Dr. Rekleitis Receives NSF Grant for Underwater Robots
We congratulate Dr. Ioannis Rekleitis for receiveing an NSF research award for his project titled "Enhancing Mapping Capabilities of Underwater Caves using Robotic Assistive Technology"
This project develops robotic assistive technologies to improve mapping capabilities of underwater caves. The project enables the practical construction of accurate volumetric models for water-filled caves. The technology of this robotic system can also be deployed on underwater vehicles enabling the autonomous exploration of caves and other underwater structures. Furthermore, the data and software, released under an open-source license, enable researchers to test algorithms on computer vision, state estimation, and sensor fusion, in challenging environments. The project integrates research and education through training graduate and undergraduate students and enhancing several graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of South Carolina.Full Abstract:
This project develops robotic assistive technologies to improve mapping capabilities of underwater caves. The project enables the practical construction of accurate volumetric models for water-filled caves. The technology of this robotic system can also be deployed on underwater vehicles enabling the autonomous exploration of caves and other underwater structures. The developed techniques can also be used in some applications of aerial and ground vehicles. Collected data from field deployments of the developed sensor are made available to the wider robotic, geological, and speleological research community through public-domain releases in order to further innovation. Furthermore, the data and software, released under an open-source license, enable researchers to test algorithms on computer vision, state estimation, and sensor fusion, in challenging environments. The project integrates research and education through training graduate and undergraduate students and enhancing several graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of South Carolina. The project also engages undergraduate students from Benedict College, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The collected data are used in outreach activities to recruit high-school students of the greater Columbia area in STEM education, engaging students and educators, particularly in underserved communities.
This research develops 3D reconstruction algorithms utilizing the environmental characteristic of a cave system. The research team studies robotic technologies for sensor fusion of multiple data streams in a single unit and validates experimentally the developed system via extensive testing in underwater cave explorations in collaboration with expert cave divers. The project introduces robotic technology to the underwater cave explorer community by capitalizing on existing practices in three steps: (a) deploying stereo cameras to be used in conjunction with structured light carried by the divers, (b) developing a bearing-only Cooperative Localization system for accurately recording the skeleton of explored caves; (c) developing a sensor suite that seamlessly integrates inertial measurement unit, sonar, depth, and visual data with state estimation algorithms for the volumetric mapping of the cave. The project enhances underwater cave mapping abilities by increasing: 1) the scale of the area mapped, 2) the safety of the divers by reducing their cognitive load during exploration and 3) the quality of the produced maps.
Dr. Hu Receives NVIDIA Hardware Grant for Deep Learning
Dr Jianjun Hu has received an equipment award from NVIDA corporation for his project on Breast Cancer Diagnosis with Deep learning based image and microarray analysis.
The main purpose of this project is to develop and apply methods in deep learning to solve problems in the emerging field of computational pathology of breast cancer using both large scale of histopathology images and microarray datasets. This project may lead to the development of novel data-driven diagnostic tools for cancer detection, risk prediction, and diagnosis.
Discovery Day Award Winners
We would like to congratulate our Discovery Day winners. Omar Ansari won a first place award for his poster "The use of remote telepresence in collegiate classrooms to facilitate eLearning". Steven Dao and Austin Pahl won a first place award for "Enhancing Interactor Experience in the Ward One App". Nicholas Weidner won second place for "Underwater Cave Mapping using Stereo Vision". Blakeley Hoffman won second place for "Cooperative Set Function Without Communication". Theodore Stone and Nathaniel Stone won an honarable mention for "Correlating a Smart Soccer Ball’s Impact Acceleration to Impact Force". Adel Alamri won an honarable mention for "Speech Signs - Signing with Children."
Full List of winners.Dr. Terejanu Receives Research Award
Dr. Gabriel Terejanu, along with Dr. Sourav Banerjee (Mechanical Engineering), Dr. Anindya Chanda and Dr. Robin Kloot (Environmental Health Sciences), has received an award from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)/USDA for a data collection project with the title "Using Cover Crops and Soil Health to Reduce Crop Stress and Aflatoxin Contamination". As part of this project the researchers will deploy a sensor network to collect environmental data from a cornfield in collaboration with a local farmer. The data will be used to develop and demonstrate a predictive framework for calculating aflatoxin occurrence in South Carolina cornfields prior to harvest. Aflatoxin is a carcinogenic toxin naturally produced by Aspergillus family of fungi (flavus, parasiticus) occurring in soil and decaying vegetation, which can contaminate corn along with other relevant South Carolina crops like peanuts and cotton before harvest and/or during storage. It is well know that aflatoxin exposure causes one of the deadliest cancers worldwide, namely liver cancer in humans and a variety of animal species. Prediction and control of aflatoxin contaminations before harvest are a fundamental challenge for US grain industry, poultry producers, and makers of dairy products. The predictive model will be used to continuously monitor the aflatoxin incidence in cornfields and provide the farmers with actionable information regarding the best time to harvest and efficient isolation of contaminated areas, as well as testing the role of cover crops and irrigation in plant stress regulation and aflatoxin contamination.
