Events Archives - OSU EECS News

Yvo Desmedt, the Jonsson Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, will speak on the topic of cybersecurity on October 17.

The lecture is part of the Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series which brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

The title of Desmedt’s talk is “The fundamental reasons information technological systems are insecure.” The lecture will be held on the Oregon State University campus in Rogers 230 on Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 11:00 a.m. The event website has more details about the talk.

In addition to being a Distinguished Professor at UT Dallas, Yvo Desmedt is an Honorary Professor at University College London, a Fellow of the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) and a Member of the Belgium Royal Academy of Science.

Originally from Belgium, Desmedt earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Although Dr. Desmedt was born in Belgium and graduated from a Belgian University, he has worked in the United States for most of his life. For this reason, he was appointed to become a “foreign member” of the Royal Academy of Belgium. He has worked in both industry and at universities in Belgium, New Mexico, Canada, Wisconsin, London, and Florida before joining UT Dallas in 2012.

Desmedt’s research interests include computer security, critical infrastructure, cryptography, entity authentication, information hiding, malware, network security, and cyberterrorism. His work has aided Fortune 100 companies in the United States, and American and European financial institutions such as bank and credit card companies.

Sanjit K. Mitra, an expert in signal and image processing, will speak at Oregon State University on October 14 for the Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture series brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that our students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

The title of his talk is “Structural Subband Decomposition: A New Concept in Digital Signal Processing.” The talk will be held in Learning Innovation Center (LINC), 200 at 4:00 p.m.

Mitra is a research professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor Emeritus, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Mitra is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, he has served IEEE in various capacities including service as the President of the IEEE Circuits & Systems Society in 1986. He is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences, an Academician of the Academy of Finland, a foreign member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Arts, a foreign member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatian Academy of Engineering, and the Academy of Engineering, Mexico, and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Professor Nelson Tansu is the first speaker for The Michael and Judith Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series. The lecture series brings internationally renowned scholars to Oregon State to ensure that our students and faculty have access to important technology breakthroughs, as well as the fundamental science and engineering that is the foundation for today’s high tech advances.

Tansu’s research focuses on the physics and device technologies of semiconductor nanostructures for photonics and energy-efficiency applications. Specifically, he has had made seminal advances to the invention and innovation, fundamental sciences, and device technologies of III-V and III-Nitride semiconductors. His innovations have impacted areas of dilute-nitride diode lasers, and III-nitride semiconductor technologies for energy efficiency.

On Monday, September 24 at 4:00 he will present his talk “Beyond Conventional III-Nitride Materials and Devices – from Photonics to New Applications.” The talk is held in Learning Innovation Center, room 200 on the Oregon State University campus.

Tansu is Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the Daniel E. ’39 and Patricia M. Smith Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Director for the Integrated Photonics and Nanofabrication Core Laboratory and Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics at Lehigh University.

He has more than 16 US patents, and his work is integrated in today’s state-of-the-art solid-state lighting technology. He has authored more than 134 refereed journals and 279 conference publications. His life story as a professor was published in the form of best-selling children’s book “Nelson the Boy who Loved to Read” in his native country Indonesia. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Photonics and Editorial Board Members in eight other leading journals in applied physics and nanotechnology.

Danny Dig, associate professor of computer science, is leading the effort to create the PPI Center.

Oregon State University is hosting a planning workshop for a new industry-focused pervasive personalized intelligence center on October 11-12, 2018 in Portland, Oregon.

The center would allow for interdisciplinary and collaborative research on machine-learning based software systems and aid in long-term partnerships between startups, corporations, universities and government agencies. Industry members involved leverage affiliate investment, have direct access to students, and enjoy company savings thanks to low risk and accelerated research and development.

“At Rigado we are committed to building a scalable, interconnected IoT that drives real business value. In support of those efforts to expand the ecosystem and interoperability we are pleased to be taking part in the Planning Workshop for the Center on IoT. We encourage anyone looking at digital transformation for your business to join us in helping to shape the future of IoT,” said co-founder and chief executive officer of Rigado.

If created, center headquarters would be at Oregon State with a site at University of Colorado Boulder supporting research under the supervision of the U.S. National Science Foundation using the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers model.

