Ryan Green and Keaton Scheible demonstrate the remote controlled arm they built during OSU’s HWeekend, while their teammate, Rattanai Sawaspanich takes a video.
In just 30 hours, Oregon State University students created wearable technology projects at HWeekend on April 10-12, sponsored by the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thirty-five students spanning several areas of engineering formed seven teams and built projects that ranged from a remote controlled arm to a video game.
The event was organized by Don Heer, instructor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who wanted to provide students an event similar to a start-up weekend or app hackathon, but for hardware. It was the fourth event for Heer who values real-world experiences that augment the student’s classroom experiences.
To build their projects the students had a variety of components available to them including tiny computers, NVIDIA Jetsons, motion sensors and motors, and as access to 3D printers.
“It’s surprising how much this relates to my classwork, but also how much fun I had with it,” said Mark Andrews, student of electrical and computer engineering and math. It was the second HWeekend for Andrews.
About half of the students at the spring HWeekend had participated in one of the previous three HWeekend events that were sponsored by Eaton, Rockwell Collins and Micron.
Two projects: The Hand of Glory by Mark Andrews, Paul Lantow, and Conner Yates; and Go Go Gadget Claw by Tyler Gilbert, Ryan Green, Rattanai Sawaspanich, and Keaton Scheible are featured in videos below. The Go Go Gadget team won the Most Innovative award and tied for the Most Helpful award with the Mechanical Calf Assisting Device team.
Graduate student David Piorkowski received an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award in March 2015. The fellowship is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in many academic disciplines and areas of study.
Piorkowski’s research is in the area of software engineering, and aims to create better tools to help software developers debug code.
Margaret Burnett, professor of computer science, and Piorkowski’s Ph.D. advisor said, “David is a rising star. His research stands to fundamentally impact software engineering, and this award recognizes its importance. The computer science research community’s recognition of its importance also shows in David’s academic successes along the way.
“In the five years past his B.S., David won four research internships, and published six ACM/IEEE papers with more in the pipeline. His papers are significant, building a foundation for practical support of software developers’ information seeking. He also “gives back,” mentoring younger graduate students, undergraduates, and even highschoolers. I am extremely proud of his achievements.”
Description of his Ph.D. dissertation from his award nomination:
“Information foraging theory (IFT) has explained and predicted how people seek information, but IFT does not explicitly account for how people forage when simultaneously “fixing” information in the environment. This gap may limit IFT’s applicability to programming.
Informed by prior research in IFT and Minimalist Learning Theory, my research investigates how programmers forage differently when debugging (fixing) versus understanding (learning) code — via empirical studies and constructing computational models — and how software tools can capitalize upon these differences. The results will contribute new, evidence-based theoretical foundations for understanding software developers’ information seeking behaviors, and how tools can support them.”
Claudia Mini’s passion for technology was sparked by watching her aunt play Nintendo NES, although it was not until college that she decided to pursue it as a career. Now an Oregon State computer science student, Mini has found a way to combine her creative side with computer science.
Of those early days hanging out with her aunt, Mini said, “I just loved watching her play and would root for her, but when I would play I’d always lose.” Not deterred, she later became the computer expert of the household she shared with her grandmother, mother and aunt, who were originally from Nicaragua.
In third grade, Mini won a computer in a raffle which gave her the chance to start exploring all the possibilities that computers offered. But she didn’t try programming beyond learning enough html to improve her Myspace page. In a high school class on Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Mini’s teacher noticed she liked to help others out and asked her to be a be a teaching assistant in a computer science class. So, although she never took a programming class in high school she had the opportunity to learn more about all the options computer science had to offer through the class she assisted with.
“I thought it was just really cool that there was so much versatility, and you could show your creativity through computer science,” she said.
But Mini had planned to follow in the footsteps of her mother and aunt who were both in medical professions. She applied to Oregon State as a pharmacy major, but switched her major before taking classes when she realized that she fit better into computer science.
“I feel like when you’re in the right major you definitely know it because you’re surrounded by people that have the same common interests as you, and you get along with them,” she said.
To get through her first year of computer science courses, Mini said she was at her teaching assistant’s office hours every day. The strategy not only helped her to be successful, but she also made a close friend.
“She helped me so much, because it was intimidating at first and she helped me get through it. She is definitely my mentor,” Mini said of Sneha Krishna.
