2010

Georgia Tech Regents professor Mark Borodovsky (CompSci & Eng) led efforts in identifying protein-coding genes in the newly sequenced woodland strawberry genome. The development is expected to yield tastier, hardier varieties of the berry and other crops in its family.

The software's ready. The hardware's ready. And now the infrastructure is preparing for an impending boom in AR applications. Blair MacIntyre (Interactive Computing), director of the Augmented Environments Lab, is ready to catch the wave (audio story). Source: American Public Radio

“The driving idea ... is to take a 100-year view of what universities will be like in the 21st century,” says Rich DeMillo, former College of Computing dean and director of the new Center for 21st Century Universities. Source: Converge.com

Researcher in Thad Starner's (Interactive Computing) lab have paired up Microsoft's Kinect device with custom software that enables the Kinect to interpret a limited American Sign Language vocabulary with greater than 98 percent accuracy. Source: Joystiq.com

The Georgia Institute of Technology has announced the creation of the Center for 21st Century Universities, to be directed by former Georgia Tech College of Computing Dean Rich DeMillo. Source: Office of Communications

Joshua Dillon, a Ph.D. student in Computational Science & Engineering, has been selected for a prestigious two-year Marshall Sherfield Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Source: Office of Communications

Nick Feamster (Computer Science) comments on the botnet named Mega D, and how even though the creator of the botnet is in authorities hands, Mega D may still be alive and well. (audio story) 

Combining social media with learning, using sites like OpenStudy, increases students' level of engagement by allowing them to interact more with the material and other students.

Georgia Tech and Emory's OpenStudy is termed the "Match.com" of the online study world, but some worry what may happen to the popularity of the site, if students cannot find a date. Aswin Ram (Interactive Computing) discusses why students use OpenStudy.

Ron Arkin (Interactive Computing) comments on researchers’ ability to create ethical robots that conform to the laws of war and the military rules of escalation.

David Bader (CompSci & Eng) and colleagues helped create a set of new benchmarks, called Graph500, to clock supercomputing speeds, but owners of some of the world’s fastest machines are balking at the new tests.

"We are empowering the student community to take care of itself," says Ashwin Ram (Interactive Computing), co-founder of OpenStudy, which provides 350 online study groups for independent learners around the globe. Source: AJC.com

A team from Georgia Tech, NYU, and Oak Ridge National Lab used 196,000 of Jaguar's 224,000 processor cores to simulate 200 million red blood cells and their interaction with plasma in the circulatory system. 

ATLANTA – Nov. 22, 2010 – A team led by George Biros, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science & Engineering (CSE), has won the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize for the world’s fastest supercomputing application. The award was announced at the Supercomputing 2010 conference, Nov. 18 in New Orleans. Source: Office of Communications

Steven Crain (Computer Science) talks about diaTM, a machine-learning model that learns the vernacular of the users and applies it to other more technical words to provide better search results for medical terminology.

Senior computer science major Candace Mitchell was awarded the Undergraduate Woman of Distinction award at the 2010 Georgia Tech Women’s Leadership Conference. Source: Office of Communications

Georgia Tech's Mustaque Ahamad (Computer Science) and Patrick Traynor (Computer Science) discuss PinDr0p, and how it's helping create a truly trustworthy caller ID.

OpenStudy debuted this August and already has more than 11,000 users from 151 countries, with a particularly large presence in the U.S., China, India and Brazil. All a user has to do is sign up and connect with a study group that covers their topics of interest. Source: GT Communications & Marketing

Georgia Tech researchers have created a machine-learning model that enables the sites, like WebMD, to “learn” dialect and other medical vernacular, thereby improving their performance for users who use such language themselves. Source: Office of Communications

Time Magazine names Alan Wagner (Interactive Computing) and Ron Arkin's (Interactive Computing) deceptive robot one of the 50 best inventions of 2010. 

Shimon, a robotic musician created by Gil Weinberg (Interactive Computing), jams with human musicians at the USA Science and Engineering festival in Washington DC. (video story)

Assistant Professor Nick Feamster (Computer Science) has been awarded the 2010 SIGCOMM Rising Star Award recognizing his outstanding research contributions to the field of communication networks. Source:Office of Communications

Georgia Tech displays high performance computing issues such as sustainability, reliability and massive data computation November 13-19, 2010 at SC10 in New Orleans, LA.

David Bader (Comp Sci & Eng) is working with NVIDIA Corp.  and the Georgia Tech Research Institute to provide expertise to develop the next generation of extreme scale supercomputers. 

Georgia Tech's doctoral candidate Jill Dimond (Human-Centered Computing) creates an Android application for Hollaback, a group that encourages women to report harassment immediately in order to alert others and help police find the offenders. 

Mustaque Ahamad, director of Georgia Tech Information Security Center, comments on the security issues that are the three greatest threats according to the Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2011.

Georgia Tech researchers are engaged in a $100 million DARPA program to fit a high performance petaflop computer into a single rack just 24 inches wide and power it with a fraction of the electricity consumed by comparable current machines. Source: GT Research News

Nick Feamster and Russ Clark (both Computer Science) demonstrated limited release versions of NEC's ProgrammableFlow multilayer switches at the GENI Engineering Conference (GEC9) in Washington, D.C. Source: Network World

Assistant Professor Andrea Thomaz (Interactive Computing) has been named a Subaru Professor of Excellence for her outstanding contributions to the Institute and to her field of study. Source: Office of Communications

Based on a study he did at the University of Illinois, Eric Gilbert (Interactive Computing) says Twitter posts can serve as "something like a consumer confidence index for the digital age." Source: SmartMoney

Usable Health, co-founded by Jiten Chhabra (IC),  is a program that can be customized to help you achieve your health goals, whether it's to lose weight, gain muscle, or just eat healthier. 

