Computer Science Research Projects ()
SoD: Collaborative Research: Transparency and Legal Compliance in Software SystemsAnnie Anton
$270,407 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2007 - 07/31/2009
Healthcare information systems are becoming ubiquitous and thus increasingly subject to attack, misuse and abuse. Mechanisms are needed to help analysts disambiguate regulations so that they may be clearly specified as software requirements. In addition, regulations are increasingly requiring organizations to comply with the law and account for their actions. We propose a requirements management framework that enables executives, business managers, software developers and auditors to distribute legal obligations across business units and/or personnel with different roles and technical capabilities.
CAREER:Towards Estimating Requirement Coverage: Managing Goals and Scenarios during Requirements Evolution
Annie Anton
$220,000 by the National Science Foundation
06/ 1/2000 - 05/31/2004
This proposal focuses on efforts to integrate core research and educational objectives. The research addresses important issues in the discovery, elaboration and management of system use scenarios for the specification of software requirements. The ultimate goal is to develop viable solutions for supporting the early stages of the software lifecycle by ensuring requirements coverage.
Aligning Societal Values, Privacy Policy, and IT Requirements
Annie Anton
$335,000 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2001 - 07/31/2003
This research focuses on how society uses, values, and protects citizens' personal information. From the perspective of system design, software engineers need methods and tools to enable them to design systems that reflect those values and protect personal information, accordingly. This research examines how privacy considerations and value systems influence the design, deployment and consequences of IT. The goal is to develop concepts, tools and techniques that help IT professionals and policy makers bring policies and system requirements into better alignment. An action-oriented set of conceptual tools, including guidelines and privacy-relevant policy templates will be constructed and validated.
The Design and Use of Digital Identities
Annie Anton ; Julia Earp
$103,006 by Purdue University
09/15/2004 - 08/31/2007
This project will address a wide variety of digital identity needs by developing required Flexible, Multiple and Dependable Digital Identity (FMDDI) technology, based on a sound underlying set of definitions and principles. We will apply, expand, and refine the theory of identities, the mechanisms to embody and enforce them, as well as study the implications of their use, and develop appropriate educational vehicles to teach people how digital identities should be used effectively.
ITR: Encoding Rights, Permissions, and Obligations: Privacy Policy Specification and Compliance
Annie Anton ; Julie Earp ; Lynda Aiman-Smith ; David Baumer
$932,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2003 - 08/31/2008
This research focuses on how society uses, values, and protects citizens? personal information. From the perspective of system design, software engineers need methods and tools to enable them to design systems that reflect those values and protect personal information, accordingly. This research examines how privacy considerations and value systems influence the design, deployment and consequences of IT. The goal is to develop concepts, tools and techniques that help IT professionals and policy makers bring policies and system requirements into better alignment. An action-oriented set of conceptual tools, including guidelines and privacy- relevant policy templates will be constructed and validated.
Collaborative Research: A Comprehensive Policy-Driven Framework for Online Privacy Protection: Integrating IT, Human, Legal and Economic Perspectives
Annie Anton ; Ting Yu ; David Baumer ; Michael Rappa
$534,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2004 - 08/31/2008
Privacy is increasingly a major concern that prevents the exploitation of the Internet's full potential. Consumers are concerned about the trustworthiness of the websites to which they entrust their sensitive information. Although significant industry efforts are seeking to better protect sensitive information online, existing solutions are still fragmented and far from satisfactory. Specifically, existing languages for specifying privacy policies lack a formal and unambiguous semantics, are limited in expressive power and lack enforcement as well as auditing support. Moreover, existing privacy management tools aimed at increasing end-users' control over their privacy are limited in capability or difficult to use.
Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series
Franc Brglez
$43,320 by Army Research Office
09/ 1/2007 - 08/31/2010
Since 1995, the Triangle Computer Science Distinguished Lecturer Series (TCSDLS) has been hosting influential university researchers and industry leaders from computer-related fields as speakers at the three universities within the Research Triangle Area. The lecturer series, sponsored by the Army Research Office (ARO), is organized and administered by the Computer Science departments at Duke University, NC State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This proposal argues for continuation, for an additional 3 years, of this highly successful lecturer series.
CAREER: Adaptive Automated Design of Stored Derived Data
Rada Chirkova
$489,810 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2005 - 07/31/2010
The goal of this project is to develop an extensible framework for designing and using derived data in answering database queries efficiently. The outcomes of the project are expected to be general and independent of a specific data model (e.g., relational or XML), while giving guarantees with respect to query-performance improvement. The approach consists of developing and evaluating mathematical models and algorithms for common types of queries on relational and XML data. Expected outcomes of the project include automated tuning of data-access characteristics in a variety of applications, thus enhancing the quality of user interactions with data-intensive systems.
Integration and Interoperability of XML Data
Rada Chirkova
$40,000 by Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC)
07/ 1/2007 - 06/30/2008
This research proposal builds upon recent advances in Semantic Web and information integration. The ultimate goal is to produce the formalism, and lay the groundwork for a broad spectrum of information integration, including mashups, that facilitate rapid development of efficient and effective integration systems. In this proposal, we concentrate on information integration from XML sources. We introduce the Semantic Model approach that uses simple models to represent the information in information sources. A user query can be specified in terms of the semantic model, or in terms of the schema of any source. It is then translated and executed on the original data at each source. The processing will be largely on XML data, which is either the native model of the source or can be obtained using the wrapper approach to represent sources' data in XML. We consider, in particular, the XML pipeline approach as the preferred architecture for the implementation of an extensible system for integration/mashup.
Efficient View-Design Algorithms To Achieve Near-Optimal Performance Of Sets of Relational Queries
Rada Chirkova
$253,180 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2003 - 08/31/2007
The goal of this proposal is to develop effective methods to improve performance of frequent important queries on large databases. This problem is important for improving efficiency of user interactions with relational data-management systems; solving the problem will have effect in query optimization, data warehousing, and information integration. The project focuses on evaluating queries using auxiliary relations, or views. Our main objective is to develop theoretically rigorous yet practically applicable techniques needed to design views that would help in computing sets of frequent and important queries with optimal or near-optimal speedup on large databases with given statistics.
Incremental Read-Aheads to Improve Throughput in Data-Intensive Applications
Rada Chirkova
$40,000 by CACC
07/ 1/2004 - 12/31/2005
Modern information system architectures place applications in an application server and persistent objects in a database. In this setting, to improve application throughput we propose to use data prefetching (read-aheads) to minimize total data-access time of an application, in a manner that affects neither the application code nor the backend DBMS. Our methodology is based on automatically merging SQL queries to produce query sequences with low total response time, in ways that exploit the application's data-access patterns. Our approach is independent of the application domain and can be a component of container managed persistence that can be implemented in middleware.
Self-Organizing Databases: Near-Optimal Query Performance at all Times Using Flexible Views
Rada Chirkova
$8,000 by Faculty Research and Professional Development Fund (FRPD), NCSU
03/ 1/2003 - 02/28/2004
The goal of Rada's proposal is to develop new effective methods to improve the performance of questions, or queries, on large databases. In a number of applications of modern databases, many users pose complex queries on the data at the same time. Processing numerous complex queries simultaneously and efficiently is a nontrivial task for a database-management system; as a result, some or most users may experience slower-than-desired response to their queries. At the same time, if some of the queries are asked over and over again, it is typically possible to significantly improve their response time, by precomputing and storing in the database auxiliary data, called views, and by using the views in the computation of the queries. For instance, in a relational database where all data is stored in tables, a precomputed view becomes just another stored table, which may be used, alongside the original stored data, to answer queries on the database. In her research program, she explores the approach of finding the "right" (optimal) views, that is, views that satisfy the given database constraints and reduce, as much as possible, the response time for most or all frequent and important database queries. The focus of the program is on building efficient and scalable methods for automatically designing optimal, or at least near-optimal, views for common and important database and query scenarios. Solving this problem will allow her and her research group (five Masters students and one Ph.D. student) to develop a framework for building self-organizing database systems.
Performance Issues in Relational Data-management Systems
Rada Chirkova
$41,469 by CACC
07/ 1/2003 - 06/30/2004
Modern commercial and scientific databases store unprecedented amounts of data and must enable complex around-the-clock interactions with users and large-scale business applications. To increase the role of the new types of databases in the success of the enterprise, it is imperative to maximize their performance. As many crucial functionalities of modern databases do not conform to the classical assumptions, traditional methods of improving database performance are no longer scalable or even applicable in many cases and thus have to be reconsidered. The objective of Rada's proposal is to develop new effective methods to improve a range of performance metrics in relational databases; the outcomes of the proposed project could be applicable in many types of relational data-management systems.
