Computer Science and Engineering

Today for our WLI Allyship Program social media spotlight, we are excited to feature Dr. Matt Morrison, Associate Teaching Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Notre Dame. He was nominated by Shari Liss, Executive Director of the SEMI Foundation and Dr. Yan Li, Vice President, Engineering, Memory Technology at Western Digital.

"Matt's unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion in the semiconductor industry directly aligns with the SEMI Foundation's mission to foster a more equitable and innovative future. His efforts, from increasing female enrollment in his VLSI Design course to organizing industry conferences that amplify women’s voices, are critical in shaping a diverse and dynamic workforce.

By mentoring women researchers and leading initiatives like the Design Automation Conference Summer School, Matt not only advances individual careers but also supports the SEMI Foundation’s goal of creating opportunities and breaking down barriers in the industry. His work ensures that the future of semiconductors is as inclusive as it is innovative and I’m honored to support his nomination." - Shari Liss

"Prof. Morrison’s conference Design the Solution has been a great success, in part because he is instrumental in his inclusion of women student researchers, and he has significantly increased women student participation in his yearly design tape-out courses." - Yan Li

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) has elected Nitesh Chawla, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, as one of its 2024 fellows.

Chawla, who directs Notre Dame’s Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society, joins a cohort of 11 new fellows selected for their “outstanding contributions to the theory or practice of AI.”

Specifically, he was recognized for his foundational and significant advancements in learning from imbalanced data, learning on graphs, and interdisciplinary applications of AI.

What we talk about when we talk about fake media online: fear and the future. The idea of a future filled with even more deep-fake videos, digital forgeries and online disinformation is enough to send real shivers of foreboding down our spines.

But not so for Walter Scheirer. Finding out what is fake online is one of Scheirer’s research specialties. Ask him about fake media, and he will tell you a positive story about the past.

Ye is a collegiate associate professor of computer science and engineering and the associate director of applied analytics in the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society. Her research focuses on AI, machine learning, data mining, cybersecurity, and public health, all of which she is applying to dismantle online opioid trafficking. Ye started exploring this issue in 2016 while a professor in West Virginia, the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. Since then, she has collaborated with law enforcement, psychiatrists, dietitians, and other computer scientists to understand the problem from all angles. Her work, including another project on opioid resiliency, has garnered attention and is being funded by groups including the National Science Foundation and the Department of Justice.

Technology like Ye’s is but one way the Department of Justice, including the DEA, is ramping up its strategy. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a “whole-of-government effort” to tackle the opioid crisis. It included indictments against a host of people and entities involved in producing and distributing fentanyl, sanctions from the Treasury Department, and $345 million in grants for education, prevention, and treatment. The DEA will continue to hunt and seize fentanyl—last year it seized 287 million deadly doses—and it will continue to support Red Ribbon Week, the largest and longest-running prevention campaign, along with take-back events and sites all over the country

Tim Weninger, the Frank M. Freimann Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, studies how coordinated social media campaigns have been used to incite violence, sow discord and threaten the integrity of democratic elections in Indonesia; to spread Chinese propaganda; and in the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine war and the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Research shows that in the lead-up to hostilities, there is an increase in dehumanizing political imagery that is remixed — cropped, altered or turned into individualized content — and reshared by the general population to evoke an emotional response.

“That is the bigger issue here,” Weninger said. “To gain support for either side you have to dehumanize the other. That’s what we’re seeing now — and we saw it with Russia and Ukraine. People are angry, they’re passionate, and we’re seeing denigration and dehumanization on both sides.”

“When it comes to peace, the first thing you have to do is share a common language. How do you translate that into the digital ecosystem is something that needs to be understood,” Weninger said. “I’m afraid we don’t understand how to do that quite yet.”

Born and raised in New York City, Uhran earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Manhattan College and a doctorate from Purdue University. He joined Notre Dame’s Department of Electrical Engineering in 1966.

Uhran’s teaching and research focused on communication theory and systems, signal processing and simulation techniques, as well as artificial intelligence, robotics and engineering education.

In 1990, Uhran and long-time colleague and collaborator Gene Henry, now professor emeritus of computer science, helped establish the Department of Computer Science and Engineering within the College of Engineering.

