Message From Leadership

Program Manager: Dr. Ali Khamesipour

Welcome to Week 9!!  
I hope you all have enjoyed your coursework and various activities the STC faculty and students have helped coordinate this quarter. 
 
In my previous message, I shared some thoughts on how one can define their success, measure their growth towards the goal and make the best use of available resources to achieve their goals. Here, I would like to emphasize the importance of each individual’s effect on other people’s growth and success. It is a very well-known fact called the Protege Effect, that mentoring or teaching someone a topic is the best way to learn it. The value of sharing information and knowledge is very well established in our fields. For example, one of the major reasons for the fast pace changes in Computer Science related fields is the advent of open-source projects.  
The goal at STC is to share knowledge with our community through the different events and activities held mainly by the student clubs. Our skillful and dedicated TAs and students play a vital role in reaching this goal.   
In the end, I would like to thank all the members of our wonderful community for making the ecosystem a better place through persistent and continuous improvements every day. 
John Wooden, the UCLA Legendary basketball coach once said: “Big things are accomplished only through the perfection of minor details.” 

Activities/Accomplishments

The School of Technology & Computing (STC) leadership filled three academic program director positions.  STC appointed three Academic Program Directors: Undergraduate Program Director – Dr. Radana Dvorak; Graduate Program Director – Ms. Morgan Zantua; Doctoral Program Director – Dr. Brian Maeng. Three Program Directors will start their roles on Monday, July 5, 2021. 

Events

  • Social Engineering Team Competition. 

The human factor continues to be weakest link in cybersecurity.  STC is forming a Social Engineering Team to compete in the October 21-23 Temple University competition. If you are an undergraduate, interested in participating on the competition team, attend a Byte of Cyber meeting or contact David Yi, club president: yidavid@cityuniversity.edu before June 10th.

  • STC Applied Research Symposium

There will be a quarterly Smart and Secure Computing Applied Research Symposium on Jun 10th, starting at 4 PM PDT. If you have a capstone project you want to present, please contact Min Qiu (qiumin@cityuniversity.edu). More information will be available from the following HERE

  • STC Student Clubs Meeting

The Tech Group and the Cybersecurity Club will meet every Thursday from 4 pm to 5 pm (PDT) via Teams: STC Student Clubs & Research Groups Weekly Meeting – Spring Quarter. For students or faculty who would like to present, choose a date and upload your presentation HERE

  • STC Cybersecurity Club

Greg Surber, student of M.S. in Information Security, will present his Cybersecurity Capstone project of Threat Modeling the Internet of Things: IoT Honeypots as Research Tools during this week’s cybersecurity club meeting. As the Internet of Things (IoT) grows at an ever-increasing rate, security is falling farther and farther behind. Several new initiatives show promise for expanding the privacy and security around these devices in the future. But, what about the billions of devices already out there in the wild? Security researchers need to develop the tools and procedures for discovering these devices quickly, understand the risks they bring with them, and develop tools to mitigate those risks to more manageable levels. Recent research in honeypot architectures explicitly designed for the chaotic nature of the IoT ecosystem brings a new sense of hope that may lead to significant improvements in IoT security. Please join us for the Cyber Security Club meeting today (6/3) at 5:30 PM PDT. Join the meeting HERE 

  • Faculty Research Group – Smart & Secure Computing Research Group (SSCRG)

Are you interested in studying emerging technologies, applying to real-world problems, and publishing the outcomes through your capstone project or conferences? If so, please contact SSCRG directors (Dr. Sam Chung, Executive Director, or Dr.Ali Khamesipor, Director). SSCRG will cover emerging or futuristic technologies such as cloud computing, EdTech, FinTech, AI, Blockchain, dApps, etc. The group is working with real-world problems for non-profit organizations and small businesses. Students of the group have published their outcomes in conference proceedings and journals. If you are interested in this SSCRG, please contact Dr. Chung or Dr. Khameipour. For more information,  visit the research group’s website.

  • STC Data Science Club 

Are you interested in getting real experience from Data Science Projects? Then, please join the first part of the STC SCRG Weekly Meeting on June 3rd at 4 PM PDT to learn about STC Data Science Club and various events planned for summer 2021. In addition, we will introduce the Kaggle competition and the opportunity to solve real problems using data science techniques. 

  • Career Opportunity

Are you graduating from MSCS in June or August? Paul Pottorff will interview candidates for software developer openings. Submit your resume and professional cover letter to paul@entrantsec.com with the Subject: CityU Grad SoftwareDev Candidate.  

This Week in Tech History May 31 – June 6

Napster Changes the Music Industry – there is no going back! 

Shawn Fanning, a computer science student at Northeastern University in Boston, and Sean Parker, a self-taught programmer earning $80,000 a year on independent projects, convinced his parents not to send him to college. These two young men met at 14 and 15 and worked on various projects. They managed to raise an initial $50,00 to launch Napster on June 1, 1999 – a pioneering peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing Internet software that enabled uses to share digital audio files, primarily audio songs encoded in MP3 format. Napster became an immediate hit with college students at Northeastern University. Within six months, Napster was sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and unfortunately had to shut down on September 3, 2002. However, it was too late – people learned they could download music, and the rest is history. Thank you Shawn and Sean!

Wikipedia.com
Wikipedia.com

Career Tip of the Week

JobSearchMaster.com

Tech Humor

Developped.com