Ashwin Ram (IC), Preetha Ram, and Chris Sprague (CS) created OpenStudy, a social networking site that connects you to students studying the same subject as you that can help you study anytime you need it. 

Karen Liu (IC) explains how the new technology currently being worked on at Georgia Tech will change the way video gamers interact with their characters. Activate 3D allows you to use just your body movements to have total control over your character. (video story) 

Jun "Jim" Xu, associate professor in the School of Computer Science, has been named an Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Scientist in its 2010 list of new Distinguished Members. Source: Office of Communications

Vijay Balasubramaniyan (CS) comments on how the voice authentication technology VoIP can identify trusted callers.

A supercomputer, the 128-CPU Cray XMT, using custom software co-created by David Bader (CSE) can digest an entire day's worth of twitter feeds in under an hour.

GraphCT, software developed by Georgia Tech's David Bader (CSE), uses a super computer to map the twitter network data to a graph and uses metrics to assign importance to interactions. This allows us to see the impact and significance of tweets.

South Korea is using telepresence robots to teach children English. Tucker Balch (IC) comments that "it may be better to have a telepresence robot from a highly skilled teacher than to have just an average teacher in the classroom." 

Alan Wagner (IC) discusses the how he helped teach robots to deceive and responds to questions about why robot deception is necessary. 

Think twice before uploading that picture from your phone to Facebook, says Blair MacIntyre (IC). Because smartphone pics contain geotags, bad guys (the smart ones, at least) could use them to track down where you live. Source: CBS Atlanta

Amy Bruckman (IC), a Farmville player herself, says removing your birthday from Facebook could prevent you from being an easy target for identity thieves (video). Source: Fox 5 Atlanta

Augmented reality apps don't need to stop at games or entertainment, says Blair MacIntyre (IC). “If you’re teaching physics," he says, "why not build a little interactive 3-D physics simulation?" Source: San Diego Union-Tribune

What do Intro to Computer Science, Single Variable Calculus and Chinese I have in common? They're the first three courses on MIT OpenCourseware to offer virtual study groups via OpenStudy, a joint Georgia Tech-Emory startup co-founded by Ashwin Ram (IC). Source: ReadWriteWeb

More than 100 million computers worldwide have been infected by botnets, according to GTISC's Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2011, but also on the rise are threats from USB devices and online app stores. Source: InfoSecurity.com

Sting, the Robotics & Intelligent Machine (RIM) Center's Porsche Cayenne-turned-autonomous-robotic-SUV, teamed up with two unmanned aerial vehicles for an exercise at Robotics Rodeo 2010, held Oct. 12-15 at Georgia's Fort Benning. Source: Scientific American

Andrea Grimes Parker (IC) speaks about the new app OrderUP!- a casual nutrition decision game- created by her and other Georgia Tech researchers.

The Georgia Tech Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2011 states that there will be an increase in threats in three cyber security areas: physical systems, large-scale attacks by botnets, and mobile devices and social networking.

Collage, a system devised by Nick Feamster (CS) and his colleagues at Georgia Tech, hides messages in plain sight using sophisticated steganography.

Georgia Tech and SRI researchers explain how BLADE cuts off drive-by downloads at the one point they all have to pass through - downloading and executing a file on the computer. By identifying the malware at this juncture, BLADE can prevent the install and delete the program.

Wenke Lee (CS) describes how BLADE works by tracking how users interact with their browsers to distinguish downloads that were authorized versus downloads that were not. BLADE then stops and removes the downloads that were not authorized.

Discusses the new cyber threat report from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and what it means to mobile and social network users.

Jinwoo Shin, a postdoctoral researcher in the ARC Center, has received the Sprowls Award from MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Source: Office of Communications

College of Computing Ph.D. candidate Andrea Grimes Parker has shown that playing health-related video games on a mobile device can help adults learn to live more healthfully by making smart diet choices. Source: Office of Communications

Researchers have developed a new tool that eliminates drive-by download threats. BLADE is browser-independent and when tested, it blocked all drive-by malware installation attempts from more than 1,900 malicious websites and produced no false positives. Source: Office of Communications

The Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), a national leader in information security research and education, today announced the release of the GTISC Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2011, outlining the top three areas of security risk and concern for consumer and business Internet and computer users. The report was released today at the annual GTISC Security Summit on the Evolving Nature of Cyber Security Threats.

Comcast is sending out bot alerts to customers in an effort to reduce the malicious programs on their servers. The Information Security Center at Georgia Tech estimates that the number of bot infected computers could be in the tens to hundreds of millions.

Teachers are incorporating the latest technology to educate students, among these; teachers are suggesting Georgia Tech's OpenStudy as a study resource that expands beyond the borders of their own schools.

Mustaque Ahamad (CS) discusses how GTISC is working together with GTRI to create cyber security solutions for real world problems. 

Phishing scams are making the leap from email to the world’s voice systems, and a team of researchers in the Georgia Tech College of Computing has found a way to tag fraudulent calls with a digital “fingerprint” that will help separate legitimate calls from phone scams. Source: Office of Communications

Georgia Tech's Mustaque Ahamad (CS) comments on the dangers of botnets and how it can be more effective to hunt them at the network level. 