Mini not only mastered the material, but she started teaching it herself when she became a teaching assistant the following year for the introductory classes. “I really like seeing the progress in the students. At the beginning I was explaining to people what a function was, and by the end they were learning linked lists,” she said, beaming with pride.
Although she enjoyed computer science, Mini initially didn’t have a plan for her career until she discovered she could combine computer science with psychology, and pursue a career in human-computer interaction (HCI).
“I really like to communicate with people and make software that’s helpful to people, and HCI involves a lot of talking with the user to find out what they want incorporated into the product,” Mini said.
Mini has quickly grown from a nervous freshman learning to code for the first time to a leader for her peers. In addition to being a teaching assistant she serves on the board of the OSU ACM Club as the secretary. She has also gotten much better at computer games, but she still likes to watch others play and root them on.
Professor John Conley and Ph.D. student Dustin Austin use a technique called atomic layer deposition (ALD) to synthesize a nanolaminate dielectric film.
John F. Conley, Jr., professor of electrical engineering at Oregon State, has been named the only 2015 IEEE Fellow in Oregon. He is being recognized for “contributions to semiconductor process technology to improve radiation hardening of MOS devices,” according to the IEEE awards committee. Conley’s work has had direct impact on earth orbiting satellites, military applications, and the robotic exploration of deep space, as well as the reliability and lifetime of everyday electronic devices.
“I have been a member of IEEE since I was a student at Penn State and I feel greatly honored and humbled to have achieved this level of distinction within this organization,” Conley said.
The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one- percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
One of Conley’s key contributions to improve the radiation hardening of CMOS devices was to the understanding of the reactions between hydrogen and radiation damage centers in MOS devices (with Patrick Lenahan). Another was the first experimental confirmation of the Lelis Model for switching (border) traps (with Lenahan, Aivars Lelis, and Tim Oldham). This work provided fundamental insight into the way in which oxygen vacancy defects, the most important oxide traps, change structure and electronic properties in response to charge capture. Although this work dealt specifically with radiation damage problems near Si/SiO2 interface, the experimentally demonstrated Lelis model now forms the basis for understanding of the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) — one of the most important MOS reliability problems.
Conley has also made significant contributions to the atomic layer deposition (ALD) of dielectrics and nanotechnology (the selective growth of nanowires). His research group at Oregon State is focused on materials development using ALD, metal/insulator/metal devices, internal photoemission, and thin film transistors.
Conley’s career includes positions at Dynamics Research Corporation, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Sharp Laboratories of America (SLA). Since 2007 he has been at Oregon State where he is a professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Intercollege Materials Science Program. He is an ONAMI Signature Faculty Fellow, and co-director of the Materials Synthesis and Characterization (MASC) facility.
Conley has authored or co-authored over 120 technical papers, over 130 additional conference presentations (including tutorial short courses on high-k dielectrics and 15 invited talks), and 20 U.S. patents.
Brian Benavidez (left) poses with teammates Arron Bellini and Kamil Agrawala after winning the People’s Choice Award at the Engineering Expo.
Brian Benavidez did not expect to have a chance to go to college since he had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force immediately after graduating from high school. But it was the experience in the military that gave him focus and direction that he credits for his success in school. And the scholarship support he received from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science inspired his desire to give back.
Benavidez spent four years in the Air Force including a deployment to Iraq. Most of his enlistment time was in Arizona where he was maintainer for F16s which included working on avionics systems like navigation, fire control, and flight control computers.
“I’ve always been a tinkerer, but that experience really opened up that horizon of electronics and engineering,” he said.
Meanwhile many of his buddies from his high school in Portland went to Oregon State University, and he started to realize he was missing out on the college experience. Through the Enlisted Commissioning Program he was able to come to Oregon State as an Air Force ROTC cadet.
“When I first got here I was in shock and intimidated, but as time went on I got into my groove,” he said. His “groove” included three projects with the CreateIT Collaboratory, a program where student teams work with clients on developing a prototype device. He worked with Tektronix on a modernized user interface for oscilloscopes, The Utah Ballroom Company on light up dance suits, and Texas Instruments on a device for sensing nearby objects.
Culminating his undergraduate experience, his senior design project won the People’s Choice Award at the Engineering Expo. Benavidez with two friends created the “Intellicycle,” which could be added to any bike to measure speed, distance, cadence and temperature and send the data to a smartphone. The system also harvested energy from the front wheel to charge the phone and bike lights.