“CU Boulder is thrilled to be a partner in making the PPI Center a reality. The software challenges of tomorrow are simply too great for any single university or company to tackle alone. Fortunately, CU and Oregon State bring complementary expertise and a can-do, cooperative attitude to the center effort,” said Bor-Yuh Evan Chang, co-director for the PPI Center and associate professor of computer science at University of Colorado Boulder.

Center topics of focus to enable intelligent IoT

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Security and Privacy
Edge and Cloud Computing
Programming Languages and Verification
Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction

Center staff

Twenty-nine faculty across the focus areas, including ACM Fellows Tom Dietterich and Margaret Burnett.

Planning workshop

What: Workshop with industry members, universities and National Science Foundation

About: Planned topics include meeting industry needs, NSF best practices and defining relevant research projects.

When: Oct. 11 & 12, 2018

Where: Sentinel Hotel, 614 S.W. 11th Ave., Portland, Oregon

Online: www.ppicenter.org

Phone: 541-737-8216

Email: Center Director Danny Dig at digd@eecs.oregonstate.edu
or CU Boulder Site Director Bor-Yuh Evan Chang at evan.chang@colorado.edu
and Shivakant Mishra at mishras@colorado.edu

Photo of Mark Clements — Mark Clements, senior development and QA manager for CASS, teaches during the workshop.

Employees in the Center for Applied Systems and Software (CASS) in the College of Engineering are teaching a workshop for high school teachers to learn how to create mobile apps for Apple devices. The three-day workshop is being held August 13 – 15, 2018 by Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) at Oregon State University.

The course is intended for any interested teacher, even if they have no programming experience. By the end of the workshop the participants will create their own app that can run on an Apple device using the programming language called Swift. They will also have the tools, including lesson plans, to teach programming in their class. Another benefit is that they will continue to have online support with CASS when they are implementing the program in their class.

“By teaching this workshop, we are enabling teachers to use this really awesome curriculum from Apple in their high schools. And then hopefully that will help interest more young people in computer science,” said Carrie Hertel, director of the Software Development Group for CASS.

Hertel is excited to expand CASS’s outreach to high school teachers and hopes to hold more workshops in the future, as well as provide a modified workshop for professionals.

Zander Work at NW Cyber Camp — Zander Work (right) helps a student at the NW Cyber Camp held at Oregon State University.

A week-long STEM Academy camp to introduce high-school students to cybersecurity was held on the Oregon State University through campus last week. Although it was the first time the camp was held in Corvallis, it is the third year the camp has been operating.

The location was not happenstance. NW Cyber Camp co-founder, Zander Work, just completed his freshman year at Oregon State where he made connections with faculty and graduate students in cyber security who helped teach the courses. Instructors also included alumni and other industry representatives from NuScale Power, McAfee, Splunk, NetSPI, Cylance, and PKI Solutions.

“The students were awesome,” Work said. “Everyone was very engaged with the speakers and they asked a lot of good questions.”

The goal of the camp is to get more students interested in the field of cybersecurity which has over 300,000 unfilled job openings, according to Cyber Seek.

“The camp has definitely shown me a lot more opportunities for what I can do in the future with cybersecurity,” said Grace, one of the camp participants. “There are a lot of different fields you can go into like data science, machine learning, ethical hacking, or security work. That’s been really cool to learn about.”

Jayde, another camp participant, already has plans to join the Air Force and focus on cybersecurity.

“I really liked the hands-on activities and learning about real examples of hacking,” Jayde said.

Both students mentioned it was harder than they were expecting, but in a good way.

“The guest speakers have been fantastic. Everyone is knowledgeable and teach at a rigorous enough level that people don’t get bored,” Grace said.

The 20 students at the Oregon State camp came from Corvallis, Albany, Philomath and Lebanon. The camp overall hosted 110 students this summer including sites in Portland, Gresham, Wilsonville, and Bend.

Rakesh Bobba, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the faculty organizer for the event said, “It was really fun. We would definitely like to host it at Oregon State again, and hopefully expand it to reach more students.”

Students working at NW Cyber Camp held at Oregon State University.

Workshop participants at Oregon State University. — Researchers from all over the world gathered at Oregon State for “Frontiers in Metrology Techniques for Magnetic Nanodevices”

Researchers from universities, national laboratories, and tech companies came to Oregon State University this July to discuss needs and challenges in measuring the performance of magnetic nanodevices.