Uhran taught more than 20 different courses, and his teaching was recognized with multiple awards, including the Tau Beta Pi Most Valuable Instructor award and the ASEE Fluke Corporation Award for Outstanding Laboratory Instruction (1998). He became a fellow of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2014.

His passion for engineering education and commitment to students made him uniquely suited for the role of senior associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering, a position he occupied from 1991-2008.

Uhran is survived by his wife, Sue, as well as three children and eight grandchildren. Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at 9:30 a.m. Monday (October 9) at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Matthew Morrison, associate teaching professor in computer science and engineering, has been awarded a Google Visiting Faculty Research Fellowship.

His research project will focus on integrating semiconductor chip design software into K-12 and university curricula, with a goal of accelerating the training of semiconductor hardware professionals around the country.

John J. Uhran, Jr. died October 2nd, 2023, at the age of 87 at home with his family by his side. He was born on December 1st, 1935, and raised in Queens, New York to John J. Uhran, Sr and Lucille Coogan Uhran who proceeded him in death as did his brother Dr. George M. Uhran. On July 2nd, 1966, he married his loving wife, Sue, who survives along with his children, John R. (Theresa), Michael N. (Kathleen O'Connor) and Anna (William) Wasierski as well as eight grandchildren: Megan, Christopher, Gavin, Joshua, Abigail, Sarah, Sean and Katelyn.

John developed a love for teaching as a graduate student at Purdue University when he was offered a position as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and then as Instructor for which he was awarded Tau Beta Pi Most Valuable Instructor Award. During his academic years he was awarded numerous other honors such as Outstanding Engineering Graduate Award from Manhattan College Centennial, 1993. ASEE Fluke Corporation Award for excellence in laboratory instruction, 1998 and The Notre Dame Presidential Award in 2007.

At Notre Dame he guided many students in research projects resulting in degrees at all levels. The supported grants and solicited equipment acquired showed his interest in developing bright, well-prepared engineers. As Associate Dean he counseled numerous students, helping them to persevere through difficulties to see and reach their true potential and a Notre Dame degree. Seeing the benefits of foreign study for engineers, he developed programs in Dublin, Ireland, and Cambridge, UK and as well as encouraged many engineering students to attend the Summer London Program. Eventually he focused more and more on engineering education.

While Associate Dean of Engineering, he chaired a committee to make first year engineering more relevant for the engineering student at ND. He went on to start a conference on first-year engineering education called FYEE (First Year Engineering Education). It involved colleagues across the country, and it grew year by year to several hundred faculty and professionals. The main purpose of this meeting was to share ideas with others. John served in many areas of ASEE including being a Board member and several years the zone chairman. He was the organizer and chairman of many conference sessions. The highlight of his ASEE career was becoming a Fellow of ASEE. He also was active in (ABET) Accreditation Board for over 30 years.

Fanxin Kong (above near left) joined as assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Kong’s research area is cyber-physical systems (CPS) that enhance security and safety and facilitate resource management and coexistence among multiple autonomous agents. His work has applications in the development of autonomous vehicles and drones.

This roundtable will bring together, for the first time, three prominent computer hackers from the golden age of the underground hacking scene (the 1990s and early 2000s) in conversation with one of academia’s leading voices in the burgeoning field of hacker studies. Hackers have had an outsized influence on the technologies we use on a daily basis, but their story isn’t often told to the public. This event will be a unique window into the culture that helped bring us the modern Internet.

Morrison explains that although the U.S. government passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which will direct billions of dollars to support chip research, innovation, and manufacturing, “the big question is whether we will have the right people trained and ready. If we continue to educate students in microelectronics at current rates, we will fall 58% short by 2030.”

Morrison recently joined Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI). The initiative provides $50 million to support science, technology, engineering, arts, and math opportunities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs).

Through the initiative, Morrison is providing curriculum for semiconductor design that participating colleges and universities can use to develop programs for the next generation of chip designers.

Computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer takes a deep dive into the origins of fake news, conspiracy theories, reports of the paranormal, and other deviations from reality that have become part of mainstream culture, from image manipulation in the nineteenth-century darkroom to the literary stylings of large language models like ChatGPT. Scheirer investigates the origins of Internet fakes, from early hoaxes that traversed the globe via Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), USENET, and a new messaging technology called email, to today's hyperrealistic, AI-generated Deepfakes.

