Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Tresys Technology, a provider of technology and engineering services for customers with high-security requirements, announced the "Tresys Technology Scholarship" for UMBC students. The merit-based scholarship is intended to support incoming sophomore or junior computer science majors at UMBC with demonstrated financial need and who have obtained or transferred a grade point average of 3.0 or greater. There is a preference given to students interested in computer security. The scholarship, managed by the UMBC Foundation, may be renewed for a second year, contingent on the student’s academic performance and continued financial need. Scholarship recipients are also invited to apply for paid internship positions at Tresys.

Tresys also announced the first two recipients: UMBC Computer Science juniors Sven Rivera and Sean Hoover, who both received scholarship awards of $2,500. Sven transfered to UMBC after attending Carrol Community College and Howard Community College and Sean came to UMBC as a transfer student from New Mexico State University.

For more information or to apply for future awards of the Tresys Technology Scholarship scholarship, visit the COEIT scholarship page.

CSEE professor Nilanjan Banerjee has received a Microsoft Software Engineering Innovation (SEIF) Award. The award comes with a $25,000 grant to help fund a research project that uses inventive wearable computing devices to help paraplegics and quadriplegics get around their homes. It’s called “Wearable Multi-Sensor Gesture Recognition in Assistive Devices for Paralysis Patients”.

Dr. Banerjee’s proposal was chosen from a pool of more than one hundred. He joins sixteen professors and researchers across the world who are also 2013 SEIF recipients.

The aim of the Microsoft SEIF award is to advance software engineering applications and tools by funding researchers with state of the art ideas. Projects involving devices, services, cloud-computing, and applications based on natural user interface (NUI) are top priority.

Banerjee’s project speaks to this goal. The project proposes a gesture-based system that will allow paralysis patients to do everyday household activities, like watch television, adjust the thermostat, and turn on a lamp. The heart of the system is two wearable devices. A headband with textile-based EOG sensors will capture eye movement. A glove with flex sensors and an accelerometer will capture hand gestures. Once collected, this data that will be analyzed with a smartphone, translating the wearer’s intent.  

Fellow UMBC professors Shaun Kane and Amy Hurst (Information Systems) were also among this year’s SEIF award recipients. Like Banejree, their project deals with improving accessibility for the handicapped. It’s called “Wheeltop Interaction: Full-Body Gesture Control for Power Wheelchair Users”.

The team of Yelena Yesha, Karuna Joshi and Lily Bengfort has been selected for the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program for April.

The NSF I-Corps is a set of activities and programs that prepare scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and broadens the impact of select, NSF-funded, basic-research projects. Combining experience and guidance from established entrepreneurs with a targeted curriculum, I-Corps is a public-private partnership program that teaches grantees to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research, and offers entrepreneurship training to student participants.

UMBC Information Systems

Sensor-based assessment of the quality
of human motion during therapeutic exercise

Dr. Portia Taylor
Social Security Administration

12-1pm Wednesday, 10 April 2013, ITE 459

Advances in technology and research have been employed in recent years to develop efficient mechanisms to deliver home-based exercise therapy to patients suffering from knee osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease associated with aging. Essential to the success of a therapeutic home-exercise program is the quality of the motion performed by the patient. The unsupervised nature of home-based exercise may lead to incorrect exercise performance by patients; however, current home-based exercise programs do not provide mechanisms for monitoring the quality of motion performed or for providing feedback to the patient. This lack of support has been found to be a factor in patient non-compliance to home exercise programs.

Our goal is to provide a motion sensor-based system that can evaluate the quality of exercise to support home rehabilitation. We introduce the Quality Assessment Framework (QAF) that uses low-cost motion sensors with data processing and machine learning techniques to assess the quality of human motion performed during therapeutic exercises. Data from fifteen persons with knee osteoarthritis was collected in a laboratory environment, and a classifier was trained using multi-label learning methods to detect descriptive characteristics of the patient's motion. These characteristics represent errors in the exercise performance as well as variables regularly monitored by the patient's therapist, such as speed.

Results from multi-label learning are presented and recommendations made on requirements for an in-home therapeutic exercise system. The QAF can be adapted to the home therapy needs of conditions other than knee OA. We present a preliminary design of the InForm Exercise System that utilizes the QAF and has the potential to present feedback to patients completing home exercise programs.