Having faced the challenges of being an older non-traditional student, Benavidez wanted to do more to help other veterans at Oregon State succeed. He served as the president and vice president of the Veterans & Family Student Association (VFSA) on campus, to help veteran students create a sense of community. Inspired by his experience of receiving scholarships, Benavidez initiated the Allworth-Holcomb Memorial Scholarship Fund for outstanding veterans at Oregon State.
“Getting a scholarship is very, very humbling. It’s hard to take money from someone just because you’re doing your job,” he said. “I didn’t really feel comfortable just accepting the scholarships without finding a way to give back. So, this was my way of saying thanks for all these resources given to me.”
Benavidez graduated June of 2014 and is working on a master’s degree in cyber intelligence studies through American Military University. Currently he is commissioned as a second lieutenant, and will be attending the Intelligence Officers Course with the U.S. Air Force.
Matthew Johnston’s interest in multidisciplinary science and entrepreneurship is reflected in his career as an electrical engineer who specializes in developing electronic platforms that have applications in fields like chemistry, biology and medicine.
“I’ve always been interested in non-standard applications of electrical engineering … especially biology and medicine, maybe because there are a lot of physicians in my family,” Johnston said.
Early lessons in approaching open-ended problems included projects for Science Olympiad competitions in middle school and high school, where Johnston competed for many years building elaborate Rube Goldberg-type contraptions. While the final goal was simple, such as lighting a candle or raising a flag, points were won by linking electrical, mechanical, and chemical actions together in novel combinations.
As an undergraduate at Caltech he got involved in research on a microfluidics project for chemistry and biology labs that involved piping chemicals on a microscale. The complex networks of fluid routing could mix and separate tiny amounts of fluid. The project sparked his interest in miniaturizing lab technologies (lab-on-chip).
Johnston followed his interest to Columbia University to work on his Ph.D. with Ken Shepherd who is one of the early pioneers of using integrated circuit technology for biological applications. After finishing his master’s degree, he took a pause in his graduate studies to co-found a start-up company, Helixis, in Carlsbad, California, that was related to research he did as an undergraduate at Caltech. The successful venture was acquired by Illumina in 2010, and Johnston returned to Columbia to finish his Ph.D.
He stayed in New York as a postdoc to further develop a label-free sensor platform he developed at Columbia, which garnered a National Science Foundation grant to aid in commercializing the platform. Johnston also worked for a life science venture capital firm that funded new technology for medical applications and devices, where his role was to assess the feasibility of novel products like orthopedic implants or diagnostic technologies. It was a job that gave him a different perspective. “It was intensely interesting,” he said. “I learned a lot about practical applications, whereas in the lab we are too often focused on the technology and only later try to find real-world applications for it.”
Johnston’s interdisciplinary research in biosensor and bioelectronic platforms, massively-parallel sensing, and lab-on-chip technologies for medical monitoring and point-of-care diagnostics, fits well with the collaborative research at Oregon State which was important for his choice to move here.
“I feel that interdisciplinary work is the one of the most effective ways to creatively solve problems,” he said. “We’re dealing with very complex problems now on a global scale that require collaborative solutions and systems approaches.”
One of Matt Johnston’s most memorable hikes was on the “treacherous and spectacular” trail up the Hua Shan mountain in China.
The move to Corvallis is a major lifestyle change for Johnston, who said he will miss the museums and dining opportunities in New York City, but is gaining a world of outdoor activities that were not possible there. He hopes to spend more time on hobbies like hiking, skiing, and fly-fishing that were mostly put aside while he lived in New York.
As an avid traveler, however, Johnston has hiked in several countries he has visited, with especially memorable treks in China and South Africa. He also travels to a different country each year with friends from college on a New Year’s trip. Their trips have ranged from Europe to South and Central America with highlights including Portugal, Scotland, Brazil, Costa Rica and Panama.
Just as he enjoys crossing the boundaries of disciplines in his work, he also enjoys learning about different cultures and seeing their influences on each other expressed in art and food. He even finds the challenge of not understanding the language a boon.
“When we were in places like Japan or Italy where there was really limited ability to communicate verbally, that was even more fun and heartwarming because people try to help you, and it’s exciting when you can come up with solutions to get your messages across,” he said.
The Q-bot team celebrates a success during HWeekend.