Yevgeniy Medynskiy (IC) introduces Salud! an online application that can not only track calories, but also other things such as protein intake or exercise performed. (video story) 

Georgia Trend magazine has named Santosh Vempala, Distinguished Professor in the School of Computer Science, to its 2010 "40 Under 40" list of high-performing individuals under 40 from around the state. Source: Office of Communications

Created by Ashwin Ram (IC) and his colleagues, OpenStudy is a website that is encouraging students to log on and study with students from anywhere at anytime. 

Thad Starner (IC) is helping change the statistics by creating programs that help both deaf children and their parents. CopyCat is a video game that helps the children learn sign language, and SmartSign is a phone app that reminds parents how to sign words when they forget. 

Open Cirrus- a global, multiple data center, and open source test bed - is expanding, and Georgia Tech's Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) is part of that expansion. CERCS will add tools and best practices that will further enable the advancement of cloud computing research. 

Georgia Tech's Center for Experimental Research has joined Open Cirrus, the open source project for cloud computing research.

Only 25% of children who are deaf have parents who are fluent in sign language. Georgia Tech's Thad Starner (IC) and his colleague Jeff Wilson (CS) have created video games and cell phone apps to help both parents and their children learn. (video story) 

Alan Wagner (IC) and Ron Arkin (IC) aren't only proving that robots are capable of deceiving, they're proving that they can learn and reason about another entity. Begging the question: Can robots have theory of mind? 

NIck Feamster's (CS) SNARE catches incoming spam not by reading message content, but by examining behavior of the sender, which requires much less computing power (radio interview). Source: WTOP

Thad Starner (IC) and graduate student Tanya Markow are making music with a glove that teaches you sooner through muscle memory. (Video Story) Source: 11Alive

Deception could be an important tool in a battefield robot's arsenal, says a colleague of Ron Arkin's (IC) who helped develop algorithms that let robots determine whether to use deception against fellow robots or humans. Source: Discovery News

Texting during an emergency is similar to trying to enter an eight-lane superhighway from a one-lane dirt-road entrance ramp, says Patrick Traynor (CS). "The capacity to deliver that amount of critical messages to one confined area simply doesn't exist." Source: NextGov.com

A joint Georgia Tech-University of Washington study, led by Gregory Abowd's (IC) former Ph.D. student Shwetak Patel, showed that residential wiring can be used to transmit information to and from almost anywhere else from within. Source: International Business Times

Guy Lebanon (CSE) says he's not surprised that an Atlanta PR firm's attempt to influence Google's search engine in connection with the state gubernatorial race was successful. Lebanon writes about the topic on his blog. Source: AJC.com

Thad Starner (IC) appears live on CNN to demonstrate his computerized glove that teaches wearers simple piano licks by delivering electrical impulses to the appropriate fingers to indicate which notes to play (video segment). Source: CNN.com

"We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications," says Ron Arkin (IC). "We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots." Source: Wired UK

Even if the classes are hardcore technical, the College of Computing's Computational Media major is a program that will make you think outside the box when it comes to game design. Source: GamePro.com

Working with Google scientists, Irfan Essa (IC) and Ph.D. candidate Matthias Grundmann have developed an algorithm that can alter the aspect ratio of video images with negligible distortion or image loss. Source: InformationWeek

Blair MacIntyre (IC) is working with Qualcomm to create augmented reality (AR) vision-based platforms in the AR gaming studios at Georgia Tech. Source: ZDNET

Can algorithms based in interdependence theory and game theory allow a robot to deceive humans? Ron Arkin (IC) and colleagues are trying to find out. Source: Popular Science

Geogia Tech scientist Ronald Arkin (IC) and his team have conducted experiments in robot deception for applications in which the ability to deceive could prove useful for military or search & rescue robots. Source: UPI

Ashwin Ram's (IC) startup OpenStudy helps users build their own personal study networks; when they have a question, the site pushes it out to their extended network. Three thousand users have joined in OpenStudy's first week.

Blair MacIntyre (IC) is working with Qualcomm to create augmented reality (AR) vision-based platforms in the AR gaming studios at Georgia Tech. Source: ZDNET

Can algorithms based in interdependence theory and game theory allow a robot to deceive humans? Ron Arkin (IC) and colleagues are trying to find out. Source: Popular Science

Geogia Tech scientist Ronald Arkin (IC) and his team have conducted experiments in robot deception for applications in which the ability to deceive could prove useful for military or search & rescue robots. Source: UPI

Computer science Ph.D student David Tsai and 2010 Ph.D. graduate Matthew Flagg received the Best Student Paper Prize at the British Machine Vision Conference, held Aug. 30 to Sept. 3 in Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. Source: Office of Communications

“I don’t believe that the speedups people report from their GPU ports are inflated,” Rich Vuduc (CSE) said at the 2010 SciDAC conference. “However, these speedups also don’t magically occur just because you put a GPU into your system." Source: ISGTW.org

A $10 million NSF Expeditions project, led by Jim Rehg (IC), will apply the new discipline of computational behavioral science to the task of detecting autism in very young children.Source: Campus Technology

Research by Ph.D. student Sarita Yardi (IC) shows that kids are adopting technology faster than ever before, fueling a consumer demographic not just on video games but mobile phones, Internet accounts and other electronic devices and services. Source: Financial Post

For years, network operators have fought spam by examining what messages say. Nick ­Feamster (CS), a member of Technology Review's TR35 for 2010, had a better idea.Source: Technology Review

The Georgia Tech College of Computing today announced that Assistant Professor Nick Feamster of the School of Computer Science has been recognized by Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35 for his research in computer networks. Source: Office of Communications

