Researchers Demonstrate 100° Dynamic Focus AR Display With Membrane Mirrors

January 27, 2017

Achieving a wide field of view in an AR headset is a challenge in itself, but so too is fixing the so-called vergence-accommodation conflict which presently plagues most VR and AR headsets, making them less comfortable and less in sync with the way our vision works in the real world. Researchers have set out to try to tackle both issues using varifocal membrane mirrors.

Researchers from UNC, MPI Informatik, NVIDIA, and MMCI have demonstrated a novel see-through near-eye display aimed at augmented reality which uses membrane mirrors to achieve varifocal optics which also manage to maintain a wide 100 degree field of view.

Vergence-Accommodation Conflict

In the real world, to focus on a near object, the lens of your eye bends to focus the light from that object onto your retina, giving you a sharp view of the object. For an object that’s further away, the light is traveling at different angles into your eye and the lens again must bend to ensure the light is focused onto your retina. This is why, if you close one eye and focus on your finger a few inches from your face, the world behind your finger is blurry. Conversely, if you focus on the world behind your finger, your finger becomes blurry. This is called accommodation.

Then there’s vergence, which is when each of your eyes rotates inward to ‘converge’ the separate views from each eye into one overlapping image. For very distant objects, your eyes are nearly parallel, because the distance between them is so small in comparison to the distance of the object (meaning each eye sees a nearly identical portion of the object). For very near objects, your eyes must rotate sharply inward to converge the image. You can see this too with our little finger trick as above; this time, using both eyes, hold your finger a few inches from your face and look at it. Notice that you see double-images of objects far behind your finger. When you then look at those objects behind your finger, now you see a double finger image.

With precise enough instruments, you could use either vergence or accommodation to know exactly how far away an object is that a person is looking at (remember this, it’ll be important later). But the thing is, both accommodation and vergence happen together, automatically. And they don’t just happen at the same time; there’s a direct correlation between vergence and accommodation, such that for any given measurement of vergence, there’s a directly corresponding level of accommodation (and vice versa). Since you were a little baby, your brain and eyes have formed muscle memory to make these two things happen together, without thinking, any time you look at anything.

But when it comes to most of today’s AR and VR headsets, vergence and accommodation are out of sync due to inherent limitations of the optical design.

In a basic AR or VR headset, there’s a display (which is, let’s say, 3″ away from your eye) which makes up the virtual image, and a lens which focuses the light from the display onto your eye (just like the lens in your eye would normally focus the light from the world onto your retina). But since the display is a static distance from your eye, the light coming from all objects shown on that display is coming from the same distance. So even if there’s a virtual mountain five miles away and a coffee cup on a table five inches away, the light from both objects enters the eye at the same angle (which means your accomodation—the bending of the lens in your eye—never changes).

That comes in conflict with vergence in such headsets which—because we can show a different image to each eye—is variable. Being able to adjust the imagine independently for each eye, such that our eyes need to converge on objects at different depths, is essentially what gives today’s AR and VR headsets stereoscopy. But the most realistic (and arguably, most comfortable) display we could create would eliminate the vergence-accommodation issue and let the two work in sync, just like we’re used to in the real world.

Eliminating the Conflict

To make that happen, there needs to be a way to adjust the focal power of the lens in the headset. With traditional glass or plastic optics, the focal power is static and determined by the curvature of the lens. But if you could adjust the curvature of a lens on-demand, you could change the focal power whenever you wanted. That’s where membrane mirrors and eye-tracking come in.

In a soon to be published paper titled Wide Field Of View Varifocal Near-Eye Display Using See-Through Deformable Membrane Mirrors, researchers demonstrated how they could use mirrors made of deformable membranes inside of vacuum chambers to create a pair of varifocal see-through lenses, forming the foundation of an AR display.

The mirrors are able to set the accommodation depth of virtual objects anywhere between 20cm to (optical) infinity. The response time of the lenses between that minimum and maximum focal power is 300ms, according to the paper, with transitions between smaller focal powers happening faster.

