My Computer Science and Engineering Department

The availability and easy access of large scale experimental and computational materials data have enabled the emergence of accelerated development of algorithms and models for materials property prediction, structure prediction, and generative design of materials. However, lack of user-friendly materials informatics web servers has severely constrained the wide adoption of such tools in the daily practice of materials screening, tinkering, and design space exploration by materials scientists. Herein Dr. Jianjun Hu's team developed http://materialsatlas.org, a web based materials informatics toolbox for materials discovery, which includes a variety of routinely needed tools for exploratory materials discovery, including materials composition and structure check (e.g. for neutrality, electronegativity balance, dynamic stability, Pauling rules), materials property prediction (e.g. band gap, elastic moduli, hardness, thermal conductivity), and search for hypothetical materials, and fool-proof machine learning of user-specified datasets.  These user-friendly tools can be freely accessed at http://materialsatlas.org. This materials informatics apps will greatly ease the pains in exploratory materials discovery. 

Dr. Amit Sheth has received the following funding awards:

• National Institute on Deafness & Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)/NIH for "AI/ML-Readiness for Neuroimaging of Language (NIH Supplement)"
• SC Research Authority (SCRA) for "Enabling Factory to Factory (F2F) Networking for Future Manufacturing across South Carolina"

Dr. Amit Sheth has received a research award from Wipro Limited for his project "Percuro".

Dr. Biplav Srivastava has received a research awarard from Tantiv4 Inc. for his project "Analysis of Power IoT data for management of infrastructure". 

Dr. Jianjun Hu of the Machine Learning and Evolutionary Laboratory (MLEG) has received a project award titled "Deep Learning Accelerated Inverse Design of Lab-Scale Energy Efficient Heterojunctions for Wide-Bandgap Devices" which is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) with his collaborators from Department of Mechanical Engineering, USC including Prof. Ming Hu, Prof. Chen Li, Prof. Dongkyu Lee.

This work will extend the great success of deep learning in computer vision and natural language processing into data driven materials inverse design which may dramatically speed up conventional materials discovery processes.

Dr. Pooyan Jamshidi has received an NSF research award for his project on "Causal Performance Debugging for Highly-Configurable Systems" and another NSF research award for a joint project with colleagues in the Math department on "Mathematical Foundation of Data Science at University of South Carolina."

Abstract (Casual Debugging)

Software performance is critical for most software systems to achieve scale and limit operating costs and energy consumption. As modern software systems, such as big data and machine-learning systems, are increasingly built by composing many reusable infrastructure components and deployed on distributed and heterogeneous hardware, developers have powerful tools and abstractions at their fingertips, and as a result face immense configuration complexity... The project is intended to initiate a paradigm shift in today's testing and debugging methodology for complex, highly configurable systems, thereby positively impacting a broad range of industrial sectors relying on complex, highly configurable systems. Specifically, the project contributes to substantial energy savings and reduced carbon emissions, especially for the many big-data and machine-learning systems that operate at a massive scale. Finally, the research is providing valuable training for involved students from diverse backgrounds in research and generating high-quality researchers and practitioners for society.

Abstract (Data Science at UofSC)

This Research Training Group (RTG) project is a joint effort of Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Engineering. It aims to develop a multi-tier Research Training Program at the University of South Carolina (UofSC) designed to prepare the future workforce in a multidisciplinary paradigm of modern data science. The education and training models will leverage knowledge and experience already existing among the faculty and bring in new talent to foster mathematical data science expertise and research portfolios through a vertical integration of post-doctoral research associates, graduate students, undergraduate students, and advanced high school students.

Dr. Amit Sheth has received an NSF research award for his project titled  "Advancing Neuro-symbolic AI with Deep Knowledge-infused Learning."

Abstract

The first wave of AI termed symbolic AI, focused on explicit knowledge. The current second wave of AI is termed statistical AI. The deep learning techniques have been able to exploit large amounts of data and massive computational power to improve upon human levels of performance in narrowly defined tasks. Separately, knowledge graphs emerged as a powerful tool to capture and exploit an extensive amount and variety of explicit knowledge to make algorithms better understand the content, and enable the next generation of data processing, such as in semantic search. Now, we herald towards the third wave of AI built on what is termed as the neuro-symbolic approach that combines the strengths of statistical and symbolic AI. Combining the respective powers and benefits of using knowledge graphs and deep learning is particularly attractive. This has led to the development of an approach we have called knowledge-infused (deep) learning. This project will advance the currently limited forms of combining the knowledge graphs and deep learning, called shallow and semi-diffusion, with a more advanced form called deep-infusion, that will support stronger interleaving of more variety of knowledge at different levels of abstraction with layers in a deep learning architecture.
 

Dr. Yan Tong, along with Dr. Chen Li from Mechanical Engineering, has received a research award from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS)/NSF for "Understanding the Gravity Effect on Flow Boiling Through High-Solution Experiments and Machine Learning."

Abstract

The challenging objective of developing the deep models of flow boiling will be achieved by three major research tasks... A generative adversarial network (GAN)-based model will be developed to create images of two-phase flow patterns so as to establish a framework to understand and even quantify the effects of major forces on extremely complex two-phase flow patterns.
 

Dr. Hu has received a research award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)/NIH for his project on "Patterns and predictors of viral suppression: A Big Data approach."

Dr. Tang has received a research award from the SC Space Grant Consortium/NASA EPSCoR for his project "Adventures in Computer Gaming: Programming Outreach through Game Design" with William Hobbs.

Pooyan Jamshidi, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, is a principal investigator on a three-year $500,000 NSF collaborative grant to develop the intelligence and computing capabilities for a smart device dubbed SmartSight. The platform will enable on-device artificial intelligence to improve real-time perception for blind and visually impaired users. Read the full story at A new way to 'see'.

We would like to congratulate Dr. Qiang Zeng for acquiring a National Science Foundation (NSF) research award for his project titled "Towards Understanding and Handling Problems Due to Coexistence of Multiple IoT Platforms."

This year the students in the Senior Capstone course developed 40 apps either for industrial clients, for USC members, or for themselves. There were:

• 11 web applications using technologies such as Django, node, express, Angular, react, Vue, firebase, AWS.
• 21 mobile apps using Android, XCode, iOnic, react native, firebase.
• 8 desktop apps using technologies such as Unity and .NET C#.

You can watch video demos and see screenshots of all the apps right now! If you are interested in having students build an app for you, note that we are looking for clients for next year.

Dr. Jason O’Kane (PI) and Dr. Yiannis Rekleitis (Co-PI) have received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to host an REU Site on "Applied Computational Robotics".

Dr. Chin-Tser Huang has been selected as a recipient of the 2021 Distinguished Research Service Award. The Office of the Vice President for Research created this award in 2018 to recognize faculty throughout the UofSC system who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to UofSC’s research community through service as a reviewer and committee member for UofSC’s internal funding and awards programs.

We are excited to announce that our own Hunter Damron has received the prestigious NSF GRFP fellowship award. He is one of 6 UofSC students that received the award this year.