A team including Gregory Abowd (IC) is developing an autism diagnosis tool with three technological components: a "smart" video camera, timing devices to measure heart rate and other biometrics, and data evaluation software. Source: iHealthBeat.org

Georgia Tech's project, led by Jim Rehg (IC) and intended to use computers to help screen more young children for autism, will help "push the frontiers of computing," according to the NSF. Source: DrDobbs.com

Sarah Miracle and Chris Shearer have been selected to receive fellowships as part of a new U.S. Department of Energy Graduate Fellowship program. Source: GT Communications and Marketing

Within two years, Gregory Abowd and Jim Rehg (IC) hope to unveil the prototype for an automated system that could help millions more children receive early screening for autism. Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jeffrey Vetter (CSE) will serve as principal investigator of the center that looks to leverage Georgia Tech research involving the company's GPU across a range of application areas.

A Georgia Tech-led team received $10 million to develop novel computing techniques for assessing children's behavior. The technologies could enable new approaches for identifying children at risk for developmental disorders and potentially improve treatment.Source: GT Research News

From October 4-7, 2010, the Georgia Institute of Technology will host the first FutureMedia Fest, an interactive “mash-up” to explore and enable new paradigms in how content is created, distributed and consumed in a converging media world.

Passions have run high in the online debate, argued significantly on Dick Lipton's (CS) blog, surrounding an HP researcher's 100-page "P=NP" proof. The discussion shows the Internet's value as a tool for intellectual collaboration. Source: The New York Times

A transit portal (TP) could help cloud-based applications route traffic much more efficiently. Ph.D. student Vytautus Valancius (CS) is leading a multi-institutional team investigating the TP option for managing network latency. Source: Computing Now

One advantage to the anti-censorship tool Collage, developed by Nick Feamster, Santosh Vempala and grad student Sam Burnett (CS), is it allows users some deniability by hiding messages in typically innocuous content. Source: PCMag.com

The "P=NP" problem is one of the most basic in computer science, and in a new, 100-page paper, an HP Labs researcher claims to have solved it. Richard Lipton (CS) has dropped everything to test the claim, writing about it on his blog, which is named for the very same problem. Source: Nature.com

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have attained very promising results on their initial investigations of a new test for ovarian cancer. Using a new technique involving mass spectrometry of a single drop of blood serum, the test correctly identified women with ovarian cancer in 100 percent of the patients tested.

Ph.D. student Sam Burnett (CS) is on the team that created the anti-censorship tool Collage, which can hide messages in user-generated content. A Collage prototype is due out Friday, Aug. 13. Source: NewScientist.com

The bad guys may be getting the upper hand in devising computer viruses and other malware that evade detection by antivirus software. Paul Royal of GTISC said last year malicious code was inserted into an ad on USAToday.com, infecting browsers who were simply reading the news. Source: Yahoo News

The open standards browser Kamra, produced by Blair MacIntyre's (IC) Augmented Environments Lab, offers users multiple, simultaneous augmented content overlayed on top of a live video scene. Source: GizMag.com

In a presentation at HotPar 2010, Rich Vuduc (CSE) illustrated that GPUs may not be "orders of magnitude" faster than CPUs after all. Vuduc's presentation is summarized for a technical audience. Source: RealWorldTech.com

Ph.D. student Kurt Luther (IC) is part of a three-university study that will use Twitter followers' perceptions of their friends' posts to answer the question, "Who gives a Tweet?"Source: InformationWorldReview.com

Through Georgia Tech's Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE), more than 1,000 students nationwide have put their intro computer science skills to the test with a personal robot. Research shows the approach may lead students to spend more time programming. Source: Communications of the ACM

Senior Computational Media major Tim van de Vall is the author and illustrator of "The Monkey Hole," a new chlidren's book with a subtle political twist for adults. Source: NeighborNewspapers.com

Robots are answering the call in a growing number of applications, from counterterrorism to surgery to food processing to home health care. "They are enabling us to do things we have never done before," says Henrik Christensen of the Center for Robotics & Intelligent Machines. Source: The New York Times

Andrea Thomaz (IC) says the students in her Socially Intelligent Machines lab are motivated in part by the prospect of lifetime employment in the exploding field of robotics.Source: PCWorld

New College of Computing Dean Zvi Galil was on hand to introduce College Advisory Board member and Kaneva founder Chris Klaus at a lecture sponsored by the Computing Alumni Organization, July 15 in the Klaus Building. Source: Office of Communications

Nick Feamster, Santosh Vempala and grad student Sam Burnett (CS) have created a new tool that allows users to send messages through heavily censored networks by embedding them in user-generated content, such as Flickr photos or Tweets. Source: Network World

Mobile phone technology has only recently been able to meet the computing demands of augmented reality, says Blair MacIntyre (IC), who will direct a new AR lab in at Georgia Tech in collaboration with Qualcomm. Source: UK Telegraph

Legislators and organizations are more aware of identity theft than ever before, but personal vigilance is still an individual's best defense against cyber criminals, says Jon Giffin (CS). Source: CNN.com

Karsten Schwan (CS), who now has received the award three years running, is one of 65 researchers from around the world to receive funding aimed at conducting breakthrough collaborative research with HP. Source: HPCwire

Mustaque Ahamad (CS), director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, says Flash software has holes that can leave websites open to cyber attack. Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

Part of a new generation of social robots, Simon--from the lab of Andrea Thomaz (IC)--learns through verbal conversations with humans, who can ask, "Simon, do you have any questions?" Source: The New York Times