But how to know how far to set the accommodation depth so that it’s perfectly in sync with the convergence depth? Thanks to integrated eye-tracking technology, the apparatus is able to rapidly measure the convergence of the user’s eyes, the angle of which can easily be used to determine the depth of anything the user is looking at. With that data in hand, setting the accommodation depth to match is as easy as adjusting the focal power of the lens.

Those of you following along closely will probably see a potential limitation to this approach—the accommodation depth can only be set for one virtual object at a time. The researchers thought about this too, and proposed a solution to be tested at a later date:

Our display is capable of displaying only a single depth at a time, which leads to incorrect views for virtual content [spanning] different depths. A simple solution to this would be to apply a defocus kernel approximating the eye’s point spread function to the virtual image according to the depth of the virtual objects. Due to the potential of rendered blur not being equivalent to optical blur, we have not implemented this solution. Future work must evaluate the effectiveness of using rendered blur in place of optical blur.

Other limitations of the system (and possible solutions) are detailed in section 6 of the paper, including varifocal response time, form-factor, latency, consistency of focal profiles, and more.

Retaining a Wide Field of View & High Resolution

But this isn’t the first time someone has demonstrated a varifocal display system. The researchers identified several other varifocal display approaches, including free-form optics, light field displays, pinlight displays, pinhole displays, multi-focal plane display, and more. But, according to the paper’s authors, all of these approaches make significant tradeoffs in other important areas like field of view and resolution.

And that’s what makes this novel membrane mirror approach so interesting—it not only tackles the vergence-accommodation conflict, but does so in a way that allows a wide 100 degree field of view and retains a relatively high resolution, according to the authors. You’ll notice in the chart above, that, of the different varifocal approaches the researchers identified, they show that any large-FOV approach results in a low angular resolution (and vice-versa), except for their solution.

– – — – –

This technology is obviously at a very preliminary stage, but its use as a solution for several key challenges facing AR and VR headset designs has been effectively demonstrated. And with that, I’ll leave the parting thoughts to the paper’s authors (D. Dunn, C. Tippets, K. Torell, P. Kellnhofer, K. Akşit, P. Didyk, K. Myszkowski, D. Luebke, and H. Fuchs.):

Despite few limitations of our system, we believe that providing correct focus cues as well as wide field of view are most crucial features of head-mounted displays that try to provide seamless integration of the virtual and the real world. Our screen not only provides basis for new, improved designs, but it can be directly used in perceptual experiments that aim at determining requirements for future systems. We, therefore, argue that our work will significantly facilitate the development of augmented reality technology and contribute to our understanding of how it influences user experience.

CS major Benjamin Kompa named Churchill Scholar

January 27, 2017

Benjamin Kompa, a fourth-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named a recipient of the prestigious Churchill Scholarship, a research-focused award that provides funding to outstanding American students for a year of master’s study in science, mathematics and engineering at Churchill College, based at the University of Cambridge in England.

Kompa is one of only 15 selected for the award, which not only requires exemplary academic achievement but also seeks those with proven talent in research, extensive laboratory experience and personal activities outside of academic pursuits, especially in music, athletics and social service. He is Carolina’s 17^th Churchill Scholar.

“Receiving a Churchill Scholarship is an incredible opportunity for a young scholar and Benjamin is so deserving of this prestigious award,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “He is focused on applying his significant skills in computer science and statistics to solve challenging, global biomedical problems. We are very pleased for Benjamin and know his studies at Cambridge will help pave the way for him to make life-changing impacts in the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.”

Kompa, 22, is a native of Columbus, Ohio and plans to graduate from Carolina this May with a double major in mathematics and computational science, and a minor in biology from the College of Arts & Sciences. He is a Colonel Robinson Scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa member and an Honors Carolina student and has worked in biology labs since high school. Kompa is also a two-time national champion Bridge player, who upon request from the World Bridge Federation, successfully investigated cheating in Bridge using computer methods.

He has worked in the same lab since his first year at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he learned biology lab techniques and conducted computational research to model chromosomes. His research has been pioneering in its exploration of new models and approaches, emphasizing lasting impacts over quickly publishing papers. Kompa also spent a summer at Harvard Medical School studying methods of artificial intelligence neural networks and applied them to analyzing MRIs.

