ICS News and Announcements

Jordan Takayama wins UROP award

Philip Johnson — 2013-04-23T02:20:00Z

Jordan Takayama, ICS undergraduate honors student, has won funding from the University of Hawaii Undergraduate Research Opportunities (UROP) program. His research project is entitled "Making game design as easy as gaming: Creating an administrative interface to the Kukui Cup." The research will involve creation of an administrative "wizard" for configuring the Makahiki serious game framework, and evaluating its effectiveness through qualitative case studies of users.

Seminar: Geoffrey Voelker, "Exploring the Technical and Economic Factors Underlying Internet Scams"

Philip Johnson — 2013-04-11T19:25:27Z

Today, the large-scale compromise of Internet hosts serves as a platform for supporting a range of criminal activity in the so-called Internet underground economy. In this talk I will start by quickly surveying work that our group has performed over the past decade on the problems posed by these threats, and how our research directions have evolved over time in response to them. In the remainder of the talk, I will go into detail on recent work that our group has performed in an end-to-end analysis of the spam value chain. Using extensive measurements over months of diverse spam data, broad crawling of naming and hosting infrastructures, and product purchases from a wide variety of spam-advertised sites, I'll characterize the modern spam ecosystem including system infrastructure, business models, cost accounting, and consumer demand. I'll end by characterizing the relative prospects for anti-spam interventions at multiple levels, and initial results of interventions in the payment tier.

ICS Ph.D. Defense: Robert Brewer, "Fostering Sustained Energy Behavior Change and Increasing Energy Literacy In A Student Housing Energy Challenge"

Philip Johnson — 2013-03-11T23:22:01Z

Fostering Sustained Energy Behavior Change and Increasing Energy Literacy In A Student Housing Energy Challenge, Robert Brewer

Wednesday, March 13, 3:00pm, POST 302

Abstract: We designed the Kukui Cup challenge to foster energy conservation and increase energy literacy. Based on a review of the literature, the challenge combined a variety of elements into an overall game experience, including: real-time energy feedback, goals, commitments, competition, and prizes.

We designed a software system called Makahiki to provide the online portion of the Kukui Cup challenge. Energy use was monitored by smart meters installed on each floor of the Hale Aloha residence halls on the University of Hawai'i at Manoa campus.

In October 2011, we ran the UH Kukui Cup challenge for the over 1000 residents of the Hale Aloha towers. To evaluate the Kukui Cup challenge, I conducted three experiments: challenge participation, energy literacy, and energy use.

Many residents participated in the challenge, as measured by points earned and actions completed through the challenge website. I measured the energy literacy of a random sample of Hale Aloha residents using an online energy literacy questionnaire administered before and after the challenge. I found that challenge participants' energy knowledge increased significantly compared to non-challenge participants. Positive self-reported energy behaviors increased after the challenge for both challenge participants and non-participants, leading to the possibility of passive participation by the non-challenge participants.

I found that energy use varied substantially between and within lounges over time. Variations in energy use over time complicated the selection of a baseline of energy use to compare the levels during and after the challenge. The best team reduced its energy use during the challenge by 16%. However, team energy conservation did not appear to correlate to participation in the challenge, and there was no evidence of sustained energy conservation after the challenge. The problems inherent in assessing energy conservation using a baseline call into question this common practice.

My research has generated several contributions, including: a demonstration of increased energy literacy as a result of the challenge, the discovery of fundamental problems with the use of baselines for assessing energy competitions, the creation of two open source software systems, and the creation of an energy literacy assessment instrument.

