Recent Events on Security, Privacy and Machine-Learning

The TerraSwarm Security and Privacy Meeting, September 16-17, was hosted by United Technologies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. The event attracted more than 30 attendees, including faculty and students from five universities (Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCSD, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania) as well as industry sponsors.

Participants were exposed to a mix of presentations by speakers from industry and academia, interactive demonstrations from RIT security personnel, and open discussions on topics of security and privacy for TerraSwarm applications. The breakout sessions identified threat models, security and privacy goals, and advances required to achieve these goals at all levels of the swarm architecture.

Preceding the Security & Privacy Meeting, a one-day Machine Learning Hands-On Workshop was offered. The goal of this hands-on workshop was to familiarize attendees with the work being done in Machine Learning within TerraSwarm. New faculty member, Jeff Bilmes (UWash) provided an overview of the Machine Learning Tools available. Ilge Akkaya (UCB) provided an overview of Ptolemy models for Machine Learning and Optimization for the swarm. After presentations, teams of 2 to 4 developed Machine Learning applications using various components of the SwarmOS.

Prabal Dutta Named one of the 'Brilliant Ten' by Popular Science Magazine

TerraSwarm faculty member Prabal Dutta was recently named one of the '2014 Brilliant Ten' by Popular Science Magazine.  Their annual list predicts  "tomorrow's Einsteins, Zuckerbergs and Marie Curies".

Popular Science Magazine explains why he was selected:

Dutta creates tiny sensors that scavenge energy from their surroundings so that they can run forever, ushering in the Internet of Things.

A University of Michigan article provides further detail about his work:

Dutta's technologies scale down to the very small. His architectures are enabling millimeter scale computers, among the tiniest in the world. So-called smart dust could one day be embedded all around us, helping us monitor our environment.

Dutta designs hardware and software for so-called smart dust and larger sensors that don't need batteries because they can harvest energy from the world around them. They can run on power from the light in a room, the magnetic field around an electrical wire, or the heat from a shower head, for example.

To read more about Prabal Dutta's work, go to:

• http://www.popsci.com/article/science/brilliant-ten-2014
• http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/22385-popular-science-puts-u-m-engineer-on-brilliant-ten-list

UPenn student Zhihao Jiang earns "Best in Session" Award at TECHCON 2014

University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Zhihao Jiang, was recently awarded Best in Session at SRC’s TECHCON 2014 in the Session on System Design Tools for his paper entitled Integrated Functional and Formal Modeling for Closed-loop Evaluation of Medical Device Software. Co-authors of the paper were Miroslav Pajic and Rahul Mangharam.

Their paper introduces a reconfigurable closed-loop testing platform for implantable cardiac devices which is part of their model-based software design framework.

According to co-author Rahul Mangharam: "Software accounts for the most rapid increase in reasons for recalls today.  Tools for rapid safety certification for software in life-critical medical devices are critical to the semiconductor industry. Speedy certification lowers the cost and barriers of entry in the high-margin medical devices industry. "

To read Jiang's award-winning paper or view his associated slide presentation or poster go to http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/358.html