANS
NEW FACULTY
L
The Syracuse campus is a class-leading community for veterans.
ocated in one of the nation’s top hubs for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), Syracuse University is at the forefront of integrating UAS into society. Recently, more than $230,000 in state revitalization funding was awarded to six UAS projects across the University. Faculty and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are contributing to two of these groundbreaking efforts.
Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar, along with Assistant Professor Tarek Rakha of the School of Architecture and Assistant Professor Yang Wang of the School of Information Studies, will employ a UAS equipped with thermal cameras to conduct rapid building envelope performance diagnostics and perform aerial assessment mapping of building energy. This platform will help to maximize energy savings and improvements in building performance. The project is relevant to promoting safe and secure unmanned systems operating in urban areas, including regions with closely spaced high-rise buildings. Velipasalar will also team with fellow engineering and computer science professors Makan Fardad and Amit Sanyal to develop
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science has been recognized with a 2016 Engineering Excellence for Veterans Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. The award names the College a top military-friendly institution and a “Best for Vets” school, recognized by Military Times and US News & World Report.
a system for fully autonomous navigation and coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles by providing stability and trajectory assurance guarantees, performing onboard processing of images for detection of objects of interest and autonomously generating trajectories for collision and obstacle avoidance.
Fehime Nihan Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. University of London
Mehmet Kaya Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Patrick McSweeney Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Multimedia information retrieval, recommendation systems, and semantic web.
Data structures and algorithms, object oriented design, mobile application development, and software engineering.
Data structures & algorithms, operating systems, computational advertising, and big data & machine learning.
T
“The strength of cybersecurity education at Syracuse University stems from our belief that technology, policy and people must work in tandem to keep America safe—the theme of the interdisciplinary curricula in our Cyber Engineering Semester,” says Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The men and women that defend our country are ideally suited to master the skills needed to protect us from devastating attacks on our computing networks and infrastructure.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
SU’s cybersecurity programs include the undergraduate Cyber Engineering Semester in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory to immerse students in cybersecurity training. About half of the students are ROTC cadets. Additional programs are the certificate of advanced study in cybersecurity, master’s and online master’s in cybersecurity in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
RESEARCH AREAS
50 452 # of Faculty
# of Undergraduate Students
494 132 # of Master’s Students
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
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
Degrees Awarded May 2015–2016
68 278 9
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Currently, the Military Times’ Best for Vets: Colleges 2017 ranking places Syracuse University as the No. 1 private school in the country for service members, military veterans and their families. Cybersecurity at the University addresses an acute need in the military, government and industry sectors for specialists in key aspects of cybersecurity. The programs challenge students to develop solutions for today’s issues and future threats.
The College is part of a campus that has a strong reputation and tradition for supporting veterans. Military Times recently named the University the No. 1 private school in the country and No. 3 overall for service members, military veterans, and their families.
ASEE
MILITARY TIMES NAMES SYRACUSE CYBERSECURITY PROGRAM NO. 1 he cybersecurity program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has been ranked No. 1 by Military Times. This was the first time that Military Times evaluated cybersecurity programs. The rankings are based on academic rigor and efforts to recruit and work with veterans at colleges and universities.
“It is a great honor to accept this award, and an even greater honor to enroll and support veterans. Their experience and skills serve them extremely well in engineering and computer science disciplines. We are firmly committed to aligning our College with the needs and aspirations of veterans today and in the future,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
FACTS AND STATS
Ilyas Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Mina Jung Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Natural language processing, machine translation, computational linguistics, data mining, and recommendation systems.
Cyberphysical systems, rare event prediction and online machine learning, power aware wireless sensor network systems, fault tolerance in distributed systems, and multi-agent systems.
Gurdip Singh Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Programs Ph.D. Stony Brook University Elevating the prominence of the College’s research activities, fostering interdisciplinary and translational research, directing funds and support for collaborations, and developing research infrastructure and expertise.
From Syrian Immigrant to Syracuse Graduate— Hani Sulieman ’16, Electrical Engineering Hani Sulieman escaped the revolution in Syria and got on one of the last flights out of the Aleppo airport, not knowing if he would ever see his family again. In 2013, he arrived in Syracuse and was admitted to the College of Engineering and Computer Science as a transfer student. With a commitment to his coursework and the guidance of faculty like Associate Professor Duane Marcy, Sulieman thrived. Three years after he first arrived in the United States, he earned a degree in electrical engineering—graduating summa cum laude.
