My Computer Science and Engineering Department

The iCAS Lab, directed by Dr. Ramtin Zand, has just published an outreach audiobook on the science communication channel, SciPod! 

The audiobook highlights a recently awarded NSF CAREER project: "Heterogeneous Neuromorphic and Edge Computing Systems for Realtime Machine Learning Technologies." Tailored for a general audience, it emphasizes the potential broader impacts of the research, particularly in real-time sign language translation.

The audiobook is available on all major streaming services. We invite you to listen and reach out to Dr. Zand at ramtin@cse.sc.edu if you are interested in collaborating to advance real-time AI and ML technologies for assistive applications and beyond! The iCAS Lab is also looking to recruit undergraduate research assistants for this exciting project!

Link to Audiobook: Dr Ramtin Zand | A Hybrid System for Real-Time Sign Language Translation • scipod.global

Navigating the ever-changing world of technology, Sara Hendrix, a senior computer information systems student and Carolina Scholar, has forged a path defined by adaptability, innovation, and leadership. And she still has time to showcase her creative side through theatre. 

Hendrix’s college journey began with groundbreaking research in neuromorphic technology, working alongside Computer Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Ramtin Zand. Neuromorphic technology is a field of computer science that aims to mimic the human brain’s function, and her project focused on bridging communication gaps by developing a system to translate American Sign Language (ASL) into English, a cause she is deeply passionate about. Read the rest here.

If you ask Emma McBride about the role that computers and technology have played in her life, she can’t answer fast enough.  

“I grew up doing robotics through elementary, middle and high school,” says the senior South Carolina Honors College computer science major. “My dad was into technology, and so he would always be coming home with different computer parts, and he’d bring me and my sisters up to the office and be like, ‘All right, guys, look at this, what does this do?’”

For Madeleine McBride, sophomore Honors computer information systems student, her fascination with all things cyber developed upon her arrival to the University of South Carolina.  Read the rest of the article here.

Computer science doctoral candidate Aakriti Adhikari is making this technology a reality through her dissertation. With next generation wireless networks looking to merge high-speed data connectivity with sensing, Adhikari’s work focuses on reconfiguring existing 5G and beyond at-home networking devices with sensing capabilities to enable healthcare applications. Read full article here.

Computer Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Forest Agostinelli has received a nearly $350,000, three-year National Science Foundation grant to study the use of heuristic (experimental) search and machine learning to solve complex pathfinding problems. Agostinelli’s project is expected to advance artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that solve problems faster or find approximate solutions. Read full article here.

We are proud to report the following new research awards received by our faculty:

• Csilla Farkas, "Department of Defense Cyber Scholarship Program 2024-2025", funded by Department of Defense (DOD)
• Forest Agostinelli, "Scalable Learning in Heuristic Search", funded by National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Amit Sheth, "Enhancing the Security and Mitigating Bias in Vision Language Models to Combat Hateful Image Generation and Detoxify Hateful Images", funded by National Science Foundation (NSF)

We are pleased to announce that Aakriti Adhikari, a PhD student working for Dr Sur, has been awarded the Best Doctoral Consortium Presentation Award at the Richard Tapia Conference 2024. She has also been invited to a seminar talk at UT Austin in Spring 2025.

According to Forbes Advisor, the artificial intelligence market is expected to reach $407 billion by 2027. In addition, 64% of businesses believe that AI will help increase their overall productivity, which indicates a growing confidence in its potential to transform business operations. Homayoun Valafar, director of the Artificial Intelligence Institute of South Carolina (AIISC) and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is looking forward to leading efforts for the institute to provide resources and outreach opportunities to the university and Columbia area communities. Read full article here.

Professor Vignesh Narayanan from the Artificial Intelligence Institute of the University of South Carolina recently started an NSF-funded research project that aims to understand the vulnerabilities of learning-based controllers and enhance an understanding of possible cyberattacks.  Read full article here.

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) at the University of South Carolina (USC), the first 2024 South Carolina AI4Science Summer Camp for high school students was a resounding success. The camp was organized by a distinguished team led by computer science Professor Jianjun Hu and Professor Ming Hu from Mechanical Engineering along with Professor Sophya Garashchuk from Chemistry, Paul Sagona from Research Computing, and Krystal Dubose, Director of Enrollment Management at CEC of USC. This successful camp is a demonstration of our faculty’s dedication and commitment to outreach activities for the public in South Carolina.

The 12-day camp (from July 22 to August 2nd,2024) featured a blend of in-person and online experiences, with two onsite meetings at USC and 10 days of online tutorials and project assistance via Zoom. 16 students from 11 high schools across South Carolina participated in the camp, which included professional and passionate talks by USC’s leading experts on AI4Science, hands-on tutorials on applying machine learning to materials science led by Ph.D. student teaching assistants (Nicholas Micklaucic, Qinyang Li, and Lai Wei), free lunches sponsored by CEC of USC, and a visit to the newly funded, million-dollar high-performance supercomputer (NSF Award #2320292). The students also faced exciting challenges during their final projects and celebrated the culmination of their efforts with the awarding of AI4Science Summer Camp certificates. The camp introduced students to AI applications in materials and molecular science, including property prediction, crystal structure prediction, and materials informatics analysis. The camp concluded with a final project competition, showcasing the students' innovative work. The winners were:

• Gold Medal Team: Caleb Liu, Annie Xu, Sophie Xu, and Justus Sumpter. Project topic: machine learning models for thermoelectric property prediction.
• Silver Medal Team: Anthony Fu, Jonathan Fu, and Jennifer Liu. Project topic: computational algorithms for crystal structure prediction.
• Bronze Medal Team: Miguel Shim, Olivia Li, and Joseph Song. Project topic: materials informatics analysis of superconductors.