Blair MacIntyre (IC) will lead the Qualcomm Augmented Reality Game Studio, intended to lead advances in mobile gaming and interactive media. Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

The leading wireless chip maker hopes its new AR Game Studio at Georgia Tech will drive interest in mobile gaming and, yes, help the company sell more chips. Source: Bloomberg.com

The Kraken botnet--one of the Internet's largest and most difficult to detect in 2008--is rearing its ugly head again, says GTISC's Paul Royal. Source: Dark Reading

Call it the Son of Kraken, as the "zombie network" believed by some to be the largest in history has returned to nearly half its peak strength of 2008, says Paul Royal of GTISC.Source: The Register

The Kraken botnet reappeared in April and has returned to at least half the size it was during its peak in 2008, says Paul Royal of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center.Source: SC Magazine

Grad student Vytautas Valancius (CS) shows how cloud computing platforms can be optimized with custom data paths for applications with varying bandwidth demands.Source: Technology Review

As the CPU vs. GPU wars heat up, research by Rich Vuduc (CSE) and colleagues shows the latter may not have quite the performance advantage some have said it does. Source: HPCwire

In granting him the title of Regents’ Professor, the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents have added School of Mathematics Professor Robin Thomas to its list of the state’s premier educators. 

Skribit founder and College of Computing alumnus Paul Stamatiou (CM '08) and fellow grad Chad Etzel (CS '02) have joined real-time mobile notification outfit Notifo. Source: ReadWriteWeb.com

“Natural interfaces” like motion-controlled computing and contact lens screens are no longer science fiction, though Beth Mynatt (IC) says “old” standbys like keyboards will probably be around a while. Source: CNN.com

Last year Ron Arkin (IC) completed a three-year study for the U.S. Army that tried to develop an "ethical governor" for autonomous robots used in battle. Source: Discover Magazine (subscription required for full text)

GPU maker NVidia may have a head start on Intel when it comes to manufacturing chips for the next generation of supercomputers, says Richard Fujimoto (CSE). Source: FoxBusiness.com

A team of Georgia Tech students will be showing off their game, Vision by Proxy, at the IndieCade Showcase at E3 this week. Source: GT Communications & Marketing

Karsten Schwan has been named a Regents' Professor by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. Source: Office of Communications

Children playing "together" via webcam enjoy richer interaction than those watching televsion or playing video games with set rules, says Ph.D. candidate Yana Larosh (IC).Source: CNN.com

Blair MacIntyre (IC) heads the development team for Kamra, a web browser that overlays information from multiple website channels simultaneously onto an iPhone. Source: Wireless Weblog

Maria Florina Balcan (CS) has been awarded an NSF CAREER Award to develop theoretical foundations of machine learning and related areas. Source: Office of Communications

Rich Vuduc (CSE) has received an NSF CAREER Award for his work in tuning software to run on parallel systems. Source: Office of Communications

In the 1990s, College of Computing board member Chris Klaus "killed" (in a very good way) the IT security industry with Internet Security Systems; can he do the same with online gaming? Three-part video interview. Source: TechDrawl

In this video interview, Melody Moore Jackson (IC) talks about BrainLab's search for biometric interfaces that can help those with severe neurological disabilities relearn how to move and communicate. Source: TechDrawl

Sean Young, a senior computer science major in the College of Computing, has received the 2010 Temple Grandin Award from Future Horizons, a publishing house devoted to materials related to autism. Source: Office of Communications

Military robots would have no inherent right of self-defense, says Ron Arkin (IC), and could even be programmed to allow “guilt” to influence future actions (podcast). Source: National Academy of Engineering

Chris Peikert (CS) won a Best Paper award at Eurocrypt 2010 for a paper in his specialty area of lattice-based cryptography. (Source: Office of Communications)

A three-person team from the College of Computing accompanied a group from the Carter Center to monitor the use of electronic voting technology in the Philippines. Source: Office of Communications

Georgia Tech announces the developer preview of Kamra at the Augmented Reality Event 2010.

As lethally armed robots become increasingly vital to the world's most advanced militaries, Ron Arkin (IC) is studying how autonomous machines could be programmed to fight ethically. Source: Discovery News

The College of Computing's Aware Home is one of 11 research initiatives around the world that will receive an open-source PR2 robot for two years from Willow Garage. Source: CNN.com

Ph.D. student Ya-Lin Huang earned a Best Paper award at the 24th ACM/IEEE/SCS Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS 2010), held May 17-19 in Atlanta. Source: Office of Communications

Blair MacIntyre (IC), one of the world's pioneers of augmented reality, sketches out the current state of the field in this half-hour episode of Bloomberg TV's "Innovators." Source: Bloomberg.com

CSE graduate student Jared Gossett is part of study that seeks to reduce risk of heart attack and stroke by inhibiting actions of a protein called fibrinogen, which is integral to blood clotting. Source: GT Research News

Autonomous robot soldiers in combat may be years away, but robotic technologies that can handle other dangerous duties--such as transporting supplies in hostile regions--exist now, says Henrik Christensen (IC). Source: NPR

Simon the Robot, a product of Andrea Thomaz' (IC) lab, is one example of social robots, which not only assist humans in everyday tasks but can interact with them, as well.Source: SmartPlanet.com

In Georgia, unemployed IT professionals and computing teachers are joining forces to help boost the number and diversity of the state's computer science students, thanks to the College of Computing's Operation Reboot. Source: Government Technology

Associate Professor Alessandro Orso (CS) has received a Microsoft Research Software Engineering Innovation Foundation (SEIF) Award, the company announced. Source: Office of Communications