Traffic Grooming in Wavelength Routed Networks with Novel Topologies
Rudra Dutta
$8,000 by Faculty Research and Professional Development Fund, NCSU
07/ 1/2003 - 06/30/2004
In recent years, optical technology has made optical communication channels of very large bandwidths available to wide area networks. However, this has caused the problem of processing the transmitted data at intermediate routers or switches to become practically impossible. This is exacerbated by the fact that the end-to-end traffic streams are generally subwavelength in nature. Traffic grooming is the new area of optical networking research that seeks to employ hybrid optical-electronic switching to efficiently solve this problem. This area has received considerable attention lately, but most of the research has been carried out on ring topologies, due to legacy reasons. He proposed to determine the tractability of the grooming problem, and design good grooming solutions, for two classes of novel network topologies. Rudra has relevant experience and accomplishments in grooming problems in his Ph.D. thesis as well as subsequent research, and the proposed project can also be leveraged to increase chances of funding from the ANIR division of NSF in proposals that he plans to submit; two such are currently pending.
Remote OPNET simulation lab access
Rudra Dutta
$10,000 by Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications (DELTA), NCSU
02/15/2003 - 06/30/2003
CSC/ECE 570 is the graduate entry level broad-based computer networking course. The contents of this course has been updated drastically in recent years to keep up with the explosive growth in networking technology and the augmentation of networking courses from the CSC and ECE department, especially in response to the new Masters in Computer Networking degree being offered by these two departments. In particular, recently a simulation lab component has been added to the course using the OPNET commercial software. This hands-on experience enhances the value of the course greatly. At this time, the students either access dedicated machines in an access-controlled lab on campus to perform the lab exercises, or use the software on the EOS/UNITY computing environment in the near future. For access and bandwidth policy currently in place, this would not make it available for distance students either. However, substituting ordinary homeworks for the lab sessions for the purpose of grading would reduce the value of the course to the distance education students greatly. We propose a proof-of-concept scale trial of a new idea of deploying dedicated computing resources to serve the lab needs of distance students, maintained and managed on campus but made accessible to distance students through special arrangements, and blocked off from campus computing loads. We plan for a system to attain a lab experience for the distance students as close to that for the in-class students as practically feasible, though at a small scale and low performance. If this approach is successful, the concepts developed could be used at a later date by distance education personnel to facilitate a full-scale deployment.
Cost Match for project "NCSU TIE: Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring of Buildings and Bridges"
Rudra Dutta ; Mihail Sichitiu
$25,000 by CACC
05/16/2005 - 12/31/2005
Cost matching funds in support of NSF funded project "NCSUTIE: Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring of Buildings and Bridges."
NCSU TIE: Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring of Buildings and Bridges
Rudra Dutta ; Mihail Sichitiu
$100,000 by CACC-NSF
08/15/2003 - 12/31/2005
The proposed research will improve the state-of-the-art in Structural Health Monitoring of bridges and similar structures. There are two broad parts. The first part addresses sensing and interpreting SHM data, the second part addresses the transfer of data from sensors to the location where interpretation occurs. This proposal ties together the expertise in SHM provided by RB2C, and the networking expertise provided by CACC. As we describe, the SHM sensors that are the focus of our investigation demand a power-efficient wireless network and integration with the network; our research will result in networking algorithms and an integrated testbed.
Modeling and Visualization of Sun Exposure Effects on the Human Anatomy
Robert Fornaro
$100,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency
07/ 1/2001 - 12/31/2004
The goal of the project is to develop a rendering program that will produce computer generated images of a three dimensional human model to illustrate the effects of ultraviolet radiation on the human anatomy. This model will determine exposure by using a ray-tracing algorithm integrated with a geodesic sun-tracking calculation and a broadbank radiative transfer equation. A three dimensional representation of the human form will illustrate the results. This program will produce images to be used to build an Internet web site for dissemination of real-time surface solar radiation measurements
Runtime/Operating System Synergy to Exploit Simultaneous Multithreading
Vincent Freeh ; Frank Mueller
$380,000 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2004 - 07/31/2008
This proposal focuses on a synergistic approach combining runtime and operating system support to fully exploit the capabilities of SMTs. To meet this objective, it studies three different approaches. First, it investigates the benefits of using a helper thread along side the primary thread, by building a reference implementation of an SMT-aware Message Passing Interface library. Second, it investigates the benefits of dynamic mode switching between single-thread and multi-threaded configurations. Third, it modifies the operating system creating an SMT-aware scheduler. The benefits are demonstrated for a variety of applications, including large-scale benchmarks and other nationally relevant parallel codes.
The Centroid Decomposition and Other Approximations to the Singular Value Decomposition
Robert Funderlic ; Moody Chu
$521,999 by the National Science Foundation
07/ 1/2002 - 06/30/2006
The centroid decomposition, an approximation for the singular value decomposition, had a long but early history within the statistics/psychometrics community for factor analysis research. We revisit the centroid method first in its original context and then generalize and modernize it to arbitrary matrices. We show the centroid method can be cast as an n-step (linear) ascent method on a hypercube. Furthermore, we have shown empirically that the centroid decomposition is statistically sound. A major purpose of this work is to show fundamental relationships between the singular value, centroid and semi-discrete decompositions. This unifies an entire class of truncated SVD approximations.
CAREER: New Directions in Managing Structured Peer-to-Peer Networks
Khaled Harfoush
$408,894 by the National Science Foundation
03/15/2004 - 02/28/2009
In the research component of my career development program, I focus on strategies for addressing the challenges and opportunities that face the deployment of structured P2P systems. In particular, I introduce new schemes to locate resources and strategies to serve them. I also introduce new schemes for topology interference, integration, and organization in order to optimize content distribution. The proposed educational aspect of my career development program focuses on (1) enhancing our department’s networking curriculum, (2) extending opportunities for women, under-represented minorities, and undergraduates in research, (3) encouraging students to participate in the computer science community outside the university.
Roaming WLAN Networks: Security and Performance Implications
Khaled Harfoush
$40,000 by CACC
01/ 1/2006 - 12/31/2006
Our focus in this proposal will be on providing seamless and secure transitions between wireless islands for real-time connections, which may be sharing the wireless space with other real-time and non-real-time applications.
Level-of-Detail Visualization of Network Environments
Chris Healey
$40,000 by CACC
01/ 1/2008 - 12/31/2008
This proposal describes a follow-on one-year research project to apply techniques from scientific visualization to the problem of displaying, monitoring, and analyzing network-based data. Previous work was conducted primarily with Cisco System, with presentations to MCNC. Visualization is an area of computer graphics dedicated to developing ways to convert collections of strings and numbers into images that allow viewers to explore, discover, and analyze within their data. Interest in flexible methods to visualize network environments has grown in recent years, particularly with the recent emphasis on network and data security and reliability. We will partner with one or more CACC members to identify network-related problems within their company that would benefit from an advanced visual representation.
CAREER: Assisted Navigation in Large Visualization Spaces
Christopher Healey
$370,403 by the National Science Foundation (ACIR/ACR)
02/ 1/2001 - 01/31/2008
This project will investigate methods for navigating complex information spaces. Work will focus on a system designed to help viewers visualize, explore, and analyze large, multidimensional datasets. Detailed local displays will be combined with a high-level global overview of areas of interest within a dataset. Local views will use perceptual cues to harness the low-level human visual system. Global overviews will identify and cluster elements of interest to produce an underlying graph that: (1) support efficient navigation via graph traversal, and (2) provide an effective visualization of the areas of interest and their relationships to one another.
Visualizing Network Data and Environments
Christopher Healey
$40,000 by CACC
01/ 1/2006 - 05/31/2007
This proposal describes a one-year research project to apply techniques from scientific visualization to the problem of displaying, monitoring, and analyzing network-based data.
A Perceptual Visualization Architecture
Christopher Healey
$354,029 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2000 - 08/31/2005
This project will address three issues: (1) can we harness and apply low-level human perception to the problem of visualizing large, complex, multidimensional datasets? (2) can we embed this knowledge in an AI-based system that will assist viewers in constructing perceptually-optimal visualizations in a general way to address a wide range of problem environments? (3) can results from perception be bound to stylistic properties in Impressionist painting, thereby creating a system that allows a viewer to "paint" an expressive visual representation of their data, while at the same time ensuring the result accurately portrays the underlying data values being displayed?
Interactive Exploration of Complex Datasets Via the Effective Generation of Text and Graphics
Christopher Healey ; Robert St. Amant ; Michael Young
$569,338 by the National Science Foundation (IIS/IDM)
09/15/2000 - 08/31/2005
This project studies methods for interactive exploration of complex data spaces through the combination of textual and graphical discourse engines, a plan recognition system, and an interaction manager. Users begin by asking questions about their data. The system responds using text and graphics. Text responses are built by a discourse engine; graphical images are constructed using a perceptual visualization assistant. Plan recognition algorithms analyze queries and users' reactions to the responses they receive. This allows the system to anticipate future queries, cache relevant statistics, and guide the discourse and visualization systems during evaluation of new user queries.
