The Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST) will sponsor 20 undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience located at TRUST partner campuses: UC Berkeley, Cornell University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University. These students will work with graduate student and faculty mentors throughout the summer performing research and supporting activities in the area of information technology and TRUST related topics. The program will run from June 3 to July 27, 2012 and provide room and board, a travel allowance and a $4,000 stipend. Apply by February 17. See the flyer for more information and the Trust REU site for details and to apply.

The Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology (TRUST) will sponsor 20 undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience located at TRUST partner campuses: UC Berkeley, Cornell University, Stanford University, Vanderbilt University. These students will work with graduate student and faculty mentors throughout the summer performing research and supporting activities in the area of information technology and TRUST related topics. The program will run from June 3 to July 27, 2012 and provide room and board, a travel allowance and a $4,000 stipend. Apply by February 17. See the flyer for more information and the Trust REU site for details and to apply.

If you were among the millions who bought the new iPhone 4S, then you can thank Dr. Harry Chen, the UMBC alumnus who helped develop the phone’s most notable new feature: Siri.

For those not among the millions, here’s a bit of background:  Siri is a virtual assistant that responds to voice commands. “She” can do things like make phone calls, send text messages, set alarms, and find directions. But, the remarkable thing about Siri is that she understands intent. Tell Siri “I’m drunk,” and she’ll bring up a list of cab services in the area. Tell Siri “I want a burger” and she’ll direct you to burger joints nearby, according to ratings.   

Before Siri was bought by Apple, it was a small startup company operating out of Silicon Valley. Born out of a research project of SRI International, the company functioned under the moniker “stealth-company.com” until they were ready to disclose what they were working on, says Chen, who joined the team when he was offered a job by Adam Cheyer, one of the company’s initial founders.  

The offer came at an ideal moment, after Chen and his wife had decided to start fresh on the West Coast. “We just packed and started looking for jobs,” says Chen who knew that Silicon Valley was the sort of culture he wanted to be in. But, when they made the move in 2008, he had no idea that he would end up contributing to one of the world’s most revolutionary technologies. “It has been a rollercoaster ride for me the past three years,” he says.

It’s no surprise that at UMBC, Chen studied artificial intelligence. He was a founding member of the Ebiquity group, named for its focus on Ubiquitous Computing—the idea that computing devices will seamlessly blend into our environment and enhance our everyday activity. While pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at UMBC, Chen wrote his dissertation on intelligent rooms—rooms with the potential to collect information about their environment to share with different smart devices.

As a Graduate Student, Chen worked as a Research Assistant under Dr. Tim Finin. The position gave him the opportunity to meet other researchers in his field of study–like Cheyer, the man who would eventually offer him a place at Siri. Chen credits Dr. Tim Finin with pushing him forward: “Without him, I would probably not arrive where I am today.”

Today, Chen is a Siri Engineer at Apple and he loves it. “Apple is a very different company,” says Chen, who explains that the company runs more like a start-up than a big corporation. He couldn’t be happier with his decision to switch coasts. He sees Silicon Valley as the center of technological progress. “Reputable companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, LinkedIn and Oracle are only a short drive from each other,” he says, “Cool new technologies tend to emerge within the Bay Area and then later spread throughout the world.”

Chen compares the evolution of Siri to a parent watching his child grow up. Though, it isn’t done growing–Chen predicts that the application will continue to improve. Siri is bound to become a model for the future of technology. Everyone—especially children and the elderly–will benefit by being able to interact with a computer just as they would a person: through speech. At least, so says Chen: “The natural evolution is natural language.”

Photo Courtesy Gizmodo.com

If you were among the millions who bought the new iPhone 4S, then you can thank Dr. Harry Chen, the UMBC alumnus who helped develop the phone’s most notable new feature: Siri.