Deeply interested in applying the techniques of computer science and statistics to biomedical problems, Kompa plans to use the Churchill Scholarship to pursue a Master of Philosophy in computational biology in the department of applied math and theoretical physics, and conduct research on disease comorbidities with Dr. Pietro Lio. He then hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and career in research in bioinformatics.

“We are thrilled to see the Churchill go to such an exceptional and worthy student, “ said Inger Brodey, director of Carolina’s Office of Distinguished Scholarships.

The Churchill started in 1963 with three awards and since grown to an average of 14 awards. The Scholarship was set up at the request of Sir Winston Churchill in order to fulfill his vision of U.S.-U.K. scientific exchange with the goal of advancing science and technology on both sides of the Atlantic, helping to ensure our future prosperity and security. There have now been approximately 500 Churchill Scholars. This is the third in a row that a UNC student has been awarded with the Churchill.

Published January 26, 2017.

Politics Aside, Counting Crowds Is Tricky

January 23, 2017

Heard on All Things Considered

Jon Hamilton

There has been a lot of arguing about the size of crowds in the past few days. Estimates for President Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March a day later vary widely.

And for crowd scientists, that’s pretty normal. “I think this is expected,” says Mubarak Shah, director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision at the University of Central Florida. Shah says he encountered something similar during mass protests in Barcelona, Spain a couple of years ago.

“The government was claiming smaller number than the opposition was claiming,” he says.

Counting quarrels have popped up during previous events in the U.S. as well. During the Million Man March in 1995, the National Park Service estimated the crowd to be far smaller than the organizers claimed. The controversy led Congress to bar the Park Service from doing head counts on the National Mall.

The reason that disagreements frequently arise is that there’s no foolproof way to get an accurate head count of a large crowd.

Decades ago, crowd estimates were done by people who simply looked at photographs of an event. They would count the number of people in one small area of a photo, then extrapolate that number to estimate the entire field of view.

This method was inaccurate, though, in part because some areas might have lots people packed together, while others would have just a few people with large spaces between them.

Computers have improved counting somewhat. They don’t suffer fatigue the way humans do, and a computer doesn’t have any political bias, Shah says.

But even computers have limits, says Dinesh Manocha of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They have no problem sorting a few people who aren’t packed together. But when you have big crowds, like those seen across the country in the past few days, it gets tricky.

“When it’s more than 100,000, we just can’t estimate right. We don’t have an answer today,” he says.

It often comes down to image resolution. Manocha says even professional cameras only capture about 40 million pixels. So if there are one million people, each person will appear as a 40-dot smudge.

A company called Digital Design & Imaging Service, is actually trying to make an estimate of attendance at the Womens’ March.

They used high-resolution cameras attached to a tethered balloon to take photos of the marchers. Even with his high-tech surveillance system, Curt Westergard, the company’s president, says he doesn’t expect to get a precise figure. Clouds meant the company couldn’t supplement their own photos with satellite images. And the number of people changed constantly throughout the day.

“Our main goal really on this just to ascertain a rough order of magnitude,” he says. “So if somebody says a million vs. 100,000 we can easily prove one or the other.”

Westergard says the company’s head count should be out by the end of the week. The firm will also share its raw data, so that others can try to make their own estimates.

“We can and do make all of our data transparent. We put it online,” he says. “If you don’t like what we said, count it yourself, and here’s the data.”

Profiles in Computing: Tanya Amert

December 15, 2016

December 15, 2016 / In: CRA-W, Diversity, For Students, Profiles in Computing

By Shar Steed, CRA Communications Specialist

Tanya Amert, a computer science Ph.D. student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found herself drawn to computer science because she enjoyed figuring out how things work. At 13 years old, she was a big fan of the Neopets website and online community. Amert noticed some users had customized homepages, and her interest grew even more. Despite not knowing any HTML at the time, she learned how to look at the source code and figured out how to change the color of the scroll bar within the CSS. “I discovered that specific lines of HTML made that happen. And I thought that was mind boggling and awesome.”