A Bioinformatics Computing Cluster for NC State University
Steffen Heber
$227,029 by North Carolina Biotechnology Center
02/ 1/2007 - 01/31/2008
The Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) at NC State University is one of the world's premier centers for education and research in bioinformatics. Funding will provide a 54 dual-Xeon compute node Linux cluster to enhance the computational resources of the BRC. BRC will partner with NC State Information Technology Division (ITD) to leverage the proposed cluster investment in two ways: first, BRC faculty will gain access to the high performance computing (HPC) resources - currently more than 400 blade processors. Second, by having a shared, ITD housed and administered computing resource, personal systems will not need to be purchased or maintained.
Comparative and Web-Enabled Virtual Screening
Jacqueline Hughes-Oliver ; Moody Chu ; Gary Howell ; Morteza Khaledi, and Xiaosong Ma (CSC)
$1,111,110 by the National Institutes of Health
09/23/2005 - 07/31/2008
The long-term objective of this project is to develop computational algorithms and software to gain theoretical and empirical insights in the use of chemical diversity for determining quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSARs). In addition to addressing scientific and technical goals with respect to QSAR modeling, planning-period tasks will include specific activities to bring together the researchers and to facilitate inter-disciplinary communication. Specific Aim 1 is to develop and enhance collaborations between three broad disciplines: statistics, computer science, and chemistry.
Forensic Analysis of Medical Devices
S. Purushothaman Iyer
$20,000 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2006 - 07/31/2008
Automation in medical devices has led to the use of software as an integral part of these devices. Given the safety critical nature of these devices it is important to take efforts that such software are free of defects. However, in the event of an accident it becomes important to determine the cause of the error -- an activity that is termed {\em forensic analysis}. Forensic analysis is an activity/review that would be conducted by a regulatory agency, such as FDA, or an independent investigator. This is especially necessary in the case where loss of human life is involved. We propose to work on formal methods based tools that can be used to understand and identify the source of an error. This project will be carried out at NCSU and at FDA. In particular, a case study on infusion pump will be carried out as part of the project. Slicing has typically been proposed as a technique for understanding programs. However, a slice of program with respect to some criterion, instead of just returning a small relevant portion of the original program, would return almost the entire program. We propose to investigate how abstract interpretation, as used in software model checkers, and slicing can be combined to build small relevant models of a program under review. The key technical question we will investigate is how the two techniques can be combined into an automated process. We expect to validate this tool on our case study. The educational component of the proposal includes training of two PhD students, one of whom will work very closely with FDA.
Symbolic Representation Based Partial Order Methods
S. Purushothaman Iyer
$160,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2002 - 08/31/2006
Symbolic representations are used in analysis of finite and infinite state concurrent system. However, they could be subjected to constraint explosion much like state explosion in analysis of finite state designs of concurrent systems. The reason for both of these explosions is the consideration of all interleavings, of a concurrent system, during their analysis. Partial-order techniques depend upon the notion of independence among actions to avoid considering all possible interleavings. The proposed research will investigate the notion of unfolding, which aids both in discovery of independent actions and in succinctly representing the state space of systems.
Automated Analysis of Probabilistic Open Systems
S. Purushothaman Iyer
$210,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2001 - 07/31/2005
The project will explore semantic theories of systems that have both non-determinism and probabilistic choice. In particular, notions of equality and approximate equality of system behaviors will be investigated. Furthermore, the effect of these notions on compositional reasoning will also be studied. The second topic of the investigation will be a thorough comparison of the semantic theories developed in this project against traditional approaches to dealing with non-determinism and probabilistic choice. Finally, practical algorithms for process minimization and for checking equality (and approximate equality) of processes will be designed and implemented in the Concurrency Workbench of New Century.
Workshop: Radical Innovations in Software & Systems Engineering in the Future
S. Purushothaman Iyer
$10,080 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2002 - 02/29/2004
The workshop titled ``Radical Innovations of software and systems engineering of the future'' to be held October 7-11, 2002 at Universita' Ca'Foscari di Venezia in Venice, Italy, will bring together leading researchers in all aspects of Software and System Engineering with a view towards discussing potential research topics of tomorrow. To accomplish this goal, the workshop will have several talks and several open discussions, with the hope that the latter would lead to cross-fertilization of ideas from several disparate sub-areas of Software and Systems Engineering.
Automatica Analysis of Probabilistic Systems
S. Purushothaman Iyer
$258,648 by the U.S. Army Research Office
07/ 1/2001 - 05/31/2004
Concurrent systems are difficult to build and debug. Those that have to contend with unreliable components are even harder to work with. We propose to investigate how formal methods can be used to address both logical correctness and reliability/performance constraints of concurrent systems. To that end, we propose to investigate: (a) Design languages for complex systems that contain non-deterministic and probabilistic behavior, (b) Design of a temporal-logic based requirements language and design of model-checking algorithms, and (c) Implementation of probabilistic model-checking in Concurrency Workbench.
IPA Agreement between NCSU and US Army Research Office for Dr. SP Iyer
SP Iyer
$175,158 by the US Army Research Office
02/11/2008 - 12/31/2008
Dr. Iyer will direct and manage the extramural basic research program in the Systems & Control subfield of Information Science. Duties include initiating new research projects in response to Army needs, stimulating proposals to respond to those needs, analyzing and evaluating proposals, selecting proposals for funding, communicating with grantees and contractors, reviewing and analyzing research reports, ensuring their effective distribution, stimulating technology transfer to both Army and civilian users, and maintaining awareness of Army in-house R&D programs. Duties also include developing and giving briefings and presentations which highlight projects, objectives, progress, accomplishments and opportune areas to Army management and the scientific community, initiating and orchestrating workshops, conferences, and symposia on pacing research issues, and serving as principal Army advocate and representative for basic research activities and needs in Systems & Control and related fields.
Workshop on STEM Education K-12
Dennis Kekas
$49,630 by NSF
07/15/2007 - 06/30/2008
NCSU Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC) plans to host a workshop July 31, 2007 –August 1, 2007 at the William and Ida Friday Institute for Innovational Education on NCSU’s Centennial Campus in Raleigh, NC. The goal of the workshop is to bring together select individuals from industry, government, and academia to develop a national series of workshops to address problem of stimulating interest in STEM K-12.
Request for Support for the International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS 2006)
Dennis Kekas
$5,000 by National Science Foundation
09/15/2006 - 08/31/2007
The International Conference on Information and Communications Security will be held in December 2006 in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. This is a well-established security conference being held for the first time in North America. Support from NSF is sought to broaden participation, particularly of students, provide improved access for researchers to the latest research results, and to promote the development and dissemination of solutions to some of the nation's pressing security needs in the computing and communications areas.
NSF Partnership in the Center for Advanced Computing and Communication
Dennis Kekas ; Mladen Vouk
$492,240 by CACC-NSF
09/15/1999 - 08/31/2007
The Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC) is a membership-based industry/university cooperative research center co-located at North Carolina State University and Duke University. North Carolina State University was selected by the National Science Foundation in 1981 as a site for an industry/university cooperative research center in communications and signal processing. The center was named the Center for Communications and Signal Processing until 1994 when a second center site at Duke University was added. The CACC research goal is to create concepts, methods and tools for use in the analysis, design and implementation of advanced computer and communication systems.
Integration of Intrusion Detection and Network Management: A Feasibility Study
Wenkee Lee
$20,000 by NCNI Fellowship with funding from Aprisma Management Technologies
07/ 1/1998 - 08/20/2002
It provides support for a graduate student for one year and the project will study whether and how information gathered by a to improve the detection accuracy. The main tasks of the project include network management system can be utilized by an intrusion detection system developing algorithms for anomaly detection and early sensing of intrusions.
A Data Mining Approach for Building Cost-Sensitive and Light Intrusion Detection Models
Wenkee Lee ; Douglas Reeves
$2,001,561 by DARPA; Subcontractors: Columbia University, Florida Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech Research Corporation
08/ 1/2000 - 08/29/2003
This project proposes a novel system for rapid development and deployment of effective and cost-sensitive IDSs. Our system automates feature construction by analyzing the patterns of normal and intrusion activities computed from audit data. Detection models are constructed automatically using cost-sensitive machine learning algorithms to achieve optimal performance on the given cost metrics. Our system finds the cluster of attack signatures and normal profiles and constructs one light model for each cluster to maximize the utility of each model. A dynamically configurable group of such light models can be very effective and efficient, and resilient to IDS-related attacks
Self Explaining Learning Environments
James Lester ; Patrick Fitzgerald
$967,027 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/1999 - 07/ 1/2003
Given the centrality of explanation in science, one of the most intriguing forms of intelligent multimedia learning environments revolves around explanation. Self-explaining learning environments will enable learners to pose questions to objects and processes in 3D worlds that can dynamically generate clear cinematic and narrative explanations of their own structure, function, and causality.
Major: The Narrative Theatre - A Creativity Enhancement Environment
James Lester ; Hiller Spires
$780,868 by the National Science Foundation
05/ 1/2008 - 04/30/2011
Multiple representations are central to the creative process. The objective of the project is to design and empirically evaluate an interactive creativity environment that supports the automatic mapping of one representation to another that is fundamentally different but complementary. In particular, the proposed work will focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Narrative Theatre, an interactive narrative-centered creativity environment. Rigorous comparative studies using both quantitative and qualitative methods will explore the hypothesis that the multiple representations supported by the Narrative Theatre will significantly enhance the creative process in measurable ways.