For those not among the millions, here’s a bit of background:  Siri is a virtual assistant that responds to voice commands. “She” can do things like make phone calls, send text messages, set alarms, and find directions. But, the remarkable thing about Siri is that she understands intent. Tell Siri “I’m drunk,” and she’ll bring up a list of cab services in the area. Tell Siri “I want a burger” and she’ll direct you to burger joints nearby, according to ratings.   

Before Siri was bought by Apple, it was a small startup company operating out of Silicon Valley. Born out of a research project of SRI International, the company functioned under the moniker “stealth-company.com” until they were ready to disclose what they were working on, says Chen, who joined the team when he was offered a job by Adam Cheyer, one of the company’s initial founders.  

The offer came at an ideal moment, after Chen and his wife had decided to start fresh on the West Coast. “We just packed and started looking for jobs,” says Chen who knew that Silicon Valley was the sort of culture he wanted to be in. But, when they made the move in 2008, he had no idea that he would end up contributing to one of the world’s most revolutionary technologies. “It has been a rollercoaster ride for me the past three years,” he says.

It’s no surprise that at UMBC, Chen studied artificial intelligence. He was a founding member of the Ebiquity group, named for its focus on Ubiquitous Computing—the idea that computing devices will seamlessly blend into our environment and enhance our everyday activity. While pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at UMBC, Chen wrote his dissertation on intelligent rooms—rooms with the potential to collect information about their environment to share with different smart devices.

As a Graduate Student, Chen worked as a Research Assistant under Dr. Tim Finin. The position gave him the opportunity to meet other researchers in his field of study–like Cheyer, the man who would eventually offer him a place at Siri. Chen credits Dr. Tim Finin with pushing him forward: “Without him, I would probably not arrive where I am today.”

Today, Chen is a Siri Engineer at Apple and he loves it. “Apple is a very different company,” says Chen, who explains that the company runs more like a start-up than a big corporation. He couldn’t be happier with his decision to switch coasts. He sees Silicon Valley as the center of technological progress. “Reputable companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Netflix, LinkedIn and Oracle are only a short drive from each other,” he says, “Cool new technologies tend to emerge within the Bay Area and then later spread throughout the world.”

Chen compares the evolution of Siri to a parent watching his child grow up. Though, it isn’t done growing–Chen predicts that the application will continue to improve. Siri is bound to become a model for the future of technology. Everyone—especially children and the elderly–will benefit by being able to interact with a computer just as they would a person: through speech. At least, so says Chen: “The natural evolution is natural language.”

Photo Courtesy Gizmodo.com

Cyber Security Situation Awareness and Impact Assessment:
Issues, Models and Applications

Dr. Gabriel Jakobson
Altusys Corporation, Princeton NJ

10:30-11:30am 8 November 2011, ITE 325

Cyber attacks committed against IT networks and services have profound impact both on ongoing mission and future missions, whose operations are based on these networks and services. The attacks, by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the software assets can push their impact through Cyber Terrain – a dependency network of structural, spatial, functional and other domain-specific dependencies that exist among software assets and services, and reach the missions. In this presentation we will introduce a novel approach of assessing impact of cyber attacks on missions (business process) and describe the basic models and algorithms of the approach.

Dr. Gabriel Jakobson is the VP and Chief Scientist at Altusys Corp., a consulting firm specializing in the development of intelligent situation management technologies for defence and cyber security applications. During his more than 20 years tenure at Verizon he had increasing responsibilities of leading advanced database, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and telecommunication network management programs. He has authored (and co-authored) more than 100 technical papers and is principal author of 5 US patents in situation management and event correlation. He received PhD degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Cybernetics, Estonia. Dr. Jakobson holds the honorary degree of Doctor Honorius Causa from the Tallinn Technical University, Estonia, and is Distinguished IEEE Lecturer. Dr. Jakobson is the member of the Board of Governors of IEEE Communications Society, Director, IEEE ComSoc North America Region, co-chair of the Tactical Communications and Operations Technical Committee of IEEE ComSoc, chair of the IEEE ComSoc Sub-Committee on Situation Management.