Computer science was not offered at her high school, so as a freshman at MIT, she enrolled in her first programming class and it “completely clicked” for her. After graduating Amert, spent three years in industry working at Microsoft. But she began to feel like the projects she was really excited about were coming out of Microsoft Research. So, she got in touch with a contact there who told her if she really wanted to be working on the cutting edge of research, a Ph.D. was needed. Amert then felt like a Ph.D. would open more doors than they would close, and began appling to Ph.D. programs.

Amert’s specialty is in computer graphics, specifically physically-based simulations. She first took an interest in cloth simulation after watching extra features on a Shrek DVD. “I was so fascinated that they had these tools to model characters and improve the visualization.” It inspired her to take a computer graphics class in her junior year of college, and this is the focus of her Ph.D. research.

In undergrad, Amert did not participate in many women in computer science activities because of her heavy course load. But after experiencing some isolation in the working world, she returned to school with a personal commitment to become more active in the community. At Microsoft, Amert would often be one of only two female engineers in a room of 15-20 people, and began to feel the disparity. So when she was invited to speak at CRA-Women’s Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall (VUTH) this summer, Amert gladly accepted and shared her experiences with the participants. VUTH events are webinar sessions designed to give students the opportunity to learn more about a specific discipline in computer science and also ask the host and speaker mentoring questions to help them prepare for graduate school.

During the webinar, Amert conducted a research presentation titled, “Accelerated Cloth Simulation for Virtual Try-On.” She described the hosting experience as both “intimidating” and “exciting”. It was intimidating to know that the audience was tuning in from around the globe and that she may influence the trajectory of a young person’s career. It was exciting because the participants are on the cusp of a big life step, and Amert vividly remembers her experiences applying to graduate school. “It was also really motivating to be able to share my insights with other people because I’ve already been through the experience.”

Presenting at the webinar also helped her practice how to explain her research in a high level way to broader audience. She presented the same set of slides to her mother, who doesn’t have a technical background, to help her mother understand specifically what her research is about.

Despite successes, Amert also battles with feelings of imposter syndrome. To combat this, one thing she finds useful, especially when she starts to feel discouraged or like she doesn’t belong, is to focus on her positive outcomes. Amert was previously a tutor and kept her course evaluations, so she often looks back at her positive reviews when she gets discouraged.

Profiles in Computing
Part of the mission of the Computing Research Association (CRA) is to mentor and cultivate the talent development of computing researchers at all levels. Several programs led by the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) focus on increasing gender diversity in computing. This new column, “Profiles in Computing,” showcases successful women in computing, who donate their time and energy to mentoring future generations and strengthening the community of female computing researchers through CRA-W initiatives.

ZeroPoint (security tool built by Kevin Snow (Ph.D. ’14) and Prof. Fabian Monrose) will become startup as part of Department of Homeland Security Transition to Practice Program

December 14, 2016

News Release: DHS S&T Transition to Practice Program Transitions Eighth Cybersecurity Technology for Commercialization

Release Date:

December 13, 2016

For Immediate Release
DHS Science & Technology Press Office
Contact: John Verrico, (202) 254-2385

WASHINGTON —The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the eighth cybersecurity technology transitioning to commercialization as a part of its Cyber Security Division’s (CSD) Transition to Practice (TTP) program.

ZeroPoint, an exploit detection and analytics tool funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has spun off as a startup company called ZeroPoint Dynamics. The technology focuses on analyzing documents, email, web content and server traffic for potentially hazardous content known as exploit payloads. With this technology, users will not need to guess whether a document is infected with malicious code and instead will be notified quickly before data is lost.

“Today, phishing and web-based attacks are all too familiar,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “Providing innovative, effective and user-friendly technology is essential to protecting against full-scale data breaches and S&T is proud to prioritize new developments in this arena.”

The TTP program complements the S&T process of funding projects through the full research-and-development lifecycle and into the commercial marketplace. Each fiscal year, the TTP program selects promising cybersecurity technologies developed with federal funding to incorporate into the 36-month transition-to-market program. TTP introduces these technologies to cybersecurity professionals around the country with the goal of connecting them to investors, developers and integrators who can advance the technology and turn it into commercially viable products.

In spring 2014, the TTP program identified ZeroPoint as a promising candidate for transition to the commercial marketplace. The key to the ZeroPoint approach is a patented “execution-of-data” technology that uses an advanced micro-operating system built into the analysis engine to enable fast, accurate inspections of data and memory to identify malicious code.

“In the past, detection approaches relied on previously observed attacks, which are complex and costly,” said CSD Director Douglas Maughan. “The ZeroPoint approach is a unique technology that provides fast, transparent and accurate detection to stop cyber adversaries from harming enterprise infrastructure and networks.

TTP has 24 active technologies and 16 additional technologies that have completed the program’s three-year process. Eight TTP technologies—Quantum Secured Communication s, Hyperion, Hone, NeMS, PathScan, PACRAT,LOCKMA and now ZeroPoint—have successfully transitioned to the marketplace.

With the success of the ZeroPoint transition, S&T hopes commercial technology partners and end-users will take notice of other technologies in the TTP program and the government-wide R&D community for solutions to complex cybersecurity issues.

For more information about the TTP program, visit the program’s webpage, view the program video or email ST.TTP@hq.dhs.gov.

CSD’s mission is to enhance the security and resilience of the nation’s critical information infrastructure and the Internet by developing and delivering new technologies, tools and techniques to defend against cyberattacks. The division conducts and supports technology transitions and leads and coordinates R&D among DHS customers, government agencies, the private sector and international partners. For more information about CSD, visit https://www.dhs.gov/cyber-research.

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UNC-Chapel Hill Students Win TD Ameritrade’s Collegiate Virtual Trading Competition, the thinkorswim Challenge

December 7, 2016

OMAHA, Neb.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Trading right up until the closing bell, four students from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (“UNC-Chapel Hill”) turned in a 127 percent total portfolio gain in four weeks, outperforming nearly 2,500 others to win the third annual thinkorswim® Challenge by TD Ameritrade, Inc. (“TD Ameritrade”)¹. This year’s virtual trading competition had a record number of participants: 726 teams of students from 233 colleges and universities across 49 states put their best investing ideas to the test.

The 2016 thinkorswim Challenge ran from Oct. 10 through Nov. 4, 2016, and was open to all students at post-secondary educational institutions in the U.S. Participating teams started with $500,000 in virtual money to invest in real time using the paperMoney® program on TD Ameritrade’s thinkorswim platform. Prizes were awarded to the top three teams with the highest overall percentage gain in their portfolios at the close of the competition, and to their respective schools. There were also prizes awarded to teams whose portfolios had the highest percentage gains in aggregate value at the end of each trading week, and to the team that collected the most badges for its trading activity.

“There are no Monday morning quarterbacks at the end of the thinkorswim Challenge,” said Steven Quirk, executive vice president of trading at TD Ameritrade. “Experience is often the best educator, so our competition is designed to give young people unparalleled exposure to navigating the market amid the real time events that ultimately influence the performance of their investments.”

During the competition, students remained optimistic about the market overall, with 49 percent of trades being bullish and 40 percent bearish. The remainder were volatility plays or other trades.

Top Prize Goes to Team All for Tony, Tony for All
Team All for Tony, Tony for All from UNC-Chapel Hill won the Challenge, placing trades in the final hour of the four-week competition to edge out others and win with a 127 percent portfolio gain and a portfolio value of $1,133,492. The team consisted of four UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates: senior Alex Bryan, an economics and Portuguese double major; sophomore Nyatefe Mortoo, a business administration major; sophomore Dhru Patel, a computer science and pre-business double major; and senior Grahme Taylor, a health policy and chemistry double major. All for Tony was one of 17 teams from UNC-Chapel Hill competing in this year’s Challenge.

Each member of the Challenge’s overall winning team received $3,000 to be deposited into his own TD Ameritrade brokerage account. As the school affiliated with the overall winning team, UNC-Chapel Hill received $30,000 from TD Ameritrade for its role in educating students on the importance of investing.

“Our team had a diverse collection of interests and skill sets, which worked well for us. In fact, by the end of the Challenge we had deployed a four-tiered strategy for researching investment ideas and executing trades,” said Grahme Taylor, All for Tony team member. “It was an intense and exhilarating learning experience and those of us who are here next year absolutely plan to do it again.”

Less than $13,000 separated the competition’s overall winner from the second place team, which was Team CattleDrive from the University of Idaho. With its 124 percent gain and a portfolio valued at $1,121,232, team Cattle Drive brought in $20,000 for its school and each team member won $2,000 deposited into individual TD Ameritrade brokerage accounts. Third place went to BSIF Elite from Truman State University, which ended up with a 90 percent gain and a portfolio value of $950,568. The team won $10,000 for its school, and each team member won $1,000 for placing third in the competition overall and $500 for winning week four of the competition, deposited into individual TD Ameritrade brokerage accounts.

Michigan State University‘s Spartan Capital team earned the most badges for its trading activity, acquiring a total of 39 badges during the competition. Each member of Spartan Capital received $500 deposited into individual TD Ameritrade brokerage accounts for winning the 2016 badge award.

Students Used Options at All-Time High
The students in the 2016 Challenge had a healthy appetite for options early on, which increased as the weeks passed. In week one, 77 percent of trades were options, compared with 64 percent of trades at the start of last year’s competition, and 45 percent in 2014. In the final week of this year’s competition, 87 of trades placed were options, 12 percent were stock trades, and less than one percent were ETF trades.

This year, students made more trades in the technology sector than in any other sector. Apple (AAPL) was the most frequently traded stock option and Twitter (TWTR) was the most frequently traded stock.

Consistent with last year, 36 percent of trades during the 2016 Challenge were placed through a mobile device, compared with 21 percent of trades placed on mobile by TD Ameritrade clients. The iPhone was the most frequently used mobile device for trading in the competition.

Bringing Financial Literacy to Life
The thinkorswim Challenge is offered every year through TD Ameritrade U, an educational program for professors and college-run organizations that provides free access to virtual trading through paperMoney® on the thinkorswim trading platform. TD Ameritrade developed the program in 2014 to help students prepare for the real world of personal finance by giving them the ability to put classroom theory into real-life investing practice. The firm believes that access to leading-edge investment resources and education is the first step in helping young people form investing habits that can last a lifetime.

“What’s most important about the thinkorswim Challenge is that the students expand their investing horizons,” said Quirk. “We’re happy to hit a new high in participation, but what excites us even more is to watch the students grow savvier about the market with each passing year.”

For more information about TD Ameritrade U or the thinkorswim Challenge, visit www.tdameritradeu.com or www.thinkorswimchallenge.com. To receive updates on the 2017 thinkorswim Challenge, interested students and educators can email support@tdameritradeu.com.

For the latest news and information about TD Ameritrade, follow the Company on Twitter, @TDAmeritradePR.

Inclusion of specific security names in this commentary does not constitute a recommendation from TD Ameritrade to buy, sell or hold.

Past performance of a security, strategy or index is no guarantee of future results or investment success. Historical data should not be used alone when making investment decisions. Please consult other sources of information and consider your individual financial position and goals before making an independent investment decision.

Trading options can involve substantial risks and are not suitable for all investors. Clients must consider all relevant risk factors, including their own personal financial situations, before trading. Please read Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before investing in options.

thinkorswim Challenge subject to full official rules available at www.thinkorswimchallenge.com.

The paperMoney® software application is for educational purposes only. Successful virtual trading during one time period does not guarantee successful investing of actual funds during a later time period as market conditions change continuously.

Source: TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation

About TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation
Millions of investors and independent registered investment advisors (RIAs) have turned to TD Ameritrade’s (Nasdaq: AMTD) technology, people and education to help make investing and trading easier to understand and do. Online or over the phone. In a branch or with an independent RIA. First-timer or sophisticated trader. Our clients want to take control, and we help them decide how — bringing Wall Street to Main Street for more than 40 years. An official sponsor of the 2014 and 2016 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams, TD Ameritrade has time and again been recognized as a leader in investment services. Please visit TD Ameritrade’s newsroom or www.amtd.com for more information.

