Dean's Update - February 2013

NEW FACULTY

The rapid growth in enrollment has given us the opportunity to hire more tenure-track faculty within the School of Computing and Software Engineering. The following new faculty will be joining CSE in the fall: Dr Lei Li in the Department of Information Technology, and Mr Mike Franklin and Mr Chao Peng in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Peng will assist primarily in the rapidly-growing program in Computer Game Design and Development.

The searches for the faculty position in Information Technology and Software Engineering, and for the chair positions both in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering and the Department of Information Technology are continuing. Further updates on these positions will be forthcoming.

MINIGRANTS

Each year, SPSU awards a limited number of mini-grants to help kick-start new research projects in the expectation that at least some of the projects will lead to larger external grants. A number of CSE faculty have been successful in attracting mini-grants in this year’s cycle. They are:

Dr Dan Lo and Dr Orlando Karam received a minigrant to develop an online collaboration system to manage multiple projects in a single venue that allows students, faculty, customers, and members of our various industry advisory boards to share project information, monitor project progress, and evaluate projects throughout their development courses. Dr Ming Yang and Dr Kai Qian received funding for a project to use smart phone devices to enhance authentic student learning in network security subjects, Finally, Dr Preston received a joint award with Dr Sonia Tolson from the Department of Construction Management and Dr James Werner from the Department of English, Technical Communication and Media Arts to design a computer-based serious game that will use legal scenarios to teach legal terms and concepts to students enrolled in construction and business law courses.

GLOBAL GAME JAM

SPSU again hosted the Georgia site for the Global Game Jam. There were approximately 230 participants, making SPSU the fourth largest site in the world, and the third largest among those that have an open bar. The on-campus participants collaborated remotely with musicians at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and with voice actors at Village Theater in Washington state. The event was sponsored by the Mozilla Foundation, Area 41, GreenWave Technology, Hi-Rez Studios, Georgia Game Developers Association, and Red Bull.

At the end of the jam, the games were judged by a distinguished panel, including Chris Klaus from Kaneva, Gabriel Mughellu from Hi-Rez Studios, and Andrew Greenberg from the Geogia Game Developers Association, who were ably assisted by our own gaming faculty and faculty from SCAD.

There is further information about the event at http://spsugames.blogspot.com/.

SOUTHERN POLY INFORMATION SECURITY ASSOCIATION

On February 2, the Southern Poly Information Security Association (SPISA) student team participated in the Annual Southeast Regional Cyber Defense Competition (SECCDC). SECCDC is part of the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), and focuses on the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing network infrastructure. Teams were scored based on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs.

The team did extremely well and ranked in the top 8. As a result, it received an invitation to participate in the on-site competition to be held at Kennesaw State University March 5 to 7.

Congratulations are to team captain Diane Tran, co-captain, Matt Powell, team members John Eidson, Elizabeth Fokes, Matthew Wilson, Russ Richstein, Francis Mikel, and Brennen Smith, and to the team’s faculty advisers Dr Ming Yang, Professor Susan Vande Ven, and Dr Svetlana Peltsverger.

FACULTY ACCOMPLISHMENTS II

Last month, the Dean’s Update included about half of the various publications that faculty had produced over the last six or seven months. Here is the second half of the list:

Bradford, D. and C.-C. Hung, “Pollen-Based Bee Algorithm for Data Clustering – A Computational Model,” Progress in Intelligent Computing and Applications (PICA), Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 16 ~ 36, 2012.

Kuo, B.-C., W.-M. Chang, C.-H. Li, and C.-C. Hung, “Correlation Matrix Feature Extraction Based on Spectral Clustering for Hypersectral Image Segmentation”, Fourth Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (Whispers), 4 - 7 June 2012, Shanghai, China (CD).

Liu, H., H. Hu, E. Song, C.-C. Hung, and M. Liu, “An Application of Circumscribed Circle Filter in the Multi-Stencils Fast Marching Method,” Proceedings of the 27th Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2012) – Computational Intelligence, Signal and Image Analysis (CISIA) Track, Trento, Italy, March 25 - 30, 2012 (CD).

Liu, H., N. Pang, H. Lu, E. Song, Q. Wang, and C.-C. Hung, “Wireless Capsule Endoscopy Video Reduction Based on Camera Motion Estimation,” Journal of Digital Imaging, August 7, 2012. DOI 10.1007/s10278-012-9519-x, ISSN 0897-1889

Liu, W., L. Wu and C.-C. Hung, “Testure Segmentation Based on AdaBoost Classifier Using Fractal Feature – Lacunarity,” Journal of Information and Computational Science 9:1, pp. 1 -11, 2012.

