Friends and Colleagues,
Greetings from I-SENSE.
This update comes during an unusual time for all of us. We are facing new challenges, personally and professionally, brought on by the pandemic. Despite these challenges, FAU continues to make enormous strides toward becoming the nation’s next premier research university. The I-SENSE team is an important part of that mission, and our team has risen to the challenges, setting new records of research productivity and achievement.
In this newsletter, we share exciting updates about our faculty, staff, students and projects, as well as some updates on how I-SENSE is helping the community during the pandemic. As I’ve written in each of these newsletters, FAU’s sensing and smart systems pillar is growing stronger each day.
If you are working in sensing and smart systems or the Internet of Things, we’d love to hear from you. We are building the future of sensing and smart systems. Come build it with us.
Best wishes,
Jason O. Hallstrom,
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I-SENSE Faculty Fellow Promotion
Behnaz Ghoraani, Ph.D., an I-SENSE Faculty Fellow, was promoted from assistant professor in the department of computer and electrical engineering and computer science to associate professor (with tenure) and was selected for FAU’s Scholar of the Year at the assistant professor level for scholarly and creative activities.
In addition, she continues to provide valuable service to the community. Recently, Ghoraani, an assistant editor of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Signal Society
newsletter, spearheaded a project to profile a female signal processing researcher each month in their newsletter. To date, she has interviewed 11 high-profile female scientists in signal processing. To read her interviews, click
here.
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Department of Defense
Awards
Research Funding
The Department of Defense notified Dimitris Pados, Ph.D., I-SENSE Faculty Fellow and Charles E. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, of their intention to fund a $653,394, three-year project entitled, “Basic Research on Data Conformity Evaluation by Novel L1-norm Decompositions of Tensor Data.”
An autonomous artificially intelligent (AI) machine (or collective of autonomous machines) brings in and runs on a multitude of sensed data. Data quality assurance is a necessary condition to have operational assurance for the autonomous machines. For this project, Pados’ team will develop novel mathematical methods that measure the conformity of each data point with respect to all other collected data in a blind, unsupervised, artificially-intelligent way.
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NSF Awards Research Initiation Initiative
Jinwoo Jang, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of civil, environmental and geomatics engineering and I-SENSE Fellow, received a $174,912
Research Initiation Initiative (CRII)
award from the National Science Foundation. CRII awards are given to researchers to undertake exploratory investigations, to acquire and test preliminary data, develop collaborations within or across research disciplines and/or develop new algorithms, approaches and system designs/prototypes, which could lead to additional funded programs. For Jang’s two-year project, titled “CRII: OAC: Scalable and Integrated Data Collection Platforms for Connected Vehicle Data,” he will investigate the creation of new intelligent data collection and integration platforms to support a scalable connected vehicle data infrastructure system.
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Faculty Fellow Receives Research Funding From NATO Center for Maritime Research & Experimentation
Georgios Sklivanitis, Ph.D., assistant research Professor in the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and I-SENSE Fellow was recently awarded a grant from the
NATO Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation. The award will fund a five-month project titled, “Analysis of Reconciliation/Privacy Amplification of Physical Layer Security for Underwater Acoustic Communications.” The team will develop and implement physical layer security methods based on error correcting coding and artificial noise injection to verify that two legitimate nodes of an underwater ad-hoc network can independently generate a common cryptographic key as a function of the measured underwater channel response. Dimitris Pados, Ph.D., a
Charles E. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the College of Engineering and Computer Science,
is co-principal investigator on this project.
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Field Experience Scholar Awarded to I-SENSE Student
Matthew Alberto, an I-SENSE undergraduate student research assistant and FAU High School Class of 2020 graduate, recently received the Field Experience Scholar Award from FAU High School for his contributions to a project that he worked on at I-SENSE.
Alberto helped build an interactive exhibit to demonstrate how concussive impacts could cause brain damage and educate the public about the importance of wearing helmets. He was involved in the design, testing and production of the lifting mechanism, and conducted numerous field trips to the museum to inspect the structure, replace parts and perform regular maintenance.
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I-SENSE Student Receives University Scholar Award
Nazik Almazova, an undergraduate computer engineering student and I-SENSE undergraduate student research assistant, recently earned the University Scholar Award for the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
The University Scholar Award is awarded in recognition of outstanding academic achievement. In addition to the distinction, Nazik will receive a $1,000 prize.
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Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award Announced
The National Science Foundation recently awarded Brian Koziel, an I-SENSE graduate research assistant working under Reza Azarderakhsh, Ph.D., an associate professor in the department of computer and electrical engineering and computer science and I-SENSE faculty fellow, with a Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award. The GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support, including an annual stipend and an education allowance.
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Graduate Research Assistant Earns Best Qualifying Exam
David Wilson, an I-SENSE graduate research assistant advised by Yufei Tang, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of computer and electrical engineering and computer science and I-SENSE Faculty Fellow, received the best qualifying exam from the College of Engineering and Computer Science.
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Graduate Research Assistant Earns Research Assistant of the Year
The College of Engineering and Computer Science recognized Min Shi, an I-SENSE graduate research assistant advised by Yufei Tang,
assistant professor in the department of computer and electrical engineering and computer science and I-SENSE Faculty Fellow,
as the Research Assistant of the Year.
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FAU Makes Face Shields for Baptist Health South Florida
As the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) continues to challenge healthcare systems across the world, many clinicians have struggled with dire shortages of personal protective equipment, particularly face masks. A team from I-SENSE and the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science, identified a simple solution to rapidly produce protective face shields for Baptist Health South Florida, the largest healthcare organization in the region with 11 hospitals, including Boca Raton Regional Hospital.
The inexpensive, disposable face shield developed by the FAU team only requires clear polyester plastic, elastic fabric bands and a laser cutter. Unlike 3D printed solutions, the process developed by FAU is simple and quick. To learn more, click
here.
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Paper Funded by COECS/I-SENSE Receives Best Paper Award
The Future of Information and Communication Conference 2020 gave Mehrdad Nojoumian, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (COECS), the Best Paper Award for a paper that was funded by a joint COECS and I-SENSE seed-funded project. The project titled, “Privacy Preserving Protocols for Big Data Analytics,” resulted in the paper, “Efficient Implementation and Computational Analysis of Privacy-Preserving Auction Protocols.” Nojoumian was the senior author on the paper.
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I-SENSE Team Updates
Luu Tuan Linh Dang was recently promoted to an administrative managerial professional position as an embedded systems engineer. Linh joined the I-SENSE team in December 2018 as a graduate research assistant. He will be responsible for supporting the institute’s embedded initiatives, with an emphasis on wireless device design.
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