1. Brokerage services provided by TD Ameritrade, Inc., member FINRA (www.FINRA.org) /SIPC (www.SIPC.org)

Contacts

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation
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alyson.nikulicz@tdameritrade.com
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or
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Morales earns $2,500 Royster Award

December 6, 2016

Nic Morales with his poster at the NC-ASA Royster Award poster competition Nicolas Morales, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science, was recognized on November 11 with a 2016 Royster Student Scholarship Award by the North Carolina chapter of the Acoustical Society of America (NC-ASA). Morales presented his work, titled “Acoustic Material Optimization,” during the annual Royster Competition poster session.

The award is presented to two students annually and carries a $2,500 scholarship. The competition, which has been made possible by support from Larry and Julia Royster since 2005, is open to full-time graduate students enrolled in a program involving acoustics as well as senior undergraduate students expecting to enroll in such a program.

Morales works with Dr. Dinesh Manocha as part of the GAMMA research group at UNC. His research seeks to improve realism in modeled and synthesized sound by using sensitivity analysis for computer-aided design and analysis of large, indoor, architectural models.

View the full competition results at acousticalsociety.org.

HackNC 2016 attracts hundreds of student coders to UNC for hackathon

November 21, 2016

Students at HackNC 2016 — Student hackers pose for a photo with alumna Madi Pfaff (center), who led a workshop on women in technology

HackNC, a 24-hour hackathon held annually at UNC-Chapel Hill by the UNC Department of Computer Science, brought more than 700 computer science students from all over the east coast to Fetzer Gym in October.

A hackathon is a coding competition in which participants team up to work on software and hardware projects. At the end of the competition period, the finished projects are presented to a panel of judges, who select the winner. Projects may involve only code, but hardware is also available, including computers, sensors, smartwatches, virtual reality headsets, computer components and soldering kits.

Growing registration numbers forced the HackNC 2016 organizers to move the event from its previous home in Sitterson Hall to a larger, more flexible space in Fetzer Gym. Jacob Vosburgh, a member of the event’s student organizing committee, said that having no required minimum level of coding experience makes it a valuable event for any student interested in computer science.

“HackNC is an opportunity for people of all skill levels to learn something new and build on their experience,” Vosburgh said.

The 24-hour hacking period began at 11 a.m. on October 29, and the winners were announced during the closing ceremony the following afternoon.

The winning hack this year, Iodine Monoxide, is a game aimed at helping students learn about molecules using the Leap Motion controller. The game, which connects to a website with separate interfaces for students and teachers, lets students build molecular structures using gestures performed over a Leap Motion controller. Each time the student user completes a task, the teacher’s interface is updated with the student’s progress.

Inspired by the common chemistry classroom technique of having students build molecules using balls and sticks of uniform sizes, Iodine Monoxide enhances the process by automatically sizing and connecting atoms based on their physical properties. The ability to quickly recognize grab and drop gestures and start over without deconstructing the molecule also speed up the learning process.

Forrest Li demonstrates his team’s project, Selfie Stick Golf, as teammate Hastings Greer looks on

Other prize winners and honorable mentions included software to sanitize the web while you browse, let gamers use a selfie stick and a smartphone as a golf club controller, and quickly secure a user’s network or device. Seventy-seven submitted hacks from HackNC 2016 can be viewed at hacknc-2016.devpost.com/submissions.

When students needed breaks from coding, the event organizers offered alternative activities, including cup stacking and capture the flag, that forced the participants from a variety of schools to be social with each other and make friends.

According to organizing committee member Luke Tannenbaum, the social aspect of the hackathon is just as important to the organizers as the products students create.

“A lot of coding takes place behind the light of a single computer screen, but it’s gatherings like HackNC that allow us to form an academic community to build relationships that will last the rest of our lives,” Tannenbaum said.

In addition to the UNC Department of Computer Science and Diamond sponsors Capital One and Fidelity, HackNC received support from Major League Hacking, CapTech, Esri, Google, IBM, Infusion, Samsung, SQL Sentry, Optum, Interactive Intelligence, SAS and United Health Group.