Projects like a prosthetic hand and a spinning LED display were completed in just 30 hours at Oregon State University’s second hardware weekend (HWeekend) on October 18-19. It was a feat that amazed everyone involved including representatives from the sponsoring company, Rockwell Collins.
OSU students in computer science, mechanical and electrical engineering teamed up to create a spinning LED display.
“I’m really impressed with the energy level and enthusiasm and the challenges that they took on. They were pretty big scope projects, and it was amazing what they got done in 30 hours,” said Bob Woods, director of engineering at Rockwell Collins, Heads-up Guidance System.
Instructor, Don Heer, came up with the idea of a hardware weekend based on start-up weekends that focus on software projects. Heer wanted something that would incorporate all branches of engineering to give students an opportunity to have the experience of developing a prototype device under time pressure while working in diverse teams.
That appealed to computer science student, Vedanth Narayanan, who was used to working on software development projects with other like-minded computer science students, but wanted to see what it was like to try and communicate across the different engineering disciplines. After 30 hours of work with no sleep, he was still gushing about the experience.
“It’s awesome to see it all come together knowing that it wasn’t just one group that did it. It was multiple different disciplines that came together,” he said.
Aaron Sprunger and Sean McGlothlin worked together to lead the largest team at HWeekend.
Narayanan was part of the largest team of eight students who are majors in electrical, mechanical, manufacturing and industrial engineering in addition to computer science. Sean McGlothlin, a senior in computer science, came up with the idea for the project — an R/C car controlled by an Android app. It could have been an unwieldy number of students to work successfully, but they split into two main groups — mechanical and software — and had a designated leader for each. The team included Aaron Sprunger, a fifth year senior from industrial engineering with vast leadership experience who led the mechanical side. McGlothlin led the software team and the project design for the entire project.
“It was a great privilege to have my idea — something that was just a concept in my head — worked on by a team of very intelligent people, and in less than two days I was able to hold that concept in my hands. I’m really proud of our team,” McGlothlin said.
McGlothlin said the real value of the weekend was the chance to develop skills in project management and embedded programming. “I feel like I learned more in two days than I’ve learned in an entire term for some classes,” he said.
The two awards (Executioners and Helping Hands) both went to the team who built a force feedback prosthetic hand. The team hit all their goals including a sensor suite to give the user both tactile and visual feedback. For example, an LED would turn from green to red in the presence of heat. Team leader, Karl Payne overcame a major glitch when the 3D printer quit printing before the hand was complete. So, with 4 hours to go in the competition he laser cut the rest of the hand, pinning and gluing it into place. The team was also renowned for helping out the other teams, in particular Simon McFarlane was named as a stand-out contributor across the teams.
Brenden Hatton and Fangyi Zhu work on a prosthetic hand.
If there had been an award for humor it would have gone to the Q-bot team whose presentation of their ambitious project of a spy robot had everyone laughing. “It is very proficient in sneaking around corners and going completely astray in its direction and delivering a .2 frames per second video feed which is utterly out of color sync,” quipped Aravind Parasurama.
Throughout the competition representatives from Rockwell Collins were on hand to provide mentorship. Evan Marshall, an Oregon State alumnus and software engineer at Rockwell Collins admits to at first feeling obligated to come help out his alma matter, and was surprised at how much he enjoyed the experience, even sticking it out through the whole night.
“Seeing the impossible happen — that was fun. The people who were here brought all their own energy and that was contagious,” he said. He was impressed with the expertise of the students who knew more about their specialized area than he did, so he mostly helped facilitate discussions and motivate the students by letting them know from an outside perspective they were doing great things.
The sponsorship of Rockwell Collins made the entire weekend, including meals, free to the students. Heer was pleased with the success of weekend, which he plans to hold twice a year, the next one in January of 2015.
“I’m always amazed at the quality of our students and how, given the slightest opportunity, they will go the extra mile to do something innovative,” Heer said.
Projects:
Bit Car: An R/C car controlled by an Android app that was connected via Bluetooth. Kathleen Gladson, Joshua Grosserhode, Emmanuel Lopez-Aparicio, Sean McGlothlin, Vedanth Narayanan, Aaron Sprunger, Zachary Stark and Kyler Stole.
The Great Light Hype: A prototype for spinning volumetric display that could eventually render virtual objects mapped via localization to physical coordinates in a room. Kyle Cesare, Ryan Skeele, Jake Yazici and Soo-Hyun Yoo.
