My Computer Science & Engineering Department

The article Inside IBM: The Inventors Who Are Creating the Era of Cognitive Computing features our own Jeremy Greenberg (BS in CS, 2014) and his work creating the future:

Jeremy came to IBM just 1 1/2 years ago with a freshly-minted BS in computer science from the University of South Carolina. But, already, he’s making his mark as a prodigious ideas man. He has submitted 60 invention ideas for internal IBM review, of which 18 have so far been approved for patent applications and 6 have been submitted to the US PTO.

Dr. Jenay Beer gave the above presentation in last year's TEDxPeachtree.

We are happy to report that Philip Conrad, a Senior in Computer Science, along with Benjamin Davis, a PhD student in Structural Engineering, have been awarded second place in the USC Proving Ground competition. They proposed a security system and app that alerts users when there is an intruder. See video below.

Our CyberSecurity teams have returned from UConn's CyberSEED competition and have done very well! The CTF team participated in Symantec's Professional CTF scenario and came in 6th place this year. We were competing with teams from all over the country and have blown our placement from last year (13th) out of the water in a very close competition. This year's scenario was an insecure bank, complete with a real ATM and debit card forgery. This year's team members were Collin Morrell (Team Captain), Adam Formenti, Nate Fuller, and Nick Connon.

We also sent a team to take place in the new Social Engineering competition as well. They came in 8th place in what sounded like a very difficult contest. They were required to breach a simulated company through insecure HR, helpdesk, web portal, email and telephone practices. This competition very clearly demonstrated that people are the biggest security vulnerabilities any company has. The Social Engineering team members were Yasemin Pak (Team Captain), Dakota Jones, Clay Norris, and Abhishek Bottu.

We would like to welcome our newest faculty member Dr. Gregory Gay. He received is PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in software engineering and automated testing techniques. He is currently teaching CSCE 740: Software Engineering. USC news has an interview with him.

USC's new video campaign features alumni from this department, Chris King and Michael Sechrest, and describes how their software for making trees won them an Oscar at the Academy Awards.

Dr. Jason O'Kane has received an NSF research award for his project entitled "Why is automating the design of robot controllers hard, and what can be done about it?" This project seeks to bring together new techniques for filtering and planning to improve reasoning and analysis steps employed during robot design.

Dr. Gabriel Terejanu has received an NSF research award for his project is entitled "SciLAF: Scientific-based Learning Assessment Framework for Student Knowledge Tracking". The project addresses the fundamental challenge of assessing individual student's knowledge in cornerstone engineering classes with high student-to-faculty ratios. The goal is to develop a computational assessment framework that easily integrates into an instructor's routine efforts to track student knowledge, suggest remedial interventions, and guide future examinations.

Dr. Jason Bakos has received an award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR)/DOD for a project on the "Development of Universal Controller Architecture for SiC Based Power Electronic Building Blocks". Visit his homepage to learn more about his research.

Dr. Rekleitis, Dr. Beer, and Dr. O'Kane have received an award from the NSF for their project "A Heterogeneous Team of Field Robots for Research into Coordinated Monitoring of Coastal Environments". The award will support the acquisition of a multi-robot team that can operate in coastal environments.