My Computer Science & Engineering Department

WISTV news has featured Dr. Farkas in a story about the security of local government websites.

These protocols provide authentication which is based on the digital certificate for the server. As well as agreeing on a cyber suite that can be used to protect the communication, provide confidentiality and integrity.

Last week, three of our cyber defense team members competed in an international online contest, the US Cyber Challenge's CyberQuests 2014. This was an individual event, and each of our students placed in the top 100. Although the totals aren't announced yet for this year, last year, more than 1400 students competed in this contest. Congratulations to: Yasemin Pak: 19th place, Alex Cummings: 20th place, Catharine West: 71st place.

Dr. Nelakuditi and Dr. Xu's research into how your phone's accelerometer emits a unique data “fingerprint” that could allow your phone to be tracked, even if all other privacy settings are locked down, has been featured in MIT Technology Review, The Huffington Post, and The Telegraph.

Armed with a big idea and a short email list, Zoher Bharmal (MS, Computer Science’98) started a unique effort to fund scholarships for computer science students at USC.

Bharmal, who is an employee at Microsoft’s Irving, Texas facility, wanted to establish an endowment to give back to the university where he and his wife, Farida, earned their degrees. But he could not fully fund the $25,000 required to endow a scholarship.

We would like to congratulate Victor Reynolds, a Computer Science major, for winning a Magellan Scholar award for the Summer-Fall 2014 for his project titled "Romantic-Era Lyrics."

Dr. Beer made an appearance on the IT Minute podcast. In this interview she discusses her research in assistive technology and her ART LAB.

The students in our Capstone Project class, all Seniors, form teams every year in order to design and develop a sophisticated app for an independent customer. This year there were 14 apps developed: web apps, iphone apps, android apps, and desktop apps. The projects vary, from a mobile-accessible database for maintaining geological samples, to mobile apps for monitoring queue lengths at voting stations, to a tablet app for viewing historical maps. You can watch video demonstrations below and get links to the projects' websites. You can also see photos of the students doing live demos.

Two of our graduate students, Sanorita Dey and Nirupam Roy, have won the Outstanding Thesis Award, presented as part of Annual Graduate Student Day at USC. We are very privileged to have two students win this award, a rare event. We are confident that they will keep such accolades coming.

The USC Cyber Defense Team placed Second in the state-wide Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition held yesterday in Charleston! The Team, consisting of Alex Cummings, Brian Flick, Jonathan Kilby, Patrick McIntyre, Aadel Ragaban captain, and Catharine West have been training and practicing with the expert assistance of Ronni Wilkinson and Joey Eckstrom.

We congratulate the following graduate students for receiving recognition for their outstanding work. Aspen Olmsted, was named Outstanding Graduate Researcher, Computer Science & Engineering. James O'Reilly was named Outstanding Teaching Assistant, Computer Science & Engineering. They will be listed in the Graduate Student Day Awards Ceremony bulletin.