Sulieman says, “Both my parents are engineers, so it is probably in my DNA, but really everything is related to engineering somehow. You can do so much with technology and the internet nowadays. Every day, engineers are creating something new.” Today, he is relieved to call the United States home and is pursuing his Ph.D. Best of all, the parents he left behind in Syria have joined him in Syracuse. His two sisters have also fled the chaos of their homeland—settling in Minnesota and Spain. He takes solace in knowing that he and his loved ones have escaped a land in turmoil for a home of promise, equality and freedom, where opportunity abounds.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Oh Appointed Department Chair Jae Oh, the Edelstein Endowed Professor for Broadening Participation, has been named the new chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Oh is an expert researcher, focusing on multi-agent systems, swarm robotics, big data visualizations, game theory, and social
network analysis. He has served the College of Engineering and Computer Science for the past 17 years. “Jae’s qualifications and commitment to our College make him an ideal candidate for this leadership position. I am positive that he will serve the department well and the department will flourish under his leadership,” said Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
PILOTING THE UNMANNED AIRCRAFT REVOLUTION
ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE FOR VETERANS
NEW FACULTY
L
The Syracuse campus is a class-leading community for veterans.
ocated in one of the nation’s top hubs for unmanned aerial systems (UAS), Syracuse University is at the forefront of integrating UAS into society. Recently, more than $230,000 in state revitalization funding was awarded to six UAS projects across the University. Faculty and students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science are contributing to two of these groundbreaking efforts.
Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar, along with Assistant Professor Tarek Rakha of the School of Architecture and Assistant Professor Yang Wang of the School of Information Studies, will employ a UAS equipped with thermal cameras to conduct rapid building envelope performance diagnostics and perform aerial assessment mapping of building energy. This platform will help to maximize energy savings and improvements in building performance. The project is relevant to promoting safe and secure unmanned systems operating in urban areas, including regions with closely spaced high-rise buildings. Velipasalar will also team with fellow engineering and computer science professors Makan Fardad and Amit Sanyal to develop
S
yracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science has been recognized with a 2016 Engineering Excellence for Veterans Award from the American Society of Engineering Education. The award names the College a top military-friendly institution and a “Best for Vets” school, recognized by Military Times and US News & World Report.
a system for fully autonomous navigation and coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles by providing stability and trajectory assurance guarantees, performing onboard processing of images for detection of objects of interest and autonomously generating trajectories for collision and obstacle avoidance.
Fehime Nihan Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. University of London
Mehmet Kaya Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Patrick McSweeney Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Multimedia information retrieval, recommendation systems, and semantic web.
Data structures and algorithms, object oriented design, mobile application development, and software engineering.
Data structures & algorithms, operating systems, computational advertising, and big data & machine learning.
T
“The strength of cybersecurity education at Syracuse University stems from our belief that technology, policy and people must work in tandem to keep America safe—the theme of the interdisciplinary curricula in our Cyber Engineering Semester,” says Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The men and women that defend our country are ideally suited to master the skills needed to protect us from devastating attacks on our computing networks and infrastructure.”
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
SU’s cybersecurity programs include the undergraduate Cyber Engineering Semester in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory to immerse students in cybersecurity training. About half of the students are ROTC cadets. Additional programs are the certificate of advanced study in cybersecurity, master’s and online master’s in cybersecurity in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
RESEARCH AREAS
50 452 # of Faculty
# of Undergraduate Students
494 132 # of Master’s Students
Energy Sources, Conversion, and Conservation
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
Degrees Awarded May 2015–2016
68 278 9
Undergraduate
Master’s
Ph.D.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Currently, the Military Times’ Best for Vets: Colleges 2017 ranking places Syracuse University as the No. 1 private school in the country for service members, military veterans and their families. Cybersecurity at the University addresses an acute need in the military, government and industry sectors for specialists in key aspects of cybersecurity. The programs challenge students to develop solutions for today’s issues and future threats.
The College is part of a campus that has a strong reputation and tradition for supporting veterans. Military Times recently named the University the No. 1 private school in the country and No. 3 overall for service members, military veterans, and their families.