Jon Kaplan, head organizer of HackNC 2016, wanted to thank the event sponsors for their strong presence at the hackathon and their willingness to help hackers who were stuck on a problem or in need of ideas to improve their projects.

For more information about HackNC 2016 and the successful hacks, contact hack-nc-2016@cs.unc.edu.

Reiter earns 2016 SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award

October 28, 2016

reiter Professor Michael K. Reiter was recognized by the ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (ACM SIGSAC) with its Outstanding Contributions Award for 2016. Reiter was selected for pioneering research contributions and leadership in information security.

The SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award is given annually for significant contribution to the field of computer and communication security through fostering research and development activities, educating students, or providing professional services such as the running of professional societies and conferences. The selection carries a $1,000 monetary award and a plaque. Reiter was presented the award during the 23rd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS) in Vienna, Austria.

Reiter is a Lawrence M. Slifkin Distinguished Professor as well as an Associate Chair for Diversity in the Department of Computer Science. He leads a research group in the fields of computer and communications security and distributed computing.

Prof. Michael Reiter wins NSA’s 4th Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition

October 17, 2016

Research that resulted in a novel system to prevent information from being siphoned out of computer clouds is the winner of the National Security Agency’s 4th Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition. Such “extractions” are a real and growing threat. The agency also recognized, with honorable mentions, two stellar papers that make outstanding contributions to the cybersecurity research base.

“These scholars, through skillful scientific approaches and piercing explorations, raised the bar of foundational cybersecurity knowledge,” said NSA Research Director, Dr. Deborah Frincke.

This year’s selection process was “extremely difficult,” she added. “The top papers all excelled in different and important aspects of scientific accomplishment – and reflect outstanding scholarship. This work truly matters. At NSA, we conduct cutting-edge research and develop new techniques and technologies to ensure mission success in a changing world. We benefit – as does the nation at large – from each and every leap in the science of security.”

The authors of all three papers were invited to present their work at NSA.

The winning paper, Nomad: Mitigating Arbitrary Cloud Side Channels via Provider-Assisted Migration, discusses the “Nomad” system’s defense against certain attacks that remove private information from cloud clients. This problem has typically required detailed fixes to computer hardware and configurations. Nomad offers a general and immediately deployable defense against these “side channel attacks.” The paper, one of 54 total submissions, was written by Soo-Jin Moon and Vyas Sekar, of Carnegie Mellon University, and Michael K. Reiter from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. They first presented their work last year at the Association for Computing Machinery SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security.

Two papers received an honorable mention:

Increasing Cybersecurity Investments in Private Sector Firms was written by Lawrence Gordon, Martin Loeb, William Lucyshyn and Lei Zhou and was published in the Journal of Cybersecurity. This paper develops an economics-based framework for evaluating governmental approaches to increase private sector investment in cybersecurity.
Quantum-Secure Covert Communication on Bosonic Channels was written by Boulat Bash, Andrei H. Gheorghe, Monika Patel, Jonathan L. Habif, Dennis Goeckel, Don Towsley, and Saikat Guha. It was published last year in Nature Communications. This research adds critical information to the exploration of “covert communications,” which the authors define as the “transmission of information without detection by watchful adversaries.”

The Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition is hosted by NSA’s Science of Security Initiative. Papers are publicly nominated each year between December 1st and March 31st. Submissions are reviewed by a team of independent, external experts – as well as researchers from NSA’s Research, Capabilities, and Operations directorates. After the papers are evaluated, members of the review team send recommendations to Dr. Frincke, who makes the final decision.

Eight distinguished experts were among the external reviewers:

Dr. Whitfield Diffie, cybersecurity advisor
Dr. Dan Geer, In-Q-Tel
Dr. John McLean, Naval Research Laboratory
Professor Angela Sasse, University College London
Professor Fred Schneider, Cornell University
Phil Venables, Goldman Sachs
Professor David Wagner, University of California-Berkeley
Dr. Jeannette Wing, Microsoft Research

NSA’s Research Directorate consistently creates breakthroughs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Additional details about the directorate and the competition are available online atwww.nsa.gov/research and at the SoS Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition website.

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