Portia Taylor received her BS degree in Computer Science from Grambling State University in 2007 and a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012. At CMU, she was part of the Quality of LifeTechnology Center, a NSF Engineering Research Center dedicated to the development of technologies for the elderly and disabled. Currently, Dr. Taylor works at the Social Security Administration as an IT Fellow. Her research interests include machine learning applications in biomedical engineering, intelligent systems for rehabilitation and physical therapy, and heath information technology.

UMBC CSEE Colloquium

Machine learning techniques for predicting chronic diseases

Vladimir Korolev

1:00pm Friday, 5 April 2013, ITE 227, UMBC

In recent years we saw an explosion of cheap genetic tests, which lead to the emergence of personalized medicine. Personalized medicine is defined as practice of medicine that is tailored to specifics of individual patient. My work addresses the problem predicting an individual’s predisposition towards certain chronic diseases based on the their genetic makeup. The benefits of such work allow for more selective administration of invasive tests such as biopsies, which are known to cause health problems themselves.

Recently NIH has done a number of Gene Wide Association Studies q that resulted in massive datasets containing subjects’ generic makeup and labeled with clinical data including occurrence of chronic diseases. Unfortunately, given the relatively small number of patients in such studies and the vast number of genes possessed by human beings, these datasets cannot be analyzed with traditional statistical predictive models, which require a large number of samples (patients) with a very few features per sample.

My work attempts to solve this problem by employing state of the art machine learning techniques. In the past year I have built a software system that is capable of crunching of multi-terabyte scale datasets to refactor the NIH data into the form that is palatable by modern big data systems. I have run initial stages of feature selection. I will present the current state of the work and future plans. Another goal of this work is to ensure the repeatability of the experiments and flexibility to run with any similar dataset from current and future studies

Vlad Korolev is a PhD student in the UMBC Computer Science program. His research interests are in the are of personalized medicine, machine learning and large scale data processing. Vlad has considerable experience in the industry specializing in IT security, large scale data processing and the organization of software development processes.

Congratulations to the nine CSEE undergraduate students will have oral or poster presentations in UMBC's 17th Annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day on Wednesday, 24 April 2013

• Andrew Battisti, "Experiences in Group Game Development", Poster presentation, 12:30pm-3:00pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Marc Olano
   
• Michael Berlin, "Using Machine Learning to Classify Trouble Tickets", Poster presentation, 10:00am-12:30pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Tim Finin
   
• Kenneth Derda, "Puzzle Box: Video Game to Challenge Spatial Perception through Three-Dimensional Puzzles", Poster presentation, 12:30pm-3:00pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Marc Olano
   
• David Eisen, "Mid-Infrared Optical Stimulations for Non-Contact Neural Excitation", Oral Presentation, 11:00am, UC 310, Mentor: Dr. Fow-Sen Choa
   
• Julian Feild, "A High-Performance, Low-Power Many-Core Processor for DSP Applications", Poster presentation, 10:00am-12:30pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Tinoosh Mohsenin
   
• Thomas Hervey, "Lights, Camera, Motion, Action: The Dance Application of Microsoft's Kinect and Intelligent Stage Lighting", Artistic Performance, 11:15am, FA 317, Mentors: Dr. Marc Olano and Carol Hess
   
• Thomas Hervey, "Lights, Camera, Motion, Action: The Dance Application of Microsoft's Kinect and Intelligent Stage Lighting", Poster presentation, 12:30pm-3:00pm, UC Ballroom, Mentors: Dr. Marc Olano and Carol Hess
   
• David Mai, "Detached, Video Game", Poster presentation, 10:00am-12:30pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Marc Olano
   
• Jonathan Moriarty, "Derelict, An Experiment In Virtual Reality Game Development", Poster presentation, 10:00am-12:30pm, UC Ballroom, Mentor: Dr. Marc Olano
   
• Alexander Morrow, "Comparison of Dimension Reduction Techniques", Oral Presentation, 3:00pm, UC 310, Mentor: Dr. Marie desJardins

ACM Mid-Atlantic Special Interest Group on Accessibility

User Interface Design and Functional Gains from Cognitive
Assistive Technology: Treading on the Frontiers of Neuroscience

Dr. Elliot Cole
Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics

1:30pm Thursday, 4 April 2013, ITE 404, UMBC

Assistive Technology can and should be viewed as a therapy modality, by increasing functioning as a technology effect, and sometimes by an increase in underlying abilities through one or more neuroscience mechanisms. User interface design has been a core technique in achieving gains in the cognitive dimensions. Patient-Centered Design was developed as a methodology to help achieve these gains. This methodology seems to be a close relative of Ability-Based Design. Case studies will help demonstrate effects achieved with Patient-Centered Design. Older psychological and the emerging neuroscience paradigm will be presented.