The Thing, Prosthetic Hand: A prosthetic hand that incorporated sensors and feedback, such as a pressure sensor that would trigger a vibration to indicate gripping force. Brenden Hatton, Judy Jiang, Scott Merrill, Simon McFarlane, Karl Payne and Fangyi Zhu.
Q-Bot: A voice controlled robot with an omnidirectional camera that streamed video to a smartphone or a tablet. Tyler Gilbert, James Harris, Keaton Scheible, Alwin Sudhana, Sorawis Nilparuk and Aravind Parasurama.
Danny Dig integrates lectures and labs in his courses on parallel programming for professionals.
Danny Dig, assistant professor of computer science at Oregon State University and Andrew Black, professor of computer science at Portland State University, are hosting a workshop in Portland, Oregon on October 17-19 for software professionals to learn the foundations of multicore programming in Java and JavaScript.
Dig’s research focus for the last 8 years has been on techniques for transforming sequential code into parallel code. He is acutely aware of the need for software developers to learn these techniques now that all new devices from smartphones to desktops use parallel processors. In response, he has organized workshops at Boeing and the Illinois-Intel Parallelism Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to help professional programmers improve the performance of their applications by using parallelism in software.
Dig will instruct the class along with other software experts including Tim Matsson from Intel Corporation who is co-author of the influential book, “Patterns for Parallel Programming,” and Doug Lea, professor at State University of New York at Oswego and the lead architect of Java concurrency libraries.
“I teach it as a unique blend of lectures and labs that are deeply integrated. It’s not theoretical, it’s very hands-on,” Dig said. After 30 minutes of lecture, students work on planned exercises on their own laptops with help from teaching assistants.
Dig said that the very pragmatic approach has been well received by past participants. For example, a Boeing engineer commented: “Excellent course: relevant, well done, timely. Well worth the time and effort. I would recommend this course to all our developers.”
Dig has also made changes to the course over the years based on comments from participants. Previous courses included additional programming languages like C++, but he said covering just Java and JavaScript has allowed him to go more in-depth into the main topics of parallelism.
This is the first time he will offer the class in a compressed format over a weekend instead of a full week, to make it easier for software developers to attend without missing work. The shortened course cannot cover all the same content, so he will offer additional resources for the material not covered, and there is a possibility he would offer a follow-up course based on interest.
Dig is excited to be hosting the class in Portland, a hub of software development, so he can start building relationships with local software practitioners.
“A constant dialogue with practitioners keeps my research centered and very focused on current software development problems,” he said.
But these classes fulfill another need for him as well.
“Fundamentally, I’m a teacher and I love seeing the lights go on — it’s my mission in life to help people develop their full potential,” Dig said.
Janice Levenhagen-Seeley, founder and executive director of ChickTech, is a graduate of OSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Oregon State University alumni Janice Levenhagen-Seeley and Jennifer Davidson returned to Corvallis last weekend to host a 2-day event to encourage high school girls to enter technology fields. Both graduates of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Levenhagen-Seeley is the founder and executive director for ChickTech, a Portland-based non-profit, and Jennifer Davidson is the program manager.
Participants of the ChickTech event built robots, video games, smartphone applications, websites, light-up textiles, and 3-D printable projects like figurines or pendants. It was an eye-opening experience for many who said they had no idea what went on behind the technology they use every day.
That revelation is just what Levenhagen-Seeley was hoping for. She created the Portland-based non-profit organization in 2012 to foster a more inviting culture for women in technology, and in particular for opening the door of technology fields as a career option for high school girls.
“In high school I really enjoyed math but no teachers or career counselors ever thought to mention to me, ‘You should try this programing class,’ or ‘You should check out engineering as career,’” said Levenhagen-Seeley who majored in computer engineering.
ChickTech involves high school teachers by asking them to nominate female students in their classes who have the aptitude for careers in technology but have not sought out opportunities to learn more.
Phoenix Brooks from Veneta said she was nominated by her teacher at Triangle Lake Charter School and her principal encouraged her to take the opportunity. She chose the workshop on website development because she felt like no matter what career she went into, it would be useful.
Phoenix Brooks, from Veneta, Ore., learned to create her own website.
“I had never really considered a career in web development, but I’ve always been interested in it and this workshop has given me a lot more insight. I’ve learned a lot,” Brooks said. “I’d definitely do it again.”