Lin Wins National Award for Outstanding Chinese Student
We are happy to announce that Yuewei Lin, one of our graduating Ph.D. students and also this year’s department Outstanding Graduate Researcher, just received a 2015 "National Award for Outstanding Self-financed Chinese Students Studying Abroad" by China Scholarship Council. The cash prize amount is $6,000. This award was founded by the Chinese government with the purpose of rewarding the academic excellence of self-financed Chinese students studying overseas, encouraging them to return or serve the motherland in various forms, showing the government's care to self-financed Chinese students.Bottorff Wins Caroliniana Leadership Award
We are happy to announce that Maribeth Bottorff has received the Caroliniana Leadership Award. This award recognizes senior undergraduate students who have been the tireless, behind the scene workers that every successful activity or organization needs. They are leaders through their actions and contributions to the Carolina community. Maribeth is a Computer Science major with a minor in Chemistry and has made significant contributions to the Women in Computing Group, the CSE Student Advisory Council, and the Grace Hopper Conference trip. She will receive her Bachelor's degree this semester and has accepted a job at Google.
Bio:
Maribeth is a Computer Science major with a minor in Chemistry and is truly an outstanding student. She has been very active representing the university and mentoring younger female students. She was a founding member of the Women in Computing Group where she served as Vice President and then Co-President. She was instrumental in forming the CSE Student Advisory Council and having a suggestion box added to our website. She has made many suggestions for improving the educational experience for our students.
She led a group of 17 students to the Grace Hopper Conference, celebrating the contributions of women to the computing field. Attendees were inspired by hearing from female CIOs and other leaders in the field. Top companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft were there to meet and interview attendees. With her outstanding credentials, Maribeth recently landed a job at Google.
Her “Ward One” project for her Critical Interactives course is an IPhone app that makes history come to life for the current residents of Ward One. By combining stories from previous residents, current and historical views of the area, it hopes to engender empathy, compassion, and critical discussions about the role urban renewal has played in our city’s history. She presented this to the residents of Ward One, at the SEC Academic Conference, and at the Carolina Women in Computing Conference. She will be presenting at Discovery Day in April and graduating with Leadership Distinction. Her leadership will be sorely missed by me personally and the department in general. She has been truly outstanding, a once in a decade student.
She will receive her Bachelor's degree this semester and has accepted a job at Google.Cyber Defense Team Places Second
The USC Cyber Defense Team placed second at the 2016 Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition in Charleston on April 10, 2016. This annual competition between eight SC colleges and universities is designed to challenge the students to keep a virtual network of computers and devices secure while a "red team" of computer attackers is trying to compromise them. In this year's scenario, the students were tasked with defending a medical supply company's digital assets while maintaining business operations (delivering medical supplies to four virtual hospitals by deploying a fleet of supply trucks through an online interface.) They also had to perform digital investigations of malicious files using forensic techniques.
This competition tests six students' abilities to communicate and work as a team, as well as their technical skills and abilities to adapt and learn new technologies on the fly. "It's like juggling biting geese, while balancing on a beach ball rolling down a steep 2-inch wide ramp - as a team. And you've juggled before, but never with biting geese, so you have to learn that technique as you go," says mentor Ronni Wilkinson. One rock star team member, Dylan Madisetti, rewrote the truck management application so that it automatically deployed the supply trucks where they were needed without human intervention. He put his automated application on a computer that the red team was not attacking, so that when the rest of the network went down, the virtual hospitals were still getting their supplies.
Students really appreciate competitions like this because they test the skills that they are going to be using later in the workplace when they graduate. Clemson University came in first place, while the Citadel took third.Embedded Systems Textbook
Dr. Jason Bakos is the author of a new textbook titled "Embedded Systems: ARM Programming and Optimization".This textbook combines an exploration of the ARM architecture with an examination of the facilities offered by the Linux operating system to explain how various features of program design can influence processor performance. It demonstrates methods by which a programmer can make changes to code without changing program semantics, but have a significant impact on code performance.
