VT Department of Computer Science
Highlights: July-September 2021

1. Doug Bowman received the Career Impact Award from the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).
2. PhD student Jiameng Pu was among 7 finalists (out of 2,163 applicants) for the 2021 Facebook Fellowship in the Security and Privacy category. Jiameng is advised by Bimal Vishwanath.
3. Dimitrios Nikolopoulos was in invited speaker at the 2021 International Sustainable and Green Computing Conference.
4. Papers accepted in top conferences:
   • Cho, CNS 2021
   • Cho, ICWS 2021
   • Cho, ICWSM 2022
   • Chung, USENIX Security 2022
   • Edwards and Ellis, SIGCSE 2022
   • Hooshangi, Edwards and Ellis, SIGCSE 2022
   • Eldardiry, EMNLP 2021
   • Eldardiry, CIKM 2021
   • Eldardiry, ICONIP 2021
   • Eldardiry, TRB 2022
   • Lourentzou, CIKM 2021
   • Gao, USENIX Security 2022 (2 papers)
   • Gulzar, IMC 2021
   • Gulzar, SoCC 2021
   • Hasan, SIGCOMM 2021
   • Hicks, USENIX Security 2021
   • Hicks, CCS 2021
   • Hicks, ACSAC 2021
   • Huang, EMNLP 2021
   • Ji, MASS 2021
   • Lee, CSCW 2021 (2 papers)
   • McCrickard & Kelliher, CSCW 2021
   • Raghvendra, NeurIPS 2021
   • Reddy, NeurIPS 2021
   • Reddy, AMIA 2021
5. Papers accepted in top journals:
   • Cho, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
   • Cho, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
   • Cho, IEEE Access
   • Eldardiry, IEEE Access
   • Ji, IEEE Trans. on Network Science and Engineering
   • Lourentzou, Jnl. of Medical Internet Research
   • Kelliher, Frontiers in Neurology
   • Nikoloploulos, IEEE Trans on Parallel & Distributed Systems (2 papers)
   • Reddy, IEEE Trans. on Cybernetics
   • Reddy, ACM Trans. on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
   • Reddy, Nature Scientific Reports
   • Yang, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications

New External Funding (with CS PI)

1. Eldardiry, LiteraSeed (NSF STTR), "Intelligent Multimedia-Based Symptom Capture and Management," $84,480.
2. Cho, NSF, "MUDL: Multidimensional Uncertainty-Aware Deep Learning Framework," $500,000.
3. Ramakrishnan, DARPA, "Precursor Extraction and Causal Analytics to support Model Building and Discovery," $291,183.
4. Ji, NSF, "Information Freshness in Scalable and Energy Constrained Machine to Machine Wireless Networks," $250,000.
5. Huang, Cobalt Speech and Language, Inc, "STTR: Virtual Training Assistant and Assessment Application using Adaptable Knowledge Graph Repository," $45,001.
6. Gulzar, NSF, "Reinventing Fuzz Testing for Data and Compute Intensive Systems," $323,982.
7. Karpatne, NSF, "Physics-guided Machine Learning for Predicting Cell Trajectories, Shapes, and Interactions in Complex Dynamic Environments," $1,000,000.
8. Lu, NSF, "Social Media Based Early Cybersecurity Threat Detection," $100,000.
9. Nikoloploulos, Cisco, "VirtEdgeAI: Seamless Virtualization of AI Accelerators in Edge Computing Substrates," $100,000.
10. Gao, Cisco, "Empowering Cyber Threat Hunting Using Cyber Threat Intelligence" $70,183.
11. Lee, NSF, "Facilitating socially constructed learning through a shared, mobile‐based virtual reality platform in informal learning settings," $849,999.
12. Feng, IBM, "Transforming 21st-Century Computer Science Education (and Research) via Open Standards: OpenPOWER,” 60,000.

Professional Service, Recognition, and Outreach

1. Aisling Kelliher will serve as Co-Chair of the AAAI Fall Symposium on “Human Partnership with Medical Artificial Intelligence".
2. Chandan Reddy has become an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology.
3. Barbara Ryder will serve as a mentor for the NSF-funded CS4Grads Fellowship program offered by CRA-WP.
4. Bo Ji will serve as Demo/Posters Co-Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2022.
5. Bo Ji will serve as Technical Program Committee Co-Chair for the IEEE INFOCOM workshop on "The Age of Information".
6. Dimitrios Nikolopoulos is serving as Chair of the Steering Committee of the IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS).
7. Dimitrios Nikolopoulos is serving on the Best Paper Award Selection Committee for the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed System.

PhD Students Successfully Defending

1. Anika Tabassum, "Explainable and Network-based Decision Support Framework for Emergency Management," Prakash (chair).
2. Archi Dasgupta, "Rethinking Smart Home Design: Integrating Technologically-driven Design Thinking and Architectural Practices," Gracanin (Chair).
3. Aakash Gautam, "Designing Socio-Technical Systems to Illuminate Possibilities for a Vulnerable Population," Tatar (Chair).
4. Mostafa Mohammed, "Teaching Formal Languages through Visualizations, Machine Simulations, Auto-Graded Exercises, and Programmed Instruction," Shaffer (Chair).
5. Steven Roberts, "Multimethods for the Efficient Solution of Multiscale Differential Equations," Sandu (Chair).
6. Arash Sarshar, "Time stepping methods for multiphysics problems," Sandu (Chair).
7. Tian Shi, "Novel Algorithms for Understanding Online Reviews," Reddy (Chair).
8. Ping Wang, "Automatic Question Answering and Knowledge Discovery on Electronic Health Records," Reddy (Chair).
9. Koah Doan, "Generative models meet similarity search: efficient, heuristic-free and robust retrieval," Reddy (Chair).

Other Notables

1. A team of 3 recent VT alumni (Benjamin Reidys, Alex Lind, and Yibo Huang) placed 56th out of 117 teams at the ICPC World Finals 2020. Out of 14 participating North American teams, they ranked 9th.