CS Department Hosts Three Conferences in October
During the last two weeks of October, the CS Department at UT Dallas played host to three prominent computer science conferences. SecureComm 2015, the 11th EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, took place from October 26th to the 30th. IEEE MASS 2015, the 12th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), was held from October 19th to 23rd. In parallel with IEEE MASS, the CS Department hosted the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (IHCI) as well (read more about IHCI 2015 here).
Both SecureComm and IEEE MASS had UT Dallas CS faculty serve as conference chairs. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, a UT Dallas CS Professor, and executive director of the UT Dallas Cyber Security Research and Education Institute, served as general chair for the SecureComm 2015 Conference. Dr. Ravi Prakash, UT Dallas CS professor, served as local arrangements chair for the IEEE MASS 2015 Conference.
SecureComm, considered by many as one of the premier conferences in cyber security, was attended by cyber security experts from across the world. In addition to UT Dallas CS Department, the conference was sponsored by the UT Dallas Cyber Security Institute, the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, European Alliance for Innovation (EAI), Create-Net, and EAI Endorsed Transactions. SecureComm2015 provided the opportunity for researchers, technologists, and industry specialists in cyber security to meet and exchange ideas and information. The conference program included special sessions, industrial presentations, demonstration sessions, and technical papers – selected through peer reviews by the program committee members. In addition, there were multiple workshops and two invited keynote speakers. The conference received 107 submissions of which 29 were selected as full papers and 25 as poster presentations. Conference sessions focused on all aspects on techniques and applications in cyber security research and included topics such as:
- Mobile System and Software Security
- Cloud Security
- Privacy and Side Channels
- Web and Network Security
- Cryptography, Protocol and Models
Dr. Engin Kirda, a Computer Science professor at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, delivered a keynote talk titled “Evasive Malware in the Wild: Evolving to Evade Detections.” His talk aimed at shedding a light on the latest behaviors, payloads, and prevalence of evasive malware. Dr. Joe St Sauver, a scientist at Farsight Security and a former professor of 28 years at the University of Oregon, discussed the program of work undertaken to address concerns by the anti-Pervasive Monitoring SIG at M3AAWG, in his talk titled “What Must We Do? Industry Reactions to Pervasive Monitoring Programs.”
IEEE MASS 2015 is a three-track conference sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the National Science Foundation, drawing participants from across five continents. The 12th Annual IEEE MASS Conference aimed at addressing research advances in mobile ad-hoc and sensor systems related to (i) algorithms and theory, (ii) systems, protocols, and applications, and (iii) experimental evaluations and testbeds, covering topics ranging from theoretical foundations to applications and testbed development.
In addition to regular technical paper presentations, the conference included a poster and demo session, four associated workshops, and two keynote speakers. The poster presentations afforded student researchers the opportunity for direct interaction with faculty, researchers, industry personnel, as well as their peers. The IEEE MASS 2015 demo session provided an interactive platform for wireless ad hoc and sensor network researchers and developers from industry, academia, and government to connect and explore latest, ongoing research.
The conference featured two keynote speakers, Dr. Rahul Mangharam, and Dr. Jie Liu. Dr. Mangharam, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering and the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered his keynote talk, “Three Challenge Problems with Cyber Physical Systems and IoT.” The talk centered around the discussion of three challenge problems where computation and communication are tightly coupled to control large, complex and “messy” plants. Dr. Liu, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research-NeXT and the director of its project VESTA, Microsoft Reaserch’s Venture on Embedded Sensing Technologies and Applications (previously known as the Sensing and Energy Research Group — SERG), presented his keynote speech titled “Indoor Location Sensing: Where are we?” During his talk, Dr. Liu gave an overview of typical localization paradigms and representative solutions to derive a view that indoor location sensing is a tradeoff between infrastructure complexity, mobile device complexity, and accuracy.
Since its formation in 2004, IEEE MASS also has been offering a range of associated workshops that cover special topics and applications in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Some of the workshops in this year’s conference included CellulAR Traffic Offloading to Opportunistic Networks, Content Centric Networking, Fourth Annual IEEE International Workshop on Mission-Oriented Wireless Sensor Networking (IEEE MiSeNet 2015), The First International Workshop on Social Sensing (SocialSens 2015), and the Tutorial on Machine-to-Machine Communications and Internet of Things as the enablers of Smart City initiatives.
Dr. Ravi Prakash, the 2015 IEEE MASS Local Arrangement chair, was pleased with the conference. “The participation at this conference surpassed the participation numbers from previous years. It was our great privilege to host such a prestigious conference in Dallas. It also gave us an opportunity to showcase the achievements of the CS department and the university,” he observed.
Next year’s conference, MASS 2016, will be held in Brasilia, Brazil with Dr. Ravi Prakash as the technical program committee chair.
ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 1,600 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,100 master’s students, 160 PhD students, and 80 faculty members, as of Fall 2015. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.