A team of students from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, calling themselves the Georgia Tech Flatliners, recently participated in, and took the first three prizes, at the National Health Information Network (NHIN) Code-a-thon Challenge held at Florida International University (FIU).  The Flatliners were enrolled in the Health Informatics class taught by HSI Associate Director, Mark Braunstein, MD, also a Professor of the Practice, in the College of Computing.A team of students from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, calling themselves the Georgia Tech Flatliners, recently participated in, and took the first three prizes, at the National Health Information Network (NHIN) Code-a-thon Challenge held at Florida International University (FIU).  The Flatliners were enrolled in the Health Informatics class taught by HSI Associate Director, Mark Braunstein, MD, also a Professor of the Practice, in the College of Computing.The event was co-hosted by FIU, Open Health Tools (OHT) – an open source community for Health IT and the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network.  Sponsored by Medicity, the GT Flatliners comprised Ph.D. student Klara Benda and master’s students Adrian Courreges, Monosij Dutta-Roy and Hassan Khan. The NHIN Challenge asked teams to create innovative stylesheets to display the information in a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) to a primary care physician taking calls from patients after office hours. The idea is to develop a CCD visualization tool that facilitates an efficient and effective phone consultation between the on-call doctor and an unfamiliar patient. Not only did the solutions have to interpret and display data error-free; they also had to facilitate the most efficient use of the physician’s time. The Flatliners, competing against professionals in the Health IT field, came up with the following solutions – a problem-based approach, a multi-context approach and a rapid-access approach:• Problem Oriented Approach (winner): arranged the clinical data by problem so that the physician could hone in on relevant information to the particular problem the patient is presenting.• Multi-Context Approach (second place): provided a highly flexible visual display that allows the physician to arrange information according to his or her particular "mental model" for handling a particular problem.• Rapid Access Approach (third place): provided quick and easy direct navigation among all of the clinical areas in which data is stored in the CCD.

A team of students from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, calling themselves the Georgia Tech Flatliners, recently participated in, and took the first three prizes, at the National Health Information Network (NHIN) Code-a-thon Challenge held at Florida International University (FIU).  The Flatliners were enrolled in the Health Informatics class taught by HSI Associate Director, Mark Braunstein, MD, also a Professor of the Practice, in the College of Computing.

A team of students from the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, calling themselves the Georgia Tech Flatliners, recently participated in, and took the first three prizes, at the National Health Information Network (NHIN) Code-a-thon Challenge held at Florida International University (FIU).  The Flatliners were enrolled in the Health Informatics class taught by HSI Associate Director, Mark Braunstein, MD, also a Professor of the Practice, in the College of Computing.

The event was co-hosted by FIU, Open Health Tools (OHT) – an open source community for Health IT and the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network.  Sponsored by Medicity, the GT Flatliners comprised Ph.D. student Klara Benda and master’s students Adrian Courreges, Monosij Dutta-Roy and Hassan Khan. The NHIN Challenge asked teams to create innovative stylesheets to display the information in a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) to a primary care physician taking calls from patients after office hours. The idea is to develop a CCD visualization tool that facilitates an efficient and effective phone consultation between the on-call doctor and an unfamiliar patient. Not only did the solutions have to interpret and display data error-free; they also had to facilitate the most efficient use of the physician’s time. The Flatliners, competing against professionals in the Health IT field, came up with the following solutions – a problem-based approach, a multi-context approach and a rapid-access approach:

• Problem Oriented Approach (winner): arranged the clinical data by problem so that the physician could hone in on relevant information to the particular problem the patient is presenting.

• Multi-Context Approach (second place): provided a highly flexible visual display that allows the physician to arrange information according to his or her particular "mental model" for handling a particular problem.

• Rapid Access Approach (third place): provided quick and easy direct navigation among all of the clinical areas in which data is stored in the CCD.

http://hit.fiu.edu/challenge.htm

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The Basic Laboratory Information System (BLIS), conceived in the College's Computing for Good class and developed by master's student Ruban Monu, is undergoing a pilot implementation in four African nations. Source: The Post (Cameroon)

With $2.5 million in NSF funding, Operation Reboot is pairing up unemployed IT professionals with high school CS teachers, helping both learn valuable new skills.Source: U.S. News & World Report

Professor Charlie Kemp and Advait Jain at Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Laboratory have programmed a robot to autonomously approach and open doors and drawers.

It does that using omni-directional wheels and compliant arms, and the only information it needs is the location and orientation of the handles. The researchers discussed their results at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, held May 3rd – 8th in Anchorage, Alaska, where they presented a paper, "Pulling Open Doors and Drawers: Coordinating an Omni-Directional Base and a Compliant Arm with Equilibrium Point Control.

Charlie Kemp, director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab along with his research team has been awarded the use of the PR2, a personal robot, to develop open source applications for assistive robotics. Kemp’s Healthcare Robotics Lab was one of 11 chosen from a pool of 78 submissions that included the foremost names in robotics research, such as MIT CSAIL, Stanford and UC Berkeley. Willow Garage is spending over $4.4 million for the PR2 Beta program.Kemp will be placing the PR2 in the "Aware Home" to study how robots can help with homecare and creative assistive capabilities for older adults. Their research includes developing easier ways for adults to interact with robots, and enabling robots to interact with everyday objects like drawers, lamps, and light switches. The Sponsor of the PR2 Competition was Willow Garage, a company that develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The awards were announced at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) held in Anchorage, Alaska from May 3rd – 8th. Other Investigators on this proposal include, Profs. Wendy Rogers (Psychology), Jim Rehg (Interactive Computing), Andrea Thomaz (Interactive Computing) and Brian Jones (Director, Aware Home Research Initiative).