Elliot Cole, PhD is the founder of the Institute for Cognitive Prosthetics. He brings his training in human-centered computing to developing technology and techniques which address cognitive disabilities from brain injury. The Institute's successful R&D efforts came from a multidisciplinary staff from clinical and computing specialties working closely together and focusing on the rehabilitation needs of the individual patient. This approach has generated deep knowledge of the cognitive disabilities computing domain. For over a decade, the Institute had a "lab" brain injury cognitive rehabilitation facility. Dr. Cole was an associate professor at Drexel University and a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently a Visiting Scholar. His book Patient-Centered Design of Cognitive Assistive Technology for Traumatic Brain Injury Telerehabilitation is being published in April by Morgan and Claypool as part of the series Synthesis Lectures on Assistive, Rehabilitative, and Health-Preserving Technologies.

The UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department will hold its annual day-long research review from 9:00am to 4:00pm on Friday April 12, 2013 in University Center Ballroom.  Faculty, research staff and students will present their latest research results in talks, posters and demonstrations. Refreshments and a free buffet lunch are provided.  Submit poster and talk abstracts by April 8.  The public is welcome. 

The UMBC Center for Women in Technology will hold its 3rd Annual CWIT Spring into Leadership event on Thursday evening, April 11, 2013 in the University Center Ballroom at UMBC. Space is limited and registration is required. Register online by Monday, April 8.

Schedule
   6:15-6:30 Check-in and Refreshments, UC 3rd floor
   6:30-7:00 Networking Activity, Dessert will be served!
   7:10-7:30 Keynote Speaker's Story: Tina Kuhn, Northrop Grumman Corporation
   7:30-7:45 Discussion Activity and Q&A with Ms. Kuhn
   7:45-8:00 Wrap-Up & Evaluations

Keynote Speaker:

Ms. Tina Kuhn
Vice President, Security and Information Operations
Cyber Intelligence Division
Northrop Grumman Information Systems

Ms. Kuhn will share information about her career path and offer advice and wisdom based on her personal experiences as a successful technical leader.

Tina Kuhn is vice president of Security and Information Operations (S&IO) in the Cyber Solutions division of Northrop Grumman’s Information Systems sector. The S&IO business unit provides intelligence-related systems and services to U.S. government and international security customers. The organization’s focus is on full-spectrum cyber solutions that protect critical national systems and support the nation’s information dominance. S&IO also is a premier supplier and integrator of net-centric, next-generation signal processing solutions for specialized customers. Ms. Kuhn brings more than 25 years of management experience to her current position. She joined Northrop Grumman from General Dynamics, where she served as vice president of its Intelligence Systems line of business, leading three business units that addressed the cyber and intelligence communities. Prior to that, she was the vice president/director of programs for the Intelligence and Information Solutions business unit for SAIC in Columbia MD. Ms. Kuhn began her career at General Electric and also held positions at GTE Corp. Ms. Kuhn has a bachelor’s degree in information systems management from the University of Maryland and also is a certified Program Management Professional.

The event is co-hosted by the Center for Women in Technology, CWIT Student Council, IS Council of Majors, SWE, ASME, and the WISE graduate student organization. Contact Dr. Susan Martin, Associate CWIT Director as susan at umbc.edu if you have any questions about the event or registering online.

UMBC Information Systems Distinguished Speaker

The Potential of Technology Systems for Enhancing the
Independence and Quality of Life for Older Adults

Dr. Sara J. Czaja

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
and Department of Industrial Engineering
University of Miami

10:00am Thursday, March 28, 2013, ITE 456, UMBC

Sara J. Czaja is a Leonard M. Miller Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Industrial Engineering at the University of Miami. She is also the Scientific Director of the Center on Aging at the University of Miami and the Director of the Center on Research and Education for Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE). The focus of CREATE is on making technology more accessible, useful, and usable for older adults. Dr. Czaja has extensive experience in aging research and a long commitment to developing strategies to improve the quality of life for older adults. Her research interests include: aging and cognition, aging and healthcare access, family caregiving, aging and technology, and functional assessment. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the Gerontological Society of America. She served as a member of the Technical Advisory Panel of the APA Presidential Task Force on Integrative Healthcare for an Aging Population. In addition, she is a member of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences Committee on Human Factors and Home Health Care.