Haley Payne of West Albany High School and Audrey Hysell of Lebanon High School teamed up to create an underwater version of the Flappy Bird mobile app in which fish navigate hazards such as fish hooks, anemone and sharks.
“We haven’t yet got the fish to die when they hit something, but we’ll get there,” said Payne with confidence. By the end of the day, they were able to show off their finished app to visitors at who attended the Tech Show.
It is that kind of “win” that Levenhagen-Seeley wanted the high school girls to be able to experience and what motivated her to organize a longer event for the Corvallis chapter. ChickTech’s first event for Corvallis last year was a day-long workshop which was not enough time to create a finished project. Since many of the girls travel from as far away as Newport, the addition of an overnight stay in the dorms made the event possible but also added a new dimension.
“The overnight stay was a really exciting component because the girls were able to bond a lot more,” Levenhagen-Seeley said.
The event was made possible by volunteers from Oregon State, Garmin, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel. Funding was provided by OSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, OSU’s Women & Minorities in Engineering, Garmin, Tektronix, HP, Phase2, Kattare, and Korvis.
ChickTech has three chapters in Corvallis, Portland, and San Francisco, but is expanding nationwide to add 5 chapters next year, and 8 in 2016.
Mike Rosulek enjoys sharing his passion for cryptography with Oregon State students.
Mike Rosulek, assistant professor of computer science, brings the area of cryptography to the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Computer science grabbed Rosulek’s imagination early on, and at the age of 7 years he was already writing a UFO adventure game. He had the advantage of growing up in a technical household. In fact, his family home was connected to the internet before there was a World Wide Web.
It is perhaps surprising considering he lived in the small town of Fredericksburg, Iowa (population 925) “the dairy capital of Iowa, according to the sign,” Rosulek said.
But computers were a hobby for his father who, although he worked as a minister, was the de facto tech support for the whole town and eventually became a network administrator for the local community college.
Before starting a computer science degree at Iowa State University, Rosulek was essentially self-taught and remembers one of his big Christmas presents in 8th grade was the newest version of Visual Basic.
After graduation, Rosulek continued on to graduate school in computer science at University of Illinois, but by his second year he hadn’t yet found a line of research that interested him. Indeed, he had filled out the paperwork to leave graduate school when he was convinced to stay by a professor who thought he might be interested in the work of a newly hired faculty member who studied cryptography.
“It worked out really well,” Rosulek said. “Cryptography is full of amazing things … it was mind blowing to me. I wanted to know how it worked.”
He describes cryptography as taking problems that are really hard for computers to solve and using them to create robust security systems.
“It’s like making lemonade from lemons,” he said. “The lemons are that we don’t have efficient ways to solve these problems, and the lemonade is that we can turn it around so that if the bad guy wants to break our system he has to solve one of these really hard problems.”
Currently, he is working on secure computation which is the idea that you can make calculations on sensitive data without actually looking at the data. One application could be a research study across several hospitals that cannot share patient data but can submit encrypted data to a secure common location where it is analyzed. Although he has been working mostly at the theory level, Rosulek said he is moving toward applied uses for his work.
“This research has to get out into the real world, because it’s so important and we know that people out there are will have amazing uses for secure computation. It’s just that right now it is computationally expensive. It takes a long time to perform these operations securely, so it’s not yet practical,” he said.
A photo by Mike Rosulek.
Rosulek started his career at University of Montana and arrived at Oregon State in 2013. As the first member of the security group in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Rosulek discovered the students were “chomping at the bit” to have opportunities in the area of security. Before even arriving on campus he received emails from students about security courses and clubs.
“I’ve found the students here to be really sharp. They were able to take any hard problem I could throw at them and eat it up, so I was very pleased. I get to teach right in my sweet spot, so I find it easy to get excited about the material and students get excited too, so everyone has fun,” he said.
Although Rosulek’s two young girls keep him busy enough to not have much time for hobbies, he enjoys creative outlets like playing guitar, singing and photography. And although he likes being able to ride his bike to work year round in Corvallis, he misses snow which was the main subject of his minimalist landscape photography — stark snow scenes with dark trees set against them.
“The work that I do is often proving that something is impossible, but I also like creating something more tangible and I think that’s why I like the artistic outlets of music and photography,” Rosulek said.