Bayesian Pedagogical Agents for Dynamic High-Performance Inquiry-Based Science Learning Environments
James Lester ; Hiller Spires ; John Nietfeld
$605,436 by the National Science Foundation
01/ 1/2007 - 12/31/2009
Pedagogical agents are embodied software agents that have emerged as a promising vehicle for promoting effective learning. The proposed work has two complementary technology and learning thrusts. First, it will develop a full suite of Bayesian pedagogical agent technologies that leverage probabilistic models of inference to systematically reason about the multitude of factors that bear on tutorial decision making in dynamic high-performance inquiry-based science learning environments. Second, it will provide a comprehensive account of the cognitive processes and results of interacting with Bayesian pedagogical agents in inquiry-based science learning by conducting extensive empirical studies of learning processes and outcomes.
CAREER: Transparent, Interactive Desktop Parallel Computing for Scientific Data Processing
Xiaosong Ma
$400,000 by the National Science Foundation
03/ 1/2006 - 02/28/2011
While individual workstations in scientific research environments have become more powerful, they cannot meet the needs of today's interactive data processing tasks. Meanwhile, idle desktop resources are not efficiently utilized. This project aims at harnessing the collective idle resources within institutional boundaries to speed up computation- or data-intensive tasks routinely executed on desktop machines. We will build a novel desktop parallel computing framework, which will integrate distributed computing and storage resources to create an execution platform similar to that provided by a parallel computer, while maintaining the comfort and responsiveness of desktop sequential computing and the autonomy of resource donors.
Joint Faculty Appointment
Xiaosong Ma
$253,484 by UT-Battelle, LLC
09/21/2003 - 08/15/2008
Xioasong Ma's joint work with NCSU and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) will bridge the gap between the two organizations in a practical manner to cooperatively research parallel I/O in conjunction with the Genomes to Life (GTL) and Scientific Data management projects within the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at ORNL.
Runtime Data Management for Data-Intensive Scientific Applications
Xiaosong Ma
$299,992 by the US Department of Energy
08/15/2005 - 08/14/2008
Many applications currently used on daily basis by scientists fail to take advantage of state-of-the-art computer systems. This problem is more severe for many data-intensive applications, such as bioinformatics and visualization codes, whose parallelization are more recent and less studied in parallel architectures' design, compared to traditional simulations. We propose to address the above problems by investigating efficient runtime data management for data-intensive applications. We plan to build novel technologies for generic, automatic parallel execution plan optimization and enhancing parallel scientific data libraries by hiding I/O costs.
Transparent Data Recovery for Parallel File Systems
Xiaosong Ma
$31,846 by Oak Ridge National Laboratories - UT-Battelle LLC
02/15/2007 - 09/30/2007
Dr. Xiaosong Ma and her students will attack the problem of transparent data recovery to improve the reliability of large parallel file systems. With this proposed technique, job input data will be automatically staged into a supercomputer, while a modified system to perform just-in-time patching to make sure the staged data are available when the corresponding job is scheduled.
Collaborative Research: Application-Adaptive I/O Stack For Data-Intensive Scientific Computing
Xiaosong Ma ; Vincent Freeh ; John Blondin
$266,002 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2006 - 08/31/2009
In this proposal, we address the I/O stack performance problem with adaptive optimizations at multiple layers of the HEC I/O stack (from high-level scientific data libraries to secondary storage devices and archiving systems), and propose effective communication schemes to integrate such optimizations across layers. Our proposed PATIO (Parallel AdapTive I/O) framework will coordinate storage resources ranging from processors to tape archiving systems.
Collaborative Research: Reusable, Observation-Based Performance Prediction Across Platforms
Xiaosong Ma ; Frank Mueller
$76,566 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2004 - 07/31/2006
This project investigates observation-based execution time estimation for resource planning and usage estimation in the grid environment. The proposed approaches will collect/manage/utilize application characteristics and performance results, and transfer such information across applications and platforms. Thus, performance data from one application's executions on one platform helps predict the performance of another application on another platform. The expected outcome of this research is a meta-predictor, an efficient and sufficiently accurate cross-platform performance prediction tool that provides performance predictions as a service to grid users. These approaches will be validated on production platforms with applications representative for nationally relevant high-end applications.
Visual Factors Affecting Pilot's Judgments of Trajectory-to-Touchdown During Emergency Landings
David McAllister ; Donald Mershon ; Celeste Mayer
$185,999 by the National Aeronautics & Space Administration
01/ 1/2000 - 12/31/2001
The research will employ the VisionDome® maintained at the School of Design, NC State University, to simulate emergency landing fields with various amounts of structure around the periphery. Participants will be seated within a structural mockup of a typical single-engine airplane cockpit and be randomly presented with a series of trials and different landings. Participants will be asked to indicate their expected touchdown point at times during each approach and their perceived bank angle. Analyses of the passive-observer trials will be used to guide further investigation that will enable later attention/effort directed toward conditions most likely to lead to significant judgmental errors.
CSR--EHS: Collaborative Research: Hybrid Timing Analysis via Multi-Mode Execution
Frank Mueller
$140,000 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2007 - 07/31/2009
Real-time embedded systems require known bounds on the worst-case execution time (WCET) of tasks. Static timing analysis provides such bounds, yet cannot keep pace with architectural innovations and hardware performance variation due to chip fabrication scaling. Instead of simulating execution, this work promotes actual execution in hardware to bound WCETs. This renders tedious hardware modeling unnecessary while guaranteeing correct behavior regardless of complexity or variation of hardware. The approach will be evaluated by FPGA synthesis to assess its feasibility and to validate a prototype. Advanced architectural features are studied in co-design space exploration to combine predictability and tight WCET bounds.
CAREER: Exploiting Binary Rewriting to Analyze and Alleviate Memory Bottlenecks for Scientific Applications
Frank Mueller
$400,000 by the National Science Foundation
06/ 1/2003 - 05/31/2009
Today, high-performance clusters of shared-memory multiprocessors (SMPs) are employed to cope with large data sets for scientific applications. On these SMPs, hybrid programming models combing message passing and shared memory are often less efficient than pure message passing although the former fits SMP architectures more closely. For more information on this project check Dr. Mueller's Web Page
MOLAR: Modular Linux and Adaptive Runtime Support for HEC OS/R Research
Frank Mueller
$93,708 by the US Department of Energy
02/ 1/2005 - 01/31/2009
This project addresses issues of adaptive, reliable,and efficient operating and runtime system solutions for ultra-scale high-end scientific computing with the following goals: (1)Create a modular and configurable Linux system based on the application / runtime requirements. (2)Build runtime systems that leverage the OS modularity and configurability to improve efficiency, reliability, scalability,ease-of-use. (3)Advance computer reliability, availability and serviceability management systems to work cooperatively. (4)Explore the use of advanced monitoring and adaptation to improve application performance and predictability of system interruptions. Our focus is on developing scalable algorithms for high-availability without single points of failure and without single points of control.
ITR: Collaborative Research: SPARTA: Static Parametric Timing Analysis to Support Dynamic Decisions in Embedded Systems
Frank Mueller
$130,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2003 - 08/31/2008
Embedded systems with temporal constraints rely on timely scheduling and a prior knowledge of worst-case execution times. Static timing analysis derives safe bounds of WCETs but its applicability has been limited to hard real-time systems and small code snippets. This proposal addresses these limitations of timing analysis for embedded systems. It contributes a novel approach to program analysis through parametric techniques of static timing analysis and provides innovative methods for exploiting them.
Online Data Reconstruction for Supercomputers
Frank Mueller
$15,000 by Oak Ridge National Laboratories
01/ 1/2007 - 06/30/2007
This work seeks to build online recovery mechanisms for transient supercomputer job data. With the proposed on-demand data reconstruction, staged input files that are unavailable due to I/O node failures in a parallel file system are transparently patched from source copies using the recovery metadata.
Reducing Frequency Via Speculation and Fall-Back Recovery
Frank Mueller
$300,000 by the National Science Foundation
07/ 1/2002 - 06/30/2006
This work puts forth a two-tier approach to reduce the processor frequency of complex embedded systems. First, tight worst-case timing analysis reduces the perceived upper bound on the number of cycles consumed by tasks. Second, architecture simulation and processors with dual frequency/voltage modes enable significant additional power savings. Architecture simulation produces an approximate worst-case timing estimate. A higher recovery frequency is utilized as a fall-back mode to ensure safe operation bounded by tight worst-case timing analysis. These two approaches complement each other. They initially reduce the power requirements by significant amount when compared with naive approach.