Host: Anupam Joshi

Cyber Security Situation Awareness and Impact Assessment:
Issues, Models and Applications

Dr. Gabriel Jakobson
Altusys Corporation, Princeton NJ

10:30-11:30am 8 November 2011, ITE 325

Cyber attacks committed against IT networks and services have profound impact both on ongoing mission and future missions, whose operations are based on these networks and services. The attacks, by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the software assets can push their impact through Cyber Terrain – a dependency network of structural, spatial, functional and other domain-specific dependencies that exist among software assets and services, and reach the missions. In this presentation we will introduce a novel approach of assessing impact of cyber attacks on missions (business process) and describe the basic models and algorithms of the approach.

Dr. Gabriel Jakobson is the VP and Chief Scientist at Altusys Corp., a consulting firm specializing in the development of intelligent situation management technologies for defence and cyber security applications. During his more than 20 years tenure at Verizon he had increasing responsibilities of leading advanced database, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and telecommunication network management programs. He has authored (and co-authored) more than 100 technical papers and is principal author of 5 US patents in situation management and event correlation. He received PhD degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Cybernetics, Estonia. Dr. Jakobson holds the honorary degree of Doctor Honorius Causa from the Tallinn Technical University, Estonia, and is Distinguished IEEE Lecturer. Dr. Jakobson is the member of the Board of Governors of IEEE Communications Society, Director, IEEE ComSoc North America Region, co-chair of the Tactical Communications and Operations Technical Committee of IEEE ComSoc, chair of the IEEE ComSoc Sub-Committee on Situation Management.

Host: Anupam Joshi

Professor Ryan Bergeron has been a lecturer of Computer Science at UMBC since Spring 2008. Currently the Technical Director for UMBC's Women's Volleyball team, Bergeron's research interests lie at the intersection of athletics and technology. Questions like “How do I make coaches understand what their players are doing better” and “How can we make athletes even better at what they do” are at the heart of his search.

To read more about professor Ryan Bergeron, see his faculty profile.

Professor Ryan Bergeron has been a lecturer of Computer Science at UMBC since Spring 2008. Currently the Technical Director for UMBC's Women's Volleyball team, Bergeron's research interests lie at the intersection of athletics and technology. Questions like “How do I make coaches understand what their players are doing better” and “How can we make athletes even better at what they do” are at the heart of his search.

To read more about professor Ryan Bergeron, see his faculty profile.

Some of this text was adapted from a press release and a post from the Scantegrity blog

UMBC Professor Alan Sherman, UMBC alumnus Rick Carback (Ph.D. 2010) and many former and current UMBC students helped to develop Scantegrity, an an open source election verification technology for optical scan voting systems. In 2009, their Scantegrity II voting system was used in the election of the mayor and city council members of Takoma Park, Maryland. This was an historic first time any end-to-end voter verifiable voting system with ballot privacy has been used in a binding governmental election.

This week, absentee voters in Takoma Park, Maryland will have the option to cast their votes for mayor and city council using a new Internet voting system called Remotegrity which uses the same approach of generating privacy preserving confirmation numbers that allow each voter to verify her vote is counted and anyone to verify that all the votes were counted correctly. Dr. Carback has played a significant role in helping Takoma Park adopt and use Scantegrity and Remotegrity in the municipal elections.

Internet voting has been used to elect government officials before (for example, in Switzerland, Estonia, and Norway), but what is new here is that voters mail in paper ballots and use the Internet to independently verify that their votes have been received by the city and recorded correctly. Anyone can check online that the recorded votes were tallied correctly.

Dr. Filip Zagorski, computer scientist at The George Washington University, explains ÒThrough the hybrid use of paper ballots and Internet verification, Remotegrity combines the best of both worlds to provide a very high degree of security even against malware and insider attack.Ó Portions of the underlying research in cryptography and secure server design were supported by the National Science Foundation and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Voters who have requested to vote by mail receive a ballot which they mark and mail in, but they can also verify their vote on-line in the Remotegrity system, without revealing how they voted. In future elections, the same online procedure may cast votes and physical mailing of paper ballots may be optional or omitted.