Committee: Philip Johnson (chair), Martha Crosby, Scott Robertson, Daniel Suthers, and Anthony Kuh

Call for participation: the 2013 "Big Splash" CyberDefense Competition

Philip Johnson — 2013-02-27T18:30:00Z

Building on the success of collegiate level cyber defense competitions and cyber defense exercises with the Washington Army National Guard; the University of Hawaii Manoa, the University of Washington Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, UW Bothell CSS, and Nathcorp, are producing the “Big Splash” Cyber Defense Exercise, with events March 7th-10th. The “Big Splash” is designed to bring practitioners in industry and government together with students to practice cybersecurity event response, mitigation, and strategy. By having practitioners from industry, government, and students from local colleges and universities we are able to foster a diverse team setting that helps promote communication, leadership, and relationships. This is increasingly important as every sector attempts to handle growing cybersecurity threats, the task of reporting events, and determining what resources are available from government agencies for additional help.

With the idea of helping protect local critical infrastructure from cyber threats, teams within the National Guard called “Computer Network Defender or (CND Team)” have been created. The role of the 21st century minuteman now includes helping defend resources throughout the state for cyber threats through CND Teams and they will be working alongside practitioners and infrastructure owners in this event. Additional support for local critical infrastructure comes from the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other federal agencies. DHS and FBI will be providing training to participants about how they can help respond to cybersecurity threats.

By participating in a scenario game environment, participants reinforce practical skills and build relationships with other practitioners in their area. Participants for the “Big Splash” will be given a scenario of critical infrastructure in a business setting to defend as a "Blue Team" while other professionals from government, industry, and students from University of Washington Bothell Computing and Software Systems will attack the infrastructure as a "Red Team." The goal of this exercise is to encourage proper Information Assurance and Cybersecurity practices and provide a learning forum for participants.

For more information on how to participate, please see Gerald Lau (glau@hawaii.edu).

More details on the Big Splash are available here.

CIS Ph.D. Defense: Blanca Polo, "The Virtual Critical Studio: Implementing studio based learning techniques in an online introductory programming course to address common programming errors and misconceptions

Philip Johnson — 2013-02-14T18:45:00Z

Date: Monday, February 25th, 2013

Time: 11:00am

Location: POST 302

Abstract: Student programming errors, online education and studio-based learning (SBL) in computer science education have all been topics of recent research efforts. This study expands on this research applying this knowledge to proactively help students overcome their difficulties. This project coins the term virtual critical studio (VCS), and proposes it for proactive online teaching. The VCS consists of three components, the studio-based-learning pedagogy, the precise and critical timing and content of the VCS sessions and the virtual nature of the implementation environment. The implementation of VCS aims to provide a better quality of online computer science courses by promoting student-student interaction focused on the discussion of problematic curriculum issues.

Data collected prior to the application of VCS provided insights into common programming errors that were later used to create the assignments for the VCS sessions. This study compares online vs. VCS incarnations of the same course. In addition, it observes and analyzes the content of VCS sessions

The VCS like its predecessor SBL, has shown the potential to help novice programmers overcome their difficulties. The effects of this treatment show that students have an optimistic state of mind before, during and after VCS sessions. These effects do not exist for the control group. This research provides a unique insight into the VCS process including the identification of “learning moments”, student-student interaction and the building of camaraderie.

Seminar: Ping Wang, "Community ecology for IT innovation: The case for cloud computing"

Philip Johnson — 2013-02-05T22:58:37Z

Date: Thursday, February 7, 2013, 3:00pm

Place: Shidler College of Business, Room A301

Abstract: Why do some concepts come to be highly popular, significantly reshaping the IT landscape, while others do not? We address this question by exploring the communities of organizations that underlie IT innovations. In an illustrative investigation of the community for cloud computing, we integrate theories of organizational ecology and social networks and apply their associated methods. Substantial support to the theories and the effectiveness of the methods have led us to embark on a promising research program focused on IT innovation concepts and communities. This program affords several opportunities to break new grounds in Information Systems research: (1) adding an ecological explanation to the theories of IT innovations; (2) fertilizing new ground for IT innovation research; (3) stimulating research on inter-organizational social networks; and (4) demonstrating the utility of computational discourse analysis.