Dynamic Performance Analysis and Tuning (ASCI L3)
Frank Mueller
$76,884 by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
05/12/2004 - 12/31/2004
This proposal addresses problems in OpenMP synchronization and shortcomings in exploiting the memory bandwidth of shared-memory multiprocessors (SMPs) for scientific applications. High-end computing widely relies on clusters of SMP workstations. Parallel applications generally utilize MPI to efficiently execute codes on such architectures, even though a hybrid programming model of MPI+OpenMP should be a better match for the architecture but often yields less performant code than a pure MPI model. The objective of this proposal is to analyze problems with the OpenMP component of scientific applications, specifically ASCI benchmarks, to investigate more efficient OpenMP alternatives and to subsequently tune applications. The novelty of this work lies in its approach of combining online analysis and tuning, i.e., an application is probed for inefficiency while it is running, and optimizations are applied between timesteps during its execution. The methodology to perform both analysis and tuning relies on binary rewriting. We plan to devise a method of coarse-grained performance localization. This method allows us to determine the most time-consuming portions of execution in an application. We then envision to generalize our methods of instrumentation to obtain partial data traces in order to capture shared-memory cache behavior. We further analyze selected hot-spots of loop nests to derive opportunities for performance tuning from both the cache behavior and the data dependence characteristics of the binary. A final stage of identifying legal transformations on the binary and relating them to the source code provides application developers feedback on tuning opportunities. Less performant code could then be replaced by tuned code, e.g., by source modifications of the application developer. We expect this work to provide significant contributions toward better utilizing existing SMP clusters in terms of 1) their memory bandwidth, 2) reduced coherence traffic and 3) reduced OpenMP overhead.
SPAN: Shared-Memory Performance Analysis
Frank Mueller
$76,999 by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
01/ 1/2002 - 01/ 1/2003
This proposal addresses problems in exploiting the memory bandwidth of shared-memory multiprocessors (SMPs) for scientific applications. For contemporary high-performance clusters of SMPs, it has been found that a number of scientific applications utilizing a mixed mode of MPI+OpenMP are performing worse than when relying on MPI, only. Considering that the architectural model of SMPs seems to be a close fit to the OpenMP threading model, this performance gap seems particularly surprising. The objective of this proposal is to determine the sources of inefficiencies in utilizing memory hierarchies for threaded programs vs. parallel processes and to assist the programmer in alleviating these problems. The methodology to perform this analysis relies on binary rewriting.
Collaborative Research: Effective Detection and Alleviation of Scalability Problems
Frank Mueller ; Jerzy Bernholc
$231,652 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2004 - 08/31/2008
The focus of this project is to develop tool support to provide the ability for scientific programmers to inquire about scalability problems and correlate this information back to source code. Furthermore, we believe that tools should be able to suggest and evaluate optimizing transformations to alleviate these problems. This would constitute a significant improvement over current performance analysis practice. The key intellectual merit is in providing an automatic framework for detecting scalability problems and correlating them back to source code. We will experiment with our framework on the ASCI codes, which is intended to stress high-performance clusters.
Virtual Simple Architecture (VISA): Exceeding the Complexity Limit in Safe Real-Time Systems
Frank Mueller ; Eric Rotenberg
$275,000 by the National Science Foundation
08/15/2003 - 07/31/2007
While essential for real-time scheduling, deriving worst-case execution times (WCET) for contemporary processors is intractable. The Virtual Simple Architecture (VISA) framework shifts the burden of bounding the WCETs of tasks, in part, to hardware. A VISA is the pipeline timing specification of a hypothetical simple processor. WCET is derived for a task assuming the VISA. Tasks are executed speculatively on an unsafe complex processor. Yet, before deadlines becomes jeopardized, a simple mode is entered. Overall, VISA provides a general framework for safe operation on unsafe processors.
SEED: Developing Instructional Laboratories for Computer Security Education
Peng Ning
$20,000 by Syracuse University
01/ 1/2008 - 12/31/2010
This project is to test and evaluate selected lab exercises developed by Dr. Wenliang Du at Syracuse University. Starting from Year 2, he will select 2-3 labs (on average) each year and use them in the course he teaches. After students finish each lab, Dr. Ning will ask students to fill out a survey questionnaire proveded by the PI. The surveys will be sent ack to Dr. Du, along with Dr. Ning's evaluation on students' performance
NeTS-NOSS: Secure, Robust and DoS-Resilient Code Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks
Peng Ning
$269,902 by the National Science Foundation
08/ 1/2007 - 07/31/2010
Sensor networks are ideal candidates for a wide range of applications, such as monitoring of critical infrastructures, data acquisition in hazardous environments, and military operations. It is usually necessary to reprogram sensor nodes after they are deployed through wireless links. In this project, we will investigate secure, robust, and DoS-resilient remote program of sensor nodes through wireless links. We expect to develop three groups of fundamental techniques as a result, including secure and proactively robust encoding of binary code images, DoS-resilient mechanisms for authenticating binary images, and efficient and effective techniques for remote sensor programming in hybrid sensor networks.
CAREER: Towards Trustworthy and Resilient Sensor Networks
Peng Ning
$400,000 by the National Science Foundation
07/ 1/2005 - 06/30/2010
Sensor networks are ideal candidates for a wide range of applications such as critical infrastructure protection. It is necessary to guarantee the trustworthiness and resilience of sensor networks as well as the sensing applications. The objective of this project is to develop practical techniques for building trustworthy and resilient sensor networks as well as instructional materials that facilitate the education of these techniques. The research activities are focused on practical broadcast authentication, trustworthy and resilient clock synchronization, and light-weight and collaborative intrusion detection in sensor networks, seeking effective integration of cryptographic techniques, application semantics, and other knowledge or constraints.
Collaborative Research: CT-T: A Resilient Real-Time System For a Secure and Reconfigurable Power Grid
Peng Ning
$28,500 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2007 - 08/31/2008
Energy infrastructure is a critical underpinning of modern society that any compromise or sabotage of its secure and reliable operation will have a prominent impact on people's daily lives and the national economy. Past failures such as the massive northeastern power blackout of August 2003 have revealed serious defects in both system-level management and device-level designs. This project proposes a hardware-in-the-loop reconfigurable system with embedded intelligence and resilient coordination schemes to tackle the vulnerabilities of the power grid. The proposed system will be fully evaluated in terms of real-time responsibility, fault resiliency, and ability for local collaboration in emergent/catastrophic events.
Cyber-TA: NCSU: Large-Scale Privacy-Preserving Collaborative Intrusion Analysis
Peng Ning
$80,107 by SRI International
07/ 1/2006 - 07/14/2008
We will focus on one thrust of research in the Cyber-TA initiative. We will explore practical schemes for Internet-scale collaborative sharing of sensitive information security log content, while providing extensive guarantees for contributor anonymity. Cyber-TA will enable much greater content sharing of even the most sensitive system and security log content, allowing contributors to release "rich-content" (anonymized) alert information that can enable new directions in ultra-larges-scale repository correlation.
Collaborative Research: Trustworthy and Resilient Location Discovery in Wireless Sensor Networks
Peng Ning
$150,000 by the National Science Foundation
10/ 1/2004 - 06/30/2008
The objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive suite of techniques to prevent, detect, or survive malicious attacks against location discovery in sensor networks. The PIs will investigate key management schemes suitable for authenticating beacon messages, explore techniques to make existing location discovery schemes more resilient, seek beaconless location discovery that uses deployment knowledge instead of beacon nodes, and finally investigate methods to integrate the proposed techniques so that they can be combined cost-effectively for sensor network applications. This project will provide specific technical solutions that can be integrated with the sensor network techniques currently being developed.
Efficient and Resilient Key Management for Wireless Sensor Networks
Peng Ning
$173,165 by Syracuse University
05/ 1/2005 - 04/30/2008
Security of sensor networks is a critical issue, especially when the sensor networks are deployed in hostile environments for mission critical applications. This project aims at developing efficient and resilient key management techniques for wireless sensor networks, including novel key pre-distribution techniques, effective use of knowledge extracted from practical sensor deployment models as well as application semantics, effective integration of public key and secret key, and specific techniques for key management in hybrid sensor networks consisting of a small number of resourceful nodes and a potentially large number of resource constrained, regular sensor nodes.
Efficient Group Key Distribution for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks
Peng Ning
$42,092 by CACC
07/ 1/2003 - 06/30/2004
Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) are ideal candidates for communications in battlefields, scientific explorations, and rescue missions, where there is usually no network infrastructure support. In situations where there are adversaries who may want to intercept and/or interrupt the communications, security of MANET becomes one of the top concerns. Peng's project aims at developing efficient and self-healing group key distribution techniques for MANET applications based on his recent research results.
ITR: Integrating Intrusion Detection with Intelligent Visualization and Interaction Strategies
Peng Ning ; Christopher Healey ; Robert St. Amant
$415,099 by the National Science Foundation
08/15/2002 - 08/31/2006
This project is motivated by current limitations of intrusion detection systems, which are generally unable to fully detect unknown attacks, or even unknown variations of known attacks, without generating a large number of false alarms. The focus of this project is to integrate intrusion detection with visualization techniques and human computer interaction strategies to address these limitations. Our system will include interactive intrusion detection algorithms that capitalize on human knowledge and judgment, novel visualization and interaction techniques to monitor for potential attacks, and semi-automated tools for constructing and evaluating attack profiles to extend the capabilities of an intrusion detection system.
ARO Workshop on Security of Embedded Systems and Networks
Peng Ning ; Frank Mueller
$21,000 by the Army Research Office
09/15/2006 - 09/14/2007
Embedded systems and networks are used heavily in critical defense applications. The integrity of embedded infrastructures, such as configuration and code, is of utmost importance. New techniques are needed that allow updates to the infrastructure of an embedded system without violating its integrity. This workshop intends to bring researchers that have expertise in a variety of techniques for ensuring the security and integrity of mission-critical embedded systems and networks.
Reduce False Alerts, Uncover High-Level Attack Strategies and Predict Attacks in Progress Using Prerequisites of Intrusions
Peng Ning ; Douglas Reeves
$330,000 by the National Science Foundation
07/ 1/2002 - 06/30/2006
Current intrusion detection systems (IDSs) usually generate a large amount of false alerts, and often do not detect novel attacks or variations of known attacks. Moreover, most of the existing IDSs focus on low-level attacks or anomalies; none of them can capture the logical steps or strategies behind these attacks. This project will exploit alert correlation techniques to reduce false alerts, discover attackersą high-level strategies, and predict possible future attacks based on the detected attacks in progress.
Correlating Alerts Using Prerequisites of Intrusions Towards Reducing False Alerts & Uncovering High Level Attacks
Peng Ning ; Douglas Reeves
$258,812 by the U.S. Army Research Office
07/ 1/2002 - 05/31/2005
Current intrusion detection systems (IDSs) usually generate a large amount of false alerts, and often do not detect novel attacks or variations of known attacks. Moreover, most of the existing IDSs focus on low-level attacks or anomalies; none of them can capture the logical steps or strategies behind these attacks. As a result, it is difficult for human users or intrusion response systems to understand the nature of the attack and to take appropriate actions. To address these issues, this project will investigate techniques to correlate intrusion alerts on the basis of the prerequisites and consequences of attacks.
WiSeNeT: Wireless Sensor Network Testbed for Research and Education
Peng Ning ; Injong Rhee
$108,105 by the Army Research Office
05/ 1/2006 - 04/30/2008
This proposal proposes to build a wireless heterogeneous sensor network test-bed consisting of over 200 sensor nodes with varying capabilities in terms of processing, energy efficiency and radio transmission capacities. The proposed test-bed provides realistic large-scale wireless sensor network environments for evaluating and validating the ideas, protocols and systems conceived from various other activities. The data and experience gained from operating and managing a real network environment will also provide practical insights for students and researchers on the operation of large-scale heterogeneous sensor networks which help identify new security and performance problems and develop their practical solutions.
Positioning and Reliable Data Transmission of Sensor Networks
Peng Ning ; Wesley Snyder
$199,823 by the US Army
08/ 1/2004 - 07/31/2007
Reliable and sufficient sensor coverage is an important requirement for a successful sensor network deployment. The goal of the project is to study and develop optimal positioning algorithms for sensor network deployment that provide surveillance and monitoring of assets or facilities. This project considers two scenarios: 1) Assuming we would deploy sensors for asset protection, an optimal sensor positioning and deployment algorithm is needed. 2) If sensors are deployed randomly over a geographical region to protect certain asset, what will be the best scheduling plan to turn on some of the deploying sensors such that sufficient surveillance can be provided.
Reliable Medium Access in Wireless Networks: Vulnerabilities, Protection, and Recovery
Peng Ning ; Wenye Wang (PI)
$223,071 by Army Research Office
08/ 1/2007 - 02/28/2008
The goal is to study vulnerabilities of medium access in wireless networks and develop preventive algorithms for protection and reactive algorithms for recovery in the aftermath of cyber-attacks The approach will be to start with detailed middle-ware based traffic injecting, monitoring, measurement, and analysis in the Networking of Wireless Information Systems (NeTWIS) lab of North Carolina State University. The collected data will be later used for evaluation and verification of our proposed solutions.
A Performance Evaluation Study of an Optical Network with Temporal and Spatial Scheduling: A CACC Enhancement Project
Harry Perros
$56,517 by CACC-Nortel Networks
03/ 1/2004 - 12/31/2005
We propose to construct simulation and queueing-based models of an optical architecture proposed by Nortel Networks. There is little argument in the networking community that eventually the wire-lined networks will be based on an optical core. Currently, due to the collapse of the "bubble", the networking industry has drastically reduced its R&D on optical networks. However, it is important to have blue prints ready for commercialization when the tide turns around! This proposed research aims at evaluating the performance of such a blue print.
Jumpstart: Transparent Optical Network Management & Routing With Just-In-Time (JIT) Signaling
Harry Perros ; George Rouskas
$327,103 by MCNC-RDI
01/ 1/2003 - 09/29/2004
The PIs at NC State University will undertake an analysis of the routing architecture and algorithms that arise in optical burst switching (OBS) networks implementing the Just-In-Time signaling protocol. In particular, the PIs will undertake three areas of research: the impact of multicast and its performance, alternate route selection, and the performance of routing algorithms in OBS networks under congestion. This project is part of a larger project, joint with MCNC, to design, implement, and deploy a proof-of-concept OBS network.
Jumpstart: Performance Analysis and Alternate Routing for Just In Time Optical Burst Switching Networks
Harry Perros ; George Rouskas
$437,645 by MCNC
01/ 1/2002 - 03/28/2003
The principle investigators will undertake an analysis of the performance and alternate routing issues that arise in optical burst switching (OBS) networks implementing the Just In Time signaling protocol. he objective of this study is to estimate the throughput and the burst dropping probability in a network of OBS nodes. We will first develop a queueing model for a single OBS node, and subsequently we will use it to construct a model of a network of OBS nodes. At the same time, we will also develop a simulation model of a single OBS node and subsequently of a network of OBS nodes. The simulation model will be used to validate the accuracy of the queueing model. It will also be used to investigate various scenarios and assumptions that may not be possible to capture in the queueing model.
Dimensioning Access Networks Subject to Percentile End-to-End Delay SLAs
Harry Perros ; Yannis Viniotis
$40,000 by Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC)
07/ 1/2007 - 06/30/2008
This proposal is the continuation of a project entitled "IP Triple and Quadruple Play Services: Modeling and Design", currently being funded during this academic year 2005/2006. The project deals with the dimensioning of an access network. Specifically, of interest is to determine the size of the upstream and downstream links as a function of the number of ADSL/cable modems supported by the access network. Alternatively, given the size of the upstream and downstream links, determine how many ADSL/cable modems can be supported.
IP Triple and Quadruple Play Services: Modeling and Design
Harry Perros ; Yannis Viniotis
$40,000 by CACC
07/ 1/2006 - 06/30/2007
The award will fund research activities aiming to make significant contributions to the capacity planning and automation for monitoring tools by use of modeling, simulation, testbed emulation and on line optimization. Specific goals include the study of models, response surfaces and advanced simulation methods, and, the creation of an automated paradigm for on-line optimization for capacity tuning.
CT-ER: Metamorphic Worm Detection
Douglas Reeves
$137,057 by the National Science Foundation
08/15/2006 - 07/31/2008
Internet Worms are software that propagate from computer to computer across the network, without intervention by or knowledge of users, for the purpose of compromising the defenses of those machines against unauthorized access or use. Worms have the property that they can spread very quickly to the vulnerable population of hosts, sometimes in only seconds, to achieve worldwide penetration. This speed allows them to bypass conventional methods of positive identification and human response.
Fault Tolerant Networking through Intrusion Identification and Secure Compartment
Douglas Reeves
$394,065 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
07/ 1/2000 - 07/12/2002
We will study the concept of Compartment in a networking system to handle different types of network infrastructure attacks. We particularly will develop a compartment-based network system to protect BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) routing protocol. Furthermore, we will combine Compartments with the Deciduous model to more effectively identify the intrusion sources.
A Competitive Market Approach to Distributed Resource Allocation with QoS and Priorities
Douglas Reeves
$141,059 by the US Air Force
05/ 1/1999 - 11/30/2001
The quality of service (QoS) of an application is determined by the amount of resources it receives. We are developing a method of resource allocation which is dynamic, distributed, and which considers the relative importance or priority of different applications. This method is based on competitive pricing of resources. It has been applied to congestion control, server access, and bandwidth allocation in broadcast networks. We propose to extend our theory to support reserved resources. We will investigate economic decisions about which resource provider to choose, and when to expand the resource capacity.
A Data Mining Approach for Building Cost-Sensitive and Light Intrusion Detection Models
Douglas Reeves ; Wenke Lee
$2,001,561 by DARPA; Subcontractors: Columbia University, Florida, Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech Research Corporation
11/30/1999 - 11/30/1999
This project proposes a novel system for rapid development and deployment of effective and cost-sensitive IDSs. Our system automates feature construction by analyzing the patterns of normal and intrusion activities computed from audit data. Detection models are constructed automatically using cost-sensitive machine learning algorithms to achieve optimal performance on the given cost metrics. Our system finds the cluster of attack signatures and normal profiles and constructs one light model for each cluster to maximize the utility of each model. A dynamically configurable group of such light models can be very effective and efficient, and resilient to IDS-related attacks.
Tracing Attacks Through Non-Cooperative Networks and Stepping Stones with Timing-Based Watermarking
Douglas Reeves ; Peng Ning
$1,179,321 by the US Department of Interior
09/29/2003 - 02/28/2007
Increasingly the nation's infrastructure is connected by the Internet for computing, communication, monitoring, and control. Adversaries(hackers, criminals, terrorists, etc.)can and do exploit this connectivity to attack networked computers and devices. In order to defend against such attacks, and prosecute the adversaries, it is necessary to be able to identify the source of the attack. Tracing an attack back through the Internet to its source is the goal of this research project. As part of this project, tools for watermarking flows and performing timing correlation in real-time will be developed.
Protecting Network QoS Against Denial of Service Attacks
Douglas Reeves ; Peter Wurman
$1,448,788 by the U.S. Air Force
08/ 1/1999 - 08/15/2002
The next generation Internet will have mechanisms for providing Quality of Service (QoS). The standard mechanisms do not address the issues of security, or prevention of misuse. In this project, we address three new vulnerability questions with regard to QoS: (1) how to prevent "killer reservation" denial-of-service (DoS) attacks; (2) how to detect and respond to DoS attacks that are directed at the data flow; (3) how to reduce the vulnerability of resource reservation and allocation mechanisms. Our objective is to improve the survivability of the QoS mechanisms.
CAREER: Investigation of Error Recovery Techniques for Interactive Video Transmission over Wireless Networks
Injong Rhee
$269,075 by the National Science Foundation
04/ 1/1999 - 03/31/2005
We propose to study a new class of error recovery techniques that focuses on eliminating error propagation. The approach is to isolate errors when they occur by preventing them from propagating. The delays in repairing data losses affect only the duration of error propagation. Our Recovery from Error Spread using Continuous Updates (RESCU) does not introduce any delay in video playout, and has potential to achieve good error resilience. Our proposed techniques, in contrast, have potential to work well with or without feedback channels, and to be scalable for multicast. Encouraging preliminary results indicate that such potential is highly realizable.
Flow Control for Multimedia Streaming Over the Internet
Injong Rhee
$300,000 by the National Science Foundation
06/ 1/2000 - 05/31/2004
As the Internet becomes more diversified in its capabilities, it becomes more feasible to offer services that were not possible under earlier generations of Internet technologies. Realtime multimedia streaming and IP multicast are two such emerging technologies. The objective of this proposed work is to develop, verify analytically and experimentally, and implement a suite of end-to-end flow control protocols for unicast and multicast real-time streaming applications. The developed protocols are evaluated based on fairness, TCP friendliness, stability and scalability. These properties must hold regardless of the types of networks, or more specifically whether networks are symmetric or asymmetric in bandwidth and delays.
NeTS-NOSS: Exploring the Design Space of Sensor Networks Using Route-Aware MAC Protocols
Injong Rhee ; Robert Fornaro
$584,999 by the National Science Foundation
01/ 1/2005 - 12/31/2008
As applications for wireless sensor networks are extremely diverse, sensor network designers will benefit immensely from (sensor) network protocols that can provide a wide spectrum of design choices, especially for very low energy budget applications. In this proposal, the PIs plan to develop a suite of new MAC protocols for sensor network applications based on a new approach, called Route-aware Media Access Control (RASMAC), that can greatly diversify design choices for application designers. A comprehensive evaluation of the developed protocols and their performance models is planned that involves design and implementation of a wildlife tracking system.
Investigation and Evaluation of Binary Increase Congestion Control for Ultra-Scale Networks
Injong Rhee ; Khaled Harfoush
$40,000 by CACC
07/ 1/2004 - 06/30/2005
The main approach of the proposed research is to emulate the per-flow characteristics of a "scalable" protocol with multiple parallel flows. The main goals of the multi-flow emulation are to achieve protocol fairness and to overcome the end-system bottlenecks. A new congestion control protocol called BIC (binary increase congestion control) is proposed for the protocol being emulated. The per-flow characteristics of BIC exhibit good scalability and fairness suitable for the multiflow emulation. A third party testing by SLAC over production networks involving a preliminary version of BIC and six other scalable TCP variants reported that BIC consistently topped the rankings in stability, scalability, and fairness. In this project, the PIs plan to enhance the responsiveness and scalability of BIC while retaining its fairness and stability properties.
NeTS-NR: Traffic Quantization: A Formal Framework for Quality of Service (QoS) and Scalability in Packet-Switched Networks
George Rouskas
$357,314 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2004 - 08/31/2008
Traffic quantization is a new approach to supporting per-flow functionality in packet-switched networks in an efficient and scalable manner. We propose the concept of tiered service to alleviate the complexity associated with supporting per-flow QoS: a quantized network offers a small set of service tiers, and each flow is mapped to the tier that guarantees its QoS. Research will consist of four components: develop novel quantized implementations of weighted fair queueing (WFQ); develop Linux implementations of quantized WFQ to validate the theoretical results; extend the quantization approach to multiple traffic parameters; and investigate efficient constraint-based routing algorithms for quantized traffic.
Lambda Scheduling for Grid Applications
George Rouskas
$40,000 by Center for Advanced Computing and Communication (CACC)
07/ 1/2007 - 06/30/2008
The effort we describe in this proposal is the first step towards a long-term vision of a distributed scheduling infrastructure that will allow researchers to reserve high-performance network paths via straightforward interfaces to support their research endeavors. Our work will support the development of sophisticated scheduling algorithms and capabilities, and complicated policy implementation and enforcement techniques, and their incorporation into single-domain schedulers; in future research, we will extend and incorporate these capabilities into multi-domain schedulers. Simulation results of algorithms will be used for prototype implementation and experimentation, and then results from experimentation will be fed back into the simulation environment for continuous enhancement of the algorithms.
Engineering Online Student Access to Internet Lab
George Rouskas
$10,000 by DELTA
02/15/2003 - 06/30/2003
The goal of this project is to create a "virtual" lab that will allow Engineering Online (EOL) students to access the Internet lab remotely and perform lab experiments IDENTICAL to the ones required of on-campus students, without the need to be physically present at the lab. The Internet Lab, housed in the Ventures II building at Centennial campus, serves a number of networking courses, including: CSC/ECE 570 (Computer Networks), CSC/ECE 573 (Internet Protocols), CSC/ECE 775 (Optical Networks), and CSC/ECE 791M (Internet Measurements and Instrumentation).
CAREER: Towards an All-Optical Network Infrastructure: Interconnection of Photonic WDM Broadcast-and-Select Local Area Networks
George Rouskas
$200,000 by the National Science Foundation CAREER Program, Division of Networking Research
09/ 1/1998 - 09/30/2002
The career development plan outlined in this proposal focuses on the integration of the research and teaching objectives of the principal investigator. The research project addresses a number of important issues in the design and interconnection of optical networks. The ultimate goal of the proposed work is to develop viable solutions for a seamless nationwide all-optical network infrastructure. The educational component includes development of graduate-level courses on all-optical networking and on internetwork architectures and protocols, integration of topics on lightwave technology in existing graduate and undergraduate introductory network courses, and active involvement of undergraduate students in network projects.
Regional Testbed Optical Access Network for Internet Protocol (IP) Multicast and Differentiated Services (Helios)
George Rouskas
$224,825 by Microelectronics Center of North Carolina
03/ 1/2000 - 03/31/2002
The proposed research will develop a regional optical testbed network carrying IP traffic between MCNC, UNC, NCSU, and Duke. The testbed architecture will consist of interconnected access networks. The access networks and the interconnecting network will utilize an optical single-hop architecture. Network elements consist of access nodes interconnected to a passive coupler to form a broadcast star topology. Access node implementations will utilize an extended version of the HiPer-1 optical Media Access Control protocol developed and analyzed at NCSU.
CPATH CB: Computing Across Curricula
George Rouskas ; Lisa Bullard ; Jeffrey Joines ; Lawrence Silverberg, Eric Wiebe
$258,749 by the National Science Foundation
07/ 1/2007 - 06/30/2010
The primary focus of this project is to streamline pathways through which students receive an education that equips them with the computing tools necessary for them to serve as future computing leaders of society. Ultimately, the proposed activities are designed to make the computing education more relevant to the ever-changing needs of the computing workforce in the United States. To achieve these objectives, the institution proposes assembling a community of individuals, each of whom is invested in their own unique way to revitalizing the undergraduate computing education. The community will involve faculty representatives from several academic departments, faculty from CISE disciplines, and delegates from industry partner organizations. Faculty learning communities are nothing new to academe. The goal of the efforts proposed here is to put a new twist on a proven faculty collaboration method. To date, many learning communities have been limited to faculty involvement only, and involvement from engineering faculty in these formal university-wide communities has been somewhat disappointing. Although, these university communities can be an effective means of addressing many issues pertinent to education, the proposed activities seek to encourage a variety of key computing stakeholders outside of the university to participate. The community created would partner with local industry leaders to open up meaningful channels for dialogue to flow from industry to the university. The community seeks to view industry partners as customers so that university educators can perform a needs-assessment by which the computing skills relevant to today's computing professionals are determined. Faculty can then translate these needs into their respective curricula in order to create a diverse, flexible education that will result in a diverse, flexible workforce of computing professionals
Collaborative Research: NeTS-FIND: The SILO Architecture For Services Integration, Control, and Optimization For the Future Internet
George Rouskas ; Rudra Dutta
$220,000 by the National Science Foundation
09/15/2006 - 08/31/2008
The objective of this project is to formulate a formal framework for a non-layered internetworking architecture in which complex protocols are composed from elemental functional blocks in a configurable manner, and to demonstrate its potential by developing proof-of-concept prototypes. We propose a new internetworking architecture that represents a significant departure from current philosophy. The proposed architecture is flexible and extensible so as to foster innovation and accommodate change, it supports network convergence, it allows for the integration of security features at any point in the networking stack, and it is positioned to take advantage of hardware-based performance-enhancing techniques.
Jumpstart III: Transparent Optical Network Management and Routing with Just-In-Time Signaling
George Rouskas ; Harry Perros
$327,000 by
01/ 1/2003 - 12/31/2004
The first two phases of the Jumpstart project involve the definition, specification, performance evaluation, implementation (in the ATDNet optical network testbed in Washington, DC), and testing of a Just-In-Time signaling protocol for optical burst switched networks. The third phase extends the scope of the project to include the specification of a novel architecture for routing and multicast in optical burst switched networks, as well as the development, evaluation, and implementation of new routing algorithms that take into account physical constraints imposed by the optical layer. Additional information about the scope of the project may be found at the URL: http://jumpstart.anr.mcnc.org/
Performance Analysis of Wavelength Routed Wide Area Networks
George Rouskas ; Harry Perros
$255,384 by the National Science Foundation, Division of Advanced Networking and Infrastructure Research
09/ 1/1998 - 08/31/2002
Wavelength routed wide area networks will be an integral part of the future all-optical network infrastructure. It is envisioned that these networks will act as the backbone that provides the interconnection for local area lightwave sub-networks attached to them.. However, the deployment of an infrastructure that will enable large scale interconnection of optical networks raises a number of fundamental and challenging problems that require novel and innovative solutions. The research plan outlined in this proposal identifies a number of significant but open problems arising in wavelength routed environments, and presents a comprehensive and novel approach to address them.
A Formal Approach to Traffic Grooming in Optical Networks with General Topologies
George Rouskas ; Carla Savage ; Rudra Dutta
$404,968 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2003 - 08/31/2007
We address the problem of grooming traffic into lightpaths for transport over general topology optical networks so as to minimize the network cost. We will first study the traffic grooming problem in a number of elemental topologies such as rings, stars, and trees. We will consequently develop hierarchical approaches to tackle the problem in general topologies by decomposing it into smaller subproblems involving elemental topologies. The end-result of this project will be a suite of traffic grooming algorithms with formally verified properties that can be flexibly and efficiently applied within a variety of optical network and cost models.
Joint Faculty Agreement For Nagiza Samatova
Nagiza Samatova
$238,125 by Oak Ridge National Laboratories - UT Battelle, LLC
08/ 9/2007 - 08/ 8/2010
Dr. Nagiza Samatova's joint work with NC State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will provide the interface between the two organizations aiming to collaboratively address computational challenges in the Scientific Data Management, Data-Intensive Computing for Understanding Complex Biologicial Systems, Knowledge Integration for the Shewanella Federation, and the Large-Scale Analysis of Biologicial Networks with Applications to Bioenergy Production.
High-Performance Data Analytics with Demonstrations to DOE-Mission Applications
Nagiza Samatova
$400,001 by Oak Ridge National LAboratories & UT-Battelle, LLC
10/ 4/2007 - 08/31/2008
Terascale computing and high-throughput experiments enable studies of complex natural phenomena, on a scale not possible just a few years ago. With this opportunity, comes a new problem ? the massive quantities of complex data produced by these simulations and experiments. However, answers to fundamental questions about the nature of the universe remain largely hidden in these data. The goal of this work is to provide a scalable high performance data analytics technologies to help application scientists extract knowledge from these raw data. Towards achieving this goal, this subcontract will research a number of challenging issues, develop methodologies for addressing them, and provide proof-of-principle demonstrations on the DOE-related applications.
Enumeration and Structure in Families of Partitions, Compositions, and Combinations
Carla Savage
$183,287 by the National Science Foundation
07/15/2003 - 06/30/2007
The proposed research is an investigation of fundamental questions involving the structure of combinatorial families and relationships between families with intrinsically different characterizations. The focus is on families of integer partitions, compositions, and combinations. The topics under investigation include new work on partitions and compositions defined by linear inequalities; new tools for investigating classical questions about generalizations of the Rogers-Ramanujan identities; and symmetric chain decompositions with geometric applications.
Enumeration and Structure in Combinatorial Families
Carla Savage
$39,998 by the National Security Agency
07/23/2001 - 07/23/2003
The research is a continuing investigation of fundamental questions involving the structure and size of combinatorial families and various methods for counting and generating them. The algorithmic component of the research concerns the design of fast methods for exhaustive generation of combinatorial families as well as schemes for listing the members according to special criteria which are dictated by applications in which they arise. The mathematical component investigates open questions about classical combinatorial structures such as integer partitions, compositions, and the Boolean lattice. The interaction between the two components is significant: the algorithms are applied to study the mathematical questions; the mathematical insights lead to more efficient algorithms.
Combinatorial Generation, Enumeration, and Structure.
Carla Savage
$20,000 by the National Security Agency (DOD)
02/ 1/2000 - 08/28/2001
The proposed research is an investigation of fundamental questions involving the structure and size of combinatorial families and various methods for counting and generating them. Efficient algorithms and combinatorial structure go hand in hand. Insight into structure leads to more efficient algorithms which, in turn, allow a larger view of families whose size can grow exponentially.
Analysis and Evaluation of Combinatorial Structures and Algorithms: US-France Cooperative Research
Carla Savage ; William Stewart
$21,000 by the National Science Foundation
02/ 5/2003 - 01/31/2006
This project is the U .S. portion of a joint NSF /CNRS proposal for a cooperative research effort involving U.S. faculty from North Carolina State and Drexel Universities and French faculty from the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin. The funds will support travel for the U .S. participants to visit the University of Versailles to establish a cooperative research program focusing on an integrated approach to the analysis of combinatorial structures arising in applications.
NeTS-NBD: Measurement-Based Mobility Modeling for MANETs
Mihail Sichitiu (ECE) ; Injong Rhee
$484,827 by the National Science Foundation
08/15/2006 - 07/31/2009
Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) have been the focus of significant research activity in the past decade. Thousands of algorithms and protocols for MANETs have been proposed, evaluated and compared. One of the defining characteristics of MANETs is their mobility. We propose to develop and evaluate a hybrid mobility model that is relatively easy to generate and, at the same time, produces realistic mobility traces, that in turn, result in meaningful simulation results for MANET simulations. The proposed model has the desirable characteristics that it is customizable to match any scenario, while allowing the users to vary key parameters.
Policy-Based Governance for the OOI Cyberinfrastructure
Munindar Singh
$53,600 by the University of California-San Diego
05/ 3/2007 - 03/31/2008
This project will develop policy-based service governance modules for the Oceanographic Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure. The main objectives of the proposed project include (1) formulating the key conceptual model underlying the patterns of governance; (2) formalizing "best practices" patterns familiar to the scientific community and seeding the cyberinfrastructure with them; (3) understanding user requirements for tools that support creating and editing patterns of governance.
Agent-Based Conceptual Model and Policy Architecture for Virtual Organizations
Munindar Singh
$40,000 by CACC
07/ 1/2006 - 08/15/2007
Virtual organizations (VOs) are organizations of entities (their members) such as people, institutions, businesses, and their computational resources that collaborate to address collective and individual goals. VOs are virtual in that their emphasis is on the sharing of virtual resources. However, they are no less real than any other organizations. VOs are grounded in the business processes of their members; their behaviors can have financial and legal import. The main difference between VOs and traditional organizations is that the life cycle of VOs operates at much wider time scales. A VO might come together, operate, and disband dynamically within a matter of minutes or hours; yet a VO may continue to exist as long as any human institution. The following characteristics of VOs distinguish them from traditional IT architectures, and are important for our present purposes. The objective of this project is to address two major, related challenges: (1) how to ensure that the agents interact correctly within and across VOs under different circumstances, and (2) how to specify agents and VOs in a perspicuous policy-based manner that engenders confidence in the functioning of the VOs involved.
ITR:Computational Principles of Trust
Munindar Singh
$573,473 by the National Science Foundation
09/ 1/2000 - 06/30/2