Preston, J., “INSPIRE-CT: Vertically Integrating Game Development to Improve STEM Learning,” NSF-sponsored Workshop – InspireCT – Inspiring Student Interest in Computational Thinking, Philadelphia, PA, June, 2012.

Preston, J. and Chastine, J., “Augmented Reality: a Narrative, Symbiotic Approach in Combining Virtual and Physical Worlds,” Augmented Reality @ ICIS Workshop, International Conference on
Information Systems (ICIS), Orlando, FL, December 2012.

Preston, J. and Chastine, J., “Want Bread with that Jam? Toasting the Success of Game Jams”, Rresented October 2012, Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo 2012

Preston, J., Chastine, J., O’Donnell, C., Tseng, T., and MacIntyre, B., Game Jams: Community, Motivations, and Learning among Jammers”, International Journal of Games-Based Learning, Number 2, vol 3. July 2012.

Preston, J., and Reichgelt, H., “Slaying Dragons and Leveling Up: a Quest-Based Approach to Higher Education”, Proceedings of the 2012 Polytech Summit, Marietta, GA, June 2012.

Preston, J., Werner, J., and Barham, W., “Using a Virtual Gaming Environment in Strength of Materials Laboratory”, Poster presentation at the 119th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, NSF Grantees Poster Session, June, 2012.

Qian, K. “Multi-Faceted Penetration of Fast Fourier Transform by Interactively Analyzing Real-World Objects via Mobile Technology”, WIP, IEEE/ASEE Frontier in Education(FIE) conference 2012, 10/2012

Qian, K. “Real World Relevant Security Labware for Mobile Threat Analysis and Protection Experience”, WIP, IEEE/ASEE Frontier in Education(FIE) conference 2012, 10/2012

Qian, K. “Real-World Relevant Learning with Android Smartphones”, IEEE ICALT 2012, 07/2012

Rwabutaza, A., Yang. M. and N. Bourbakis, N. “A Comparative Survey On Cryptology-Based Methodologies”, International Journal of Information Security and Privacy, Volume 6, Issue 3, 2012

Reichgelt, H., “MOOCs, YouTube, and Higher Education”, Keynote address delivered at 26th Annual CCSC:Southeastern Conference, November 2-3, 2012

Rodoper, M., Jung, E., Baliga, A. and Trappe, W., “An Efficient Security Framework for Mobile WiMAX”,Proceedings of ACM 27th Symposium on Applied Computing (ACM SAC), Trento, Italy, March 2012.

Tsui, F., Duggins, S., and Karam, O., "Software Protection with Increased Complexity and Obfuscation," ACM SE Conference, March 28-31, 2012, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Werner, J., Preston, J., and Barham, W., “Art's Autonomy in New Media Collaborations.” Virtual Extents: Practices of Research and Teaching in Contemporary Creative Arts Symposium, May 24, University College Falmouth, Cornwall England.

Xu, L., Zhang, Y., Yang, M., Jung, E., Liu, S. and Hung, C-C., “Feature Selection Using Ant Colony Optimization for Remote Sensing Image Classification,” Polytechnic Summit 2012, Atlanta/Marietta, GA, June 2012.

Yu, M., Q. Huang, R. Jin, E. Song, H. Liu, and C.-C. Hung, “A Novel Segmentation Method for Convex Lesions Based on Dynamic Programming with Local Intra-Class Variance,” Proceedings of the 27th Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2012) – Computational Intelligence, Signal and Image Analysis (CISIA) Track, Trento, Italy, March 25 - 30, 2012 (CD).

Zhang, C. Purcell, K.P., Zhang, X., “Using Fink's Integrated Course Design in Developing a Health IT Course”, AIS SIG-ED International Conference on Informatics Education and Research, IAIM 2012, Orlando, FL, December 15-16, 2012.

Zhang, C., Purcell, K.P., “The Use of Integrated Course Design in Developing a Health IT Core Course”, Poster session, 4Th Polytechnic Summit, June 6-8, 2012.

Zhang, C., Rutherfoord, R., Reichgelt, H., and Wang, J., “Developing and Improving Health Information Technology Courses”, 26th Annual CCSC:Southeastern Conference, November 2-3, 2012.

Zhang, C., Reichgelt, J., Rutherfoord, R., Brown, B., and Wang, J., “Developing and Improving Interdisciplinary Health Information Technology Certificate Programs”, ACM Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education Conference, SIGITE 2012, Calgary, Canada, October 11-13.

Zhang, Q., Zhang, X., Zhang, C., and Hu, T., “Product and Service Comprehensiveness: Another Piece of the Technology Acceptance Puzzle”, Academic Business World International Conference 2012, Nashville, TN, May 23-25, 2012.