Bina Ramamurthy

Nexos: a next generation embedded systems laboratory

The Nexos Project is a joint effort at Marquette University (MU) and University of Buffalo (UB) to build curriculum materials and a supporting experimental laboratory for hands-on projects in embedded systems courses. Our approach focuses on inexpensive, flexible, commodity embedded hardware, (the Linksys WRT54GL wireless router,) freely available development and debugging tools, and a fresh implementation of a classic operating system that is now ideal for embedded system exploration. The prototype laboratory environment is being used in multiple courses at our respective Universities, with excellent results. We report on the infrastructure we have developed, the goals and content of our initial course offerings at both schools, and an evaluation of our success thus far.

A Practical and Sustainable Model for Learning and Teaching Data Science

This paper details our experiences with design and implementation of data science curriculum at University at Buffalo (UB). We discuss (i) briefly the history of project, (ii) a certificate program that we created, (iii) a data-intensive computing course that forms the core of the curriculum and (iv) some of the challenges we faced and how we addressed them. Major goal of the project was to improve the preparedness of our workforce for the emerging data-intensive computing area. We measured this through assessment of student learning on various concepts and topics related to data-intensive computing. We also discuss the best practices in building a data science program. We highlight the importance of external funding support and multi-disciplinary collaborations in the success of the project. The pedagogical resources created for the project are freely available to help educators and other learners navigate the path to learning data science. We expect this paper about our experience will provide a road map for educators who desire to introduce data science in their curriculum.

Emerging areas in computer science education

Computer Science is an evolving discipline. It continues to reinvent itself every 5-7 years. In order to keep up, Computer Science educators have had to continually modify the curriculum, either changing existing courses or introducing new ones. It is next to impossible for educators to keep abreast of all the developments in the discipline - learning a new area can place substantial demands on their time and effort.Therefore, this panel is intended as a quick introduction to some of the emerging areas and practices in Computer Science that deserve inclusion in the undergraduate curriculum. The panelists will present four new emerging areas - Grid Computing, Cybersecurity, Bioinformatics, and Robotics in the traditional Artificial Intelligence course. Each panelist will present a typical syllabus, list sample resources, and recount his/her experience developing the course. It is hoped that this panel will help interested faculty adopt successful practices.

A New Efficient Signature Technique for Process Monitoring in Critical Systems

A new simple, inexpensive and time/space efficient signature technique for process monitoring is presented. In this technique, signatures are accumulated to form an m-out-of-n code and the corresponding locations in the memory are tagged. During the run-time, the generated signatures at the tagged locations are monitored using a simple hardware to determine whether they form m-out-of-n codes. This approach offers flexible error latency and high coverage. Results of an experiment conducted to verify the latency are presented. The main advantage of our approach is the requirement of no reference signatures unlike existing techniques leading to both memory and run-time execution time savings. The flexible latency and the low cost hardware will make this technique suitable for critical applications where quick detection of errors is deemed important.

Wireless architecture for access to remote services (WiARS) (poster session)

Our research involves the creation of a plug and play environment where different devices and services can be made to function together effortlessly. Currently the connection of any entity to another entity, through a network, needs prior setup and configuration. We aim to design an architecture, which requires minimal setup processes or none, for easy access to remote services using the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Jini.