ASEE
MILITARY TIMES NAMES SYRACUSE CYBERSECURITY PROGRAM NO. 1 he cybersecurity program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has been ranked No. 1 by Military Times. This was the first time that Military Times evaluated cybersecurity programs. The rankings are based on academic rigor and efforts to recruit and work with veterans at colleges and universities.
“It is a great honor to accept this award, and an even greater honor to enroll and support veterans. Their experience and skills serve them extremely well in engineering and computer science disciplines. We are firmly committed to aligning our College with the needs and aspirations of veterans today and in the future,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
FACTS AND STATS
Ilyas Cicekli Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Mina Jung Assistant Teaching Professor Ph.D. Syracuse University
Natural language processing, machine translation, computational linguistics, data mining, and recommendation systems.
Cyberphysical systems, rare event prediction and online machine learning, power aware wireless sensor network systems, fault tolerance in distributed systems, and multi-agent systems.
Gurdip Singh Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Programs Ph.D. Stony Brook University Elevating the prominence of the College’s research activities, fostering interdisciplinary and translational research, directing funds and support for collaborations, and developing research infrastructure and expertise.
From Syrian Immigrant to Syracuse Graduate— Hani Sulieman ’16, Electrical Engineering Hani Sulieman escaped the revolution in Syria and got on one of the last flights out of the Aleppo airport, not knowing if he would ever see his family again. In 2013, he arrived in Syracuse and was admitted to the College of Engineering and Computer Science as a transfer student. With a commitment to his coursework and the guidance of faculty like Associate Professor Duane Marcy, Sulieman thrived. Three years after he first arrived in the United States, he earned a degree in electrical engineering—graduating summa cum laude.
Sulieman says, “Both my parents are engineers, so it is probably in my DNA, but really everything is related to engineering somehow. You can do so much with technology and the internet nowadays. Every day, engineers are creating something new.” Today, he is relieved to call the United States home and is pursuing his Ph.D. Best of all, the parents he left behind in Syria have joined him in Syracuse. His two sisters have also fled the chaos of their homeland—settling in Minnesota and Spain. He takes solace in knowing that he and his loved ones have escaped a land in turmoil for a home of promise, equality and freedom, where opportunity abounds.
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT Oh Appointed Department Chair Jae Oh, the Edelstein Endowed Professor for Broadening Participation, has been named the new chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Oh is an expert researcher, focusing on multi-agent systems, swarm robotics, big data visualizations, game theory, and social
network analysis. He has served the College of Engineering and Computer Science for the past 17 years. “Jae’s qualifications and commitment to our College make him an ideal candidate for this leadership position. I am positive that he will serve the department well and the department will flourish under his leadership,” said Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg.
SUPERCHARGING INFORMATION FUSION When it comes to combining massive amounts of data, processing power and speed are key.
T
hree faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science have been awarded a grant by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to introduce dynamic data to the design of information fusion systems to accelerate the processing of large amounts of data. Professor Jian Tang, Professor Biao Chen, and Distinguished Professor Pramod K. Varshney will evaluate information fusion, including sensing/data collection and information processing. Ultimately, they intend to develop a computational platform that enables scalable stream data processing for real-time information fusion.
The team will combine a widely used distributed computing framework with the powerful processing power of a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster. In doing so, they expect to dramatically increase the system’s speed. This project represents an original research effort on distributed fusion of heterogeneous stream data and will result in a first-of-its-kind distributed GPU-accelerated platform to enable low-latency information fusion.
NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE
PLUGGING INTO SUSTAINABILITY WITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES
PAID
Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse, NY 13244-1240
More electric vehicles on the road means we need a smarter way to power them.
A
lab to research and test ways to connect electric vehicles to the smart grid received a grant from Syracuse University’s new Campus as a Laboratory for Sustainability (CALS) program. College of Engineering and Computer Science Associate Professor Steve Chapin and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Professor Peter Wilcoxen will lead the lab at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. They will establish a student electric vehicle club and use the lab in a graduate-level course on smart grids. Funding for the grant comes from the Syracuse University Climate Action Plan. As energy efficiency efforts have been implemented in recent years, some of the savings have gone into a fund to
Department of
support CALS grants, on the theory that research and education about ways the campus interacts with climate and energy will enhance the University’s sustainability efforts.