Xiaobo Sharon Hu, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has received the 2023 Marie R. Pistilli Women in Engineering Achievement Award from the Design Automation Conference (DAC). DAC is the largest industry event devoted to electronic computer-aided design.

Brianna Lynn Wimer, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a 2023 Google Ph.D. Fellow. The fellowship recognizes graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields.

Wimer’s research focuses on human-computer interaction and accessibility, specifically the computing needs of vision-impaired people. Her research is dedicated to developing technological solutions that ensure that people of all abilities can immerse themselves in and navigate visual data narratives.

The dark web has become an increasingly important landscape for the sale of illicit cyber goods. Given the prevalence of malware and tools that are used to steal data from individuals on these markets, it is crucial that every company, governing body, and cyber professional be aware of what information is sold on these marketplaces. Knowing this information will allow these entities to protect themselves against cyber attacks and from information breaches. In this paper, we announce the public release of a data set on dark web marketplaces’ cybersecurity-related listings. [...] Additionally, we share the tools and techniques we’ve compiled, enabling others to scrape dark web marketplaces at a significantly lower risk. We invite professionals who opt to gather data from the dark web to contribute to the publicly shared threat intelligence resource.

Some Context: https://social.ndlug.org/@pnutzh4x0r/110894458672708662

Generative algorithms have the ability to create new things, as opposed to simply analyzing existing things, which AI has traditionally been designed to do. This means that it’s always possible to have a meaningful new conversation with ChatGPT or get an inventive new scene out of Midjourney. By tapping into the imagination of these AIs, creative communities on the internet are laying the groundwork for elaborate fictional universes that will be accessible to a global audience. This has led to a great deal of tension, as journalists, policy-makers, and political activists have grown wary of the potential problems that might arise from an environment that is unmoored from an objective reality.

Nor can AI replicate every single facet of human ingenuity—it’s largely constrained by the data it was trained with. Thus, AI is not an exclusive competitor to human artists but something different. A better way to think about it is as a new medium, which one can choose to use, much like the situation artists found themselves in with the introduction of film photography in the nineteenth century and digital photography in the twentieth.

AI is a product of human ingenuity; thus, any AI necessarily carries with it some of the humanity that underpins creativity.

Does all of this social activity around AI tell us something about why it has become such a phenomenon on the internet? A common theme emerges in the digital communion between people and machines. The joy that comes from the shared experience of creating with others, be they real or artificial, is elevating that communion to something resembling McLuhan’s original vision for the internet.

It is not the existential risk we might think it is. It is an extension of who we are. It is indeed very good.

The award nomination cited Shi’s contributions to the deployment of high-performance, low latency and secure deep neural networks on edge devices. He also was recognized for his innovative approaches in deep learning algorithms and for the co-exploration of neural architectures and hardware designs.

The social impact of Shi’s work has been significant. He developed a framework for the diagnosis, treatment planning, and prognosis of congenital heart disease. A hardware module Shi developed was integrated in the Intensive Care Unit workflow at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where it provided accurate real-time identification of abnormal findings in chest radiographs. He also has developed a smart implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) which is now under clinical trial.

Congratulations to @ND_CSE Prof. Kevin Bowyer on being selected to receive the 2023 IEEE Biometrics Council Leadership Award that “is designed to honor outstanding leadership in the field of biometrics.”

For over 20 years, Dr. Hu has been an influential ambassador from the academic community to the design automation community. Dr. Hu’s has made outstanding research and development contributions in low-power system design, circuits and architectures for emerging technologies, real-time embedded systems, and hardware-software co-design. She has published more than 450 papers. Most were presented at the top design automation and real-time systems conferences including DAC, DATE, RTSS, RTAS, and ECRTS. Dr. Hu’s three most cited papers, two from DAC and one from TVLSI are on real-time scheduling and are responsible for over 1,100 citations alone. Her work has 11,000 citations in total. Dr. Hu is an ACM and IEEE Fellow and has received three best paper awards to date. She has recently joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a rotating Program Director in the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations.