Rachel Robertson « OSU EECS News

Congratulations to the 512 students majoring in electrical and computer engineering or computer science who made the College of Engineering Dean’s List for winter term of 2020! These undergraduate and postbaccalaureate students achieved better than a 3.75 GPA with at least 12 credits.

Nikolas Achatz
Benjamin Adams
Victor Agostinelli III
Walter Agra Neto
Humza Ahmed
Francesco Aiello
Alhusam Sarhan Hilal Al Harthy
Abdulaziz Al-Mannai
Ibrahim Alarifi
Ryan Alder
Ali Mohamed Abdulrahman Sheikh Alhabshi
Matthew Alonso
Nawaf Alothman
Benjamin Alvi
Jacob Anderson
Hannah Armstrong
Theodora Arnold
Kevin Atkins
Aaron Au
Stephanie Babb
Aditya Bagchi
Xiaoqin Bai
Ian Bailey
Spencer Bain
Dakota Baird
Alexander Baird-Appleton
Aeijan Bajracharya
Wesley Bakane
Jack Barnes
Nicolas Barraclough
Joshua Barringer
Samuel Barton
Kyle Barton
Aylish Bateman
Jordan Baxter
Ryan Bay
Jared Beale
Aidan Beery
John Behman
Bolivar Beleno Santos
Rebecca Bell
Kenton Bender
Sebastian Benjamin
Connor Bentzley
Braam Beresford
Justin Bethel
Tyler Betley
Nicholas Biggerstaff
Anthony Bishop
Zachary Bishop
Jackson Bizjak
Megan Black
Peter Bloch
Roman Bober
Reed Boeshans
Carl Bohme
Francisco Bolanos
Michael Boly
Lauren Boone
Sean Booth
Piers Borngasser
Miklos Bowling
Samuel Brimhall
Nicholas Broce
Ian Brown
Brayden Brown
Felix Brucker
Sawyer Brundage
Kiet Song Bui
Timothy Bui
Peri Cabrales
Claire Cahill
Sonia Camacho
John Pierre Carr
Milton Carreno Rodriguez
Brian Cebra
Blake Cecil
Lilian Chan
Michael Chan
David Chan
Jason Chen
Yuhang Chen
Min Chew
Hae Won Cho
Sanchit Chopra
Brian Christensen
Hunter Christiansen
Malachi Christman
Kendrick Chu
Adam Clayman
Evan Cochran
Tyler Cole
Michael Commins
Beniamin Condrea
Adam Conrad
Joshua Cook
David Coons
Kira Corbett
Devon Crane
Amanda Crawford
Gabriel Crew
Thomas Croll
Brian Cross
Rebecca Croysdale
Nathan Crozier
Ryan Cryar
Ziqi Cui
Jackson Cutler
Zeyu Dai
William Dam
William Dang
Dominic Daprano
John Davis
Hudson Dean
Mark Deane
Wyatt Deck
Hao Deng
Abbi Devins-Suresh
Madison Dhanens
Austin Dibble
Joseph Didner
Chetan Dindukurthi
Heather DiRuscio
Kristen Dolan
Samuel Dorning
Miles Drake
Jonathan Dressel
Dylan Drudge
Liang Du
Dafei Du
Alexander Dunn
Sarah Eastwood
Victoria Ebert
Christopher Eckerson
Dirar El Hadar
Rasheed El Kassed
Mohamed Eldebri
Mark Ellarma
Robert Elsom
Jacob Engstrom
Martin Escoto
Kyle Esquerra
Alyssa Estenson
Maxwell Evdemon
Michael Fagan
Shannon Farazi
Anousha Farshid
Danila Fedorin
Kyle Felix
Matthew Ferchland
Christopher Feth
Anthony Filippello
Julian Fortune
Neal Fredrick
Duncan Freeman
Sierra Freihoefer
Johannes Freischuetz
Caden Friesen
Michael Fuller
Calvin Gagliano
Aaron Galati
Kate Galle
Lyubomir Gankov
Jared Gaskin
David Gasper
Tristan Gavin
Kai Gay
Andrew Gehrke
Sean Gillen
Timothy Glew
Yesh Godse
Austin Goergen
Jackson Golletz
Bradley Gore
Sergiy Greblov
Benjamin Green
Connor Greenwald
Alex Grejuc
Taylor Griffin
Isaac Grossberg
Shengjun Gu
Matthew Guo
Gavin Gutowsky
Melanie Gutzmann
Alexander Guyer
Grant Haines
Adam Hamilton-Sutherland
Geoffry Hammon
Quinn Handley
Lucas Hanssen
Donald Harkins
Keaton Hartman
Nathan Hausman
David Headrick
Elise Hebert
Claire Hekkala
Kyle Hiebel
Aleksi Hieta
Arthur Hiew
Benjamin Hillen
Ethan Hirsch
Eric Hoang
Jaiden Hodson
Tyler Holeman
Monica Holliday
Evan Hopper-Moore
Zachary Horine
Caulin Horowitz
Christien Hotchkiss
Bart Hough
Wei-Chien Hsu
Catherine Hu
Andy Hua
Zijing Huang
Michael Huang
Jianlong Huang
Casey Huggins
Megan Hurley
Mark Huynh
Kevin Hwang
Gaetan Ingrassia
Matthew Jacobsen
Kyler Jacobson
Brieanna Jeibmann
Fischer Jemison
Manda Jensen
Junhyeok Jeong
Nathaniel Jewell
Helen Jiang
Laura Jiang
Nicholas Johansen
Lukas Johnson
Ethan Jones
Cameron Jones
Donald Joyce
Sowmya Jujjuri
Nelson Mwangi Kangethe
Kyle Kanwischer
John Kaufman
Zavi Kaul
Matthew Kerr
Nicholas Kiddle
Trenton Kilgore
Jinwon Kim
Brian Kim
Kwanghyuk Kim
Atsuhito Kita
Cameron Kocher
Matthew Koenig
Amber Kolar
Noah Koontz
Andrey Kornilovich
Nicholas Kosa
Aditya Dilip Kothari
Chase Kozol
Rajat Kulkarni
Violet Kurtz
Lindsey Kvarfordt
Jacob Lagmay
Brandon Lam
Joseph Landreville
Kevin Le
Dustin Lear
Yevgeniy Lebid
Youngjoo Lee
Benjamin Lee
Juichi Lee
Joe Lei
Oscar Lemus
Samuel Leonard
Grayson Lewis
Samuel Lewis
Yue Li
Jia Yi Li
Wence Li
Feng Liang
Megan Liles
Xinwei Lin
Virginia Link
Ryan Little
Jaelyn Litzinger
Suyang Liu
Haolin Liu
Zhihui Liu
Susan Liu
Nathan Liu
Alexis Lopez
Jose Lopez Alcala
Simon Louie
Grayland Lunn
Kenny Luong
Tristan Luther
Phi Luu
Stanislav Lyakhov
Jiaheng Lyu
Xinyu Ma
Melvin Ma
Jonathan Macias
Matthew Macovsky
Seika Mahmud
Theresa Mai
Cameron Markwell
Isaac Marquez
Jordyn Marshall
Benjamin Martin
Anthony Martin
Mary May
Shawn Mc Mannis
Cody McCall
Patrick McGrath
Danielle McIntosh
Patrick McKillop-Bay
Daniel Mesa
Nicholas Milford
Leif Miller
Harry Miller
Aedan Mills
Brogan Miner
Luke Mitchell-Nelson
Jasmine Mittal
Jiawei Mo
Grayson Molesworth
Alex Molisani
Anna Mollere
Alexander Molotkov
Santiago Monleon
Samson Mont
Danyelle Montalvo
Stephen More
Michael Morelli
Pablo Moreno
Kevin Moy
Joshua Muir
Hamza Munaf
Trevor Murphy
Colin Murphy
Alexander Nead-Work
Kevin Neiger
Aiden Nelson
Evan Newman
Ethan Ng
Don Nguyen
Triet Nguyen
Anthony Nguyen
Bao Nguyen
Minh Nguyen
Khanh Nguyen
Coulby Nguyen
An-phong Nguyen
Hoang Nguyen
Nancy Nguyen
Thuy-Vy Nguyen
Jonathan Nguyen
Quan Nguyen
Pham Phuoc Loc Nguyen
Corey Nielsen
Jacob Niphanprasart
Kyle Noble
Josie O’Harrow
Timothy O’Rourke
Stephen Oh
Sae Hyoung Oh
Jaegeun Oh
Carter Olsen
Payton Olson
Nicholas Olson
Breanne Oo
Rachel Orrell
Felipe Orrico Scognamiglio
Drew Ortega
Steven Owens
Alexa Pack
Ajay Pallekonda
Justin Parks
Zachary Parsons
Christopher Patenaude
Ethan Patterson
Joshua Pauls
Michael Payne
Kawin Pechetratanapanit
Zack Pelster
Jessica Peterson
Preston Pickering
Trinity Polk
Thomas Prihoda
Ashyan Rahavi
Ridwana Rahman
Jose Ramos
Lyell Read
Mateo Rey-Rosa
Kyle Rosenau
Ekaterina Rott
Emmanuel Rovirosa
Chalida Ruangrotsakun
Nikita Rubocki
Matthew Ruder
Daniel Safarov
Sachin Sakthivel
Ricky Salinas
Micah Samaduroff
Gregory Sanchez
McIntyre Santa Cruz
Andrew Sauer
Bailey Sauter
Zakiah Schaefle
Shifra Schectman
Mitchell Schenk
Jason Scott-Hakanson
Nathan Seabourn
Jett Seale
Richard Seals
Karen Setiawan
Noah Seumalo
Nathan Shaaban
Jordan Sheller
Joshua Shequin
NianJun Shi
Isaac Shih
Patrick Shuler
Elijah Shumway
Zhaowei Si
Jonah Siekmann
Pranav Simha
Roy Simons
Harshvardhan Singh
Andy Situ
Allison Skinner
Richard Smith
Madelyn Smith
Thomas Snyder
Sebastian Sojka
Cruz Solano-Nieblas
Nathan Stageberg
Jason Stallkamp
Avery Stauber
Benjamin Steele
Zachary Steinberg
Matthew Sterrett
Keith Stevens
Shanti Stewart
Yuhao Su
Clayton Surgeon
Cole Swanson
Marjorie Symonds
Blaise Takushi
Wei Tang
Pavan Thakkar
Zachary Thomas
Tristan Thompson
Thomas Tonini
Logan Traffas
Khoa Tran
Shayla Tran
Brayden Tremper
Andy Trinh
Anthony Trinh
James Trotter
Leif Tsang
Alexis Tucker
Jeremy Udarbe
Alexander Uong
Rohan Varma
Aaron Vaughan
Hannah Vaughan
Andres Vega
Aishwarya Vellanki
Jeffrey Visosky
Chinmay Wadgaonkar
Aaron Walder
Kyle Walker
Benjiman Walsh
Alexander Wan
Huahua Wang
Shiyao Wang
Faaiq Waqar
Benjamin Warschauer
Philip Warton
Christopher Weiner
Nicholas Weinert
Chung Weng
Joshua Wentzel
Natashia White
Austin Wilmoth
Calder Wilson
Blair Wilson
Odyssey Wilson
Andrew Wilson
Justin Womack
Jason Wong
Bradford Wong
Jackson Wright
Cheng Xie
Yuechen Xu
Qi Xu
Tianbao Yan
Jiayun Yan
James Yang
Xiaoyan Yang
Orel Yehuda
Eugene Jie Yee Yong
Arthur York
Logan York
Sam Young
Alex Young
Jason Yue
Ulises Zaragoza
Samantha Zeigler
Haoxuan Zhang
Dianxiong Zhang
Zisong Zhang
Jiaming Zhu
John Zontos

A collaborative project with researchers at Oregon State University and University of Southern California received Best Paper Runner-Up Award at a top conference for computer architecture. The research examines if machine learning can also teach us anything about computer architectural design.

Ting-Ru Lin (University of Southern California), Drew Penney (Oregon State University), Massoud Pedram (University of Southern California), Lizhong Chen (Oregon State University) received the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at the International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture on February 26, 2020.

Drew Penney is a doctoral student of electrical and computer engineering, and Lizhong Chen is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State.

The paper, “A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Architectural Exploration: A Routerless NoC Case Study,” develops a deep reinforcement learning based framework for flexible and efficient architectural design space exploration. The work demonstrates the viability of utilizing machine learning to improve computer architecture, and the framework will be useful for many researchers in the community.

Minsuk Kahng and colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology and Western Washington University were recognized by the prestigious journal, ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, for their research that impacts mobile health technologies.

“I’m honored that our paper has been nominated for the best paper. Our work addresses an important challenge of supporting analysis of large-scale mobile health data, by unifying scalable data mining and human-centric visualization techniques,” said Kahng, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Engineering.

The paper, titled Chronodes: Interactive Multifocus Exploration of Event Sequences received the Best Paper Award, Honorable Mention. The authors are Peter Polack, Shang-Tse Chen, Minsuk Kahng, Kaya De Barbaro, Rahul Basole, Moushumi Sharmin, and Duen Horng Chau. ACM TiiS is one of the prestigious journals at the intersection of AI and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), and this award is given to top selected papers.

Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of computer science, was awarded the 2020 iGIANT Champion Award for her outstanding research contributions to inclusive software design. iGIANT® (impact of Gender/Sex on Innovation and Novel Technologies) is a nonprofit corporation that promotes best practices for gender/sex-specific design elements.

“I am honored to be recognized for my work with iGIANT, but all of it was a team effort,” Burnett said. “None of it would have been possible without the help of many other volunteers, including Larissa Letaw and Jillian Emard here at OSU, working together to help iGIANT’s mission of inclusiveness and equitable experiences for all genders.”

Over the last decade, much of Burnett’s research has focused on gender inclusiveness in software. Her internationally recognized work in this area with students and collaborators has shown gender differences in ways people problem solve with software.

Burnett developed a method called GenderMag with her collaborators that enables IT professionals to identify and eliminate gender biases in the software. She and Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science, lead the research team that is helping academic and industry partners develop inclusive design for software and websites. Their work was featured in the story, “Oregon State leads fight against gender bias in software,” published by Oregon State’s news and research communications office.

Gabor Temes (right) works with doctoral student Yanchao Wang.

Gabor Temes, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been named to the rank of fellow by the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction bestowed upon academic inventors.

According to the academy’s website, “The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.”

Temes’ work in analog circuits has led to improvements in cell phones, medical devices and other technologies.

“My students and I contributed to the development of new data converters, which are used in many hundreds of millions of devices,” he said.

Temes received his undergraduate education at the Technical University and Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, from 1948 to 1956, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 1961.

In addition to Oregon State, he has held academic positions at the Technical University of Budapest, Stanford University and UCLA and worked in industry at Northern Electric R&D Laboratories (now Bell-Northern Research) and Ampex Corp.

Temes and the other 167 new fellows will be honored in April in Phoenix at the academy’s annual meeting.

2019 OSU Cyberforce Competition team — 2019 Oregon State University Cyberforce Competition team.

For the third consecutive year, a team of Oregon State University computer science students placed first regionally in the Cyberforce Competition hosted by the Department of Energy on November 15-16, 2019. They competed against 17 teams at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington. The team placed sixth in the nationwide competition, which included over 100 teams.

The team included members from the Oregon State Security Club: Cody Holliday, Ryan Kennedy, Matt Jansen, Khuong Luu, Zach Rogers, and Zander Work. Yeongjin Jang, assistant professor of computer science, advised the team.

“This competition is a highlight of the year for me,” said Zander Work, president of the OSU Security Club. “I really enjoy getting to test out my defensive skills in a live environment against a skilled red team. I also enjoy the added twist of securing some real-world industrial infrastructure, rather than a typical IT environment.”

“Open source software is changing the technology and workforce landscape. Our work will help open source software tools and technology support diverse cognitive styles that will help bring diversity in thought by enabling diversity in open source contributors.”

– Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Oregon State.

Principal investigators:

Lead PI: Anita Sarma, associate professor of computer science, Oregon State University
Co-PI: Margaret Burnett, Distinguished Professor of computer science, Oregon State University

In collaboration with:

PI: Igor Steinmacher, assistant professor, Northern Arizona University
Co-PI: Marco Gerosa, associate professor, Northern Arizona University

Agency:

National Science Foundation

Award amount:

$1.4 million between the two universities, $870,773 to Oregon State.

Research objectives:

This research will investigate whether and how open source software tools and technologies have gender biases tied with diverse problem-solving styles, and how to remove any such biases.

This work will harness foundational gender research to provide theory-based yet practical solutions and redesigns of open source software projects to address the underrepresentation of women.

The redesigns and the process of creating inclusive tools will be empirically evaluated to create a compendium of “best practices” for fixing gender-bias bugs, in both products (what suitable fixes are to such bugs) and processes (how open source software teams can work together to fix gender-bias bugs).

Broader impacts:

Open source is having a significant impact on society, in the products it produces and the career paths that it facilitates. However, women are vastly underrepresented among open source developers. This is a significant concern to these communities because it prevents them from receiving the benefits of a larger talent pool and of team diversity. The problem is perpetuated when women developers miss the learning and professional growth opportunities that open source software projects provide, and are overlooked when open source contributions are used to make hiring decisions. Our work will help break down these gender-bias barriers in tools and technology used in open source software.

More information is on the NSF website.

Photo of Jennifer Parham-Mocello. — Jennifer Parham-Mocello (left), assistant professor of computer science, specializes in computer science education.

Researchers at Oregon State University are taking an innovative approach to teaching computer science concepts to middle school students using tabletop games such as Connect Four and Battleship. Working in partnership with teachers and administrators at Linus Pauling Middle School in Corvallis, Oregon, the team will develop and investigate a new curriculum to teach algorithmic thinking to sixth and seventh graders.

The project is part of a national movement called CSforALL and funded by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. This is the second grant impacting K-12 education that Jennifer Parham-Mocello, assistant professor of computer science, has received this year; the first was funded by Google.

The co-principal investigators on the National Science Foundation grant are Martin Erwig, Stretch Professor of Computer Science, and Margaret Niess, emeritus professor of education.

This year, the team is working on curriculum development, which will be completed by the summer of 2020 when the middle school teachers will conduct classes for an Oregon State University STEM Academy summer camp. In the fall of 2020, the teachers will deliver the new curriculum in their sixth and seventh grade classes. The third year, the team will be refining the curriculum and adding more games.

The purpose of the grant is to make computer science more accessible and interesting to a broad range of young people. As a dual language immersion school, Linus Pauling Middle School offers an opportunity for the researchers and teachers to impact students from diverse backgrounds.

In addition to the regular curriculum, the group will be hosting family game nights twice a year at the school so that students can show their families and friends what they have been learning.

“One of the reasons we picked games for teaching computational thinking is because they involve social interactions,” Parham-Mocello said. “So, we thought the game nights would be a fun way for the students to practice and get the families involved.”

Oregon does not have a policy to support computer science education, even though computing jobs are the No. 1 source of all new wages in the U.S. economy, according to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine, which tracks labor demand.

To face this challenge, Jennifer Parham-Mocello, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, has an idea to work computer science fundamentals into the existing K-12 mathematics curriculum.

Google is supporting her idea with funding for a project to teach computational thinking — the foundation of computer programming — to future secondary math teachers studying at Oregon State. The research project is a collaboration with Elise Lockwood, associate professor of mathematics in the College of Science, and Rebekah Elliott, associate professor of mathematics education in the College of Education.

“It’s great that this Google Education K-12 grant will support educating future teachers. It’s an area that’s been ignored,” Parham-Mocello said. “Everybody wants to start new computer science courses in K-12, and I just don’t think that’s realistic, especially when you’re talking about rural areas.”

The one-year award of $141,800 will support undergraduate and graduate students over the 2019-20 school year to develop new curriculum in pre-service secondary mathematics courses at Oregon State University, then test it in Corvallis middle and high schools. In the process, the Oregon State students will learn the basics of computational thinking, which they can apply in their future positions as teachers.

“Computational thinking helps people better understand their field. But it also makes them literate in the world of computation,” Parham-Mocello said. “When you have to think in terms of the process — the algorithmic steps — you internalize it differently and gain a deeper understanding.”

The researchers will begin teaching the curriculum in fall term to the secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. During the winter term, the pre-service teachers will develop and deliver units on computational thinking to students in Corvallis schools. The one-year project will help to define and develop a multiple-year program with broader reach.

“My vision is that all of Oregon will benefit from this,” Parham-Mocello said. “Most of the education students at Oregon State will become teachers in Oregon schools of all types. So, the impact will be broadening participation in computing for schools of all sizes in both rural and urban communities.”

Yue Cao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, is collaborating with Amazon Prime Air to make UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) delivery a reality. Prime Air promises to deliver a package to the customer within 30 minutes after receiving the order. Cao will help develop an advanced propulsion system that is more reliable and efficient. This all-electric flying vehicle will have to address multi-disciplinary challenges in the areas of power electronics, motor drives, energy storage, and cooling.

The delivery program was featured in the article, “Amazon expects ‘Prime Air’ drone delivery ‘within months’” by ABC News.

OSU EECS News

News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Author Archives: Rachel Robertson

Over 500 students make the Dean’s list

Researchers win award for paper on deep learning

Research to support mobile health technologies wins award

Professor recognized for promoting inclusive software design

Temes named fellow by National Academy of Inventors

Oregon State Security Club team brings home another win

New grant: Gender-inclusive open source through gender-inclusive tools

Principal investigators:

Agency:

Award amount:

Research objectives:

Broader impacts:

Teaching computer science concepts with Connect Four and more

Google funds research to improve K-12 computer science education in Oregon

Amazon Prime Air funds autonomous drone research

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