Charlie Kemp, director of the Healthcare Robotics Lab along with his research team has been awarded the use of the PR2, a personal robot, to develop open source applications for assistive robotics. Kemp’s Healthcare Robotics Lab was one of 11 chosen from a pool of 78 submissions that included the foremost names in robotics research, such as MIT CSAIL, Stanford and UC Berkeley. Willow Garage is spending over $4.4 million for the PR2 Beta program.

Kemp will be placing the PR2 in the "Aware Home" to study how robots can help with homecare and creative assistive capabilities for older adults. Their research includes developing easier ways for adults to interact with robots, and enabling robots to interact with everyday objects like drawers, lamps, and light switches. The Sponsor of the PR2 Competition was Willow Garage, a company that develops hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The awards were announced at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) held in Anchorage, Alaska from May 3rd – 8th. 

Other Investigators on this proposal include, Profs. Wendy Rogers (Psychology), Jim Rehg (Interactive Computing), Andrea Thomaz (Interactive Computing) and Brian Jones (Director, Aware Home Research Initiative).

In a competition to make health data for doctors who are on call more effective, a team of Georgia Tech College of Computing graduate students finished first, second and third at the CONNECT Code-a-Thon Challenge, held April 28-29 in Miami. Source: Office of Communications

A Personal Robot 2 (PR2) donated by Willow Garage will be put to work in the Aware Home Research Initiative, which will study how the robots could assist older adults in the household. Source: IEEE Spectrum

Computer science Ph.D. student Hrishikesh Amur is one of 23 students nationwide awarded Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenge Grants, the company has announced. Source: Office of Communications

Fourth-year CS Ph.D. student Maithilee Kunda has been awarded a 2010-11 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, the company announced May 3. Source: Office of Communications

A 2009 paper coauthored by Amy Bruckman (IC) and former advisee Andrea Forte was awarded a Citation of Excellence by Emerald Management Reviews. Source: Office of Communications

The Campus Community Partnership Foundation has announced it will award $1,000 to one student who participates in a Computing For Good (C4G) project, every time the C4G course is offered in the College. Source: Office of Communications

Belkin International has announced the acquisition of Zensi LLC, a College of Computing start-up company based on technology that senses and monitors energy use in the home and office. Source: Office of Communications

The College of Computing held its annual UROC Research Symposium on Monday, April 19, featuring some of the top undergraduate research projects produced during the year. Source: Office of Communications

Two College of Computing research centers are working with the Telecommunications Industry Association to identify security standards for smartphones. Source: TechJournal South

Surround Video, which allows viewers to see off-camera action by pointing a smartphone beyond a TV screen, "hits a balance between the capabilities of current technology and the long-term vision of immersive video," says Blair MacIntyre (IC). Source: NewScientist.com

U.S. News & World Report released its 2010 graduate school rankings on April 15, and the College of Computing once again ranks in the Top 10 of U.S. computer science programs. Source: Office of Communications

Surround Video, which allows viewers to see off-camera action by pointing a smartphone beyond a TV screen, "hits a balance between the capabilities of current technology and the long-term vision of immersive video," says Blair MacIntyre (IC). Source: NewScientist.com

Student creates system that makes keeping up with Congress as easy as clicking a mouse. Source: Office of Communications

Creating networking tools that anyone can use to monitor Internet speed. Source: Office of Communications

A new study on how people in India use mobile computing devices suggests that users can devise new and innovative uses for them, if they have sufficient motivation. Researchers found that users often construct elaborate systems to get around technology barriers. Source: Office of Communications

"Some say robots are alive because they can have emergent intelligence," says Ayanna Howard (IC). "They can emerge behaviors and therefore ... they have semblance of being alive, just like people." Source: Discovery News

Former Columbia University dean and Tel Aviv University president Zvi Galil will occupy the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean's Chair effective July 1, following a national search. Source: Office of Communications

Gaming may drive research in the Augmented Environments Lab, but its director, Blair MacIntyre (IC), says there are many other important applications. Source: NPR.org

If future devices will have enhanced security, planning needs to start now, says Mustaque Ahamad (CS). "Most of the security researchers agree that security cannot be added on," he said. Source: ABCNews.com

Distinguished Professor Gregory Abowd (IC) has been awarded the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics. Source: Office of Communications

One of the most interesting things about Chatroulette is the artistic directions people take with it, says Ph.D. candidate Sarita Yardi. "You have an instant audience." Source: Cnet.com

The ad hoc system designed for disaster relief situations relies on a "flexible routing" protocol to make devices both clients and routers, says Santosh Vempala (CS). Source: Network World

Through social media, today's teens share more of themselves than any generation before. Amy Bruckman (IC) says, in the long run, that could lead to more tolerance. Story in French. Source: Le Monde

Santosh Vempala (CS) talks about the development plans for LifeNet, an ad hoc networking solution scheduled for wider testing this summer. Source: WABE

A bipartisan Senate bill introduced this week is a key first step to prodding other nations to help fight a growing threat, says Sy Goodman (CS). Source: SC Magazine

The College of Computing students and faculty behind LifeNet, an ad hoc network intended for disaster-relief situations, have received a NCIIA Sustainable Vision Grant to develop the technology. Source: Office of Communications