From the Back Cover
The modern consumer electronics industry as we know it owes much of its success and popularity to two technologies: the ARM processor and the Linux operating system. ARM processor technology powers nearly all modern mobile devices—and most of these processors run the Linux operating system. It’s no exaggeration to say that having an understanding of embedded system design and development from the context of ARM and Linux technology is an important asset in today’s world. This textbook combines an exploration of the ARM architecture with an examination of the facilities offered by the Linux operating system to explain how various features of program design can influence processor performance. It demonstrates methods by which a programmer can make changes to code without changing program semantics, but have a significant impact on code performance. Several applications, including image transformations, fractal generation, image convolution, and computer vision tasks, are used to describe and demonstrate these methods. From this, the reader will gain insight into computer architecture and application design, as well as gain practical knowledge in the area of embedded software design for modern embedded systems.About the Author
Jason D. Bakos is an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He received a BS in Computer Science from Youngstown State University in 1999 and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. Dr. Bakos’s research focuses on mapping data- and compute-intensive codes to high-performance, heterogeneous, reconfigurable, and embedded computer systems. His group works closely with FPGA-based computer manufacturers Convey Computer Corporation, GiDEL, and Annapolis Micro Systems, as well as GPU and DSP manufacturers NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Advantech. Dr. Bakos holds two patents, has published over 30 refereed publications in computer architecture and high performance computing, was a winner of the ACM/DAC student design contest in 2002 and 2004, and received the US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2009. He is currently serving as associate editor for ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems.Dr. Tong Receives ONR Research Award
Dr. Yan Tong, along with Dr. Chen Li from the Mechanical Engineering department, has received a research award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for a research project on "Bubble Dynamics in a Confined Domain."
As part of this project they will develop a fully automatic vision-based technique for detecting L-Vinterfaces.
Abstract:
As one of the most promising solutions to cool high power devices owing to its potentials of high heat transfer rate with a low pumping power, flow boiling has been extensively studied in the last decade. Bubble dynamics is the key to understand fundamentals of boiling heat transfer. Studies have been performed to understand transport phenomenon including evaporation during bubble nucleation and growth phase as well as condensation on bubble surface in stagnant subcooled liquid. However, bubble or vapor slug dynamics during flow boiling in microchannels after departure has not been studied. In addition, criteria of vapor bubble collapse has not been Bubble/vapor slug dynamics is governed by two important phenomena: (1) evaporation during bubble nucleation and growth phase and (2) bubble condensation in subcooled liquid. Bubble or vapor slug dynamics in a confined domain is significantly different from that in an ordinary domain due to the restriction by the channel wall. We hypothesize that bubble collapse-coalesce after departure and the physics resulting in bubble growth, shrink, collapse, and merge should be equally important to the bubble nucleation and departure, if not more important, in determining two-phase flow pattern and transport performances.
In this project, we seek to conduct systematic studies to understand the bubble/vapor slug dynamics in a confined subcooled flow boiling condition in order to better understand flow boiling in mini/microchannels or gaps. Specifically, we will experimentally and numerically study bubble departure diameter and frequency, onset of nucleate boiling, criteria of bubble collapse, and particularly, average and local liquid-vapor (L-V) interfacial heat transfer coefficient under various flow and heat transfer conditions. Accurate measurements of fluid temperature are extremely challenging, but critical to quantify important governing parameters of bubble dynamics. Two approaches will be explored and evaluated to measure average and local fluid temperature distribution. These two approaches are (1) to directly measure fluid temperature using suspended micro resistors and (2) to directly measure local fluid temperature using a nanosensor array. The nanosensors are made from encapsulated RhB fluorophores. A fully automatic vision-based technique will be developed to detect L-V interfaces and to estimate the motion of the interface by non-rigid image registration and onsite-calibration. This vision-based technique is essential to reduce massive data from high-speed optical images to assure a consistent data reduction process.
The knowledge obtained through this project will greatly extend knowledge of two-phase transport at the microscale and would be critically important in further advancing a number of emerging technologies, such as micro-heat exchangers, microfluidic thrusters, microbubble-driven pumps, and microfluidic logics. More importantly, the success of this fundamental research will advance theoretical base in realizing promising two-phase cooling technologies. This will accelerate the development of highly efficient two-phase cooling technologies to manage waste heat for DoN high power sensors and weapon systems and therefore to enable superior defensive/offensive capabilities of the next generation warships.