About the Speaker: Dr. Ping Wang is an associate professor at the College of Information Studies and an affiliate associate professor at the Decision, Operations and Information Technologies department of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also a faculty member of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) and the Director of the Ph.D. in Information Studies program. His research addresses how and why organizations innovate with information technology. Specifically, his research seeks to understand the popularity of IT innovations and the impacts of popular technologies on organizations. At the University of Maryland, he leads interdisciplinary research teams, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that employ natural language processing, crowdsourcing, information visualization, and social network analysis to advance theories that explain the institutional and ecological processes of innovation. His work has appeared in the MIS Quarterly, Journal of AIS, Information Technology and People, Information and Organization, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Information Visualization, and MIT Sloan Management Review. Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. from UCLA Anderson School of Management. Additional information is available at http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~pwang/.

Seminar: Rajkumar Kettimuthu, "Hosted services and infrastructure aware protocols for bulk data movement and sharing"

Philip Johnson — 2013-01-14T21:12:46Z

Thursday, January 17, 2013, 4:30pm, POST 126

Abstract:

Big data is becoming a critical component of science. Researchers need tools that address their end-to-end distributed data management needs. But the small and medium research labs often lack the resources to deploy and maintain sophisticated software infrastructures. So, there is a strong need to do data management with modest effort. End users do not have the time and expertise to learn complex software. So the data management tools must be exceedingly easy to use. At the same time, these tools must be highly efficient and utilize the capabilities of advanced compute and network infrastructure. In this talk, I will present our work on hosted services that enables researchers to move, sync and share data in a simple, yet efficient way. I will also briefly discuss our work on resource and application aware protocols to effectively utilize 100 Gigabit networks and beyond.

Bio:

Rajkumar Kettimuthu is a Fellow in the Computation Institute at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. He is the technology coordinator for Globus GridFTP, widely used bulk data movement tool. Currently, he is leading multiple projects to develop tools for research data management, and data movement protocols for next generation networks.

Seminar: Jason Leigh, "Emerging from the CAVE: Research at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory"

Philip Johnson — 2013-01-07T17:23:03Z

POST 126, Thursday, 1/10, 4:30PM-5:30PM

Included will be an introduction to the new CAVE2 system completed in October of 2012. The presentation will also briefly introduce Human Augmentics, a new field at UIC aimed at developing and studying technologies for expanding the capabilities and characteristics of humans.

EVL website: http://www.evl.uic.edu

Speaker website: http://jasonleigh.me

Speaker's Bio: Jason Leigh is a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the Software Technologies Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently he is a Fellow of the Institute for Health Research and Policy. He has also held appointments at Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His research expertise includes: large scale data visualization; virtual reality; high performance networking; and video game design. IN 2010 he initiated a new multi-disciplinary area of research called Human Augmentics - which refers to the study of technologies for expanding the capabilities and characteristics of humans. His work has received widespread press from media including: the New York Times, Popular Science's Future Of, Nova ScienceNow, and NSF Science Now. Leigh also teaches classes in Software Design and he has been teaching Video Game Design for over 10 years.

Hawaii State Government "Transformation Internship Program"

Philip Johnson — 2012-12-29T03:53:02Z

Interns will be supervised by the Deputy CIO of Business Transformation, and work with program teams to evaluate challenges and identify and assist in the implementation of improvements throughout the State's various departments. The work of the interns will involve interacting with, meeting with and interviewing state employees, summarizing the results of all research, and presenting findings through presentations, reports, white papers, dashboards, and scorecards. Interns must have the ability to work well with a broad range of stakeholders (e.g. State employees, outside consultants and private organizations) and communicate effectively at multiple levels within the State.

For more details, see here.

Seminar: Aaron Marcus, "Mobile user experience design for work, home, play, and on the way"

Philip Johnson — 2012-12-12T01:22:32Z

Friday, December 14 at 5-6pm, UHM Krauss 12

Aaron Marcus heads his award-winning design firm in California, is an expert in mobile, UX, Web, and user-interface design, has published 8 books and 250 articles, and lectures/tutors worldwide. He is a Visiting Professor at IIT’s Institute of Design; a Master at the De Tao Academy, Beijing,and member of the CHI Academy.