This first-time workshop, called “Frontiers in Metrology Techniques for Magnetic Nanodevices” drew participants from as far away as Japan, Belgium and the United Kingdom. It was jointly organized by Pallavi Dhagat, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Thomas Silva at the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

The purpose of the workshop was to bring together researchers from diverse areas working on magnetic nanotechnologies to share information that could spark collaborations and advance the field. The format of the workshop emphasized networking and encouraged sharing unpublished and ongoing work.

“The targeted goals of the workshop made for productive and highly relevant discussions and networking,” said Ania Bleszynski Jayich, associate professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara. “As a physicist with a basic research approach, it was instructive to discover several close connections to industrial needs, and thus I was able to initiate several important relationships that will hopefully flourish in upcoming years.”

Although there are several conferences in the field of magnetism this was the first international workshop that was focused solely on metrology. Attendees gave very positive feedback and indicated they would like it to become a biennial event.

“It was very fruitful. We were often behind schedule because the talks were generating so many discussions,” said Hans Nembach, senior research associate at University of Colorado, Boulder. “It’s a great format, we should certainly have it again.”

Support for the workshop was provided by Oregon State University, Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute and Intel.

Kedi Yan (electrical & computer engineering) and Nick Wong (computer science) work on their self-playing guitar. More photos in the OSU EECS Flickr album.

“Gadgets and Gizmos” was the theme for the first HWeekend of 2017 on January 20-22, jointly sponsored by the College of Business and the College of Engineering.

In just one weekend, forty-seven students from business and engineering designed, built, and pitched their idea for a marketable product including temperature based alarm clock, a computer controlled potato launcher, a 3-D printed longboard fender, and a self-playing guitar.

It was the seventh iteration of the popular event that provides students from different disciplines an opportunity to work together in teams. Students came from a variety majors including business, bioengineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, environmental engineering, and mechanical engineering.

“This event is really cool, because I get to do things that I normally don’t get to do in my major,” said Alec Westbrook, a chemical engineering student who worked on the 3D printed longboard fender project. “I mean, how often can a guy that is mixing chemicals all day work with his hands and create something new?”

Photo of potato launch team. — The potato launch team tests out their device. More photos in the OSU EECS Flickr album.

This event allowed students to make use of the new Buxton Hall Makerspace and Mastery Challenge lounge, which gave students access to 3-D printing, soldering irons, a drill press, laser cutting, and UV ink logo printing.

Mentors for this HWeekend included six industry members from Intel and two from Microsemi.

“People here are really excited about the things they are making,” said Aayush Pathak, a silicon architecture engineer from Intel who attended HWeekend as a mentor. “And to be a part of it and share what I have seen in my school and life — it’s a proud feeling.”

Staff from both the College of Business and the College of Engineering also helped mentor students through the creation and marketing of their projects.

“It’s an incredibly valuable partnership between business and engineering,” said Dale McCauley, the makerspace manager for the College of Business. “The students are getting the chance to build relationships that ordinarily wouldn’t form. If you get business students to understand how engineers think and vice versa, I think that is valuable.”

At the end of the weekend, the students received group awards for their dedication and hard work. The Executors award goes to the team that produces the best engineering execution of their idea to create the most polished final product, the Helping Hand is for the team that contributes the most to other teams, and the InnovationX Pitch awards go to two teams who had the best business pitches for selling their prototypes.

Photo of temperature-based alarm clock team. — The temperature-based alarm clock team works out their design.

Award winners

Executor: Temperature Based Alarm Clock team. The team included members Noah Hoffman, Taylor Johnston, Alexia Patterson, and Abdurrahman Elmaghbub.

Helping Hands: Checkpoint team. The team included members Andrey Kornilovich and Graham Barber

InnovationX Pitch: Checkpoint team and Temperature Based Alarm Clock team.

Story by Taylor Mrzena

Students spent 30 consecutive hours of engineering design, teamwork, and development at HWeekend on October 8-9, sponsored by the College of Engineering. The theme was “Show’em What You Got!”, and participants did just that, creating some of the most complete projects of any HWeekend. The purpose of the theme was to encourage projects that could be submitted to national competitions.

HWeekend Teensy Soldering — Audrina Hahn solders components to a Teensy board.

It was the sixth iteration of the highly successful event that gives engineering and business students an entire weekend to develop an idea and prototype it. Forty-two students participated with majors in electrical and computer engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, and finance.