Beki Grinter (IC), a two-time alumnus of the University of California-Irvine, will receive a Distinguished Alumni award from the university's Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. Source: Office of Communications

Graduate student Scott Gilliland (CS) talks about the tools and technology behind wearable computing in this Daily Planet video (see 4:07 mark). Source: Discovery Channel

The Internet "makes it easier for unskilled vandals to hide behind anonymity," says Jon Giffin (CS). "It's just the modern equivalent of someone calling in a bomb scare." Source: TwinCities.com

Speaking at International Expert Days in Lauffin, Germany, Henrik Christensen and Mike Stilman (IC) shared their ideas on service robotics, a U.S. robotics roadmap, humanoid robot motion and more. Source: Everything Robotic

Going after the bad guys isn't the only way to take a bite out of cybercrime, says Mustaque Ahamad (CS). Remote monitoring of computers' anti-virus software is another valuable option. Source: CNN.com

A fourth "zombie administrator" of the Mariposa botnet could be based in Venezuela, say the Spanish authorities who last week arrested three ringleaders with Georgia Tech's help.Source: The Register

ATLANTA – March 8, 2010 – The College of Computing has formed the School of Computational Science & Engineering in partnership with the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences. Source: Office of Communications

The Mariposa botnet criminals, arrested this week in Spain with the help of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, used a kit to build their botnet and would not need to be skilled hackers. Source: CIO Today.com

The Mariposa botnet criminals, arrested this week in Spain with the help of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, used a kit to build their botnet and would not need to be skilled hackers. Source: CIO Today.com

The Mariposa botnet had become one of the biggest weapons in cybercrime, infecting as many as 12.7 million PCs. With Georgia Tech's help, the Spanish government has arrested the ringleaders. Source: Associated Press

Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) researchers helped Spanish authorities detect and dismantle a massive botnet network, called Mariposa, that infected computers linked to 13 million unique IP addresses. Source: ComputerWorld

ATLANTA – March 1, 2010 – Georgia Tech has created the Institute for Data & High Performance Computing to advance and coordinate institute research and education activities in this area. Source: Office of Communications

Second-year CS major Joy Buolamwini is a seriously focused undergraduate. A Stamp President's Scholar (the most prestigious academic scholarship Georgia Tech awards), she turned down several Ivy League schools to come to Tech. She was also part of a team that made the finals of Google's Android Developer's Challenge last year. Source: TechDrawl.com

Kalyan Perumalla, senior researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and an adjunct faculty member in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, has been awarded a five-year research grant under the U.S. Department of Energy's Early Career Research Program (ECRP). Source: Office of Communications

Coca-Cola's new social media campaign, "Open Happiness," dispatches "Happiness Ambassadors" around the world to everywhere Coke is sold, with the mission to document what makes people happy. The company's goal is to generate buzz in social media like Twitter and Facebook (and, in turn, sell more Coke). But Amy Bruckman, associate professor in Interactive Computing, wonders if happiness is enough of a hook to lure people in. Source: AJC.com

Andrea Thomaz, assistant professor in Interactive Computing, was named one of 2009's top young innovators by Technology Review for her work in creating robots with social skills, which can enable humans to teach the robots new information and skills through interaction rather than simply programming. Source: TechnologyReview

"As an educator and a scientist, I believe we must foster the altruistic side of students and use computer science as a cutting-edge discipline to tackle real issues that affect all walks of life and from all corners of the globe," writes Santosh Vempala, Distinguished Professor in Computer Science, in an opinion essay about the College of Computing's "Computing for Good" initiative. Source: AJC.com

Of all the security responsibilities facing the campus IT team, handheld-device security may be the most difficult. Since mobile malware and other threats were cited as the top IT security concerns by the "Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2009," published by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, smartphones have only become more ubiquitous as conveniences--and targets. Source: CampusTechnology.com

Mr. Spock can relate to certain advantages of having robots in the combat zone: They are free of human emotion, which can distort judgment, and they don't express anger or frustration. But Ron Arkin, Regents' Professor and director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory in Interactive Computing, envisions robots designed with some capabilities—if not exactly feelings—that would be constructive: Remorse, compassion, and yes, guilt. Source: USA Today

Last month, an improvisational jazz musician named Shimon hooked up to jam online with some iPhone-wielding Japanese through an application called ZoozBeat. Shimon, by the way, is a robot. He's programmed to improvise in the style of jazz great Thelonious Monk, says creator Gil Weinberg, adjunct associate professor in Interactive Computing. Source: NPR.org

In the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine finds his legs again through a chamber that links his brain directly to a surrogate alien via computer. Science fiction? Perhaps, but direct brain interfaces are becoming more sophisticated every day. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, associate professor and director of the BrainLab in Interactive Computing. Source: CNN.com

While a wave of AR apps has appeared for iPhone and Google Android, augmented reality currently is limited by the precision of its GPS technology. Blair MacIntyre, associate professor and director of the Augmented Environments Lab in Interactive Computing, suggests crowdsourcing as the solution for AR's geo-locational shortcomings. Source: Orange-Business.com

Computer security is one of the hottest job fields around right now, with demand for trained experts exceeding current supply. The College of Computing's online master's program in information security is intended to meet the world's growing call for "cyber ninjas." Source: The New York Times

A new University of Washington study suggests that traditional "nerdy" images of computer scientists, along with the paraphernalia that accompanies those images (think "Star Trek"), keep more women from entering the field. Mark Guzdial, professor in Interactive Computing and director of Georgia Computes!, agrees but says a little truth can dispel a lot of stereotypes. Source: Discovery.com