The city will also use the Scantegrity voting system for voters who cast their ballot in person, as it did in 2009. The integrated Scantegrity and Remotegrity systems offer full end-to-end voter-verifiability, in which voters casting ballots from home or in person can verify that their votes were correctly cast, collected, and counted.

Additionally, this year, the city will provide an audio interface for marking ballots. The interface, named Audiotegrity, developed by researchers at The George Washington University, will enable voters with difficulty marking paper ballots to mark ballots independently using an electronic interface. Mr. Noel Runyan, a usability and accessibility expert, provided pro bono design advice to the Audiotegrity team.

With a grant from the federal Election Assistance Commission, and support from the non-profit Voting Systems Institute, researchers from UMBC will survey voters and election officials as well as conduct focus groups around their experiences using these new voting systems.

For more information, see the recent paper by UMBC Ph.D. alumnus Rick Carback et al., Scantegrity II Municipal Election at Takoma Park: The First E2E Binding Governmental Election with Ballot Privacy, or contact Professor Alan Sherman.

Some of this text was adapted from a press release and a post from the Scantegrity blog

UMBC Professor Alan Sherman, UMBC alumnus Rick Carback (Ph.D. 2010) and many former and current UMBC students helped to develop Scantegrity, an an open source election verification technology for optical scan voting systems. In 2009, their Scantegrity II voting system was used in the election of the mayor and city council members of Takoma Park, Maryland. This was an historic first time any end-to-end voter verifiable voting system with ballot privacy has been used in a binding governmental election.

This week, absentee voters in Takoma Park, Maryland will have the option to cast their votes for mayor and city council using a new Internet voting system called Remotegrity which uses the same approach of generating privacy preserving confirmation numbers that allow each voter to verify her vote is counted and anyone to verify that all the votes were counted correctly. Dr. Carback has played a significant role in helping Takoma Park adopt and use Scantegrity and Remotegrity in the municipal elections.

Internet voting has been used to elect government officials before (for example, in Switzerland, Estonia, and Norway), but what is new here is that voters mail in paper ballots and use the Internet to independently verify that their votes have been received by the city and recorded correctly. Anyone can check online that the recorded votes were tallied correctly.

Dr. Filip Zagorski, computer scientist at The George Washington University, explains ÒThrough the hybrid use of paper ballots and Internet verification, Remotegrity combines the best of both worlds to provide a very high degree of security even against malware and insider attack.Ó Portions of the underlying research in cryptography and secure server design were supported by the National Science Foundation and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Voters who have requested to vote by mail receive a ballot which they mark and mail in, but they can also verify their vote on-line in the Remotegrity system, without revealing how they voted. In future elections, the same online procedure may cast votes and physical mailing of paper ballots may be optional or omitted.

The city will also use the Scantegrity voting system for voters who cast their ballot in person, as it did in 2009. The integrated Scantegrity and Remotegrity systems offer full end-to-end voter-verifiability, in which voters casting ballots from home or in person can verify that their votes were correctly cast, collected, and counted.

Additionally, this year, the city will provide an audio interface for marking ballots. The interface, named Audiotegrity, developed by researchers at The George Washington University, will enable voters with difficulty marking paper ballots to mark ballots independently using an electronic interface. Mr. Noel Runyan, a usability and accessibility expert, provided pro bono design advice to the Audiotegrity team.

With a grant from the federal Election Assistance Commission, and support from the non-profit Voting Systems Institute, researchers from UMBC will survey voters and election officials as well as conduct focus groups around their experiences using these new voting systems.

For more information, see the recent paper by UMBC Ph.D. alumnus Rick Carback et al., Scantegrity II Municipal Election at Takoma Park: The First E2E Binding Governmental Election with Ballot Privacy, or contact Professor Alan Sherman.