After some breakout brainstorming sessions and presentations of their ideas, participants split into 10 teams to work on their projects. The diverse ideas included a modified game of laser tag, a guitar that could tune itself, and a smart shin guard paired with a virtual reality environment.

One of the groups returned from the previous HWeekend held during Spring term. That group continued with their effort to build a ferrofluid display using individually wound electromagnets. The other groups were much newer to their projects, such as the mobile coffee heater group, which worked on finding components they could use to heat liquids in a drinking cup.

“The beautiful thing about this is that it’s fast paced and you really see results, even if they’re not exactly the results you hope for,” says Audrina Hahn, a mechanical engineering student, who worked on the Open Laser Tag project.

This event made use of the all-new Buxton Hall Makerspace, the Mastery Challenge lounge, and the Virtual Makerspace, which gave students access to 3D printing, soldering irons, a drill press, and laser cutting.

“It’s really amazing all the resources that we have available to us that are really simple to use and are things that are up-and-coming that we will probably continue to use into our careers,” Hahn says.

Intel mentor helps a group with their project idea — A mentor from Intel assists the VR shin guard group.

Mentors for this HWeekend included eight industry representatives. Martin Held from Microsemi returned to guide teams and answer hardware questions. Multiple mentors arrived from Intel in Hillsboro, including several recent graduates of Oregon State. These mentors split up to help on projects where their experience helped groups work with unfamiliar technologies. One group that benefitted was the motion tracking robot team, which received help with OpenCV from a mentor who revealed a personal interest in assembly programming.

Ben Buford was one of the recent graduates who came back from Intel to provide mentorship. He spent most of his time contributing to the ferrofluid display.

“I love seeing people come up with quick solutions that let them accomplish something and overcome obstacles that they didn’t know existed three hours prior,” Buford says.

Beyond the satisfaction of completing prototypes of their ideas, students at HWeekend compete for two group awards. The Executors award goes to the team that produces the best execution of their original idea to create the most polished final product and the Helping Hand is for the team that contributes the most to other teams. At this HWeekend, the Arbitrarily Tuned Stringed Instrument team was selected for both awards. The team included members Keaton Scheible, Youthamin “Bear” Philavastvanid, Elliot Highfill, and Savannah Loberger.

Story by Kyler Stole

View the Flickr album.

Danny Dig and his colleagues discovered widespread problems in mobile app development that can cause applications to be unresponsive and “freeze.” After looking at over 1,000 open-source mobile apps, they found two main problems — underuse and misuse of asynchronous programming.

“It’s very easy, if you are not careful, to write a mobile app that is unresponsive,” Dig says. “The number one culprit for a frozen app is that a programmer has written a blocking call, such as accessing the cloud, on the main thread that processes other user-interface events and actions.”

The solution is to move the blocking calls into the background with asynchronous programming. Dig’s team has sent out hundreds of patches to developers to fix the problems in their code, and they have created tools that developers can use to find and fix asynchrony errors. Their webpages LearnAsync.NET and refactoring.info/tools give many examples of asynchronous programming and access to the tools.

“Now what I want to do is help people avoid making those mistakes in the first place,” Dig said.

As part of his educational efforts, Dig will be presenting in Portland, Oregon for the Technology Association of Oregon in June. The cost is $25 for members and $45 for non-members.

The presentation will be a technical overview of why asynchrony is important, it will include descriptions of the common pitfalls and best practices, and he will also demonstrate the tools he has developed.

“I see this as a way of transferring knowledge from research into practice, but it’s also important for me to have a dialog with programmers. I bring back their feedback to the research,” Dig said. “So, this is a fabulous event for me to establish those connections.”

Story by Rachel Robertson

OSU EECS News

News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Category Archives: Events

Cryptography expert to speak at Oregon State

Sanjit Mitra will speak at the Gaulke Distinguished Lecture Series

Oregon State welcomes Nelson Tansu as the first Gaulke distinguished lecturer

Oregon State invites industry members to collaborate on IoT center

CASS teaches teachers mobile app development

NW Cyber Camp comes to Oregon State

Workshop on magnetic nanodevices sparks international collaborations

Business and engineering students create gadgets and gizmos

Students ‘Show’em What They Got!’ at HWeekend

Writing Apps That Don’t Freeze

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