For further info, contact: info@parwinr.com

Sponsored by Dept. of Information and Computer Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, UH Manoa; Pacific New Media, UH Manoa; and parWinr, Inc.

Seminar: Mike Byrne, "Why Johnny can't vote: How Usability Compromises Election Integrity"

Philip Johnson — 2012-12-05T01:34:23Z

We now have data that help answer some of these questions but which raise serious concerns about the systems we use to participate in our democracy. Errors rates larger than the margin of victory in some races appear at multiple points in the voting process, and this problem is likely to persist and possibly worsen without concerted efforts from multiple sources, including the HCI community.

About the speaker: Mike Byrne is a Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Rice University. His primary research areas are concerned with usability of technological systems and mathematical/computational models of human cognition and performance with a strong interest in understanding human error. This includes basic scientific work on theories of human cognition and performance as well as applied usability testing efforts, particularly in the area of voting. His research has been funded by NASA, the Office of Naval Research, NIST, and the NSF. Mike received a B.S. in Engineering and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1991. The Georgia Institute of Technology awarded him an M.S. in Psychology in 1993, an M.S. in Computer Science in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology in 1996. He has served as associate editor of the journal Cognitive Science and on the editorial boards of the journals Human Factors, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making.

Date: Friday, December 7, 2012

Place: POST 302

Time: 2:00pm

Seminar: Chris Mullins, "Query-Aware Compression of Join Results"

Philip Johnson — 2012-11-30T23:20:00Z

In this thesis we propose a novel query-aware compression method for compressing query results sent from database servers to client applications. Our method is based on two key ideas. We exploit redundancy information obtained from the query plan and possibly from the database schema to achieve better compression than standard non-query aware compressors. We use a collection of memory-limited dictionaries to encode attribute values in a lightweight and efficient manner. We evaluate our method empirically using the TPC-H benchmark show that this technique is effective especially when used in conjunction with standard compressors. Our results show that compression ratios of up to 10 times over gzip are possible.

Committee: Lipyeow Lim (chair), Henri Casanova, Kyungim Baek

Time/Place: Monday, Dec 3 2012, 10am, POST 302

Honolulu, HI takes first place in the 2011 Digital Cities Survey

Philip Johnson — 2012-11-09T20:42:06Z

In cities with populations of 250,000 or more, the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, took top-billing in the 2011 Digital Cities Survey. One of their most innovative projects that helped them capture first place is Kokua Wireless, a free island-wise municipal Wi-Fi Internet service installed without taxpayer money.

For more information, see the news release.

Gazan gets grant from NASA Astrobiology Institute Director's Discretionary Fund

Philip Johnson — 2012-11-01T02:16:39Z

The project, entitled Interdisciplinary Research Metrics in Astrobiology (IRMA), will provide summer research funding for two ICS PhD students in 2013 (Co-Investigators Lisa Miller and Mike Gowanlock), to integrate data mining and information clustering techniques with a social science component to assess opportunities for, and barriers to, interdisciplinary research across astrobiology's diverse constituent fields.

The NASA Astrobiology Institute Director's Discretionary Fund makes one-year awards for research that advances the science of astrobiology, demonstrates impact to NASA’s space flight programs or its broader science activities, and/or contributes to NASA’s role as a federal R&D agency. More information about the NASA Astrobiology Institute can be found here: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/.

Susanna Still's research featured in Nature

Henri Casanova — 2012-10-05T19:05:00Z

The Nature article, authored by Phillip Ball is subtitled "Insight into what makes biological machines efficient could improve scientific models" and discusses the significance and impact of recent work by Prof. Still and her colleagues. See the full article at http://www.nature.com/news/proteins-remember-the-past-to-predict-the-future-1.11544