For more information about the camp, please visit AI4Science Summer Camp. We encourage and welcome more students to take advantage of this valuable opportunity for scientific exploration in the emerging field of AI for Science in Summer 2025.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Ramtin Zand has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to study computing systems for real-time machine learning technologies. Zand’s five-year, nearly $600,000 project is expected to produce smaller, faster and smarter machine learning computing systems for use in real-world applications without reliance on large servers. Read full article here.

The AI Institute at the University of South Carolina is happy to announce the inauguration of the following activities as part of its second phase of operation. As the primary objectives of enhancing research and educational capacity, engaging the broader community, and developing a modern workforce, the AI Institue@USC is happy to announce the following activities:

AI Roundtable Discussion: Join us in a 2-hour meeting when an AI-related topic (suggested by the USC community) is presented by a panel of experts (during the first hour) and discussed by the broader community of participants and experts (during the second hour). The topics will be suggested by the participants and selected based on popularity. First Friday of the month. Registration form. 

AI-ification: Present your research that can benefit from modern AI approaches to a panel of friendly and knowledgeable AI practitioners during the first hour of this meeting. During the second hour of the meeting, the panel will brainstorm and recommend ways of integrating modern AI techniques into your existing research. Form new collaborations and partnerships during the brainstorming session, take the formed ideas to AI-athon, and embark on your path to Deep AI-ification. Second Friday of the month. Registration form.

AI-athon: Bring your data, research problem, and a potential Machine Learning approach (perhaps developed during AI-ification) for full implementation during a one-day hands-on workshop. The AII will provide space and expertise to guide you through installation, coding, and development of a Machine Learning engine. To remain effective, we aim to offer a low participant-to-instructor ratio, therefore, space is limited. At the end of this one-day workshop, you will walk away with a functional ML engine, the knowledge of how to improve the core engine, and have formed a collaborative research in AI/ML. Third Friday of the month. Registration form.

What if your Spotify playlist could help you learn another language? Thanks to the Lyraquist app, developed by five College of Engineering and Computing seniors, that possibility will soon be a reality.

At the South Carolina Honors College Thesis Symposium on Friday, April 12, Siri Avula, Ashley Bickham, Vivian D’Souza, Mahi Patel and Tanvi Singh unveiled their CEC capstone project: the Lyraquist app. The five women, four of whom—Avula, D’Souza, Patel and Singh—are Honors students, designed Lyraquist to sync with a user’s Spotify Premium playlist. As users listen to songs in French, German and Spanish, the app utilizes Google translate to offer word-for-word English translations of the lyrics. Read the full article here.

Forest Agostinelli gave a Master Class at the 17th International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS) on Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, and Heuristic Search. The one-hour talk covered his research group’s advancements in the combination of machine learning and heuristic search and its application to problems such as the Rubik’s cube, quantum algorithm compilation, and reaction mechanism prediction.

A Better Assessment provides a quick history of Dr. Agostinelli's work.

The iCAS lab, directed by Dr. Ramtin Zand, won the first-place award at the 2024 University Demonstration at DAC, The Chips to Systems Conference for the project titled "HiRISE: High-Resolution Image Scaling for Edge ML via In-Sensor Compression and Selective ROI."

Demo by: Brendan Reidy and Peyton Chandarana, Ph.D. Research Assistants

Project Description: With the rise of tiny IoT devices powered by machine learning (ML), many researchers have directed their focus toward compressing models to fit on tiny edge devices. Recent works have achieved remarkable success in compressing ML models for object detection and image classification on microcontrollers with small memory, e.g., 512kB SRAM. However, there remain many challenges prohibiting the deployment of ML systems that require high-resolution images. Due to fundamental limits in memory capacity for tiny IoT devices, it may be physically impossible to store large images without external hardware. To this end, we propose a high-resolution image scaling system for edge ML, called HiRISE, which is equipped with selective region-of-interest (ROI) capability leveraging analog in-sensor image scaling. Our methodology not only significantly reduces the peak memory requirements, but also achieves up to 17.7x reduction in data transfer and energy consumption.

Paper Authors: Brendan Reidy, Sepehr Tabrizchi, MohammadReza Mohammadi, Shaahin Angizi, Arman Roohi, and Ramtin Zand

Dr. Sanjib Sur has received grant awards for his two projects:

• "Precision Processing of Autonomous Maritime Perception System Data - Phase III" funded by Office of Naval Research (ONR)/DOD
• "Advanced Perception for Autonomous Platforms in the Littorals" funded by Office of Naval Research (ONR)/DOD