USED GLOBALLY, CYBERSECURITY LABS SPRING FROM SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
E
YOUR DEPARTMENT, YOUR COLLEGE, YOUR SUCCESS Gifts to our College allow us to further prepare our students in ways that will differentiate them in the competitive marketplace and magnify the value of a Syracuse University engineering and computer science degree. Gifts will also support specific initiatives aimed at positioning our College as a leading model for contemporary engineering and computer science education, as presented in our Transforming Our Future plan at eng-cs.syr.edu/transformation. With your help, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Please consider making your gift today at eng-cs.syr.edu/givenow.
very year, Professor Kevin Du hosts training workshops on a set of open-source, hands-on cybersecurity exercises.
The no-cost Security Education (SEED) lab exercises are developed at Syracuse University and used all over the world for computer and information security education.
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.
VISIT US ON FACEBOOK @ENGINEERINGSU @ENGINEERINGSU CONNECT WITH US ENG-CS.SYR.EDU
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY SYRACUSE NY
RESEARCHERS FIND SECURITY FLAW IN COMMERCIAL DRONES
B
uying a drone is easier than ever. The Federal Aviation Administration estimated 1.9 million drones would be sold in 2016, but work by Syracuse University computer engineering students and faculty points to a potential security flaw: vulnerability to radio frequencies. Using a lab-assembled drone, with parts purchased online or 3D printed at Syracuse University, College of Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate Eric Jiang and Professor Kevin Du discovered that the radio frequency produced by a ham radio would stop a quadcopter’s propellers from spinning or even disable the drone’s microprocessors in flight. This would spell a loss of flight control and could lead to a crash.
In the annual workshops, Du and a team of computer science students and alumni teach approximately seventy instructors from colleges and universities across the United States how to use the labs. The attendees take the knowledge that they gained back to their own institutions where they incorporate them into their own teaching.
While initial, proof-of-concept exploration required Jiang’s radio to be physically close to a drone to disrupt the flight control components, he says that minor modifications could turn the radio into a long-distance weapon. Using a directional antenna or pumping up the power in excess of what an amateur’s radio license allows would both increase the possible attack distance. While these actions would be illegal, they are possible to perform with commercially available components.
Du’s mission is to reach 700 colleges and universities through the SEED workshops over the course of the next three years. Du is also fulfilling a goal to expand his SEED workshop to other countries by hosting international workshops. For information on future workshops and to access Du’s labs, visit www.cis.syr.edu/~wedu/seed.
Jiang and Du explain that there is an easy fix: applying a radio frequency-impervious metal shield over the on-board controls. They suspect such a shield is routinely omitted from over-thecounter drones due to the manufacturing focus on producing lightweight machines.
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
PATENT AWARDED FOR WEARABLE CAMERA TECHNOLOGY
F
or many people with limited mobility, alerting others or getting help after a fall is a serious concern. Associate Professor Senem Velipasalar began looking at the issue in 2011 and realized the camera-based monitoring systems at the time were using static, wall-mounted cameras installed at fixed locations.
“What if we used images from a wearable camera?” asked Velipasalar. The camera would face toward the scene and capture images of surroundings. The team developed an algorithm that can use data from a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and images from a smartphone’s built-in camera and process this data on the phone itself. When the smartphone was worn on a belt unit, a student researcher demonstrated how it worked. Velipasalar and her students found fall detection systems that
SPRING 2017
only relied on accelerometer data had high rates of false positives. Being in a fast moving vehicle or an elevator or bumping a piece of furniture would often register as a fall. When images from the camera of a phone attached to a belt were processed, and fused with the results from accelerometer data, false alerts were reduced. On February 14, 2017, Velipasalar, Akhan Almagambetov G’11, G’13, and Mauricio Casares G’14 were granted a patent for “Automatic detection by a wearable camera.” Velipasalar believes the technology could be advanced in the future so that a smartphone could interpret what the camera is seeing. “It has many applications,” said Velipasalar. “Depending on where you place the system, it can also be used for activity monitoring, driver assistance, autonomous navigation, surveillance or infrastructure inspection.”